by Edward Lee
Mrs. Mullins squirmed, convulsing, as she was dragged down the hall. He backed into the bedroom, flicked on the light. “Nice crib,” he complimented, scanning his gaze about the clean, white, neat-as-a-pin bedroom.
“Upsy-daisy,” he remarked when he next lifted Mrs. Mullins’s shuddering body up onto the bed. Dead from the waist down, he thought. Won’t even have to worry about tying her up. She sure as shit ain’t going nowhere.
He tore off her nightgown. He looked down and almost swooned. Christ, what a bod, he thought. And even more fascinating was the fact that Steve’s second round had caught her directly in the nipple, a perfect pop. Blood effused in steady pumps from the meaty hole. Then he squeezed it and watched more blood squirt out. And the rest of her looked great: long and lean and sleek and not an ounce of fat on her. “Too bad hubby left for the convention, huh? He’s gotta be crazy leaving you here all alone in this evil world.”
Then he continued; he couldn’t help it. “Wonder what hubby’s doing right now at the convention?”
He expectorated between her legs and raped her frenetically there on the bed as she continued to convulse. He felt compelled to have his orgasm before she died; doing so afterward seemed demented. As he copulated, he could hear the cracked bones of her spine grinding, and he gave it to her hard. But then—
“Aunt Jan?”
Steve’s masked gaze jerked up.
Holy…FUCK!
A young black girl in a nightgown, probably fifteen or sixteen, stood shock-eyed in the bedroom doorway.
“What are you—”
“The papers said you didn’t have any kids!” Steve shouted down into the back of Mrs. Mullins’s dying head.
The woman gasped, “My, my—niece. Staying with us— Pluh-pluh, please don’t hurt her. Da-da-do anything you want to me, but in thhhhh na-na-name of G-G-God, pluh, pluh, please don’t hurt h-h-her.”
Steve picked up the big revolver from the floor.
“Don’t make me laugh,” he said and then took off after the screaming girl…
— | — | —
24
As Alice’s scent on the robe lulled Holly to sleep, that same faint fragrance seemed to rouse her sometime later. She didn’t really feel awake when she opened her eyes. She felt dreamy instead, lushly becalmed and drifting…
But to where?
The room was warm, filled with ebon streaks and blocks diced by tinsel slivers of moonlight from the window. Alice’s guest room; the high, postered bed.
The odd configuration of the house became plain to her. She looked out the guest-room window and could see Alice’s window, because the watch room was an extension. Then it all came back to her.
I got drunk; I threw up, Holly remembered. How could she forget! And Alice put me to bed. But how long ago had that been? She glanced around but didn’t see a clock. All she could deduce was that it must be very late, because that was how it felt: a stark, dead hour of the night. Soundless. She felt all alone in the world just then, yet it wasn’t a bad feeling.
This feels… wonderful
Then she felt—
A hot, exotic shiver ran up her skin.
—two warm hands on her legs…
She questioned nothing, made no inquiries to herself. It’s Alice, she knew, coming to make love to me. Finally.
Holly let the robe part, its soft terry sides sliding down off her breasts. Then a moan sounded—Holly’s? Or Alice’s?—and the loving hands on her thighs gently parted them, caressing her. Holly didn’t move; she just lay back, her eyes closed, a sedate smile on her lips as she enjoyed the sensation of at last being touched by the woman she was so in love with. Her nipples gorged to tingling; her panties were slipped off. Then her lover’s mouth slowly laved Holly’s exposed sex, the tongue slipping luxuriously up and down through the tender groove. This went on for some time, each stroke coaxing the most delicious sensations, the wildest delights. Holly remained where she was, relaxed, drenched, reeling in her pleasure.
And she wanted to return this pleasure—more than anything. She wanted to do as she was being done to, and offer the same luxuries of the flesh to Alice. But the feel of that warm, loving mouth on her sex seemed to hold her to the high bed as if lashed to the oak posters by bonds. As the tongue continued to tend to the tip of her sex, a finger gently entered, then two, then three, pressing upward steadily in and out, and, as if in accompaniment, every muscle in Holly’s body went tense, then relaxed, and at the same time she could hear the luscious, wet sound as Alice’s mouth continued to give her succor. She was going to come soon; she knew it.
“You taste lovely,” Alice whispered. “I could eat you like food…”
Holly sighed.
The fingers, joined together like a penis, delved in and out, more firmly now, more resolutely.
“I can feel you’re getting close,” Alice whispered. “I can feel you’re getting ready. Are you almost ready?”
Holly moaned and nodded.
“Are you almost ready to come?”
“Yes,” Holly breathed.
“I want you to come for me. Will you come for me now?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Go ahead and let yourself come, darling.” And then Holly’s orgasm unloosed, her hips strained upward in the bed, her loins releasing all at once the pent-up desires of what seemed a lifetime, a steady climax of gushing pulses, nearly like a man’s. She came and came and came…
“That’s it, darling. Come for me—
“Come—”
Holly whined.
And her lover’s voice—
(Come.)
—yes, Alice’s voice—
(Come.)
—changed.
(Come, you little slut, you little piglet. Come right in my mouth so I can drink you all up. Drunken, broken little piece of shit. Give it all to me, all of it, all of it, strumpet, trollop, whore…)
Holly’s eyes felt pried open. Her gaze darted to the window again, which showed her Alice’s window. And there, in the extension room next to hers, she could see Alice asleep in bed.
(Here, piglet. More. Take more.) the appalling voice guttered at her loins, and then the mouth sucked her clitoris and the entire hand slipped into her sex, turning and moving back and forth, and despite the sheer hideousness of what was being done to her, Holly’s climax continued.
(That’s a good little bitch, that’s a pretty, little piece of shit, oh, yes, darling…) And next the voice broke into shredded black laughter, an evil, desolate sound, like animals being gutted en masse.
Holly lay paralyzed now. She tried to scream, even as the last of the traitorous orgasm pulsed down, but her throat felt welded shut. She was a shivering moth pinned to a board.
(Yes, a good little cunt.) Finally, then, the face from whence the voice came raised into Holly’s gaze. It was a woman, yes, but not Alice, not anything close to Alice. Large, firm breasts; long, limber white arms; sleek shoulders draped by straight, shiny hair black as the darkest night imaginable. The woman’s hand smoothed over Holly’s quivering abdomen, then raked the skin very gently with pin-sharp nails.
I’m…dreaming, Holly thought in her terror. I must be dreaming; I have to be—
For nothing this hideous could ever be real. As the woman’s gaze licked up and down her body—like a wolf appraising a fawn—Holly felt smothered by something entirely primordial, a notion, or a pretense, so totally evil she wanted to die…
(Yes, you sweet little thing, you delectable little smear of excrement. I am your dream. And all your dreams are nightmares…)
Holly’s stomach heaved.
(I should suck you off again. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?) the shredded voice croaked on. The woman slithered up then, in the moon-tinted dark, and straddled Holly’s belly. (Would you like that?)
“Oh, God, no, please—”
(I should suck you off again, and suck things out of you. Yes, I would suck your womb right out through this wet little pussy of yours. And ea
t it.)
Tears welled in Holly’s eyes. The terror now was so intense, her heart felt as though it was missing beats.
Then the woman’s hand slipped up, and her long, delicate fingers—still wet—delved into Holly’s mouth, daintily at first, as a lover might, but then quickly pressing down hard against Holly’s tongue until she was gagging, until she felt sure she would vomit.
Holly hacked as the fingers jammed in her mouth pressed down harder, harder—
(Press your pretty eyes with my thumbs, press them till they break, press them back into your head.)
—harder, harder—
(Open your belly up like a big, sweet fruit and just suck out everything inside. Yes?)
The fingers slid out. Holly’s lungs seemed to actually whistle as she was finally allowed to inhale. But only for a moment, because next the woman’s hand girded her throat just under the jawline. And squeezed.
(Look, my little suckling. Look.)
The hand began to choke her. Dizziness, like stars, erupted in her vision, but through it—
(Look, whore. Look. Look at my face.)
—Holly looked into the woman’s face.
But there was no face, not really. Just a crisped silhouette full of darkness, of blackness more complete than that of the deepest chasm in the world. No, no face, just two huge, crystal-clear black eyes…
(And behold, my love. Behold my dutiful ushers…)
Holly looked into the woman’s eyes.
And what she saw was herself.
In the ebon reflection she saw herself as she lay now on the bed, paralyzed, her eyes wide and pale in horror, but here she lay on a bed of smoking embers and tendrils of flame. Black smoke shifted around her, a nefarious fog, and an even more nefarious laughter seemed to spin about her head. She was being gazed upon now by broad, crevice-lined faces that seemed molded of lump-ridden clay, and by empty holes for eyes hooded by slitted lids. Fat, misshapen hands began to paw at her most private places, without reservation or inhibition. Steaming drool fell out of primeval mouths onto her skin, where it sizzled like spit on a frying pan. The figures circled her—not men, not even things, but far less. From the lipless, slitlike mouths, distended tongues emerged. One of the clay-faced things knelt and roughly parted her thighs with three-fingered hands. Another leaned over, chuckling, and began to kiss her, drooling long lines of slime into her mouth so abundantly, she had no choice but to swallow.
Her eyes darted back and forth, and then she noticed—
Jesus Christ Almighty oh please let me die!
—that all of these otherworldly “ushers” sported gorged genitals of frightening proportions, and as she continued to squirm in her nearly mindless terror, these same genitals began to bloom in their arousal, like great, pulsing stinkhorn mushrooms.
Then the first of them—the first of an endless queue of these abyssal ushers—stood up between her legs…
The vision vanished like a blink, and Holly was back in her own world, out of that infernal other world.
(Go to sleep now,) the woman was saying in the same corroded voice. Her hand girding Holly’s throat tightened, squeezing surely as a tourniquet—
(Go to sleep, my little piglet—)
—tighter and tighter, until her vision darkened to a shade of black equal only to the woman’s face, and Holly’s heart began to falter—
(Go to sleep and remember this, unless you want all the things I’ve shown you tonight to be your future.)
—and then her heart stopped.
(Your future forever and ever without end. Oh yes, remember this. Alice…is mine…)
— | — | —
25
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Alice asked, leaning over the open driver’s window.
“Hung over,” Holly wearily responded from behind the Maserati’s wheel. “But at least I’m not drunk anymore. I’m really sorry about making such a fool of myself last night.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it, Holly, honestly. Everybody has a few too many every so often.”
“Yeah, well, I had more than a few too many, I’m afraid.”
Alice’s eyes narrowed in concern. “But are you sure you’re feeling better? You still don’t look too good.”
Holly appraised the dark, smudge-like circles under her eyes in the rearview mirror. She groaned and looked away. “I had…a really awful dream. Remind me to never drink Scotch again. Ever.”
“Do you have any patients today?” Alice asked.
“No, thank God,” Holly said.
“Well, go home and take it easy,” Alice suggested. She glanced distractedly for a moment at a nested sparrow raising a ruckus from atop a tall tree in her yard. “And I’ll be here all day; somebody from the newspaper is coming over to take pictures of the house, so if—”
“The newspaper? Why do they want pictures of your house?”
“Some article or something they’re doing about historical houses that have been purchased by private residents. It should be pretty neat. But as I was saying, I’ll be here all day getting ready, so if you need anything, please don’t hesitate to call.”
“Thanks, Alice.” The Maserati’s engine was so quiet, one would’ve thought it was turned off. Holly winced to herself as she put the car in gear. “I’ll talk to you soon. And next time I’ll buy the sushi.”
Alice laughed. “Okay. ’Bye.”
The car pulled off down the empty street. Poor thing, Alice thought, watching until the sports car turned at the next corner and was gone, leaving total silence in its wake. Well, not total silence. High over her head, the sparrow continued to squawk. Then she heard the most diminutive sound—pap, pap, pap—and squinted harder up at the tree, a high, straight pin oak.
Oh, how sad! she thought. Several tiny white objects, no larger than a child’s marbles, were falling, then breaking at the tree’s wide base roots. The sparrow was pushing eggs out of its nest.
««—»»
In the aftermath of her drunkenness, the quiet, shimmering summer morning felt stilted, grainy. It wasn’t really even an aftermath; she was probably still partly drunk. Holly had lied about her schedule; she did, indeed, have patients today, but before she’d even left Alice’s house, she knew she would cancel them first thing. Perhaps only once or twice in her career had she actually canceled a session—a very bad flu once, and then for a colleague’s funeral. But never, she told herself in disgust, because I was hung over. Christ, Holly, what is wrong with you?
But there was no way she could see patients today; it was out of the question. She just felt too awful…
The bright sun only soured her mood further as she drove toward home. It set her headache raging. I’m never going to drink again, she promised herself, but, of course, she’d made that promise before, hadn’t she? She even laughed at herself. All alcoholics make that promise…
Yet only now were the pieces getting larger, beginning to fit together with some logic. That dream she’d had, while sleeping in Alice’s guest bed…
Awful. Hideous. Holly had never really bought Freud’s collective theories. Like other behaviorists, she believed that the mechanisms for dreaming weren’t necessarily symbolic at all, but just a mode by which the subconscious rid itself of mental garbage. And she had never hoped that was true more than right now.
She gritted her teeth at the surfacing bits of images: the beautiful woman, however faceless, seducing her with all her desires, then showing her something else altogether. A scene out of Hieronymus Bosch, only more demented, more hideous.
Like hell, she thought.
But why? Why a nightmare like that? What did it mean? Backwash from her teenage years, when she’d objectively rejected religion? Did she feel subconsciously guilty about her lesbian desires? She couldn’t believe that. The dream couldn’t have been symbolic because it couldn’t be phase-factored or regressive. Maybe I should see a shrink, she thought, and laughed until her temples ached.
Then—
More
pieces. She’d awakened, hadn’t she? Yes. When the hellish nightmare had run its course its final images had lurched her to wakefulness. Wait a minute, she thought.
She’d gotten up, hadn’t she? Her mouth so dry her tongue felt like a novelty-shop, stuffed horn toad in her mouth. She’d wanted to get some water…
And then she’d—
Still more pieces came back to Holly’s memory.
She remembered leaving the room. An antique lamp on a pedestal lit the foyer. The house seemed to generate its own silence, the air-conditioning exhaling like subdued breath, the plushly draped windows the closed eyes of its slumber. A grandfather clock ticked almost inaudibly, its works slickly clicking. The hardwood floor felt warm beneath her bare feet as she passed the foyer, prepared to cross the quiet sitting room and move into the kitchen. But…
I didn’t go into the kitchen, did I?
No, she hadn’t.
Instead she’d turned left, heading away from the sitting room…
Now the veneered wood floor gave over to dark hook-rugging. She was moving down the side hall. Ornately framed portraits hung on the walls: pre-Revolutionary personages, locals, a governor named Oglethorpe, an architect named Hammond. She thought of the most contrived notion: that the dark, stainlike faces were actually watching her, their eyes following this inexplicable progress. At the end of the hall sat a darkly upholstered Krouse Bench, adorned with needlepoint pillows.
And just forward of the Krouse, on either side, were closed doors.
Like everything in Alice’s house, even the doors were beautiful: darkly refinished, paneled, inlaid, with genuine brass knobs. The door on the right opened silently as she pulled the knob. Just a utility room, a squat dryer and washing machine, a wicker hamper, a large sink. But when she opened the door on the left, she suddenly faced a great, black maw.
Warm air eddied up into her face. She couldn’t see anything, though, until her hand blindly patted the wall just inside and switched on the light.
