Room 415

by Edward Lee

  This is fucking killing me, Flood thought.

  Therese was petite and short, and would’ve been shorter were it not for the heavily-soled beach sandals that elevated her. She lowered her face between the two of them, grinned impishly. “So are we doing a threeway, or what? I’m so horny I’m starting to show through my thong! Look, Jake—” and she squeezed next to him and pulled her thong down beneath the bartop. Flood’s eyes roved down the flat belly to see that what she revealed: an adorable little toy of a pussy, dusted by the lightest red fur. The meticulous cleft below glistened.

  “She’s such a bad girl, Jake—and I mean sometimes she’s really bad,” Carol giggled. Then, to Therese: “Put that away!”

  Both girls laughed; Therese repositioned the thong, then patted the adhesive triangle of fabric.

  Flood ordered another round of drinks, testicles tingly. Yes. This is definitely fucking killing me...

  “Jake and I just did some business,” Carol sort of lied. “Now we’re just talking.”

  “Oh. That’s cool. Sorry I missed the fun. Maybe next time?” She gave Flood’s tortured crotch a finger-tickling squeeze.

  “Sure,” Flood answered and drank more.

  He was grateful that the next few minutes of banter didn’t regard any manner of sex—just enlivened chit-chat. He wasn’t necessarily grateful for Carol’s hand on one thigh and Therese’s on the other. Flood slowly grew erect again, painstakingly so, and at this point—the futility of it all now burying him as if in a hole—he felt as though an abstract bullet had been put through his head. Flood was the diabetic working in the Godiva chocolate factory; the Olympic swimmer standing in the middle of the Sahara Desert. So he drank gluttonously, pretending to listen to the girls’ chat but hoping that enough alcohol would deaden his sexual nerves.

  “Well, I better get going now,” Carol said. “Thanks for everything, Jake. It was great hanging out with you.”

  Flood took a last useless look at the perfect breasts suspended in the big fishnet cups. “Likewise.”

  Therese gave his thigh another squeeze. “Where are you staying, Jake?”

  “The Rosamilia Hotel, just up the beach.”

  Her breasts jiggled flawlessly when she stood up. “Cool. That’s where I’m staying too.”

  “Maybe we’ll run into you before you leave,” Carol offered.

  Flood was done talking, done thinking, and very much done with seeing what he couldn’t have. “That’d be great,” he said for formality. “You girls have a great day.”

  “‘Bye.”

  “‘Bye!”

  Two more pecks on the cheek (and a final insufferable crotch-rub from Therese), and they were off. It was relief from the humiliation that overwhelmed Flood when they left. Their shadows lengthened to sultry jet-black threads as they departed back to the sand.

  His head droned with an arid silence, noise that wasn’t noise. The sound of his soul? Because that’s what his soul felt like just then. Arid, sterile. A husk.

  It occurred to him that if he died at that very moment...he wouldn’t have cared in the least.

  His hangover dragged through the dinner hour and on into the night. He didn’t bother checking in with Farris and Nathans to see how the day’s business went; he didn’t care. He lay naked and dried out on the hotel bed, head thumping, sparks of pain behind his eyes, throbbing along with the images of those two impeccable women: the abundant flesh of Carol’s breasts blaring through the fishnets, the sparse mist of downy red hair covering Therese’s mound. The coltish legs and flat abdomens. Each image twinged in his head with his heartbeat, and each heartbeat made him feel more hopeless. He thought of calling Dr. Untermann and telling her he felt like maybe committing suicide but didn’t for two reasons.

  One: She’d think I was even more pathetic than I really am.

  And, two: I don’t have the balls.

  The sun had set brilliantly—a fireball that looked nuclear—and soon full dark bled into the room. Flood stared at the ceiling, not listening to the baseball game that shot scatters of wavering light on one wall. He wished he could fall asleep, erase the humiliating day, and begin a new man in the morning.

  But he wouldn’t be a new man, would he?

  He’d be the same impotent, royally-fucked-up-in-the-head man he was today and had been for the last three years.

  As his senses began to drift, he heard voices...

  “It ain’t bad really, we’re doing better than the rest. We got fifteen girls and only a handful went bad. I’m sure Jinny won’t fuck us over again. I think the skinny bitch learned her lesson.”

  Flood sat up in bed, glanced to his window. It was Oscar’s voice, the big bad bald guy. I left the window open, Flood realized. The curtains billowed at a breeze. And the maids hadn’t come in because he’d left out the do-not-disturb sign.

  Flood sprang out of bed, seized, but not exactly knowing why. Just as he arrived to the window’s edge, Leon’s voice was floating up.

  “I know. You’re one terrifying motherfucker, Osc. Jinny’ll have nightmares about you.” A laugh.

  “Bitch sucked my balls the whole time I was driving her home, then begged me to fuck her in the ass back at her joint.”

  A darker resolve shifted into Leon’s next words. “But the other two are liabilities.”

  The other two? Flood recited.

  “I had dinner with Therese tonight. Cunt lied to my face all through her steak. Got no idea Stoolie’s ratting on Phipps’ stable.”

  “You’re shitting me?”

  “Nope.”

  A pause drifted in with the warm breeze. Oscar said, “Lemme kill her. I’ve always hated the bitch.”

  Flood’s heart stilled. He felt frozen, half his face peering out his window down into the window of Room 415. He could see the salmon-pink drapes fluttering, and in their gap, the brightly lit room. Oscar sat on the bed drinking a Heineken; Flood could see his knees and back of his large, shaven head. Leon sat in the chair along the wall, legs crossed.

  “I don’t want her iced, but I want her uglied up bad for when we boot her lying ass back to Phipps.”

  The back of Oscar’s bald head nodded.

  “It’s that other lying cunt I want iced,” Leon added.

  “Good. It’d be a pleasure.”

  Now Flood’s heart surged, a lump of muscle that felt on the verge of bursting. The other one? No! he thought. Not Carol!

  Who was the other one?

  “I’m not sure where she is tonight,” Leon continued. “I already talked to Nick. He’s going to keep an eye out for her.”

  “Nick? Oh, yeah, the new security guy downstairs.”

  “I’m paying him well. He’ll give me a call on my cell if he sees her.”

  WHO ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT? Flood’s mind detonated.

  But Carol had given him his card; she worked directly for Phipps, not Leon. If she was two-timing on Leon, she’d have Leon’s card, wouldn’t she? he reasoned.

  It didn’t matter. Nothing would happen to either girl because Flood was going to make an anonymous tip to the police right now. Last night was a mistake, a weakness on his part.

  And that won’t happen again, he vowed.

  It amazed him how the sound from their window carried so well up here. He could even hear the knock on their door.

  “That’s her,” Leon said.

  Oscar got up and walked out of the frame.

  Flood stood shivering. He watched, unblinking, as Therese walked into a corner of the window. “Hi, guys!” she greeted. “Got a beer or something?”

  Oscar handed her one.

  “And I’ll need a oxy for later.”

  “No problem, babe.”

  “Oh, and look!” she exclaimed, all bouncy and bubbling and probably really high. She shoved some money at Leon. “Four hundred!”

  “Thank you, Therese. You’re a dear.”

  Flood could see her in the veil-like wrap she’d been wearing at the bar, her sleek back to the windo
w, her short, bright-scarlet hair. Her rump looked naked due to the t-back, a perfect double-orb of flesh.

  “I got some time,” she said, but she seemed jittery now, overstrung. Was it the dope, or was she starting to think something might be wrong? “Got two doctors said they’ll meet me at midnight for a double blowjob, said they’d pay five bills. You guys wanna fuck me first? I’m dying for some cock.” A giggle, then, that sounded nervous. “I been so horny all day I been fingering myself whenever I’ve been sitting at a table.”

  “Yeah, I could use some of that,” Leon said.

  She shed the veil, then flicked off the t-back and bra. It seemed so perfunctory when she turned for the bed, but an instant later her breasts were suddenly tremoring. Her eyes bulged above Leon’s opened hand, which had snapped around and clamped over her mouth. “Not too hard,” Leon said very calmly. “Just put her lights out...”

  WHAP!

  Oscar, having already slipped on one of the sand-mitts, clouted her solidly once in the forehead. She fell limp as a sack of packing peanuts in Leon’s arms. He tossed her on the bed—

  —while Flood...watched.

  His hand remained poised in mid-air—just like last night—about to reach for the phone. But instead—

  Call. The. Police...

  —he watched.

  Oscar wrapped some duct tape around her mouth, then dropped his slacks and straddled her chest. She lay totally unconscious, arms and legs askew, head lolled to one side. Oscar spat liberally into the valley, then pressed the breasts tight around his penis and began to pump. Meanwhile, Leon had picked up one of Therese’s inch-soled platform sandals, was fidgeting with it. “There we go, Osc,” he said. He found some sort of clasp on the bottom of the sandal, then was peeling back the sole. “Stoolie wasn’t jiving us.”

  “For the money you pay him to be our squeal, why would he?”

  Inside the sandal there was some sort of a compartment, from which Leon withdrew a roll of cash. “Damn it, Osc. Bitch was hiding twelve hundred bucks in here. My money.”

  Oscar humped the slick crevice between Therese’s bulging breasts, his hairy ass pistoning back and forth with the precision of a derrick. “And she was gonna leave here tomorrow and give it all to that white nigger Henry Phipps.”

  Leon was not offended by the “n”-word. “This shit hurts, man. I treat these girls right. What is it about that goddamn Phipps that has my bitches handin’ him their money like he’s Snoop Dog and Tupac combined?”

  Oscar’s answer was forestalled for his orgasm, which looped into Therese’s still face. When he began talking again, he was wringing the last of it out of his cock like water out of a dishrag. “It ain’t him, Leon. Wanna know what it is?”

  “Tell me, my man.”

  “It’s you. You’re too nice to these bitches. You let ‘em walk on you. If there’s a buck to be made, these girls’ll eat cum out of an ass-crack like a kid eating icing off a cupcake. Only thing white-trash like this respects is a Mack-Daddy who means business, a hard fuckin’ hand, man.”

  “You know, Osc? You’re right. It don’t make sense, but you’re right. And this is one hand that’s gonna get real hard real fast. But it just hurts, ya know?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Oscar was pulling his pants back up. “It ain’t no big deal in the long run anyway. Any crew’s gotta couple bad girls. We’re weeding ours out.” Oscar paused, extended a hand to the still-unconscious Therese. “You wanna piece of this before I start working on her?”

  “No. She disgusts me.”

  And the entire scene disgusted Flood. He watched from his secret vantage point, hand still in the air to pick up the phone. His most sophisticated human senses felt severed, leaving only a blazing, mindless lust. His penis throbbed so hard it hurt, erect now beyond any maximum he’d ever experienced. Only the barest filament left of his spirit remained bellowing at him to call the police as, below, Oscar re-donned his sand-mitt and re-straddled Therese’s chest.

  “Remember, don’t kill her,” Leon instructed. “But I want that pretty little face of hers fucked up royally. When Phipps takes his first look at her, I want him to puke.”

  WHAP! came the first blow, which most certainly crushed her nose. Four more to either side just as certainly shattered her cheekbones and jaw. In only a matter of seconds, her face more resembled a stepped-on jelly donut than a human visage.

  It was as though Flood’s skin had been nailed to the wall and he was pulling that skin through the nailheads when he finally managed to drag himself away from the window to the desk with the phone. Only three steps but in those three steps the hardest erection of his life went utterly limp.

  Then that last filament of humanity made its exit.

  If anything, his cock grew even harder when he stepped back to the window, a tethered animal with rabies, just about to break its chain. Flood knew then that he had no choice at this point...

  He was masturbating at the window, sweat pouring. Oscar had already popped Therese hard over each eye, turning them to blue-black puffs of flesh. And now—

  WHAP! WHAP! WHAP!

  He was belly-punching her, his stout arm piledriving straight down with each blow. Bulbous breasts jounced with each slug.

  Flood’s climax burst, releasing the mental stopper on the day’s agonizing back-up of semen. Like last night, it flew out the window in what seemed several yard-long strings. And like last night, there’d been not an inkling of any last-second sabotaging image of Felicity. His orgasm unwound as a celebration, bringing tears to his eyes. He staggered back when it was finally all gone, his loins buzzing. His cock felt content as a beast that had just fed gluttonously.

  When he regained some order of sense, he found himself looking back down.

  Please, God. Let them be done...

  Oscar and Leon weren’t done.

  The bald man hunkered low, in one hand an empty beer bottle, in the other a hammer.

  “You said you wanted her fucked up. Well, this’ll fuck her up.”

  Leon stood, a knuckle to his lips, contemplating. “No, no—”

  “What? Going back to Mr. Nice Guy?”

  “She could bleed to death, Osc. I don’t want that. I know— Do like you did that one chick we had a couple years ago. Remember? That Gothy looking bitch who was trying to hustle our girls for some service in Key West.”

  “Oh, yeah! Balloon Pussy! Straight up.” Oscar put the bottle and hammer away, then put the mitt back on. He pushed Therese’s ankles back toward her head, where Leon then grabbed them and pulled them back further. Her ass spread; the flesh of her vagina bloomed forward.

  Oscar slapped down hard against her bared loins with the mitt’s open palm. Time and time again, as hard as a strong man could. Flood reeled, nauseated, but locked in place by the taunt of an instantaneous erection as turgid and insistent as the one his hand had relieved a minute ago. He squeezed it; it felt hard as a steel-tube covered with skin, lust and blood purpling its dome, the slit inflamed and glazed already.

  Oh my God...

  Again, that blade severed his humanity. Now Oscar was punching down outright into Therese’s sex, which was blacking and bluing and swelling before his eyes.

  WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! WHAP!

  And more.

  “Lookit that,” Oscar remarked, subtly impressed by the image of his handiwork. The majoras of Therese’s vagina, indeed, had ballooned with swelling, and with that image the pressure of desire built up similarly in Flood’s penis, backed by further semen straining to be released. Flood thought of a water balloon being slowly squeezed. The idea of calling the police, now, did not exist anywhere in his head. Flood masturbated frenetically, eyes locked below.

  Oscar and Leon were chuckling at the image of Therese’s ludicrously swollen sex.

  “I can’t help it, man,” Oscar chuckled further, dropping his slacks again. “I’ve just gotta fuck this...”

  Oscar banged away, for quite awhile, as Flood nearly jerked the skin o
ff of his own cock. At the moment when he would normally lose everything—when the image of Therese would invert to Felicity—Flood bit down on his lip to stifle the shriek of his pleasure that surely would’ve echoed outside. The first spurt blew against the glass, several more landed in loops on the carpet. This second orgasm of the night felt heroin-like. He stood ridiculously, heart hammering, legs still spread and one arm bracing him against the window frame. Insensible, he looked down and saw an impossibly still-hard penis throbbing. The final string of semen dangled from the piss-slit. When he squeezed his balls, the erection involuntarily flexed, and hook-shotted the remaining sperm in an upward arch where it stuck to his chest like a piece of flung spaghetti.

  “Not enough,” Leon said, out of frame. “It’s the tits that bother me now.”

  “What about ‘em?” Oscar was pulling his pants up again, while Therese lay with her legs wishboned, her genitals a dark swell. “That’s the best pair of tits in your stable.”

  Leon kept the contemplative finger to his lips. “Yeah, and that’s the problem. I paid for them. Let Henry Phipps pay for the next pair.”

  “Sounds fair to me,” Oscar chuckled and produced an ice pick.

  Flood couldn’t move, paralyzed by the combinant disgust of continuing to watch while his loins still buzzed in post-orgasm.

  Oscar had obviously done work like this before. Under each of Therese’s breasts, he quickly shivved the ice pick up several times, puncturing the implants. Then he lifted his leg and stepped on each breast, deflating them. Multiple streams of red-tinted saline sprayed down Therese’s lower body. A minute later, her state-of-the-art breasts were popped bags of skin.

  “Much better,” Leon said. “Let Phipps titty-fuck that... ”

  That was it for Flood. He almost lost his footing then, heels thumping backward until his knees gave out against the edge of the bed. Then he fell over on the mattress.

  And lay there perfectly still.

  He couldn’t have gotten up again if he’d wanted to. But he could still hear them talking, ghost-voices fluttering around in the dark.