by Terry Yates
“Uh…anything in the fridge there?” he asked her, trying to take her mind off of whatever it was she seemed to be doing to him.
“Yes!” she squealed, as if he had asked her if she’d had a nice Christmas. “Come look!”
She quickly took his hand and walked him over to the large refrigerator and opened it.
“Look!” she squeaked. “Meat! Meat and…meat!”
She was right. There were about six different types of meat hanging in the refrigerator. Someone, probably Sam Fong, had taken them out of the freezer and placed them into the fridge just in case the rescuers didn’t come for another day. Good thing he did, he thought to himself. There was a turkey, a ham, several long sausages, and what was left of a prime rib, which looked like it had been gutted by a rotisserie knife…and a bad ass one at that.
“Isn’t it lovely?” she asked him, taking the gutted prime rib and one of the sausage links off their hooks and walking over to a long table which looked like it had been used for cutting the meat.
He watched as she threw the meats onto the table and bent over them. That sucking and slurping sound that he had heard when he had entered the kitchen started up once again. He moved away from the refrigerator, leaving the door open…he liked the little bit of extra light. He slowly walked over to the table and stood next to Samantha, who was still bent over the meat. The slurping sound was excruciating. She sounded like a ten-year-old who was trying to get that last little drop from the bottom of his chocolate malt.
Once he saw what she was doing, he wanted to wretch. She was sucking the juices out of the prime rib…no…she was sucking the blood out of it. That’s what had been on the side of her mouth. Blood. Normally, he would’ve been quite aroused at being under a low light with a model wearing army fatigues and bent over a table, but now he was repulsed as she slurped and gurgled. He wasn’t sure, but it also looked like she was ripping chunks of meat out with her teeth. Ah…that was why the prime rib looked so gutted. That’s what she had been doing with her head stuck in the fridge.
“Mmm…” she moaned, as if she were in sexual ecstasy.
Kyler wasn’t sure if she even remembered that he was there until, all of a sudden, she stopped her chewing and sucking. She turned her head in his direction, still bent over the table. He could see either juice or blood dripping down her chin and onto the table. He half expected her to cover the meat with her hands and growl at him like a hungry dog, but instead, she stood up straight and looked at him. He had been right. It was blood that had been trickling off her face.
He watched as her eyes seemed to form into slits as she began to move toward him. Even under the low lighting, he could tell that she had one hungry look on her face, but he wasn’t sure what kind of hunger pangs she was having. She slinked toward him, her hips swaying left and right, yet her feet seemed to be gliding along the floor. To Kyler, she looked like a character from the musical “Cats”, especially after she reached up and put her whole arm in front of her mouth, and wiped it against her sleeve like some cowboy after downing a shot of rotgut.
He began to walk backwards, becoming more unnerved with every step. It was the bite. It had to be the bite, because she was going Opal Munn on him, but in a COMPLETELY different way. He thought he was somewhere near the door as he moved, but found this not to be so, when his back and head bumped into a solid wall. Actually, his head hit a shelf where two large cans of something…beans or creamed corn…sat. The shelf gave way under strain and fell, one can hitting him on the head as it dropped to the floor. Both cans rolled across the floor away from him.
“You look nervous, Doctor,” she said, her voice now a register lower. It was still dog whistle high, but in a lower register.
She moved right up to him, her nose almost touching his. Once again, normally he would be aroused, but the smell of the raw meat on her breath…not to mention several small bits of it that were on her chin and cheeks, gave him an ungodly case of the Willies.
“Can I call you Richard?” she asked, her eyes searching his. “I heard that Zora lady call you Richard.”
“Yeah…” he managed to squeak out.
She buried her face in the crook of his neck and took a deep breath. When she exhaled, her hot breath blew against his skin, sending shivers all over his body. He felt her hands on his waist as she moved them up under his shirt, her long nails driving him insane.
“Please…” he moaned, for a moment thinking that she might bite him.
But it was her tongue and not her teeth that he felt against his ear while he felt her fingernails go up under his shirt. He was almost at the point of throwing her down on the floor. He hadn’t really been that attracted to her. Sure, she was beautiful and a model to boot, but Kyler was the type of man who, once he figured out that someone was out of his league, was no longer particularly attractive to him. Of course, he knew that they were beautiful and he could still be turned on by a provocative outfit, but he tended to look at them more like a hot looking sister-in-law. Right now though, she was driving him wild…that was until, he buried his nose in her hair and smelled the raw meat. Disgusted, he pulled his face out of her hair, a cold piece of meat stuck to the end of his nose. He moved his hands up to her shoulders and held her away from him, which wasn’t easy because she was resisting, and it appeared that she was stronger than he was. The bite. The bite. The sonofabitchin’ bite! He put all his strength against her. At first, it was like trying to move stone, but after a moment, she relented and took a step back.
“Do you want me?” she asked, searching his eyes again.
Kyler saw that her eyes had grown large and dark brown, just like Opal Munn’s.
“Oh…well…you know…I’m sort of seeing someone…you see. I…uh…”
“Is it that woman?” she interrupted. “Is it Zora?”
“Eh…well…yeah…we sort of…oh…have been…so…”
Before he could finish, she gripped his shoulders and picked him up off the floor, his feet dangling at least six inches above it.
“Please, Miss Gould,” he gasped. “I need you to put me down. I really do!”
Samantha smiled up at him. “Whatever you say.”
With this, she began to carry him across the room and back over toward the table. He struggled against her, but to no avail. Her fingers were clamped into his shoulders and he couldn’t make his feet reach the floor to gain traction. He continued to struggle but his arms were pinned at his side and her head was too far away to give her a head butt, which he was more than prepared to do, if need be. But he was helpless to do anything.
As they approached the table, she lifted him up even higher. About the time that he thought that his head would touch the ceiling, she slammed him down hard onto the table, his head bouncing off the wood, and his back hitting so hard that pain began to shoot down his spine. He squeezed his eyes shut and grunted in pain. He could hear her breathing heavily, but he was hurting too badly to open his eyes. He felt the table give a little as she got on top of it and straddled him, slamming her pelvis down on his crotch and causing him to cry out in pain. She grinded up and down his body. Good luck, Sister, he thought. He was in way too much pain now to be aroused by anyone or anything.
He watched as she reached up and tore her shirt open. She breathed in an out, making a guttural sound that he had heard Nicholas Klefka and Opal make. He needed to figure out a way to get out from under her. According to Klefka, he was pretty sure that sex could transmit the lycanthrope disease.
“I want you,” she hissed at him, her eyes boring a whole through him.
She reached down and unsnapped his fatigues.
“What about Gringo?” he asked, hoping to get her mind onto something else.
“What about him?” she shot back, trying to unzip his pants.
“He’s your husband!” he yelled, trying to pull her hands away.
“It’s you I want right now!”
She took each of his hands and pinned them back over his head,
and he didn’t have the strength to stop her. As she did, she put her face with in inches of his. Oh God, the meat breath again! Kyler tried to roll over, but she forced his shoulders back down.
“I’m going to eat you up!” she hissed once again.
At that moment, the overhead lights came on, momentarily blinding Kyler. His eyes had been focused on the ceiling at the very moment that they came on.
“Well. Well. Well,” he heard a female voice say softly. It was Zora. He could tell that accent from a mile away.
Still under the weight of Samantha, he turned to his left, and saw her through the blue dots that the lights had imprinted on his retinas. He could see her body, but every time he tried to focus on her face, there were dots in front of it.
Samantha looked at Zora for a moment, then back down at Kyler. She had a look of an animal that was getting its food taken away from it. Samantha swung her legs from around Kyler’s waist and slid off of the table, but not before pressing down hard on his crotch one last time, causing him to double over, and once again cry out in pain.
Samantha stood up and closed her shirt never taking her eyes off of Zora, who stood in the entrance way, hand still on the light switch. Samantha glided over to her and looked down at the much shorter woman, who for her part stared right back up at her. Samantha looked back over her shoulder at Kyler who was still doubled over, back to them, then looked back down at Zora and smiled before silently leaving the room, the sounds of her bare feet plopping against the tile as she did. Zora watched her as she disappeared into the darkness.
She turned back to Kyler, and then walked over to the table and stood over the table where Kyler, still in the fetal position, hands on his crotch, groaned softly.
“So…you like it rough,” she said scanning the room. One of the large cans on the shelf had been a can of peas, which had broken open and was now spilled halfway across the room.
“No, I really don’t,” the doctor came back, his back still to her.
Zora gently placed her hand on his back. Kyler flinched involuntarily. She saw that his head was lying on top of the prime rib and the sausage was squashed under his hip. It looked like a couple of kids had had a huge food fight before getting interrupted.
“Are you alright?” she asked softly, turning him over.
Kyler remained in the fetal position as she turned him over onto his side. Zora saw that he was in agony, his eyes closed and his jaws clenched.
“It’s not what you think,” he said, keeping his eyes closed.
“I know, she returned, flicking away a piece of meat that was stuck to his forehead. “I saw most of it.”
“But you did nothing to help…thanks.”
“I wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first. When I came in, she was licking your neck. It kind of sounded like you were enjoying it.”
“Well, I wasn’t.”
“I figured that out when she slammed you down onto the table.”
Kyler opened his eyes, but couldn’t see her face. He was looking at her stomach, which he could see because one of the buttons was unbuttoned at her mid drift. Any other day of the week, he might’ve made a move on her, but sex was the farthest thing from his mind at that moment.
The two remained silent as she rubbed his shoulder.
“If you saw what she did,” Kyler started, “then you know that she’s becoming like Opal.”
“I know.”
She continued to rub his shoulder and stroke his meat-infested hair. “Let’s get you up,” she finally said, pulling him up into a sitting position.
Every muscle in Kyler’s body screamed out in agony as he sat up. He swore that even his hair hurt. She put her arms around his shoulder and helped him off the table. He stayed bent over, unable to straighten up. He put his hand to the back of his head where he felt a knot forming. Great, that was the second knot he’d gotten on his head in three days. He’d gotten the other one when he’d slipped on Martin Burns’ blood the fist night that they had seen the werewolf.
“I guess it’s another shower for you, young man,” Zora said smiling as she led him away.
CHAPTER 52
Wilbur watched as his grandmother continued to rant about things he didn’t know about. He didn’t care though. He loved his “Grammy”, no matter what she did or others said that she did. She had raised him since he was six. That was the year that his mother and father left for destinations unknown. He never saw his father again. He thought that he saw his mother once in a dinette. She was waiting tables, but she didn’t seem to notice him, even though Grammy said that he was the spitting image of her.
Because of his parents neglect, Opal Munn made up for it b y smothering him with love, probably too much love, some people said. She was kind and sweet and grandmotherly, but as grandmothers have a tendency to do, she sheltered him from the outside world. He had no siblings, no friends…just Grammy. He slept in the same bed with her until he was twelve, which he knew was way too old to be sleeping with a parent, or in his case, a grandparent. But she had always been there for him. When he hurt himself, she was there for him. When bullies picked on him, she was there for him. When they sang “Wilbur Loves Grammy…He’s the Palest Boy in Miami…”she was there for him. She was always there for him, and made every decision for him, so he remembered her being quite shocked two years ago when, at twenty, he had joined the army without telling her.
“What?” she had squealed upon hearing the news. “You can’t do that! You’ll be killed!”
She had begun to cry, and he had sat with her and patted her shoulder, but this had been something he had needed to do, something he had to do. He had hidden behind her apron strings for too long, and he was tired of seeing boys and girls together. He had hardly ever talked to a girl. The only way he even knew that they were different than boys was hearing other boys talk about seeing their sister naked, or their cousin, or the lady next door. Once he had seen his Aunt Jessie come out of the shower naked, so he did have some idea of the difference in mechanics, but he had never been with a girl, kissed a girl, or even held hands with a girl.
She had put on a brave face when he left for boot camp. She hadn’t wailed, or bawled…she did have tears in her eyes, but so do all mothers when their sons…or now, their daughters, join the service. Grammy had simply touched his face and kissed his cheek. She had probably realized that she had sheltered him for way too long, even though she had done it out of the goodness of her heart, and not out of some petty jealousy that some mothers have when boys have eyes for anyone but them. Opal had been one of those few women who actually realized the mistakes that they had made in raising a little boy. In most situations where a woman raises a boy alone, the mother tends to blame their sons lack of social skills on someone or something else…never their over protectiveness. But Opal let him go.
Boot camp had been sheer hell for Wilbur. He wasn’t athletic, he wasn’t agile, he wasn’t coordinated, he wasn’t strong, and he could not fight. The rest of the unit was always being punished for his lack of abilities and they resented it. There were two women who were both faster and stronger than he was, and could kick the shit out of him in combat training. But he persevered, and was in complete shock when he found out that he had passed boot camp. He had spent weeks doing pushups, shooting rifles, cleaning latrines, doing KP, running mile after mile after mile, and sometimes getting the crap hazed out of him for not being able to keep up, but he’d made it.
Naturally they didn’t send him to Iraq, but to No Name Island where he would be under the iron ass of one Col. George Patton Potts. Wilbur had heard that Col. Potts was the most despicable, disagreeable, and despised person on the face of the planet, and the man didn’t disappoint. Wilbur was made Potts’ aide. His clerk was more like it. The colonel had him doing everything from dictation to shining his shoes, to picking up his laundry. He even made Wilbur keep his checkbook balanced, the whole time swearing and cursing him. The man had never said a kind word to him, which he didn’t expect,
but he shouldn’t have ridden him constantly. He had called Opal once and told her that he thought that he was going to have a nervous breakdown, whereby Opal immediately decided to “visit” No Name Island and “temporarily” move into a little apartment about a quarter of a mile from the base. Her presence turned him around. He was happy again. He tried to visit her every day. Sometimes he’d drop in on her when he was running errands. He spent every weekend moment with her except when Potts had things for him to do, which was seldom. Like most of the soldiers, Potts went to Miami almost every weekend so he had no real use for him, not to mention the fact that Potts seemed to hate him. He had no trouble letting Wilbur go visit Opal at the hospital after she had broken her hip.
“Go!” he would scream. “Just be back at O-seven hundred hours tomorrow!”
Wilbur spent almost every waking moment with her at first, but she would always surprisingly send him away after a few hours.
“It’s time for you to go, Sweetie,” she would tell him. “Grammy will be fine.”
He never wanted to leave her. Once she had moved to the island, he swore that he would stay with her forever, and didn’t care what Potts or anyone else thought. He knew that everyone called him Norman Bates behind his back, but so what. He would bet a week’s salary that he was happier than they were.
Now here he was, and as far as he knew, out of the army, which he didn’t mind. It had been too long in coming and he knew it. Wilbur had been shocked that Potts had relented and let him stay with Opal through the ordeals of the last three days. He half expected Potts to shoot him when he refused to leave his grandmother’s side.
He still couldn’t remember last night very well. He remembered the man…the one who had bitten her…turn into a monster again, but that was about all he could remember. He guessed that he had fainted, which came as no great surprise to him, and been carried here.
