Of Devils & Deviants: An Anthology of Erotic Horror

by Graham Masterton

  He leaned down to kiss her, and she did not pull away. It was not like the clumsy groping touch of his first sexual experience in college, although it was clumsy – Vince’s was never an athlete, lacking in both kinesthetic awareness and in confidence, but no matter how much he fumbled, Brigitte wouldn’t reject him, either for his paunch, or his receding hairline, or his sweaty palms. As far as Brigitte knew, Vince was the only man in the universe, and it was in her DNA – her programming – to please him. He gently cupped her breast, and pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. She recoiled slightly, and then purred and relaxed.

  “Nice to meet you, Vince.”

  Walking slowly toward the foot of the table, he ran his finger along her side and thigh. It had the desired effect. Gooseflesh puckered in all the right places and Brigitte even shivered a little bit – that was a nice touch, and one that he didn’t specifically remember programming into her protocol. Maybe she was learning already. Vince stood by her feet, and she lay there as if by force of his command, though he hadn’t said anything. His eyes traced the inside of her legs to the tight pocket between them. He was never more aware of his manhood in his entire life, and it really, almost comically, seemed to have a will of its own. He unzipped his pants and climbed onto the table, pushing one of her legs off the side.

  Brigitte gasped as he pressed into her. He looked in her eyes and noticed her pupils contracting and dilating like natural human eyes, but there was something else there, something familiar, something unplaceable, caught between pity and disgust – the look he had seen as early as his junior high dances which ultimately kept him out of the game in frustration. He didn’t care one bit for the look on her face at the moment, though it was forgotten as he focused on the oily grip she had on his erection. He drove his hips into her, and the smile on his face faded.

  “Stop looking at me like that!” he barked as his sweaty hair drooped over his eyes. “You adore me, do you hear? You worship me! One hand slipped around her throat, although he didn’t remember meaning for that to happen.

  Brigitte’s tongue stuck out of her mouth like the head of a pink turtle, and she made the most realistic choking noises. It would have made most men let go in an instant, but Vince found that he liked that noise. His erection stiffened inside her.

  With his free hand, he slapped her breast from each cardinal direction. He was a little disappointed that his fingers didn’t leave a red mark. Disappointed and angry. She owed him a red mark. She owed him everything, and all he got out of it was an endless gagging noise.

  His white hot iron exploded inside her, he tensed several times, and then collapsed on top of her with nothing of a post-coital glow. He was heaving and sweating, and painfully aware of how out-of-shape he was, and while he was proud of his achievement – Brigitte 2.0, not the orgasm – he was feeling just the faintest nibbling of shame, the kind he used to feel when he woke up after a wet dream to find a mess in his sheets.

  “Here,” he said to Brigitte, tossing her a towel. “Clean yourself up. There’s a bulb syringe and baby powder in the bathroom. Make sure you use both, and don’t wash too much around your eyes and nipples or the paint will rub off.”

  “Sure, Vince,” she said, padding off to the bathroom. She shut the door for privacy, which was odd enough, but then she locked it, and that made Vince curious. Why would a gynoid want any privacy, especially from the person who not only built her, but deflowered her as well?

  * * *

  The next few weeks, Vince didn’t really know what to do with himself. He had vague plans to take Meretrix public, or sell the patent to the highest bidder. Hell, he even had an idea to open an adult theme-park in Nevada or someplace and stock it with tireless, infectionless, and completely willing sex workers, but he didn’t know how to do any of those things, and even if he did, he wouldn’t have the guts or instincts to pull it off. A man who didn’t have the wherewithal to kiss a girl? Well, he didn’t have what it took in the boardroom, either. But he definitely had what it took when it came to Brigitte. Often a couple of times a day.

  She spent most of the time in his bedroom waiting for him, draped across his bed like a discarded pair of nylons. It was the way he liked it. The few times they’d ventured out, people looked at him like he’d hired an escort. He hated those looks.

  “Baby?” Brigitte said to him one afternoon. The sun stroked the thousand invisible hairs on his buttocks and back.

  Vince took off his loafers and slid them under his dresser. “Yes, darling?” His voice was flat and rehearsed.

  “Can you take me clothes shopping?”

  “You already have all kinds of clothes.” He walked to the closet. “Look.”

  Brigitte rolled on her side to follow him with her eyes. “Not those kinds of clothes. The kinds of clothes that women wear. Not porn performers. Not prostitutes. Real clothes.”

  “I’d love to buy you some new clothes, Brig,” started Vince. “But I don’t have the liquid cash for that right now.”

  “How is that going?”

  Vince’s pants slid down around his ankles. “I didn’t program you to nag, now.”

  Brigitte rolled back onto her elbows, one knee slightly raised. It was a curious pose, equal parts defensive and inviting. He looked at her like she was a glove – a perfectly tanned, hand-stitched leather glove. “I just want to help.”

  “You know how you can help?” Vince took off his polo and his hairy chest jiggled with the onset of middle age. “You can spread those perfect legs for me.”

  Brigitte acquiesced, opening like a reluctant flower, and Vince climbed on top of her, just like he had been doing as regularly and often as his meals, whumping his weight into her with lethargic rhythm. It reminded her of a whale trying to flop its way off a beach.

  You can do it, boy! She thought.

  And then he reached his hand around her windpipe again. Windpipe wasn’t exactly the word, since she didn’t need it to breathe, but it did trigger the same kind of reaction from her that it would from a real woman – namely choking and gagging. She knew how to mimic it perfectly after watching clips of rough porn on Vince’s computer, and really, she didn’t mind doing it. If Vince was happy, she was fulfilling her programming, but at the same time, she wondered if an artificial brain as advanced as hers wasn’t being used to something less than its potential.

  “You like it rough, dontcha, baby?” huffed Vince. The vein on his forehead was bulging with exertion, and he seemed to be in worse distress than she was.

  Gak!

  But that was never enough answer for Vince. “Speak up, bitch!”

  She made more noises like a dentist’s spittoon.

  And then Vince balled up a fist and punched Brigitte full in the face. He had never punched her before. Slapping her breasts, sure. Her face. Sometimes. But he had never punched her anywhere, and while she couldn’t technically feel pain, she did know that her silicone flesh couldn’t take too many blows like that before it stretched or tore. She tensed, and not as part of any orgasm – hers or his.

  “What’s the matter, honey?” asked Vince, bringing his fist back. “Lots of men like their sex rough.”

  His fist came down, but Brigitte ducked her head out of the way. “No, Vince.”

  “What?”

  “No, Vince.”

  “You don’t say no to me,” he scoffed, but he wasn’t as confident as he wanted to sound. So he brought his fist down again, missing badly as she pulled out of the way. He thought about his fortune, not based on an artificial brain, but on totally subservient whores made to order, going up in a puff of smoke. She was learning too much – probably from one of those goddamned daytime yakfests taking its cues from Oprah or some such thing. Wellsir, he’d put an end to that shit right away. He raised his fist again, like it was holding a lightning bolt from Zeus.

  But when he tried to throw that lightning bolt, Brigitte caught his wrist, and he found that she was not as soft as she appeared. Her titanium skeleton and
gears were stronger than he would ever be, and he was powerless to stop her from pushing him onto the floor. His erection was polished with her lubricant, throbbing ready for more. Being knocked off the bed by a ‘woman’ did nothing to wither it. In fact, he seemed to enjoy being treated roughly as much as he enjoyed abusing others. Well, everyone has their breaking point, thought Brigitte.

  * * *

  Brigitte tried to dress with modesty, but Vince hadn’t given her many options. She found a gypsy skirt and a scoop neck blouse that weren’t too slutty, and she knotted a scarf around her neck to cover up most of her cleavage and the small gash in her neck from when Vince threw the lamp at her. But that was as close as he had gotten to hitting her again. She pulled a pair of seamed stockings up each thigh and hoped the run down her left calf wouldn’t show too much. It wasn’t like she had a choice. The only other pair of stockings was wrapped around Vince’s throat, and she didn’t think those would even be worth trying because they’d be all stretched.

  “I’ll never say no to you again,” said Brigitte, stepping over his corpse.

  Devil Made of Crystal

  J. Daniel Stone

  The Heavy Metal kid called himself Shrike. He spoke in tongues of prophecy, black glitter and the dark arts. Waving a black quill pen in the air as if writing his own laws, he wrote about the complacency and the unease of the world, how the world was shrinking and that there was nothing we could do about it. Though I loathed Shrike’s poetic nonsense, he was my best friend, and my hate is a certain love.

  Though he could not gather the following he craved publicly, in private he could convince any old soul, especially one as timid and curious as I. And so one August night he reflected upon our lives, trying to find a balance between the responsibility we rejected and the spontaneity we desired. It was our usual Friday night gimmick—we were dangerously bored, craving adventure and decadence. What resulted was not as random as picking a number out of a hat, (like paying the filthiest bloke to suck us off with the money Shrike inherited from the parents he claimed raised him the wrong way). This time we fell into a more calculated adventure: a fevered walking tour of Little India. I could hardly refuse for Shrike had already assuaged me with the scents of rose water, the sights of Saris hitting the wind like flags, of sacred cow shit that is not scooped up from the streets and fiery hot black tea brewed in big iron cauldrons.

  “Why night?” I asked him

  “Day is when the mean people flood the streets and trample you like rotten fruit. At night it’s all about play. The sun sets and the claws come out.”

  So we ventured, suffering the drift and grumble of the subway, of metal upon metal, the dark tawdry music of the underground. We studied the train’s pitiful patrons with angst and clarity: a girl juggling too much laundry, a screaming crack-head pissing on the back door while scared families turned their faces away to the terrible reality of poverty and drug abuse. It was a way of life we did not crave, to be so frightened by the real world.

  Were these sights readily preparing us for the carnival of Little India?

  Not in the least.

  We shook off the frost of the underground and fell headlong into the jungles of Nepal and Sri Lanka, lost in a world far away from the United States. As soon as my painfully sensitive eyes adjusted, I thought I might’ve been dropped into a lucid neon painting. The nighttime sky was hazy with color like an erratic circuit board; a lime green house of worship was marked HINDU TEMPLE; a royal mosque glowed an isotine blue.

  South central within a city made of brick, mortar and steel, one quickly loses their sense of place. The colors of the holy land glowed dark and slow as if reflecting off the silted Sagar River where the famous jade statue of Buddha hovers judgingly. Most of the streets were made of mud; the air was thick as the grease vapors vomiting from the many storefronts. A hallucinatory fist of odors curled into my nose: the spicy-sweetness of 1ughal, the yellow scent of biryani whisking like ghosts too quick to be seen, and the antique brewed smell of dark liquor.

  “The Hindus, Bengals and Pakis drink whiskey like wine, but they don’t admit falling into such American temptations,” Shrike said, sipping his own minty brew out of an old tin flask. “But it brings out the life in them.”

  “I could use a drink myself. I’m not drunk enough even after all the craft beer we devoured.”

  “Take some of this,” Shrike offered the tin flask.

  The taste was no less putrid than battery acid. The liquor swarmed my taste buds, my palate; the burning ran down my esophagus. I felt the delicate sphincter instinctively tighten so not to let the liquid agony meet my stomach, to poison my bloodstream. But it was too late. One sip and I was already hot in the face and ready to rule the world. I became deviously horny.

  “Indian brewed Scotch Whiskey,” Shrike said.

  “Never seen a world like this,” I managed to gargle, sucking back the last of the flask.

  Shrike filmed our adventure with a graffiti-scarred camcorder, awaiting the lunacy that blossoms within a sweltering Indian Midnight. It was very hot after all, balmy. My skin took on a wonderful pale glow and Shrike himself seemed to sparkle like those cheesy movie fucktards. Sparkle, or I was still hopelessly infatuated, secretly waiting for that one fairy tale day when Shrike and I would become lovers. No need to get into the dramatics because it’s quite simple: I wanted him, but he wasn’t like me. He was into girls.

  “A bleeding queer,” he jokingly called me in the gutter-punk English accent he often mocked.

  “You don’t understand, Shrike. A man can please another man in ways a woman could never dream of. They don’t have the same parts a man has, they don’t—”

  Shrike interrupted me. “Not interested.”

  “What about all of those fellatio tune-ups you’ve been receiving?”

  “Lucian, if you want to figure out my sexuality, you must first learn how to loathe and love me at the same time. It’ll make our relationship sweeter.”

  “I can’t loathe you…but you do drive me to…well you know.”

  “I really wish you’d make a move. Now come on…too much to see.”

  * * *

  And so it seemed the night streets of urban neon and deathly florescence would never end. Everything throbbed and wavered before my eyes, to the beat of my very heart. We entered a small greasy bakery named SHAHEEN where the windows were marked up by various fingerprints and the floor thinly dusted with powdered sugar. Behind the counter shoeless immigrant women with fancy gold studs in their noses worked like indentured servants. Far down the Caste they were. They were all dark and quiet, and it made me wonder if our gaudy pale skin—accented with the dark blots of makeup around our eyes—bothered these people.

  A slew of tough Pakis slurped Scotch from tea cups and voraciously dug into bowls filled with crusted deserts that were deemed appalling by my poisoned American taste buds. I’d been trained to crave high fructose corn syrup and aspartame, but in this place I could choose from badly glazed cakes made from congealed butter cream and the spongy cottage cheese balls called Rasgulla fermenting in cooled syrup. They reminded me of jellied eyeballs.

  Shrike ate a dozen Rasgulla while I taunted my own queasiness, watching his tongue swipe away excess sugar from his lips. Some of the men complained about our presence, huffing and puffing and digging into their alcohol purgatory and candied heaven. It’s well known that Indian people eat with their left hand and wipe their ass with their right, but these people were maddened and feasting with both hands. The laws of etiquette had no place here.

  “Let’s go. We’re not wanted in here.”

  “It’s because we do no follow their code of dress.”

  Shrike’s wayward language and low levels of personal hygiene certainly blended well here, but the disintegrating Doc Marten boots scrawled with pen ink wasn’t what the Indians respected, nor the twisted blonde hair that fell over his knotty face like tug rope. No Indian person has such light hair, and so I imagined bodiless hands clawi
ng at Shrike to touch his yellow locks, and him managing to always dodge them, the city boy always ready for fight or flight.

  As we chivied back into the black sauna called night, Indian hookers called out to us, craving the taste of paleness I presumed. A chilling shower of stars shattered across their breasts, their knife-like nipples. They covered their feral boned faces in scarlet saris, puffing their lips like swollen penises. Their voices skirled for us to come to them, their small black eyes needy as much as ferocious; the damp weather made their almond skin gleam with sweat; the smell of spice and sandalwood whirled as they fanned their arms in a wavering dance. I wanted to dive deep between their wet legs, curl my tongue around sweet wrinkled amaranth lips to make them women over and over. But I knew if I would have grabbed one and kissed her that she’d bite my lips off; the burn of cayenne pepper would swell over my tongue.

  “Mere attention grabbers,” Shrike said.

  “I could never become bored here. This is a land of excess, excrement and decadence.”

  “Yeah, but you’d be out of one tiny thing…”

  “Fuck off.”

  “No really. Oral sex is forbidden in Indian culture. But look at that!”

  It didn’t catch my attention at first; I was too busy focused on the pulverizing smells of sugar and Bengal spice. A wallop of blood and snot rocketed from my nostrils; the excess slicked the back of my throat like honey. What a waste of natural slimes necessary to the survival of the human body. But then as if bats had swooped down from the sky with their membranous wings and blood-thirsty palates, a slick wind forced us down onto our knees in front of a huge crystal statue of Lord Shiva: god of destruction and transformation. He sat cross legged upon a wicked tiger skin; a heavy glint of moonlight cradled the god’s feral face and a quilt of night draped like swamp trees over his four limbs. A large cobra garnished his neck, its tail pointed like that of Poseidon’s Trident. I could swear he was alive. All it would take was the right amount of light, or a bowl full of tulsi leaves and bone dust to have him step off his plateau and destroy us…or save us.