“Do you get much static?”
“Just from people who don’t know better,” he replied with a quick laugh. “But I soon straighten them out.”
“So . . . You don’t hear anything?”
“Like what?” Like, what the hell is this all about?
“A voice.”
“Just yours and mine, babe.” Snake sounded calm, but he was beginning to worry. She looked nervous, close to panic, in spite of the fact that she was sitting on the couch, drink in hand, her thigh tantalyzingly visible. “Hey, relax.”
As if on cue, Toni said, “Whatever they want.”
“What?”
“Whatever they want.”
“Who?”
“Men.”
“Oh.” This was an abrupt shift, but it was definitely a lot more promising, so he went with it. “Such as?”
“Come on my face. Come in my mouth.”
Her voice was stiff, and her eyes seemed to be fixed on some remote inner point. However, Snake now thought he understood the game. She was going to tell him about the things she did. Dirty talk to turn him on. It was a little more open and blunt than he would have liked, but he was prepared to cut her some slack if it had the desired effect.
“That’s pretty normal,” he told her.
“Ride my ass.”
“Some do like that. Not me, but some do.”
“Tie me up. Blindfold me.”
“Uh-hunh.”
“Hurt me.”
“Not too bad, I hope.”
“Piss on me. Shit on me.”
“Aw, Jeez.” That was exactly the kind of stuff Snake didn’t want to hear. How the hell could he lick her body now, with that stuck in his mind? “Where? On your back or stomach,” Snake said hopefully. “Right?”
“And my chest. And face. And mouth.”
“That really drags me down, babe.” The script had gone into some other movie. Snake was not happy. The only thing that kept him from clocking her on the jaw was the fact that he didn’t want to give up yet. There was still a chance Toni would snap out of her robot stare and get back on track. “I wouldn’t treat you bad like that,” he said. “I’d treat you like a queen.”
Toni suddenly began laughing. Snake didn’t understand, but he smiled at the improvement in her manner. She appeared to be much more relaxed again. He also liked that foxy look in her eye as she tuned in to him.
“Darling, would you really be a good boy?”
“Sure.”
“I want you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“Promise not to peek? Promise not to touch where you’re not supposed to?”
“Well, I don’t get it.”
“Put your drink on the floor and sit forward on your seat.”
“Okay.”
When Snake did what she told him, Toni got off the couch and carefully stepped up onto the coffee table, inches from his face. Hey, hey, hey, Snake thought. This is more like it.
“Here,” Toni said, handing him her glass of Cointreau. “I’d like you to rub it into my skin. Just the bare skin now, and you must behave yourself.”
“O-kay.”
Snake splashed the liqueur on his hand and then placed the small glass on the table. Toni pulled her skirt open, and cupped one hand modestly over her panties. The sight of that navy blue underwear against her golden skin was fantastic. Snake lovingly stroked her upper thighs, above the stocking tops.
“Mmmm . . .”
“Your hand is in the way,” he dared.
“You don’t touch there. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. You’re a good boy, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re doing a good job. What does it smell like? You can put your face closer.”
Snake went so far as to put his face between her thighs, his cheeks touching her. His forehead bumped against her hand. Toni didn’t stop him.
“Oranges.”
“Right.” Now her fingers gently pushed his face away. “The back, too. Don’t forget the back.”
Snake poured the last of the Cointreau in his hand, and Toni turned slightly on the table. She pulled the skirt higher, so he had a clear view of the flimsy blue fabric stretched tightly over her ass. He rubbed the back of her legs gently and slowly, while his eyes were locked on target just above. Toni’s other hand was still planted on her crotch, so deeply that her fingers curved up in sight from behind. Odd, but Snake barely gave it a thought as he had other things on his mind. His hand inevitably slid up and grazed her firm round bottom. She let him do that until he began to squeeze it energetically, insinuating his fingers beneath her panties, and then she spun around.
“I told you to behave.”
“Oops.”
“Never mind, you did a good job.”
Toni stepped down from the coffee table and took her spot on the couch again. Snake took his drink from the floor and slurped a major mouthful. He smiled at her and let his eyes drift slowly along the length of her body, stretched out on the couch. As if responding to his gaze, one of her knees pushed up so the flap of her skirt fell away.
“Did you hear that?” she asked.
“What?”
“The voice.”
“No.” She was still a little crazy, he thought. “You hear voices, you better see the Doc.”
“Which doctor?”
“The witch doctor, yeah,” Snake said with a laugh. “Hell, I don’t know. Go to a shrink, babe.”
His eyes were on her legs and he didn’t feel like discussing anything else. Toni’s arm had fallen casually across her crotch, another peekaboo move that tickled Snake, and her thumb rolled in a small arc on her upper thigh. Lightly, back and forth. It was mildly hypnotic, very arousing.
“Tell me about him,” she said.
“Who?”
“Your doctor.”
“I don’t have one.”
“But you know one.”
“No, I— ”
Snake hesitated. Well, he did know one. Technically. He’d met Shelly’s shrink, back a month or two ago. But he didn’t know the man, in fact he couldn’t even remember the guy’s name.
As if to encourage Snake, Toni now stretched out completely on her back and raised both knees up straight. Then she let them loll open and she rubbed herself in a slowly escalating rhythm as her body squirmed with pleasure. Snake didn’t know what he could say, but he didn’t want to stop the show. He was caught up in it almost as much as Toni was.
“The Doc is okay.”
“Yeah . . .”
“The Doc is good.”
“Yeah . . .”
“He’ll take care of you, but you have to trust him.”
“Yeah . . .”
“And do what he tells you.”
“Yeah.”
Her knees drove toward her chest, her hands worked in a last frenzied rush.
“I wish I could tell you his name.”
“YEAAAAAAAHH!”
Her body rocked convulsively, then turned rigid. She puffed air in short bursts. You momma, Snake thought. He nearly missed his mouth as he tried to take a drink with his eyes frozen on the girl. You hot little whore momma, that was better than a sexpic. The way she had done it with her clothes still on somehow made it that much more real. It was like peeking through the window next door and watching your teen queen neighbor engage in self-service fun. Snake had a hard-on, and he was clean out of words.
Toni rolled over onto her belly, her skirt rumpled and still showing a lot of leg. Her face was pressed to the couch, her one visible eye peering brightly at Snake. There was the faintest of smiles at the corner of her mouth.
“You like to watch.”
“Hey.” Snake shrugged with a grin.
“You do, and you like to have someone do it for you. That’s okay, darling, that’s cool.”
“Well, not always . . .”
“I’ll do it for you. Special, because you’re special.”
> “So are you, babe.”
“Come on with me.”
Snake followed her into the bathroom. It was dark, and Toni didn’t turn on the light. Instead, she pulled the door so it was almost shut, allowing only the slightest illumination to filter in from the living room. She had Snake stand facing the bathtub and told him to unbuckle his belt and unzip his pants. She was right behind him, speaking in a low soft voice, caressing his back.
“Grab hold of the shower bar,” she directed. “That’s right, that’s it. Now close your eyes and imagine you’re in a luxurious hotel room somewhere, maybe Paris, or Rio. You’re high up, maybe forty floors, and the view is fantastic. You stand at the window and gaze out at the spectacular scene. It’s night, and it’s like a dream, just being there. The city is far, far below, but it’s all lit up like a million shiny jewels. Now, a young woman comes into the room. Women always come to you, so you don’t even turn around, you just know she’s there. For you. She comes right to you, her hands flowing over your body. You still don’t turn, you watch the city below and you let her love you— ”
Her hands snaking around him, finding his nipples, squeezing them through his shirt, then planing down, snagging his pants and taking them to the floor. Her face to the small of his back, her hands gliding up the front of his thighs. She takes his cock in one hand, cups his balls with the other, tightening her grip with expert care as her face burrows into his backside. She licks and explores until she finds the puckered rim.
“Ohhh-aaaah . . .”
She tongues it delicately while her hands play him in front, the pace of her movements increasing steadily. Snake heaves with anticipation, his body shaking beyond his control, and she knows he is about to come. Her tongue plunges deeply into him.
“Oooooh-Gaaaaaahd . . .”
He shoots off. Little spattering sounds from the porcelain tub, but they’re almost lost in the noisy rush of breath above. Snake can hardly hold himself up by the shower bar, he’s so weak and dazed by this onslaught of pleasure. He still can’t believe it, what she did to him. So good.
“Toni . . .”
She had backed away from him a little. When he glanced over his shoulder at her he caught sight of the swift movement, but he didn’t understand it. Then he felt it, and it was the last thing he felt. The stiletto blade punctured his spine, paralyzing him. The tip snapped off, but she kept hammering the broken blade into his body, up and down, between the ribs, into his flabby midriff, blood blossoming in a spray of grey roses, his hands slipping off the shower bar, the slow dizzy fall through hot buzzing air, and still it came at him, that knife, bam bam bam bam bam bam, arcing at him, fixing him for all time, his shiny metal transport to the end of the night, bam bam bam bam bam, out of the grey, the gloom and the shadows and into the perfect no pain the perfect no night the perfect no light the perfect the
IX
silence was terrifying.
Tony was shaking so violently that he had to hold onto the sink and the wall to keep from falling to the bathroom floor. He hit the switch and the ceiling light went on. It was temporarily blinding, since Tony didn’t have his shades, and he whimpered in pain. The floor was covered with blood—such a vibrant red—he could see that much as he squinted through his tears. Tony breathed deeply, sucking air in an effort to hold off panic.
Snake was in the tub. Tony had pushed him into it when he saw that the guy was about to keel over backwards on top of him. Now the only thing he could think to do was to leave him there in peace. He’s draining, Tony told himself. Let him drain. It was the best place for him.
But then what? He couldn’t move a big body like that on his own, and he certainly couldn’t get it out of this building or the neighborhood without being seen. Not even in the middle of the night. Impossible. This is bad, bad, bad. He hazarded a glance in the mirror. A savage stared back.
“What now?”
Nothing. The little shit. Tony noticed his stiletto on the floor, and saw for the first time that the tip was broken. Where was the other piece? The way his life was going, that would turn out to be the one little thing that landed him on Death Row. The two hundred-plus pounds of incriminatingly dead meat lying in the tub suddenly seemed as vast as a continent, and somewhere in that land mass was a vital scrap of metal. He had to find it and then get rid of it.
Tony edged closer to the bathtub. Jesus, why did he have to stab the guy so many times? But why did he ever have to stab him at all? Dead, Snake looked merely pathetic. A nobody. Just one more poor stiff who wanted to live, and be loved by somebody, but who never quite got a handle on his life. Not all that different from me, Tony thought.
But, on to business. Tony picked up the stiletto and washed it under the tap in the sink. Then he wrapped it tightly in the hand towel, wiping it several times to make sure he didn’t leave a fingerprint on it, and carried it into the kitchen. He dug up a plastic supermarket bag and put the knife in it, towel and all. He rolled it into a tidy little parcel, squeezing out as much air as he could, and he used the loop handles to bind it with several knots. He set it aside on the counter.
Tony wasn’t ready for the next step yet, so he changed into jeans and a T-shirt, put on his sunglasses and had a large drink to settle his nerves. He didn’t feel better, but at least he was somewhat calmer.
The silence was truly awful. Tony thought he could hear the cells beginning to turn rotten in Snake’s body. Snake had become a factory, a death mill where billions of tiny forces worked away nonstop at the process of decay. Snake was sliming out, so there was no time to waste.
He mopped up the blood on the bathroom floor, and then began the awkward job of removing Snake’s clothes. Why? It seemed the thing to do. In the pockets of Snake’s cheap black pants he came across a wallet containing thirty-two dollars, and a medicine jar that held fifty Demerol pills. Fifty of them! To think I almost felt sorry for you, you cheap bastard. I’m in good shape now, he thought gleefully. Tony burned the driver’s license along with a few other papers in the kitchen sink, wiped Snake’s wallet clean, and buried it in an empty milk carton in his garbage bag. He put Snake’s clothes in another bag.
So far, so easy. Three ordinary parcels to throw away. But what about the big parcel in the bathtub? Tony needed help. The Pied Piper had gotten him into this mess, so where was he? Not a peep. The little fucker. I’ll bring him here fast. Tony got on his knees and smashed his forehead against the kitchen floor. It worked immediately.
—Slime.
“Jesus, man.” He struggled to his feet. The pain wasn’t so bad but black spots peppered his vision for a moment. “You can’t take me to a certain point and then leave me there alone.”
—I can do anything.
“Then get rid of the guy in the bathtub.”
—That’s your problem.
“I might as well call the cops,” Tony said. It was a bluff, and not a very good one, but it had just occurred to him that the Pied Piper needed him, or wanted him, in some way. He reappeared the minute Tony banged his head on the floor. For the moment, at least, it seemed to give Tony a slight amount of leverage. “I’ll tell them he was a trick, and he turned nasty and pulled a knife, and I had to defend myself.”
—That’s the ticket.
The quick mockery worried Tony. “Why not?”
—You defended yourself by stabbing him all those times in the back?
“Well . . .”
—Remove the body, plasmodium.
“How do I do that?”
—Piecework.
“No way, man, no way. I’d rather call the cops, and take my chances that way.”
—Yes?
“You bet yes. I’ll do it right now.”
Tony turned toward the telephone, but froze, and then sagged against the wall. It was as if invisible hands were wringing his liver, and at the same time a tiny neon worm burned like acid in the depths of his ear, eating its way into his brain.
—Yes?
“. . . No . . .”
“. . . yes . . .”
—Good little plasmodium. Now get to work. Use the Ginsu steak knives you got from that nig-nog limousine driver. They’re tacky, but they’ll do the job.
“You know everything in my life?”
—Your life is mine.
Then he was gone. Tony obediently got the steak knives and took them, along with every spare plastic bag he could find, into the bathroom. The pasty bulk of flesh was still there.
“Sorry man, but you’re already dead.”
Tony made a few tentative slices at one elbow, and promptly threw up all over the corpse. Jesus mother’s tit, he’d never get through this. He made sure that the drain was fully open, turned on the cold shower and pulled the curtain around the tub. While Snake was being sluiced down, Tony went to the sink to pat water on his own face and rinse his mouth out. Then he took a Demerol, figuring it would help him through the ordeal.
A few minutes later, he hummed as he cut loose Snake’s left forearm. The elbows and knees were trouble enough with all those wires to saw, but the shoulders were much worse, far messier. At least the head was easy. By then, however, Tony had filled every plastic bag he had. He would get more tomorrow, but for now the only thing he could find to put Snake’s head in was the spaghetti pot his mother had given him. It had a lid. Tony squirted some wash-up liquid in with the head and added water until the pot was nearly full, hoping the detergent would delay the inevitable rot and stench. He placed the covered pot on the stove, where it did not seem too conspicuous.
The Best New Horror 3 Page 48
