The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 3

by Maxim Jakubowski

  In the thickest woods, just as Clarissa could only hear, not see, the giant before her, she heard another, more distant music: a banjo.

  The drumbeats stopped, and Clarissa knew the march had stopped, too. She stood, swaying amid a copse of honeysuckle. She had not been lying when she told Charlie she purely hated the banjo and all the tunes he and Satan could commit with it, but he would play them, so she couldn’t help but recognize this one – “Budded Rose,” Charlie had called it.

  “Too damn many notes flying out of this thing,” he once said, sitting drunk on her porch wearing only his bowtie and picking the evening away. “Better catch ’em, now. Hear that? Here they come. That’s one for your pocket, and one for your stove, and one for when you wake up hungry at night.”

  At first she thought this “Budded Rose” was coming from that very porch, but then it was ahead of her, and then off to the side toward the rock fall, and then downslope and sharing a laugh with the water in the branch. It was everywhere; it was nowhere. Nowhere. Hungry at night, indeed. She wept into the cat’s fur, feeling as if she had awakened from the saddest of dreams.

  Up ahead, the drumbeat resumed, and Clarissa walked forward again, though she was no longer following the giant but coincidentally walking along behind him. Clarissa was done following Pooles. The second had broken the spell of the first; now the first had broken the spell of the second. One day Clarissa would cast a third spell herself, and not on any damn Poole. Now if only Charlie’s banjo would hush.

  To her relief, the giant, with more volume than skill, at this point began to sing.

  I want to join that holy bright number

  I want to join that holy bright number

  I want to join that holy bright number

  And turn some ransomed one home.

  They number one hundred and forty-four thousand

  They number one hundred and forty-four thousand

  They number one hundred and forty-four thousand

  Oh, turn some ransomed one home.

  The song was easily learned, and Clarissa sang along as she trudged down the hollow. Her voice grew louder, the giant’s, fainter. By the time she reached the turnpike, a rutted silver scar leading into a gloom only deepened by the distant lights of Tobaccoville, the giant and his drum and his voice had melted away as if they had never been, and any trace of “Budded Rose” was temporarily lost in the rattle and snarl of a pulpwood truck labouring up the grade. Clarissa held the squirming cat tighter as she stepped forward and stood, proud and ready, in the middle of the road. Standing straight, no need to wait. She listened to nothing, squinted into the glow of the headlamps cresting the hill.

  On Hallowed Ground

  Debra Hyde

  It would probably surprise you to learn that a graveyard sits smackdab in the middle of a small New England city. You’d never know, to drive by on either one of the two highways that skirts Hartford. But it’s there, nestled between the Gold Building and a massive urban church, shadowed by the Travelers tower, first phallic symbol of this old Puritan outpost.

  If you were to wander into the cemetery – the Ancient Burial Ground, as it’s called – you’d find tombstones as old as Hartford’s first residents and as young as American Federalism. And if you felt you were being watched as you strolled the grounds, it might be the angel-heads staring at you from their timeless perches atop their tombstones, visages like some happy-faced renaissance sun met with a pirate’s skull, then morphed into something only director Tim Burton would love.

  And if you still felt yourself being watched – well, maybe the street culture’s checking you out. Maybe the beady, withdrawal-plagued eyes of a street person, just waking up under the cemetery hedges, have spied you out. Or maybe it’s the disaffected gaze of folks just outside the grounds, people curious enough to watch you because you’re new to their tired old routine of watching and waiting for the Q bus. Then again, maybe you hit it lucky and found a group of overexcited schoolchildren, field-tripping their way through Connecticut history.

  But chances are, you won’t find Mark or Ramona there. They already had their moment in the sun – well, under moon, really – and they’re not likely to repeat their offence. Not after narrowly escaping the watchful eye of the HPD.

  It started with Mark. A lover of trivia, he stumbled across the fact that Hartford’s founder, one Thomas Hooker, Puritan minister and pioneer, probably was not actually buried at the tombstone that honoured him. As a humble pilgrim, Hooker didn’t believe in frills, and because a tombstone was as frilly to him as a lace collar, he swore off the concept of hallowed ground. So the man’s buried somewhere in there, Mark realized, but he could be next to an illustrious lawyer, a poor pilgrim, or a very early-American slave.

  Unlike Hooker, Mark believed in hallowed things, but only for the sake of sacrilege. He lived in an arrested state of punkhood and still looked for new ways to transgress against the status quo, especially now that the status quo included former drinking buddies who had long ago settled down to lawns, kids, and SUVs. How to transgress, however, had become problematic with age and he was always on the prowl.

  Ironically, Mark’s idea came to him during one day during a boring jack-off. In a brief mental epiphany – the best of which always happened when it involved his dick – the word sex led to hooker, which led to Thomas Hooker. That was followed by the vision of Ramona’s face, followed by his familiarity with her tight ass, followed by a quick tension, a long release, and a thick glob of come which oozed onto his belly.

  Knowing a good idea when he had one, Mark dipped his fingers into this creamery-thick pool, then reached for his nightstand phone and put his goopy fingers to dialling Ramona.

  “Hey, baby,” she cooed when she recognized Mark’s voice.

  “How about dinner and a trick?” Mark inquired.

  “It’ll cost you,” she warned.

  “It always does.” His voice sounded like a shrug of the shoulders.

  Dinner was a hoot. On the surface, they looked like a stylish couple consuming peasant chicken and micro-brewed beer at City Steam. Men would think Mark lucky to have such a doe-eyed, lush-haired, pouting-lipped beauty while women would ruffle territorially. But when the hordes on the happy-hour make looked closely, they would see a hint of masculinity where none should have existed and an aggressive glint in eyes that should’ve shown demure and inviting. Which suited Mark just fine. He liked freaking the mundanes.

  But not Ramona. “This place is a fucking meat market,” she complained.

  “That’s how straight men cruise, Sugar.”

  “Pigs!” she decided before amending her judgment with a present company aside codicil.

  Mark simply smiled. He loved Ramona’s feisty ways and if the straight men and women around them found themselves challenged by her presence, all the better. He had known Ramona for four years and, while he had never had the pleasure of meeting the Juan that once was, he’d seen enough of the remnants of Juan to make him adore Ramona all the more. That his relationship with Ramona always included a cash-and-carry exchange only made her more attractive to him. After all, how many straight men could say they forked over good cash for a piece of tight ass and to fund a favourite fuck-buddy’s lifelong dream of gender reassignment?

  “I don’t like this place,” Ramona protested. As she glowered her way through coffee and dessert, Mark reminded her that the day she got her pussy was the day she’d have to start living straight.

  “After all, how much of gay society’s going to be there for you when you give up your dick?” he asked.

  Ramona huffed and feigned indifference but Mark knew that beneath her haughty veneer sat an appreciative girl. No matter what she threw his way – fuck fees, bills for her hormone treatments, conflicting schedules due to her slavish clients, even the occasional temper tantrum – he stood by her without complaint. She knew he had earned the right to be her Sugar Daddy, even if he was wrong about her gay friends.

  As they left the
restaurant, Mark remarked, “Time is money.” To which Ramona answered, “So what do you have in mind?”

  Mark smiled slyly. “You’ll see.” He took her by the arm and briskly walked her down Main Street. When they passed Asylum Street and the parking garage that sat on that block, she knew they weren’t about to leave the city. As they breezed past the Gold Building, she started to complain, “Slow down. It’s hard in these heels.”

  Mark chuckled. “I’ll get you off your feet soon enough.”

  When they rounded the corner of Gold Street and headed into the Ancient Burial Ground, Ramona crossed herself as she said, “You fucking pervert.”

  “Not yet, I’m not.”

  Slow dining had afforded Mark and Ramona with the cover of dark and with the city now void of activity, the burial ground afforded them some privacy. Mark took Ramona deep into the cemetery, past the back of the old church, and practically centre square to the burial ground’s Main Street entrance. Had he done so during daylight, they would’ve never escaped notice, the spot was so public, but now, at night, only the occasional glint of a streetlight through the trees cast any light.

  Darkness didn’t keep Mark from knowing where he was and what he wanted. He had Ramona kneel before the tombstone of his choice, and, as he unzipped his pants and freed his dick he read, “In memory of the Rev. Thomas Hooker who in 1636 with his assistant Mr Stone removed to Hartford with about 100 persons where he planted ye First Church in Connecticut. An eloquent, able and faithful Minister of Christ, He died July 7th, 1647.”

  “Now,” he added “make yourself eloquent and minister to my dick.”

  “Teeth or no teeth?”

  It was a classic Hartford whore statement, but Mark opted to “make it middle class”. He didn’t need a taste of Ramona’s early days, where she could charge more for a blowjob by virtue of a no-uppers grin? Not this time, at any rate.

  Ramona sneered, called him a pervert again, and took his dick into her mouth. She crossed herself as she did. Whether it was over the teeth or the setting, she didn’t say, but whatever distaste she displayed evaporated when she tasted his dick. She loved how it bulged when it felt her mouth slip over it. She inhaled deeply as she took it, thinking that if she couldn’t actually have his balls in her face, at least she could enjoy their scent.

  As she sucked, Ramona swooned, not because she worshipped Mark’s magnificence but because she conjured up a pussy in her head and longed to know how it would feel to have a cock swelled inside her. She wondered how it would feel to finally have a dick on the inside instead of outside.

  In all honesty, she wasn’t sure she’d really let Mark’s dick inside what would be a $30,000 sculpture, but that didn’t stop her from giving good head. She tongued Mark’s dick with enthusiasm, working up and down its length and paying special tongue attention to that tender spot just below its head.

  Mark groaned in hearty appreciation but he wanted more: he wanted to face-fuck her. He leaned forward and, bracing himself hands-first against the top of the Honourable Hooker’s tombstone, began to push-up himself in and out of her mouth. Briefly, Ramona’s teeth scraped over his head and, flinching, he wondered if he should’ve gone for the lower class accommodation.

  But his dick throbbed, his balls grew tight, and Ramona made little sex sounds – the whimpers of a good bottom getting done – and other than that one scrape, her mouth felt oh so good. It was a wet and wonderfully open thing, made all the more delicious by the rumbling groans vibrating up from her throat.

  However, as much as he might like to, Mark didn’t want to come this way. He had other plans, just as morbid as doing a hooker over Hooker’s marker and they didn’t conclude with a blowjob. He pulled his cock from Ramona’s mouth, uttering a moan as she let it pop free.

  “Get up,” he rasped. He helped her up, giving her time to get steady on her feet, before moving her over to another grave.

  Unlike Hooker’s tombstone, this grave had a tablestone – a tombstone laid flat atop several walls of stone, meant to mimic a sarcophagus. Mark patted the tablestone’s top, motioning to Ramona. “Time to bend over.”

  “You’re going to keep me in confession for a month, you know that?” Ramona complained.

  “At least you have a priest for your private demons, honey,” Mark replied. “Me, I want my demon exorcised.”

  Ramona huffed, “Enough with the clichés,” as she bent over the tablestone. She laid a hand to each side and held herself there, just like she was at the kitchen table. She felt Mark lift her skirt and pull down her panties just enough to expose her ass. She heard the snap of a lid and then felt Mark’s lubed fingers at her ass. “At least you’re generous,” she opined. Mark smiled. If only Ramona knew that she was pressing her tits against an ancient, morbid poem that warned Death is a debt to Nature due/Which I have paied & so must you, she might insist on the convent.

  Mark kept that esoteric knowledge to himself and slathered Ramona’s hole instead. Then, he slipped his finger inside, as much to claim his territory as to ready it. He loved Ramona’s ass and he financed her well enough that she only had to do out-call domination. That ass was his and someday Ramona’s cunt would be as well.

  “You have the perfect hole,” he told her.

  For the first time all evening, Ramona giggled and, looking over her shoulder, smiled broadly at Mark. His words were manna to her ears, especially when she fast-forwarded into the future and applied those words to her cunt. However, the here and now was a riskier place, and she knew from her street days that one only had so much time in which to conclude business.

  “You better get to it, if you want to fuck me before the cops show up.”

  Mark grunted in agreement, took his cock in hand, and aimed it at that perfect hole. Slowly he pushed. Ramona’s hole resisted ever so slightly before it acquiesced and let the head of his dick in. Ramona moaned lusciously; she liked the feel of his cock making headway as much as he liked the feel of her hole giving way. Mark pushed a little more and felt himself slip in further.

  Normally, Mark would’ve slowly inched his way in and out and up Ramona’s ass. He liked taking his time in encouraging her to open up to him, but when he looked up from her round ass, the cold stone memories of the long-ago departed jutted up from the ground all around him as if they were watching. The grounds were quietly eerie and only the sounds of leaves rustling in a tree top breeze and the occasional late-night vehicle punctuated the silence. Mark was glad for those sounds of urban normalcy; they kept him from imagining the dead rising up to watch him.

  Which would’ve kept him from Ramona and her willing ass. He took her by the hips and began a slow but firm reaming. Ramona groaned again as his cock went to work on her, then threw back her hair and arched her ass to show she liked what he was doing. And her response – sexy, defiant, willing – sent Mark right into frenzy mode. His slow reaming went straight to merciless ramming.

  Ramona grabbed the tablestone when Mark slammed into her and clutched it for dear life. An abject moan escaped her lips every time Mark rammed his dick up her, and her whole body reacted every time he pulled back. His dick was relentless in its pursuit; swift and selfish and something else.

  And swift, selfish fucks don’t take long. Between Ramona’s perfect hole and his hungry dick, Mark felt his climax approach in no time at all.

  But not before Ramona got to issue her own selfish complaints. Mark’s fury had pushed her right up against the tablestone, pelvic bone first, and she had just issued her fourth expletive when Mark pulled out of her and pushed her aside. He barely uttered “move!” when, pumping his dick with his hand, he came, spurting a stream of come over the tablestone. Gasping as his orgasm raged through him, he caught the last bit of spunk in his hand.

  Next to him, a vexed Ramona declared, “You bastard!” as she rubbed her crotch and lowered her skirt.

  But the scene wasn’t over. Not yet it wasn’t. Not until his orgasm subsided, until his panting returned to quiet breathin
g, and until he had the presence of mind to put his dick in his pants.

  Then and only then did he conclude the scene: he took that last bit of spunk and returned to Hooker’s grave where he wiped it over the dead man’s name. He looked to Ramona. “Now I’m a fucking pervert.”

  Ramona, pointing to her crotch, hissed, “You shithead! You rubbed me raw!”

  “Is there a problem here?”

  It doesn’t take a big stretch of imagination to know those are the words of a cop on duty and, sure enough, one of Hartford’s finest had finally caught up with Mark and Ramona. Rising from Hooker’s grave, Mark answered, “Not really, officer. I just wanted to take in a little history after dinner. She’s miffed that I dragged her in here after dark.”

  Ramona turned to face the officer, said nothing but crossed herself like the good Catholic girl she always wanted to be.

  “Next time, visit before dinner,” the cop said curtly. “These grounds are closed after dark.” He scrutinized Mark and Ramona as he spoke, trying to assess just what they might’ve been doing. He hadn’t seen the scramble typical of people trying to hide drugs and paraphernalia as he approached, neither did he smell pot or alcohol on them. All he’d really witnessed was a woman apparently scolding a man so quietly that he couldn’t detect any clues.

  “We’ll leave,” Mark offered. “Sorry to have been a nuisance.”

  As the cop nodded, Mark took Ramona by the arm and headed back towards Grove Street. The cop, meanwhile, turned his attention to the hedges, looking for vagrants.

  When Mark and Ramona hit the relative safety of the street, Mark said, “That was close.”

  Ramona laughed. “That wasn’t close. Close is when you’ve just lifted your head up from a john’s lap and he barely gets zipped up before the cop’s at the window, asking for his ID and your smile.”

  Mark smirked. He knew Ramona was right and he wasn’t about to argue with her. But he was also satisfied. He’d left his mark on Hooker’s grave. He had completed his perverted little goal and it was easy to be charitable in the flush of accomplishment.