Dead Meat

by Joseph M. Monks

  "It's hardly lit back there at all," Emily remembered.

  "Yeah, I know. We think he was pulling out, but wasn’t paying attention. When TJ heard the crash, he ran out and found him wrapped around the dumpster. He must’ve hit the gas instead of the brake and floored it. Steering column went right through his chest. TJ did what he could, but it was already too late. He called me—I was only about ten minutes away myself. We brought him in and locked him up. Had him in the deep freeze less than three hours later. Aside from his head and his chest..."

  Emily heard Dave slipping into the pitch and turned on him.

  "He's a fucking zombie, Dave, a goddamned corpse!"

  "And, he's a big fan of yours," Dave added. "He was jacking off to your most recent CHERI layout when he drove into the dumpster. Look at the guy—he's got one foot in the grave and you and I both know he knows it. And he can still tell it's you. He isn't even looking at me. Last night TJ and I were nothing more than human happy meals to him, but look, look at him now. Any minute and he's gonna try and finish what he started in his car."

  Emily was listening to Dave, but matching stares with the reanimate. She thought Dave was right—this reanimate wasn't going crazy, like the ones she'd seen on the news. He wasn't tearing at the chains. He was simply standing there, like a puppy at the end of his leash. He looked like he wanted to say something to her, but reanimates weren't capable of speech. Their lungs and diaphragms didn’t work anymore. Eventually, he settled on a crooked smile, and reached for his twisted erection.

  Emily turned away.

  "Two hundred thousand, Em. You know, the word is that the Japs are going to do one, it's just a matter of time. If not them, then the Germans. You know what sick fucks those guys are. They've been making dog films and shit movies and enema torture flicks with teenage girls and amputees for years now. We do this, and you'll never have to do another video ever again."

  "No, I - that's different...This is just..." she stammered, struggling to come up with the right words. To explain her opposition. She wanted out. She needed to get out, more than Dave knew. But this? This went beyond anything she'd ever considered. Before her first amateur film, she'd done some escort work. It was a lousy, low-budget service, and she'd never told anyone about it. It was a two month black hole that she had consciously cut out of her life. Not even Lauren, who'd confessed all sorts of personal tragedies to her, knew about Emily's time there. While she had been in the tightest grips of her coke habit, she had found herself doing things for money that she would never discuss. Unspeakable things...degrading things, depraved things...painful things. There were the services that catered to powerful businessmen who simply wanted high class, discrete fucking. And then there was the seedier side, the services where anything goes, where men paid thousands to use a stun gun on your clit or to put cigars out in your ass. There were Johns who demanded that you puncture their foreskin with knitting needles, the way their mother had when they’d been bad. And there were plenty of guys—more than she wanted to admit—willing to pay whatever it cost to cum in your ass while they were choking you into unconsciousness.

  These "clients" didn't understand the meaning of the word "no," and they paid extra not to hear it.

  She thought about her mom, the house in Pennsylvania that was so close to slipping away. She was never going to be in that situation again, that was something she’d promised herself the last night she escorted.

  The night of her first overdose. The one that nobody, not even Monica, knew about. the night she'd failed.

  "Em, what do you think is next? What happens when you've done all the stuff the straight guys want to see? Do you really want to do double penetration videos with guys like Jake the Ripper and Sean Michaels tearing you up so bad you’ll need diapers when you're forty? Are you willing to go back to doing gonzo? Having three hundred guys blowing loads on your face while you wear a plastic cone around your neck like a dog and they feed you the overflow with a scoop? Are you going to let somebody gag you with their cock until you barf in his crotch just because they can market it in Amsterdam and Germany? How many more videos do you think you have in you before you have to start doing the edgy, exploitative shit? Lizzy Borden's already tapping into kidnap, rape and phony snuff. Do you want to hang around that long?"

  Emily didn't notice it, but she was shaking. Dave was right, across the board. Anything less than three and four-ways and companies weren't interested, not at her current rate. Sure, she could get by a little while longer doing the mainstream stuff, but that wouldn’t last. Even at Metro, Kevin had let her know that one of her scenes would be an anal threesome, with guys hung like donkeys. Guys she'd remember fucking for days, with additional reminders every time she went to the bathroom. Dave's question hung in the air, unanswered. How long did she want to hang around?

  "If I say yes," she asked, "How long before the money is in my account?"

  "The bank is offshore. It's still early, though. If you wanted to sleep on it, it’d be about twelve hours. But if I call now? It wouldn't take long at all. My investors’ll want to know you’re going to go through with it, though. They’ll want to shoot tonight.”

  “Fine. Make the call.”

  “You sure? Tonight?”

  Emily nodded. Dave flipped open his cell phone.

  “How’s about four hours?” he asked, his investor picking up on the first ring.

  "Make it two," Emily said firmly, not willing to allow herself the time to back

  out. "And you've got yourself Sextasy Chase in her last starring role."

  TJ got the call, cutting short a much-needed nap. He glanced at the clock radio on his nightstand. A half hour’s worth of sleep. Not bad. It was more than he’d expected.

  He wasn’t surprised that Dave had been able to seal the deal. The man was an operator. He made things happen. Sometimes, even impossible things.

  The next two hours were a blur. Assembling the members of his skeleton crew and getting them out to the studio was the easy part. Everybody had agreed to be on-call. Ready to roll at a moment’s notice. While they got things set up, Dave was doing double-duty, handling the electronic bank transfer and quelling Emily’s fears as the dollars drained from one account into another.

  He put out the fires as soon as they flared. When Emily grew concerned about the reanimate's taste for flesh, Dave informed her that they'd secured a dental brace from a dentist who did all the work on Sextreme’s talent. The reanimate would be able to open his mouth—enabling him to flash the teeth—but not close it. Biting would be impossible.

  At least, that’s what the mouth-man had promised. Dave believed him. He paid good money to have his girls equipped with dazzling smiles. That was business paid for in cash, which no tooth puller wanted to kiss bye-bye. Dave knew the value of a nice set of choppers, particularly when there was so much cocksucking going on. Like the dentist, he also had a cosmetic surgeon on retainer, one he could rely on for top-notch boob jobs, lifts and tucks, and collagen injections. Sextreme was a machine whose gears were greased with cum, cash and cunt juice. Dave kept the juggernaut rolling with generous amounts of all three.

  TJ came into the office for a specific lens, and Dave took the cue to let his star have a few minutes to get ready. With some production details to take care of while the transfer of funds was being completed, he excused himself

  "How’re you doing? Almost ready?" TJ asked. "The guys are real excited. They can't wait to get rolling."

  "I will be, as soon as I know the financial end is tied up. I'm not really looking forward to this one, TJ. This one's mercenary. This is the one that really makes me a whore."

  "Nothing wrong with that, babe. Get yours while the getting's good. This industry doesn't have any union. No benefits package, no pension plan. When you're time's up, it isn't going to feel it owes you anything, so there's nothing wrong with being mercenary. Wring every last buck out of the bitch."

  Emily couldn’t help it. She laughed.

  "T
hanks, TJ. That's the best I've felt all day."

  "You feeling okay otherwise? If you want..." He reached into the desk’s top drawer and took out a small black cylinder. A 35mm film canister. He didn't need to tell her what was in it. The biz had gone digital long ago.

  Emily's eyes locked on it. She’d been thinking of clearing her head for a while now. TJ was already at the door, lens in hand.

  "If you want, it's there. Help yourself."

  Before she could thank him, he was gone. The office door clicked shut.

  TJ paused, fumbled with the lens, which nobody had asked for and the crew didn't need. Before he'd taken another step, he heard the unmistakable sound of a deep sniff.

  Just as Dave had predicted.

  He gave Dave the thumbs-up when he strode onto the set. El Jefe would give her two minutes before he went in and told her what he'd just confirmed via cell phone. The two-hundred thousand had been successfully transferred. Now, she was his—there was no backing out.

  Dave hated lying to Emily. She was one of the few cunts-for-hire he genuinely liked. Not like that whore Jette Black, who was so busy fluffing Danny the freezer boy for hits out of his film vial that they'd only wrapped after three in the morning. Dave had been furious. TJ had had to call him down to the studio to take care of things, because Jette was acting like she owned the place. She wasn’t the only one who’d been indulging in the nose candy, though. Peter Bowne, the director, was so coked up that he had no control over the set. Though TJ was Dave’s second-in-command, nobody was listening to him. After two hours of that bullshit, he’d dropped the hammer, and made the call.

  It took Dave storming onto the set to whip the crew back into shape and finish the day's shooting. He told Bowne to do the last scene in the canyon, because he didn't want any heat to come down on Sextreme's property. Plenty of the talent and crew were potheads, and that was no big deal. Tokers weren’t going to get the place raided. But enough eight-balls to fill a pool hall? That was another story entirely.

  Dave also made it clear to the director of his most successful franchise that he expected Jette to get, “Face-fucked like she deserves, paid, and escorted off the canyon property before her face dries. I never want to see that skank on a shoot again. And if this crew doesn't shape up," he’d added, "They won't work a Sextreme production ever again. Any of them."

  The message sent, he and TJ were discussing what to do about Danny, the new assistant P.A., when they heard the squeal of tires, followed by the crash.

  "Great, just what we need," he’d fumed, following TJ out the back door. "How fucked up is this kid? I don't want any accident report being filed tonight if he's stoned."

  "Kid’s a fucking mess," TJ had grumbled. "He wasn't even phased when I threatened to fire his ass. He was going to go hook up with Jette at the Lizard Lounge. I think he was selling as much powder as he was using.”

  “Figures. Little cocksucker was probably looking to get in just for the hookup with the tail,” Dave guessed. “Our girls definitely buy a lot of blow.”

  “I don't doubt it. The rat-bastard even—Holy shit!"

  They found Danny's Lexus pinned beneath the sharp slant of the dumpster. The air bag had gone off and looked like it had broken the punk's neck. Blood ran freely from his nose. He was giggling, running his fingers through it like he was finger-painting.

  "Dumb fucking bag of shit. What a friggin’ mess,” Dave spat, seething. “No way we're letting this douchebag call the cops or the insurance company tonight."

  "Wanna leave him here to choke on his own puke?" TJ suggested.

  "Much as I'd like to, that idiot Jette would probably come back looking for her coke-daddy and freak. Let's get the putz inside and roll the car into the loading bay so nobody can see it."

  It was nothing Emily would ever know, but Dave was reliving it moment by moment as he approached the office. He and TJ had been trying to figure out what to do with the coked out, semi-conscious ex-P.A., when the kid started to shake. As the pair stood over him, Danny writhed and went into convulsions.

  "Shit," snarled TJ. "You want me to get Rodriguez?" He was referring to Dr. Manuel Rodriguez, who could be called upon to treat, quite discretely, the occasional overdose which occurred on a porn set. He might have had a sheepskin from an uncredited school in the Philippines, but the son of a bitch sure knew his drugs. He probably had killed as many L.A. girls as he'd saved with his painkiller "prescriptions," but at least he was reliable.

  "What if we just leave him there on the floor?" mused Dave. "I really don't want to call Manny, much less pay him for this loser."

  The question had been rhetorical, but it was late. Both of them were a little punchy. TJ took up the thought and ran with it.

  "He croaks, I say we wire his jaw shut and find some crack-whore to fuck him for a hundred bucks and a baggie of crystal meth."

  "You know," Dave said, Danny's legs continuing to twitch and jerk. "That's pretty fucking brilliant. I bet we could market that. Call it, Fuck of the Living Dead."

  "That’s not bad," chuckled TJ. "I think we could do better, though."

  The hour was taking its toll on them. Foamy spittle was starting to leak out of Danny's mouth.

  "Babe-E-us Corpus?" Dave suggested. TJ moaned. Danny began banging his head against the floor as the convulsions turned into a full-blown seizure.

  "Will you look at that? I've never seen anything this freaky."

  "This is the kind of shit you see on those cable TV medical shows. I should probably be taping it," TJ said.

  "So, what if he doesn't croak?" Dave asked, looking his right hand man in the eye.

  "I dunno. What are you thinking?"

  "Maybe we should make sure."

  TJ knew that the conversation had moved beyond idle fantasy, into a legitimate "what if' scenario. He thought about it for a minute, weighing their options.

  "We could just whack the fuck. We cut the air bag and the Lexus is drivable. Leave that thing on the street a half mile up the road and it's as good as gone."

  "Why don't you get on the horn, see about getting us a commercial cooler. Something solid. I'm going to make a few calls. I think this can work if we find the right chick to fuck this shitbag."

  "Got anybody in mind?" TJ asked, duct taping Danny's arms and legs together like the mummy. His head was now banging against the floor at a tempo that would have impressed Buddy Rich.

  "What about Sextasy Chase?" said Dave.

  TJ had laughed.

  "The number one porn star in the world, instead of a crack whore?"

  "Sure, why not," Dave answered, already dialing. His mind was racing. He looked down at the bloody, former production assistant.

  "If we're gonna make history, why not go all the way?"

  He rapped twice on the door before going in. When he entered, he saw that Emily's face had taken on a warm, rosy glow. Dave was satisfied. She was higher than she'd been in months, and all on Danny’s leftover blow. It hadn’t cost him a dime.

  She was probably more than ready to spread those golden thighs for some corpse cock, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to tell her what she wanted to hear, first.

  "Good news, love. The transfer is complete. If you want to log on and check

  your much-improved bank balance, mi laptop is su laptop."

  "That sounds like a plan. Gimme a sec and we can get rolling, okay?"

  Dave responded with a wide, genuine smile.

  "Sounds like we're gonna make a movie,” he said, agreeing to her request. "The guys will be ready when you are."

  TJ had the crew in place and waiting. As soon as Emily was satisfied, he and Jack Terrell, an ex-con he used for set building and studio odd jobs, would get Danny out of the deep freeze. Beyond that, it was a crap shoot. He’d been on productions where months had gone into the planning, and everything went to shit the minute the director yelled, “Action!” There was truth in the old military adage that said, all plans go out the window once the first shot is fired.
He and Dave had pulled this whole thing together in less than fourteen hours. He hoped like hell the recently deceased addict could be coerced into actually pulling this off.

  Terrell had only been filled in on the details at the last minute, but didn't give a shit. He'd done seven years on a manslaughter rap in the ‘90s, and had gotten connected with TJ through the production manager’s extensive coke connections. Jack didn't know dick about the movie business, but he knew enough to keep his mouth shut for two large a night, and tonight that's exactly what TJ wanted out of him. That, and somebody good with a snub-nosed .38, in case Danny boy got out of hand. Jack could take it or leave it either way. He didn't like reanimates, and while he wasn't thrilled about being around one, the .38 and the flesheater’s dental-dam made taking the job an easy decision.

  TJ snuck a look over at the freezer. They had the door open, keeping Danny chilled, but allowing him to thaw out enough to move. TJ hoped he and Dave had put enough screws in to hold the jaw. He knew the line of bullshit Dave had fed Sextasy. The two of them had actually done the job themselves, with a cordless drill and a couple of small brackets. It was one of many things he was going to put out of his mind the minute this was all over. He was going to take a good, long vacation. Maybe to Tahiti, where he could smoke unbelievable weed all day long and fuck natural, cocoa-skinned native girls who didn't know what implants were.

  They’d had a horrible time of it at first, trying to brace Danny’s head so they could get the brackets in. Two of Danny’s teeth had been broken, leaving jagged shards sticking out of his receding gums. Danny, it seemed, hadn't been much of a milk drinker as a kid. Either that, or he was a frequent rider on the meth train, too.