“My God.”
The tilt of her head, the subtle smile touching the corners of her lips, the way her eyes found his through the photo across a distance of weeks and miles, all added to the allure of what was the most sensuous thing Joe had ever seen. Selene’s skin was wet, hair dripping with seawater that ran over the succulent mounds of her buttocks in long rivulets that traced their way down her voluptuous thighs.
There was a vast body of water behind her and a beach with black sand. Joe had been to that beach before. It was across the bridge from San Francisco in Marin County. Black Sand Beach, a nude beach. He wondered if perhaps there had been other photos of her without the bikini and the guards had helped themselves to them.
The sunlight dappling through the droplets of water on her skin made her flesh glisten and shine. It was like seeing a glimpse of the fiery essence within her, the one he’d tasted in the tiny morsel of flesh she’d given him. Selene’s thighs, like her round buttocks, were thick with muscle and just the right amount of adipose tissue.
The last photo was of Selene lying on a beach towel with her head tilted back so her long neck was exposed to the sun and her breasts stuck out prominently. Here was Joe’s only moment of disappointment. Her breasts were indeed larger than the last time he’d seen her, but still dwarfed by the memory of Alicia’s impressive bosom. Selene’s lone nipple poked hard against the thin, satiny fabric of her black bikini top and Joe hungered to make the two breasts symmetrical by consuming the one that got away.
Joe taped the photographs to the wall above his bunk and stared at them.
“That your woman, homes?”
Joe nodded.
“She’s fine, right? I bet you miss that.”
Joe nodded. There were no words.
Twenty-Eight
“How are you feeling, Joseph?” Professor Locke inquired. He aimed a tiny penlight at Joe’s pupils and peered deep into his eyes. “Any side effects?”
“None, so far.”
“And how about the urges? Have they returned?”
Joe thought about the last time he’d made love to Cindy Addison. There had been no violence. The monster had not tried to take control. He had kissed every inch of her, sucked her nipples, licked her thighs, the cleft of her buttocks, the silken folds of her labia, tasted her womanhood, and never once felt the urge to do her harm. Their love making had been almost tender, sweet, normal. He had reached orgasm in the missionary position, staring into Cindy’s eyes. The moonlight streaming in through the library windows had illuminated her face as she whispered the words, “I love you” and he hugged her in lieu of a reply. The very next day she’d disappeared.
“No, the urges haven’t come back. But, I’m afraid.”
Professor Locke looked at him with an expression of concern, eyebrows knit, peering over the top of his glasses.
“What are you afraid of, son?”
“I’m afraid I’ll get addicted to it, the ketamine.”
Professor Locke nodded, pushing his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose.
“There are worse things to be addicted to. But I’ll look into some alternatives.”
Joe nodded.
“Thanks, Professor.”
He laid back on the gurney and a nurse stepped forward to insert the IV in his arm. Joe felt instantly relaxed. All his worries and fears, lusts and carnal obsessions, were momentarily lost in a narcotic haze.
Twenty-Nine
Joe had been nervous about going out to the yard with the other inmates. There were several other convicts just as big as him and a few who were even larger. Everyone seemed to show him respect, giving him a wide berth. It was a relief even though he found it confusing. Joe asked his cellmate about his seeming status.
“You’re a serial killer. Serial killers are high on the food chain here. Besides, you bit off Luscious Jones’s dick, man! That dude had been fucking people up for years, raping guys, stabbing guys who didn’t let that big maricón fuck them. A lot of homeys were afraid of him, but not since you whooped his ass. Now, you’re the man!” Fausto said.
Joe didn’t know how to take it. He was flattered, but he was more interested in how he could use this sudden celebrity to his advantage. Fear, he’d long ago discovered, could be a valuable asset.
In prison, the social order devolved to its most primitive state. The strongest and most vicious ruled and the meek did their best to stay out of the way. Joe sat on the bleachers, staring up at the guard towers and over at the two rows of fences topped with barbed wire. Between the two rows of barbed wire fencing, guards patrolled with dogs. Escape seemed impossible. If he couldn’t hop a fence or tunnel out of the prison, that left only two alternatives: fight his way out, which would end with him either being bludgeoned to death by the SORT team or shot down by the guards in the lookout towers once he made it outside, or he could somehow stowaway in a package that was leaving the prison. Joe began cataloging the various deliveries that came to and left from the prison.
The most frequent deliveries were food. Trucks filled with meat, vegetables, and canned goods rumbled through the door of the gates to be unloaded by convicts at the loading bay. Almost as frequently, trucks came delivering denim and cotton for the flags and blue jeans manufactured inside the prison by inmates and taking the finished products away to be shipped to distributors all over the country, then there were the coffins that were taken out to be buried in the prison cemetery and finally, there was the sewage. Sewage tunnels ran beneath the massive correctional compound, transporting tons of waste to a treatment plant a hundred miles away. Joe had many options. He smiled up at the sun. It was good to see the sky again. He had been in supermax for so long he had almost forgotten what the heavens looked like.
Joe was watching a dark cloud shaped like Buddha drift slowly across the blue firmament when a large shadow abruptly blotted out the sky. The large, athletically built black man with the shaved head and gangland-style tattoos covering his arms, chest, and stomach with rap lyrics, biblical verses, crucifixes, tombstones, firearms, and tribal designs stood above Joe with his fists clenched and a malevolent grin scarring his face. It was the inmate who’d threatened him when he was walking through the prison hospital on his way to see Professor Locke.
“You supposed to be some kind of bad mutherfucker, huh?”
Joe shrugged. He began sizing the man up, looking for weak points, places where he could do the greatest amount of damage in the shortest amount of time without leaving any evidence behind that could send him back to supermax.
He looked at the man’s slender legs. One kick to the convict’s patella would shatter his kneecap and render him helpless.
“Leave him, Devon. He ain’t lookin’ for no trouble. He just tryin’ to do his time like the rest of us,” Fausto said.
“Did I ask your fat ass, Fausto? You want some too?”
Fausto stood up. Layers of adipose tissue rippled and jiggled as he rose.
“You want some of me, Devon, you know you can get some. But you know I ain’t alone,” Fausto answered, raising his forearm and pointing to a tattoo of the Mexican flag with a crucifix in the center bordered by an uzi sub-machine gun on one side and a machete on the other. Beneath it in thick gothic lettering were the words: Latin Mafia Lords.
“I ain’t tryin’ to beef with the Latin Lords. This is just between me and the white boy that bit Luscious’s dick off and almost tore out his throat.”
Joe looked up at the tower to see if any of the guards were watching them. They weren’t. Most of the guards were busy monitoring an aggressive basketball game that seemed to be on the verge of turning violent. Joe looked over at the door that led back to the cells, counting the steps it would take to make it back inside. He estimated it would take four seconds to break the big black man’s leg and make it back to the cellblock.
A fight erupted on the basketball court between a Mexican guy and a small black guy and soon the game became a race riot. Joe took the opportunity. He gestu
red to Fausto to head for the exit, and the big Mexican, his instincts honed from years in the penitentiary, understood and began to move. Joe stomped his foot hard against the big convict’s knee, driving it backwards against the grain and snapping tendons as the ball joint of his tibia tore free from its moorings and bulged against his skin, threatening to tear its way out. The man howled in pain and collapsed in the dirt, holding his injured joint. Joe dismissed the man and turned to make a quick dash for the exit, trying to make it back inside before the guards noticed anything, but his opponent wasn’t done fighting yet.
A strong hand gripped his ankle with crushing force. Joe tripped and went down hard. In seconds, the big convict had scrambled on top of Joe and was raining down powerful blows. The first punch split his lip and the next swelled his eye. Two more blows caught him on the forehead and jaw, before the last punch hit his temple and everything went black. When Joe regained consciousness, he felt something jab into his chest and then his stomach. The large, muscular inmate was still on top of him and Joe saw the man raise his hands over his head, holding what looked like a sharpened toothbrush wrapped in duct tape and tipped with something sharp and metal. It was a shank, a makeshift knife. The sharpened metal tip was wet, dripping red down the convict’s arm. It was then that Joe realized he’d been stabbed. He’d been badly stabbed.
Blood spurted from some artery in his torso and Joe felt weak, woozy. From what he knew of such injuries, Joe estimated he had minutes to live, less if he let the big convict stab him again. He grabbed the man’s wrist with both hands and halted the blade’s downward arc. He wrapped his legs around the man’s waist and pulled him into his guard like a Jiu-Jitsu fighter. He shifted his grip so he was holding the big convict’s wrist just below the back of his hand. He then reached over his attacker’s shoulder and grabbed his own wrist. With one hard jerk he separated the man’s shoulder and the shank fell onto the floor. Joe felt the sudden powerful urge to feed. It would be easy to rip out the convict’s throat now, to taste the big man’s raging spirit in his blood and meat. But that would take this from an act of self-defense to a brutal murder and proof that he was unfit for general population.
While contemplating the pros and cons of cannibalism, Joe took another punch, far lighter than the first ones, still powerful enough to turn out the lights. Joe collapsed in the dirt. He could hear the sound of scuffling and what sounded like a whistle before the darkness rushed in. This time, he awoke in the prison infirmary. He recognized it immediately from his many trips down here with Professor Locke to use the PET scanner. It was a large gymnasium-sized room filled with single beds. It seemed as if every bed was occupied. There were separate rooms for surgery and rooms filled with medical equipment. Each room had a lock and one even had chains on the door. Joe assumed that was the room where the meds were kept. The walls were painted a sallow tan that was almost yellow and fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, making the room uncomfortably bright. The place reeked of bleach and ammonia.
Fausto stood above him, his huge pie-shaped face smiling down at him, breathing a cloud of halitosis.
“I can’t believe you’re alive, homes. You got stabbed like six times by that big negrito. You fucked Devon up bad though, right? Broke his leg and separated his shoulder and shit. You know, right?”
Joe looked around confused.
“What are you doing here? They let you come up here just to visit me?”
The big Mexican laughed. Billowy rolls of adipose tissue rippled and jiggled as he chuckled.
“No, hermano. We ain’t that tight! I work here. I’m like a nurse and shit, right? I was a medic in the army, in Iraq and shit. You know, right?”
“How long was I out?”
“Six days. They rushed you into surgery to stitch up your guts. You lucked the fuck out, right? Devon didn’t get any major organs or anything, right? He hit an artery though. You almost bled out. You know, right?”
Joe looked down at the bandages crisscrossing his torso.
“How long before these stitches heal?”
“Probably another week or two as long as you don’t do anything stupid to open them up again, you know, right?”
“Yeah, I know.”
Joe’s plans for escape would have to be delayed. He looked around the infirmary and spotted Officer Cindy Addison as she walked in, smiling. Her eyes looked watery and she quickly wiped them away with her sleeve. Fausto looked from the CO back to Joe and then smiled, winked, and backed away.
“I’ll talk to you later, hermano.”
“Thanks for everything, Fausto.”
“Hey, I told you, it’s my job, homes. You know, right?”
Joe nodded and then turned his attention back to Cindy Addison. His mind was already working all the angles.
“I thought you’d been fired. I haven’t seen you for days.”
Cindy shook her head and wiped her eyes again with her sleeve, and then tugged on her uniform to straighten it.
“Not fired, transferred to another cellblock. I think Belton said something to the warden about us. He tried to get me to fuck him. Said he knew I was fucking you and that he even had it on video. I told him to fuck himself. Next day I was called into the warden’s office and transferred.”
Joe nodded.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
Cindy shrugged.
“I ain’t the only one around here … well … you know. And it ain’t just the female guards.”
“I’ve heard the rumors. It’s good to see you, Cindy.”
Cindy looked down at Joe’s wounds and sucked in a deep breath then almost choked on it as a sob escaped.
“I’m okay,” Joe said. “I’ll be good as new in a couple weeks.”
Cindy nodded and then wiped her eyes again.
“I’m so sorry, Joe. This shouldn’t have happened. I’ll put the word out to the COs in your cellblock to keep an eye on you, okay?”
Joe motioned for her to lean in closer. Cindy looked around to make sure no one was watching them and Joe did the same. The inmates were watching TV or begging nurses for painkillers. The other nurses and doctors were busying themselves with other patients.
“Do you love me, Cindy?”
Cindy giggled nervously then wiped her eyes again as fresh tears welled up in them. She nodded her head vigorously.
“I know I shouldn’t, but I do. I do, Joseph.”
She covered her mouth as another sob escaped and the realization of what she’d just confessed hit her.
“I love you too, Cindy. I want to be with you forever. I want to make you happy.”
“Well, what are we going to do?”
Joe gestured for her to lean in closer. Cindy checked her surroundings again before obliging.
“You have to get me out of here, Cindy. You have to get me out before they kill me. They’re going to kill me, Cindy.”
Thirty
The trip to the state penitentiary was a long one. The Mercedes E-Class devoured the road in quick gulps, bringing her ever closer to the man she loved, the only man capable of giving her the ecstasy she desired.
Since her parents’ death, Selene had slowly begun to re-accustom herself to the luxurious accouterments of wealth. Her modeling career had been put on the back-burner now that the investigation into her father’s “mysterious” death had been concluded and his millions had finally transferred to her. She ran her hands over her voluptuous curves, squeezing her hips and breasts, imagining they were Joe’s hands, caressing her, appreciating her as no other man could. She closed her eyes and squeezed her nipple. She could see Joe’s mouth close over her breast, his savage teeth biting through the supple flesh to remove the tender nub. It would be a worthwhile sacrifice to have his gift.
Selene remembered her own experiment with cannibalism with a shudder. She’d been a fool. Hadn’t he told her his unique proclivities were the result of a curse? Didn’t he explain to her in his letters how he had been assaulted by Dam
on Trent as a child, how his father had murdered more than thirty young boys and girls, and how this disease had been passed along to him through his bloodstream? That’s why he murdered both of them, trying to put an end to his curse. Now he thinks the curse originated with his grandfather and he wants to get out of prison so he can hunt the man down and murder him. His idiot cousin, Dirk, had filled in that last tidbit. But Selene didn’t want the curse to end; not until she could get herself infected.
All the money in the world couldn’t purchase the ecstasy she craved. Only Joseph could give her that, but her money could get her closer to him. Selene’s lawyer had spread liberal donations and campaign contributions around in her name to secure her a few conjugal visits with her “Cannibal Cassanova,” and she was going to make the most of them. She was determined to experience the pleasures of the flesh, the all-consuming ecstasy burning inside Joseph Miles, even if she had to tear the curse from his bleeding corpse.
Thirty-One
When Professor Locke came to visit him, Joe was poking at his stitches, trying to determine the extent of his wounds. He had refused a dose of dilaudid. He didn’t want anything clouding his mind or dulling his pain. Pain provided necessary information about the health of his body. What he felt now was tolerable, and after three hours without pain killers, the nurses had assured him all the narcotics were out of his system and the pain wouldn’t get much worse than this.
“Good morning, Joseph. How are you feeling?”
It was the professor’s standard greeting. Usually it meant: “How are the treatments affecting you? Still feeling like killing and eating people?” But today there was a hint of genuine concern in his voice.
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