by Brian Hodge
Drew slipped on a damp spot and fell. The back of his skull caught the edge of the tub. Drew felt his body go numb and sparks fill his vision. The world melted to grey and then faded to nothing but black.
Black silence.
VII.
“—Laura —?”
Drew smelled the rich, coppery smell of blood as he swam back to consciousness on the damp floor of the bathroom. He tried to see. His temples drummed painfully. His neck flared with stiffness. But all these feelings became secondary when he laid eyes on the body next to him.
“—LAURA —?!!”
She was prone, arms akimbo, face turned away and filled with an empty expression. Scallops of blood pooled beneath her. The little black marital aid was missing. Drew pulled himself toward his wife. “—oh my God, Laura, honey, are you—?”
Then he saw the marks. Starting around her ankles. Little red needle prints. Pocked, like a junkie’s tracks. Running up her calf and over her knee. Along her inner thigh. Upward. Until they finally vanished into the dark cleavage between her legs. Vanished inside her.
“—ohmygod – no —”
Laura came awake with a jerk and looked at him. “Sinner!”
“Laura — what did you —?” Drew’s brain spun out of control because Laura was speaking with another voice. A raspy tenor, fervid and charismatic, like a preacher’s voice. Her eyes had hemorrhaged a deep purplish red. Her complexion had turned the color of egg whites.
“Ssssssssinner!” she hissed again.
“What —?”
Laura reached for him and touched him and Drew stiffened. Pain shot up his anus. Shocked his prostate. Filled his groin with lava. “Laura — what are you —?”
Drew tried to stand but he stumbled backward. He landed on the small of his back. The jolt of sudden pain only added to the pleasure. His mouth squirted full of saliva and lust. His groin flooded with narcotic pleasure. The sensation rolled over him. Transformed him. Filled his brain with the voice of an Old Testament God.
“—SSSSSSSSSSSSSSINNER —”
Laura climbed on top of him. She found his erection and guided it into her with cold fingers. Roman candles exploded in Drew’s forebrain. A siren went off in his ears. His cock felt like a fuse popping. He tried to say something but his ability to speak had washed away in the storm of ecstacy. Like a helpless infant he gawked up into the face of his mother.
The thing that was Laura Taubman grinned back at him. Its teeth were the shiny black plastic needles of a marital aid.
Drew closed his eyes.
— sssssinnerrr —
He was swimming.
— sssssssinnnerrrrr —
Swimming away.
Praying he would drown in the vast sea of pleasure before this angry god devoured him.
BIG BUST AT HERBERT HOOVER HIGH
It was hotter than a Barstow burrito on the morning that Arlie Staggs awoke transformed.
Arlie figured he must be having another anchovy dream. The way his noggin felt all spongy and disengaged, like the time he awoke under the mesquite tree down in Guaymas with a mescal worm stuck in each nostril and a tattoo of Pancho Villa on his ass. His wood shop teacher, Mr. Richard Dick (AKA Double-Dick, or Dick-squared to the slide rule crowd), had taken Arlie and a couple of other underachievers from Herbert Hoover High down to Mexico last summer on a field trip to ostensibly learn indigenous woodworking techniques; but alas, all the boys really learned was how to get crabs and chronic cases of Montezuma’s revenge. But the memories of past degradations were fading quickly as Arlie realized something was seriously wrong with his face.
His nose felt funny, all tight and puckered, and his vision was tunneled severely. All he could see was a pin-point of gauzy white light. He tried to blink. He tried to turn over. He tried to move but his lower extremities were completely numb. As though they didn’t exist at all. And that’s when Arlie started to panic, and that nagging Russ Tamblyn voice in his head started yapping.
You finally did it, Bucko — you choked your chicken so much you got the paralysis, the disease, and that is so uncool, because you’re only like sixteen, man, and you’re like terminal, Bucko. Like curtains. All because of that nasty Madame Thumb and her four sisters!
Arlie shivered. The heat was making him dizzy, making the flesh around the base of his neck crawl with prickly rash. He tried to breathe, but the air was close and stuffy, thick with a strange mélange of odors. Stale baby powder, sweat, traces of Prince Machiavelli. He squinted his single eye and tried to make out the shape in front of him. A pale netting pressed up against him, white pickets criss-crossing, and something along the lower edge of his vision. Looked like a word stitched in fabric.
Playtex.
Liquid terror washed over him. All at once Arlie began to recall the events of the previous night. The strange intersection of events. And the inescapable realization that he had stumbled into a nightmare.
A nightmare that only Arlie could have wreaked upon himself.
The Kingman sunset had come early the previous evening. It made the edge of the sky melt like desert peach cobbler with whipped cream whisking out across the heavens.
Five years earlier, Arlie’s father, Maynard Staggs, had relocated his family from Kansas City to Kingman, mostly on account of these “darned beautiful sunsets” (not to mention the job opportunities opening up for an enterprising young nuclear research technician in this part of the desert). At first Arlie had hated the place; if you looked up the word boredom in the dictionary, it would probably say “see: Kingman, Arizona.” But then Arlie’s hormones had kicked in, and he had discovered what an impressive array the Herbert Hoover High student body offered in the way of student bodies.
“Let’s go somewhere different tonight,” Bertha-Lou Bizzel demurred from the passenger side of the convertible’s bench, pulling away from Arlie’s clinch.
They were parked at the cusp of Grand View Hill, the local lovers leap, and Arlie was just beginning to make progress around the horn of first base toward second. He had told himself tonight was the night; it was bare titty or death.
“C’mon, Bertha-Lou,” Arlie protested, fidgeting, the steering wheel digging into his wiry frame. “Stop teasing me; you said just yesterday in the cafeteria that you thought you might like me a little.”
“I do like you, Arlie,” Bertha-Lou said, twirling her hair around a finger. “I just thought we might try a change of scenery, that’s all.”
Arlie sighed and stared through the windshield for a moment, thinking. Barely a hundred pounds soaking wet, topped with an unruly shock of carrot colored hair, Arlie was no box of chocolates in the looks department. He could have easily gotten work posing for the before-pictures in Charles Atlas ads. But tonight, he had pulled out all the stops to impress Bertha-Lou. He wore his best tab collar shirt, his pressed chinos and his new saddle shoes; he had even slicked his hair back with some of his dad’s butch wax. The sad truth was, Arlie Staggs had become obsessed.
For some boys, true obsession was found in the trading of baseball cards, sitting for hours in airless basements, ruminating over whether or not they should part with a Stan Musial for three Joe Garagiola’s. For others, it was the lure of the gridiron, the mindless weight training off-season, the starving, the endless stats, and the glory of Friday night’s big game. A few ne’er-do-wells at Herbert Hoover had even discovered this new-fangled music called rock and roll, led by hillbilly cats like Elvis the Pelvis, and some colored boy they called Little Richard. All that stuff was fine; but Arlie had found his own métier, his own special purpose in life.
A typical head shrinker might have blamed it on the diminishing succor of his mother’s nipple; the desire to return to the womb, and all that noise. But Arlie knew better. Arlie knew it had started with a little deck of playing cards he had stumbled upon in Maynard Staggs’ golf bag back in the summer of ’53. Bust Queens of the Amazon, fifty-two in all, posed on bear skins, satin backdrops and chrome gilded hotrods. Arlie had only bee
n eleven at the time, but the little devil in his pants had awakened with a vengeance; and from then on, Arlie had been hooked.
It wasn’t merely the worship of bosoms; it was everything that accompanied the existence of the mammary gland in 1958 America. Arlie had a better knowledge of brassieres than a floor manager at Lane Bryant. He had studied the various kinds, the French lace cutaways, the Italian ribbon weaves, the British seamless jobs, and the American under-wires. He knew a Chantelle from a Warner Wonder, a Maidenform from a Lilly of France. He was also similarly versed in the zaftig starlets of the day; he idolized Maimie Van Doren, Jane Mansfield and Virginia Bell. He collected eight-pagers of Paula Page and Jackie Miller. He even kept a scrapbook of the more voluptuous mainstream celebrities of the day. Julie London was the cat’s pajamas. Janet Leigh was a scream. Even Margaret Dumont, the portly matron of Marx Brothers flicks, would often make Arlie’s pulse quicken; Arlie was certain, under all that bodice and bustle, there had to be a fabulous bust.
As the years passed, Arlie’s pastime became a preoccupation. He would lie awake at night, mentally tracing the contours of his English teacher’s décolletage. He would concoct elaborate doodles of various breast shapes on the back of his spiral-bound, labeling them with taxonomical fervor; the gargantuan pears, the firm conicals, the ample rounds, and the inimitable heavenly ballasts. He would even revel in the wonderful poetry of the Sears catalogue: Full figured sizes available, 38 D to 46 EEE, reinforced Lycra cups to lift, firm and separate. For Arlie, the mammary gland was more than a mere body part, more than simple adolescent fetish; it was religion.
And Bertha-Lou Bizzel was the promised land.
Arlie had first seen Bertha-Lou during a freshman year assembly, sitting alone in the back of the gymnasium. She was a new girl from Phoenix, dark complexioned, sturdy, and full of secrets from the big city. She wore pedal-pushers, which was scandalous at Herbert Hoover, and a baggy knit sweater. And when she rose to her feet to applaud the winners of the Western Arizona Barbershop Quartet Competition, Arlie suddenly beheld the heft of her bosoms. They strained the front of her sweater, massive and proud. They were genuine works of art. And Arlie had dropped to his knees right there in front of Christ and the Blue Ribbon Barbershop Boys, silently thanking the Lord for all His wisdom and generosity.
And now, after three solid months of maneuvering, including a dozen celibate visits to Grand View Hill, Arlie wasn’t about to let a little thing like a change in scenery stop him from experiencing Bertha-Lou’s bounty.
“Wait a minute!” Arlie finally reached down and fired up the Bellaire. “I got it!”
“What?” Bertha-Lou was gazing in the rearview, applying another coat of lipstick.
“Place where my dad works,” Arlie said. “Over by Mount Fenniman.”
“That’s clear across the desert!”
Arlie looked at her, grinning and putting the car in gear. “It’ll be an adventure.”
She thought about it for a moment, then started twirling her hair and grinning back at him. “Okay.”
They drove for nearly an hour.
The twilight turned the highway purple. Long shadows of distant buttes and yuccas scissored across the pavement, then vanished, as the air got cool and clean. Arlie turned the radio on. They listened to Jack Scott and The Texas Playboys and Tennessee Ernie Ford. And the sky freckled with stars, glittering magically.
By the time they reached the outer fences of the Fenniman facility, they were both in the mood for love.
“My dad works up at the main laboratory,” Arlie said, pulling around behind a row of ramshackle Quonsets. The gravel lot was whiskered in sage and weeds, and a row of spindly Joshua trees loomed on the beam of the Bellaire’s headlights. Arlie cut the lights.
“What does he do?” Bertha-Lou was getting a little queasy all of a sudden.
“Does something for the Atomic Energy Commission, I dunno, something with particles and beams and stuff.”
“Oh.”
Arlie found a place to ditch the car behind a cluster of garbage bins. He killed the engine, grabbed a blanket out of the back and escorted Bertha-Lou across the lot. They climbed a gentle hill fringed with creosote bushes and scabrous weeds. The summit was a flat, bald stretch of earth that overlooked the rest of the compound. Arlie spread the blanket out, and the twosome sat. The air smelled of pine and something astringent, like very strong disinfectant.
Bertha-Lou gazed out across the desolate landscape of low-rise buildings and saguaro. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” she murmured.
Arlie already had his arm around her, his fingertips brushing the reinforced hooks of her bra. “I think I love you, Bertha-Lou,” he said.
“Oh, Arlie, you’re so full of bull pucky,” she said, pulling away for a moment, unbuttoning her blouse. “You’re just in love with my boobies; which is okay, ’long as you treat me kind and take me out for a steak dinner and a movie of my choice every month or so.”
She reached around, unclasped her bra, and freed her breasts.
“Ohmygah —” Arlie gasped, the words catching in his throat. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe. The blood was rushing to both of his heads, the big one and the little one, and his ears droned noisily. In the light of the desert moon, Bertha-Lou’s breasts looked positively luminous. Like two great heavenly bodies made of cream. Arlie gaped at them reverently and uttered, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she said and kissed him.
Arlie kissed her back.
They fell to the blanket, and Arlie cupped her bosoms with the care and tenderness of a monk tasting the blessed host. Even Bertha-Lou was taken aback; Arlie was so cautious, so methodical. He seemed to be inhaling her, clinging to her breasts like some kind of marsupial. He alternated from left to the right, touching every square inch of pale flesh with his face and his fingers. He had found his Valhalla.
“Wait a minute, time out,” Bertha-Lou said suddenly, gently pushing Arlie away. “You hear that?”
“What?” Arlie was oblivious, drunk on her smell and her warmth.
“That sound, like a buzzing, like the ground is vibrating.”
“It’s nothing,” Arlie said and went back to her sweet soft miracles.
In every person’s life, there’s a pivotal moment, where the wave of fate is just beginning to break. It’s the grand slam home run. The biggest fish. The most important case. Shakespeare spoke of it often; called it the “tide in the affairs of men”. And the sad truth was, most poor slobs wouldn’t know it if it bit them in the ass. Not Arlie. Face buried in buttery flesh, senses engulfed in the talc of Ivory soap and dime store perfume, he knew he was experiencing that indefinable moment toward which everything has been leading, and after which everything will pale in comparison. And in that silent instant of revelation, Arlie found himself wishing, wishing furiously, wishing upon a magical, starry Arizona night that he could —
“My God, the ground is moving!” Bertha-Lou tensed suddenly, trying to pull away.
“Mmmmmylllphlymmm—!” Arlie was glued to her nipple.
“Arlie, we’re— we’re— we’re—!”
They were moving. The grassy plateau beneath them was shifting like a glacier, rotating. A vast earthen turntable. Noxious puffs of gas seeped out the edges of the plateau, smelling like airplane glue. Arlie clung to Bertha-Lou, and the world seemed to tilt on its axis. Bertha-Lou shrieked. Arlie closed his eyes.
A moment later, they were plummeting through the darkness of an enormous air vent.
They landed on the floor of a particle accelerator, which was about to bombard another target with 750,000 megavolts of atomic energy. Bertha-Lou hit her head on impact and was knocked out cold, but Arlie wavered in and out of consciousness long enough to see the gargantuan chrome apparatus rising over them, and feel the surge of vibrations under their bodies, and hear his dad’s voice echoing in his midbrain— those darn Cockcroft-Walton gennies pack a punch, son— get your little atoms moving up to 84 per
cent the speed of light, and that’s a lot faster than any four-barrel Chevy, son, heh-heh-heh-heh!
In Arlie’s final moments of consciousness, he saw the walls around them beginning to glow, a bright phosphorous green, and felt the vibrations resonating up through his body as he clung to Bertha-Lou. And in that final wave of emotion, Arlie realized that these may very well be his last moments on this earth. And he found himself completing the wish — the secret, magical wish — that he could stay this way, united with Bertha-Lou’s cleavage, throughout eternity.
Then the atoms crashed.
“Ohmygod—!”
Back in the here and now, Arlie’s bad dream continued.
“Where the hell did — how did —?!!” Bertha-Lou was getting hysterical.
The morning sun hammered down through the vent shaft of the accelerator, and Arlie could hear Bertha-Lou’s frantic voice only inches away, muffled by the fabric of the massive brassiere pressing down on Arlie’s mutant face. Arlie tried to answer, but found that he had no mouth. Only a large, dark, puckered papilla through which he could nominally make out shapes and odors. He tried to move again and found the majority of his girth to be a ball of jiggly, sweaty flesh attached to Bertha-Lou’s torso.
“GET AWAY FROM ME —!!”
Now there was real terror in Bertha-Lou’s voice, and Arlie felt himself bounding across the airless lab, barely contained within the fabric of the Playtex. Arlie felt like a blind papoose, bouncing around the cotton carrier, clinging barnacle-like to his host body. Suddenly Bertha-Lou was scaling the inner wall of the accelerator room, and Arlie could feel the thrum of her heartbeat in his vessels, he could sense her terror in the perfumed sweat breaking out across the soft curve of his face. What a screwy dream he was having!
“GET AWAAAAAAAY!!”
There was a figure behind Bertha-Lou, pursuing her through the lab. Through the prison of fabric, Arlie could hear the pitiful, slobbering moans, the shuffling zombie-walk as it lumbered after her. What the hell was it? Some kind of radiated, mutant being? Arlie could hear its muffled, tormented cries. And the relentless shuffling, as the monster, or whatever it was, tried to climb the ladder.
