“I wanted to apologize.”
“Okay...”
“I mean, I was dumb…you’ve got every right to be mad at me for the way I acted, but…it surprised me, that’s all, and…I freaked out, I panicked…so I wanted to apologize.”
“Okay,” she said again.
“...and, uh, to see if maybe you’d give me another chance.”
“At what?”
Devon shuffled his feet some more, stirring the floor’s dirty grit of dust and fine metal shavings from the key grinder. He stammer-mumbled something that might’ve included the word ‘tattoo.’
“What?”
“Seeing your tattoo!” he blurted, turning red. “Another chance. I’d really like to. I think you’re great, I just didn’t think you thought I—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Beth went palms-out. “Back it up, new kid, back it right up. I don’t know where you got the idea—”
“The other night! When we were walking back from Jake’s!”
“Yeah, so?”
“And…and you…with the…” He flapped a hand toward her torso. “The…with your boobs, and asking did I want to see your tattoo, and I panicked, it was stupid, I freaked out and ran away, and you probably hate me but I didn’t mean to offend you it wasn’t like that at all, and oh jeez I’m such an asshole I’m really making a mess of this!”
She gaped at him. “What was that about my boobs? What are you talking about?”
“I’m sorry!” Devon wailed, grabbing the sides of his head as if it was going to explode. He spun in a clumsy one-eighty, knocking the wire keychain rack off the counter, and bolted for the door.
“Dev!” Beth sprang off the stool, knocking more stuff off the counter—the stack of catalogs and her ashtray—but he was already outside and running up the street.
The hell?
Plunking her butt back down, she stared incredulously at nothing in particular, trying to find some sense in the crazy. It didn’t help. She messaged Jake, got no reply. Messaged Spence, same thing. Marty made it zero-for-three.
Flakes. A bunch of damn flakes.
She tried a couple of other Bodeans she had contact info for, but none of them knew where Spencer was. She tried calling Jake, and got voicemail. Finally, annoyed, she dialed the Shop-N-Go, past caring if it caused Marty trouble with his boss.
“He isn’t here,” said a woman named Gina, who sounded even more annoyed than Beth felt. “Called out sick last minute. Again! Twice this week, so I’m stuck doing a double, covering for his lazy slacker ass. Well, I’m telling you, he does it tomorrow, I will personally track him down and see to it he has to call in dead!”
“Hey, I hear you,” Beth said.
“You know what I think?” Gina went on, building into a righteous froth. “I think he’s parked in front of some video game!”
“Probably.”
“If you find him, you let him know I am done putting up with his shit!”
“I will.”
She hung up, and scowled at the phone. It wouldn’t be the first time Marty blew off work for that kind of reason—the new Fallout, a midnight geek-movie premiere—but he usually mentioned it beforehand. Hell, he usually wouldn’t shut up about it beforehand.
A check of the clock showed her she had forty-five minutes left on her shift.
Screw it. Close enough. This was bugging her, and it was going to continue to bug her, until she got some answers.
She punched in the codes to route any after-hours calls to Rodney’s cell, closed up, locked up, and headed for Jake and Marty’s building. Their windows were dark, absent even the usual flicker of TV screen or monitors. Beth tromped up the steps anyway, phone in hand and thumbs texting, hardly watching where she was going, and damn near tripped over Devon.
He was sitting with his back to the door, knees drawn up, arms around his shins, and when he recognized her, he flinched like he expected a smack in the face.
After whatever he’d said about her boobs, Beth was kinda tempted. And maybe it’d knock some sense into him; the new kid seemed to have gone a little off the rails. She held back, though, shoved her phone in her pocket, and gave him a narrow-eyed look.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Devon flinched again. “Nothing, I just…I, uh…wanted to talk to someone, but…nobody’s home.”
“So, you can talk to me,” Beth said. “You can explain what the hell all that was, back at the shop.”
“What all what was?” a familiar voice interrupted, as Spencer made his way up the stairs.
Beth peered at him. “What’s with you? You’re walking funny.”
“No shit.” He grinned a lewd, smirking, exhausted grin. “You are not gonna fuckin’ believe it when I tell ya. I hardly fuckin’ believe it myself, and I was there. But why the fuck’s everybody hanging around outside?”
“Dev says nobody’s home.”
“Sure, Mart-O’s at work, but Jake—”
“Mart-O’s not at work.” She relayed her conversation with Gina.
“Well then, he’s gotta be here. Where the fuck else would he go?”
“That’s what I figured.”
“And why’s the new kid acting like you’re gonna feed him his own ass?”
“I might have to,” she said, giving Devon another helping of the narrow-eyed look. “If he keeps cracking jokes about my boobs.”
“Jokes? What? No! I didn’t…I...”
“Okay, this I gotta hear, but, let’s go inside first, huh? I’m fuckin’ beat.” Spence tried the knob, found it locked, then banged on the door. “Yo! Jake! Mart-O! It’s us. Open up.”
“Shh!” Devon hissed in warning, jerking his head toward the next apartment. Its windows were not totally dark; a faint bluish glimmer shone through a crack in the drapes.
They waited for a tense moment, but the big bald neighbor did not burst out and rearrange their teeth for them. All stayed quiet.
“Don’t you have a key?” Beth asked. “You crash on their couch often enough.”
“Kiddin’ me? Coach won’t trust me with a key to his place, and I’m his fuckin’ nephew.”
She blew an exasperated breath. “Fine. Move.”
“What’re you doing?” asked Devon, as she crouched and fiddled with her phone.
“Opening the damn door.”
“There’s an app for that?”
“You really do want me to feed you your ass, don’t you?”
“Sorry…”
“I don’t know what you did, bro,” Spencer said, “but it must’ve been epic.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
He ignored that and bent over Beth’s shoulder. “You keep lockpicks in your cell phone case?”
“I work for a damn locksmith, don’t I?”
“Nice. The ol’ B&E.”
“No B,” Beth said. The lock, a flimsy cheapo mickey-mouser she probably could have popped with a paperclip, let go. “Just E.”
Spencer pushed, and the door swung inward onto the obstacle-course gloom of Jake and Marty’s living room. The usual debris field of Mega Guzzle cups, chip bags, and snack-cake wrappers surrounded the gaming chair, but the chair itself was empty. So was the couch. Both bedroom doors were shut. The air was stale, funky, dank with old weed, and kind of foul…foul, with a weird hint of something that reminded her of those candles her mom liked, the cookie- and pie-scented ones.
“This doesn’t seem right,” Devon said.
“Enh, it’s only kinda illegal,” Spence said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Well, what did you mean, then?” asked Beth, rounding on him, fed up with the whole bunch of them but at least here was one she could take it out on. “What was all that stuff about my boobs and wanting to see my tattoo and everything?”
“Oh, this gonna be gooood,” Spence said, flopping onto the couch. “When’d you get inked? Thought you were waiting ‘til you could afford a pro, not that scuzzbag in Winston City.”
“I didn’t, and I am, so shut up.”
Devon blinked, baffled. “You mean, you don’t have a tattoo? You were…you were just messing with me? Was that just some kind of game? Jeez, Beth!”
“Was what some kind of game?”
“All that stuff about being hurt we didn’t think of you as a girl, and how you had the most amazing boobs, and…and…and…hitting on me!”
She caught Spencer’s agog expression of shocked delight out of the corner of her eye and resolved to deal with him later.
“Are you fucking insane?” she shouted at Devon.
Then they were both shouting. Him bleating and protesting and digging himself in deeper by trying to reassure her that her boobs really were amazing and he’d only freaked out and run away because he was stupid; her getting more and more pissed and insisting she had done no such thing, would do no such thing, her boobs—amazing or not—were none of his goddamn business. With Spence watching like it was the greatest high-speed tennis match in history, whooping and cackling, downright chortling, the shit!
Into the middle of it stumbled Jake, Jake with total disheveled bed-head, one eye only half-open and the other sleep-puffed. Jake in nothing but a pair of boxers hanging halfway off his hips.
“Guys…hey…guys, seriously…keep it down, huh? What time is it? What’s with the yelling?”
Marty emerged from his own room, scowling, badly in need of a shower and looking like he’d been wearing the same t-shirt and sweats for three days. “Dude. You should talk. Not as if you’re fooling anybody.”
“Huh?”
“Did you sneak her out the window again, or what?”
“Sneak who out the window?” Spence cut in.
“Cynthia-Lynne Abbott,” Marty said.
Jake started, guilt waking his groggy expression right up. The others jawdropped and boggled.
“Look, I know about you and her, okay?” Marty continued. “You don’t have to do this, hide it, lie about it, whatever.”
Further chaos ensued, everybody talking at once, trying to talk over each other, Spencer demanding to know what the fuck he’d missed, Jake telling Marty it wasn’t what he thought, Marty telling Jake oh it was but they were still cool right still bros right, Devon aghast that Jake could do that to his best friend I mean jeez they all knew how Marty felt about her, Marty claiming hey no he was good yeah okay maybe not thrilled and Jake damn well better treat her right not jerk her around like that asshole Troy-fucking-Cahill and anyway he didn’t need Cynthia-Lynne Abbott anymore because he had someone better, and Spencer remarking it was like starting a show mid-season shit he hadn’t been away that long had he but holy fuck you guys wait until they heard what he’d been doing, and Beth wanting to know what the hell was with everybody lately because she’d known they were all disgusting horndogs but this was getting crazy, and Devon protesting he wasn’t a disgusting horndog honest he wasn’t but if she still wanted to hook up give him another chance he liked her a lot and was super sorry he’d freaked out, and Beth outraging at him hook up yeah right in your dreams, and finally Jake—
“Guys! Shut up a second!”
Incredibly, they all did, and looked at him. He had both eyes open now, both eyes wide open, alight and aware.
“Dreams,” he repeated. “What Beth said, in your dreams, in our dreams, it’s our dreams…do you know what this means? We did it!”
Chapter Fourteen: Confrontation
And the chaotic shouting following that, well…
Eventually, Jake got them all simmered down enough to have some sort of coherent conversation. With a break for him to put some clothes on. Kind of a challenge to be the leader and voice of reason in just his boxers.
But it made sense now.
It all made sense.
If he could just get the others to accept it.
To get past their indignation and disbelief.
And their guilt, mortification, embarrassment, and shame.
“So, you’re saying,” Beth said, “that you’ve all been having weird freaky sex dreams you thought were real?”
Her tone was beyond dangerous, all the way to lethal, and the look she sent Devon’s direction made the new kid tuck in on himself like a turtle.
“No fuckin’ way,” Spencer said. “If I was gonna dream something like that, it’d be with cheerleaders and supermodels and shit, not a mother-daughters-granny fiveway with the Harmons. No fuckin’ way.”
“Look, one thing at a time,” Jake said. “First off, Beth, you did not make any moves on Dev, right?”
“Are you seriously asking me—?”
“So, if you didn’t, he must’ve dreamed it, right? We all did, we each did.”
Marty cast a disconsolate glance at his gaming setup, as if the Hellslayer demon-queen really could have crawled out of the screen like the chick from The Ring. Then he brightened a bit, kind of a pitiful brightening. “Then, wait, so, Jake…you’re not…you weren’t…with Cynthia-Lynne…?”
Jake shook his head. “I hardly even know her, talked to her like maybe once since school. Even if she was checking me out at the Green the other day, c’mon, I’m not Mister Super-Stud. Besides, like you said, bros, right?”
“But she did text me about you.”
“Hey, maybe she did, I don’t know, doesn’t mean I’ve been banging her behind your back. If I was going to, I wouldn’t bring her here!”
“No fuckin’ way,” repeated Spencer, as if to himself. “Porn stars or something, give me some fuckin’ credit. Why dream a redneck fuck-fest?”
“If Jake’s right, though...” Devon gulped and slid a nervous, semi-hopeful smile toward Beth. “Then it wasn’t our fault, the stuff we…said and did. It doesn’t count, it wasn’t real.”
“Doesn’t count?” she echoed, and man it was withering. “Doesn’t count? You fantasize me, me as a slut hitting on you, and somehow that’s supposed to be okay?”
“Yeah, dude, you sex-dreamed about Beth? Sick.”
“Drop dead, Marty!”
“Not to mention pussied out. Who pussies out in his own sex-dream? You want to argue against a for-real succubus scenario, there’s—”
“You can drop dead too, Spencer!”
“The fuck is your problem, anyway?”
“I don’t want to hear about your wank-fantasies, and I sure don’t want to hear about them if they involve me; that’s messed up, that’s gross, nobody wants to hear that. ‘Hey I thought about you while I was jerking it last night,’ not cool, right up there with sending dick pics, who the hell thinks that’s a good idea?”
“That’s Dev, not me—”
“Him, you and your redneck fuck-fest, Marty and some video game bimbo, what’s the difference? And now you want to say it was a succubus? The devil made you do it? That’s pretty weak, right there.”
“The succubus thing, that’s Jake, not me—”
“Wasn’t it your idea in the first place?” said Devon.
“Yeah, but I didn’t believe it!”
“Why’d you suggest it, then?”
“Guys, c’mon, chill a minute,” Jake said. “Just think about it. The ritual—”
“Was Brendan fuckin’ with us, remember?”
“Anybody ever hear from him yet?” wondered Marty.
“No, and who the fuck cares?”
Jake paused, an odd cool sinking in his stomach. “Though, if we did summon something…here we’ve been figuring Brendan’s staying away from us, but…”
“Oh for shit’s sake!” Beth flung her hands in the air. “This is nuts.”
“Maybe we should take a look at the video.”
“Why?”
“Proof.”
She barked a humorless laugh. “Of what? You say it worked? Okay, so, where is she, then, huh? Where’s this sexy succubus of yours? Let’s see her. Bring her on in!”
“Beth—”
“No, she’s got a point,” Spencer said. “You want proof, that’d be proof.”
Nobody
said anything. Jake looked at Marty, who looked back and him with a bewildered shrug. Only then, in the moment of silence, did it dawn on him again how much noise they’d been making, raised voices in the middle of the night, and how lucky they were the scary neighbor hadn’t come crashing through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man. Bullet dodged, or they would’ve been well and truly hosed.
“Jeez, you guys,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “We can’t be doing this. Someone’s going to call the cops on us or something. Guy next door’s already got a hate-on at us. Good thing he must not be home.”
“Looked like his TV was on when we came in,” said Devon.
“Quit changing the subject.” Beth stuck her fists on her hips and jutted her chin at Jake. “Where’s your succubus, mister hot-shit wizard? Hiding it in your room? You and Marty been taking turns?”
Marty turned green. “Eew.”
“Yeah, how would that be working, anyway?” Spence asked. “Pass her around? Sloppy seconds, thirds, and fourths?”
“Not me, I didn’t do—”
“Yeah, yeah, new kid, we know you didn’t fuckin’ do anything, you fuckin’ pussied out.”
“Drop it already, why don’t you?” Beth said. “You’re all a bunch of pervs.”
“There’s a news flash.” Spence snorted.
“Know what? Okay. Whatever. I’m done.” She started for the door.
“Beth, wait!” Jake almost set a hand on her shoulder, realized that would be a good way to spend part of his day in the E.R. with a broken wrist, and stopped. “Let’s just watch the video, okay? Let’s make sure.”
“Watch it yourselves, do what you want, I don’t care. Leave me out of it.”
“You’re not leaving because of—” Devon began.
“Don’t even talk to me.”
Then she was gone, slamming the door hard enough to topple a stack of DVD cases and make Marty’s framed autographed Rooster Teeth poster rattle on the wall.
Spencer whistled low. “She is piiiiissed, never seen her so pissed.”
“It’s my fault,” said Devon.
“Yep.”
“Yeah.”
“Fuckin’ A.”
“Should I go after—?”
“Dude, I wouldn’t.”
“Are you fuckin’ nuts?”
Spermjackers From Hell Page 11
