by Edward Lee
What a day, he thought when he was done.
IV
Beth, shrieking, pummeled up the basement stairs the next afternoon. “What did you do!”
“Hey, didn’t I say I’d take care of everything?”
“Rudy! You turned him into a…a torso!”
“Yeah, well, he can’t hurt anybody now, can he?” Rudy rationalized. “And he doesn’t even care, as long as we keep him happy.”
Beth’s face crimped. “What do you mean?”
Rudy thought it best to change the topic. “Look!” he celebrated and waved a sheaf of $100 bills. “Our man came through again. Pimlico, baby! Afternoon Tea by a nose in the first! The odds were 32-to-one! Can you believe it?”
Beth, quite reasonably, went nuts. “Rudy! You bet again? He’s a murderer, for God’s sake! We can’t keep a murderer in our basement! Much less a murderer who’s a torso!”
“Sure we can.” Rudy placed the stack of bills in her hands.
Beth went lax, astonished. “This looks like about ten-thou—”
“Eleven thousand clams,” Rudy corrected. “And I already paid off Vito The Eye. We’re rolling from here, babe.”
Beth’s eyes stayed fixed on the money.
“But, uh, you see,” Rudy commenced with the bad news. His throat turned dry. “There’s a catch. Remember when I told you, ‘as long as we keep him happy’?”
“Yeah?” Beth replied.
««—»»
The catch was this:
That morning, Rudy had shown the head atop Gormok’s de-limbed body the racing journal as he held the fuming ashtray under the alomancer’s nose.
“Afternoon Tea, dear Rudy,” informed the happy head. “In the first tourney.”
Rudy didn’t argue, in spite of the odds. But since last night, a question had itched at him like stitches healing.
“Hey, Gor? Yesterday you said something like you had to commit a murder any day you do the salt thing.”
“Upon any such day I perform a holy alomance, yes,” Gormok affirmed. “Nergal, the abyssal prince, has cursed me as such.”
“What happens if you, uh, don’t commit a murder?”
“Then the gift of prophecy is lost to me. Forever.”
Balls! Rudy thought. Shit! Fuck! Piss!
“Unless,” Gormok’s head leaned up and added, “I am, as a substitute, properly relieved of the groin wheneverest such needs of passion call.”
Rudy’s gaze thinned. “You mean…”
««—»»
“No!” Beth wailed upon the revelation. “No no no!”
“Honey, come on,” Rudy urged. “It’s the only way. If you don’t, he can’t pick the winners anymore.”
“Rudy, read my lips! I’m not going to have sex with a torso!”
Ho boy, Rudy thought. Women. You ask them to do a little something and they get all bent out of shape. Time to lay on the heavy bullshit, he decided. “It’s for our future, sweetheart. It’s for our children.”
Evidently, children was the magic word. Beth pouted a moment more. She looked at him, pink-faced.
“Our…children,” she whispered. “I- I…”
Rudy hugged her, stroked her hair. “It’s the only way, honey. I wouldn’t ask you to do it, but it’s the only way. Don’t we want our children to have the very best?”
“Our children,” she dizzily repeated. “I guess, I guess you’re…right.”
Then she turned for the basement steps, began to descend.
That’s my little trooper, Rudy approved.
««—»»
Little trooper was right—and then some. Rudy, being an investigative kind of guy, felt it only fitting and proper to make an observation or two, so he sneaked down a few minutes behind her and peeked through the slight gap in the door…
Good God! he thought.
Most would deem this a reasonable thing to think when witnessing one’s fiancé engaged in the physical act of love with a living torso. Beth wasted no time in the deletion of her garments, and, despite a rather disconsolate look on her face—just as reasonable—she commenced to her task with something that could only be described as a formidable resolve. She squatted over Gormok, who lay unsurprisingly motionless atop his blanket. This afforded Rudy a front-on view, and though Beth’s discomfiture was plain, she soon began to ease into the brass tacks, so to speak, of the project.
In the dim basement light, her face flushed, and her small, pretty breasts began to sway. Meanwhile, her companion gibbered sweet Babylonian gibberish in response to her attentions. How does she do it? Rudy wondered. This was, after all, a torso. Moreover, ha wondered next: What is she thinking about?
Now there was a question! What would any woman think about while slamming glands with a dismembered salt-diviner? Perhaps it was brute rationalization, but Rudy came up with the only answer his psyche would allow.
She’s thinking about me—
Of course. Who else could she be thinking about? Certainly not Gormok. In moments, Rudy became aware of a considerable hardness loitering at his groin. My girlfriend’s humping a torso and I’m getting a woody. And as he watched further, the image transposed…
He imagined himself in Gormok’s place, right there on the basement floor and shuddering in bliss as the slot of Beth’s womanhood slid hotly up and down over his cock. His crotch felt smoldering, his heart raced. Beth’s breasts bobbed vigorously on her chest as she stepped up the momentum. Up and down, up and down, hot and frantic, her hips began to locomote like a machine, until—
Aw, Christ…
“Sweet mercy of Ea!” Gormok exclaimed at the obvious brink of his crisis.
Rudy caught his breath, and realized that he’d had a crisis of his own, his libido relieving itself to the sheer exploitation of his underpants…
I just watched my wife-to-be get it on with a fat torso, he realized. And I spunked in my shorts.
He crept back upstairs, as bewildered as he was disgusted. But he did feel convinced of one thing at least: it was all for a good cause…
V
No, a great cause, an absolutely big time wonderful cause. Within a week, Rudy was something he never recalled being: debt-free. Exit the ’76 clunker Malibu, enter his and hers Mustang GT’s. The 52” Sony TV was nice too, and so was the Adcom stereo and the $50,000-worth of new furniture.
And the new house. A spacious, skylighted A-frame off Bay Ridge Drive. It was the nicest house in the area that had a basement.
VI
Gormok remained surprisingly content, considering what Rudy’s greed had divorced him of. He jabbered and drank beer through a convalescent straw during the day, propped up behind pillows in bed, while Rudy cashed in at the track. Not once had Gormok’s divinations failed, and soon Rudy’s biggest problem was what to do with all the money. Beth, of course, had her ups and downs—the freedom to buy anything she ever wanted was a bit spoiled by the constant sexual service she was required to perform upon the libidinous torso in the basement. Eventually, she began to complain…
“That thing downstairs made me give it head today!” she spat at Rudy. “Did you hear me! I had to give head to a torso!”
Just like a woman, Rudy frowned in thought. You give ’em a good thing and they STILL bellyache. “Honey, he’s not a thing. He’s not an it. You’re talking about Gormok—he’s our man.”
Beth gaped. “Our man! Then you go down there and fuck him! See how you like it! You go down there and blow our man!”
Rudy thanked the fates Gormok wasn’t gay. “Stop being selfish,” he told her. “Don’t we have everything we want?”
“Yeah, Rudy, we do, and that’s my point. We have enough now, so I shouldn’t have to do it anymore.”
Rudy looked up reprovingly. “Beth, there’s never enough.”
“Oh, so that’s it, huh?” Beth, who rarely wore anything other than panties these days (due to the mounting frequency of Gormok’s need), stomped exasperated around the kitchen table. “You think you’re going to spend the re
st of your life cleaning out the goddamn racetrack while good old Beth fucks and sucks a dismembered Babylonian alomancer!”
“Don’t be vulgar, honey. It’s not like you.”
Beth’s little breasts jiggled as she belted out a bitter chortle. “You make me fuck a torso and tell me not to be vulgar! I’m sick of it! You hear me! I’m sick of fucking that disgusting, ridiculous, grinning…trunk!”
Rudy brought a finger to his lips. “Keep your voice down. He might hear you. You’ll hurt his feelings.”
“God,” she lapsed, paling. “He takes forever sometimes, and—” she gulped “—he’s—he’s—he’s just so…huge.”
Then quit complaining, Rudy felt inclined to say. Women always want the big dick—well, baby, now you got it. At the table, he weeded out the ones, fives, and tens, into the garbage.
“Beth, oh Bethieeeeeeeeee!” called out the familiar nasal warble from downstairs. “Wither thee, my sweet beatific vision? My lovely, lovely Beth of the light-brown hair?”
“Oh, no,” Beth croaked.
“Leave me in turmoil no longer, oh, my wondrous angel, so lovely of countenance and sweet of loins. Come! I beg thee! Come assuage my beckoning fancy.”
Rudy cocked a brow. “Assuage my beckoning fancy?”
Beth glared at him. “That means he horny again, Rudy.” Her eyes rolled back in despair. “I don’t believe this. All I ever wanted was a nice normal average life, and what do I get instead? A torso with a boner.”
“Dearest Beth, please! Partake of my desire! My loins cry out for thee!”
Beth’s disdainful glare focused. “And you, you fucker. You haven’t made love to me in months.”
Rudy shrugged. It was not an easy thing for a man to rise to the occasion when he knew his squeeze was doing the bop with a naked torso. Hey, she’s got her gig, I’ve got mine, he thought. His bevy of call girls at the track wore him out. Some of those girls could suck the paint off a battleship. Not much lead left in the old pencil after when they were done. “It’s all the stress, honey,” he lied through his teeth. “All this betting everyday—it takes a lot out of a guy. And now the IRS is all over me.”
“Wondrous Beth!” the torso whined on, “my passion throbs for thee! Oh, let thy lovely loins be wed again to mine! Let your angel’s lips give succor to my manly love, and drink of my warm and copious seed!”
“You better get down there,” Rudy advised, “unless you want me to lose everything on the next race.”
Beth stared at him, her shoulders slumping.
“I hate you,” she said.
««—»»
One thing Rudy had added to the new house, unbeknownst to Beth, of course, was the hidden video camera in the basement. Rudy, after all, was a successful man now, and successful men didn’t watch their girlfriends tuck torsos through mere cracks in basement doors. No, they watched with state-of-the-art video equipment. And Rudy had a lot to watch…
Jesus Christ in a hotdog stand, he thought, staring at the screen in his den and adjusting the remote, low-light lens.
Despite his arousal, Rudy could no longer deny that watching Beth’s sexual feats maintained in him a necessary level of disdain for her. It didn’t matter at all that he coerced her to tend to Gormok—that was beside the point. And so was logic. He needed to hate her as much as he could in order to compel her to continue. In truth it was money, not love, that made the world go round, and Rudy liked the world very much.
Sometimes, though, the things he saw on the screen really bothered him. Like right now, for instance. Beth was performing an act of fellatio on Gormok the likes of which would make Linda Lovelace look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. “Goddamn! can she smoke a pole,” he whispered aloud. And he saw with even more distaste that her earlier claim was no bull. To describe Gormok as huge was sheer understatement. Try hung like a fucking Clydesdale stallion. That fruitloop motherfucker’s got more dick than four or five guys, Rudy grimly realized, and at the same time he stroked his own endowment, which in comparison, more resembled a Jimmy Dean breakfast link than a penis. And what Beth was doing to Gormok more resembled a freak-show sword-swallowing than simple fellatio. Down her assiduous lips went, all the way to the hilt, a Gormok’s legless hips squirmed in pleasure. Where did it all go? Deep throat, my ass, Rudy thought. This is deep stomach. She never sucked my cock like that, the dirty bitch.
And Rudy’s hatred did not abate in the least as his hand assuaged his own beckoning fancy. I’ll bet the little whore is enjoying it, he convinced himself. I’ll bet she’s getting off! And, Christ, she’s making more noise than a truck-load of hogs at the slop trough!
As was his habit now, Rudy pretended it was the pillar of his own manhood that was being so fastidiously gobbled up by Beth’s suck-to-wake-the-dead yap; it was the only way he could tolerate this—to fantasize. But when he eventually relocated the wares of his prostate gland and balls onto the Scotchguarded carpet, the fantasy shattered. His own release was a mere dribble compared to Gormok’s veritable whale blasts of sperm, which Beth allowed her face to be showered with as the alomancer gibbered in glee…
VII
Rudy knew it would happen eventually, but he had a contingency plan for that too. One night he woke to find Beth staring at the big bay window in the bedroom.
“Honey?” he feigned. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t even sleep anymore. I can hear him down there. He jabbers all night long.”
This in fact was true. Even from the basement, Gormok could be heard mattering inanities in arcane languages, and bubbling nasal laughter. Well, maybe if you fucked him a little better, he’d simmer down, Rudy thought. Ain’t my fault you’re a dull fuck. Suck his big dick harder—try that, bitch. Suck his ass—that’ll keep him happy.
Beth sat on the bed and began to cry.
“Sweetheart,” Rudy offered a phony consolation. “Don’t cry.”
“You said we’d get married,” she sobbed. “You said we’d have children.”
“Honey, we will.”
“When, Rudy? I need to know when.”
“Soon, I promise.” He stroked her hair, kissed her teary cheeks. “I’ve got a plan,” he whispered. “The race track, the ball games and all that? That’s smalltime.”
“What are you talking about?” she sniffled.
Rudy reached into the nightstand. “See this? It’ll set us up for life in no time, honey.” What he showed her was the NASDAQ Index of The Wall Street Journal. “We’ll be millionaires, Beth. And then, I promise you, we’ll get married and have kids just like we planned.”
“Please, Rudy, please,” she sobbed, hugging him back.
“I promise,” he reasserted. “But you’ve got to give this just a little more time. Okay?”
Beth’s sobs began to abate.
“Honey? Okay?”
“Okay,” she croaked.
“Oh, Bethieeeeeeeee!” shot the voice from below. “Come hither, please!”
VIII
Within a few months they’d moved out of the A-frame in favor of a waterfront estate. The his and hers Mustangs were replaced by his and hers Lamborghini Diablos. Rudy merely had Gormok perform a few divinations, then laid his money down at a broker’s. It didn’t take long. Blue Chip stocks. Municipal bonds. T-Bills. Not to mention the thirty-million in 6-month CD’s. Even in the highest federal and state tax-brackets, Rudy had enough to keep them pig-shit rich for life. And that bevy of call girls? Well, now they were his girls. He had thirty of them, one for each day of the month, and he put them all up in luxury condos he paid for in cash. Things weren’t bad. No, not bad at all.
And Rudy found a great solace in his calendar month of bimbos; they provided him the escape his psyche needed, the abstract catharsis which relieved the entails of his complicated, high-stress lifestyle. Plus they fucked good, which furthermore relieved the hatred he now harbored wholesale for Beth. Rudy got lost in his women, and this banished the steady and bothersome awareness that his fiancé was impali
ng herself on a “bigger” man than he, limblessness notwithstanding. Becky was his favorite, a slim, sultry blonde, whose specialty was tongue-baths, which made Rudy a great adherent of personal hygiene. Then there was Shanna, the full-tilt brunette with a rack of tits you could use to drydock a Los Angeles-class sub, and a welcome propensity for always asking Rudy to enter through the, uh, back door. And we mustn’t forget Chrissy—now there was a woman! She had looks that would make Jessica Alba seriously consider suicide, not to mention a mouth that could suck-start a Ford Tri-Motor.
Yes, Rudy’s buxom recreational brigade all proved quite adroit at helping him cope with his problems, to the extent that his only real problem was wondering just how much joy juice his vesicles could manufacture. A man could only put out so much, but lo and behold, his girls were always ready to prove that he was possessed of an endless reservoir of love lava. And on those dread occasions when he felt the old crane simply wouldn’t rise, his bevy of beauties were always quick, by their sheer expertise to prove a grand synonymy with Jesus—in that they could raise the dead. Rudy loved his women, he cherished them. And whenever he grew sick of one, he simply dumped her and found someone else. Just as there was no shortage of beer in Bavaria, there was no shortage of beautiful women who liked moolah. What a life!
In the meantime, Rudy urged Beth to research, as thoroughly as possible, every aspect of Mesopotamian mythology, ancient ritualism, pre-Christian divination, and the like. She even found one book called The Synod of the Alomancers, and learned everything about the Cenotes of Nergal, the Nashipus, the Ashipus, the ziggurats, and all the intricacies of the regalia and the ritual. Rudy felt this necessary in order to make Gormok feel more at home. He had contractors make a mock temple out of the basement. He purchased real censers and thuribles, standards and statues and murals etched with the holy glyphs. He even had a clothier make a special hooded black robe and sash, identical to those worn by the ancient alomancers, which he donned each time he asked Gormok The Talking Torso to perform another divination. Rudy wanted the atmosphere to be right for his dismembered bread-winner; he figured it was the least he could do.
