The Haunter Of The Threshold

by Edward Lee

  The crowd murmured goodbyes, high-fiving, back-slapping, and began to depart. Was it her imagination, or was her attention focusing deliberately on the tiny sparkle of blood-red light that glimmered from the tiny stone on all of their fingers?

  The ordeal, at least, seemed to be over, but...

  Is it really?

  Hazel’s limbs unfolded and flopped to the table when someone cut her bonds. She could sense the warm glob of Shot Glass’s sperm in her belly; it seemed to curdle there.

  “‘Course, it could’a been worse, huh?” Clonner addressed her.

  Hazel gaped at him. “You’re shitting me, right?”

  Clonner shrugged bony shoulders. “It’s only Shot Glass’s cum we made ya eat. I mean, we could’a been real assholes and made you eat everybody’s cum, right?”

  Hazel coddled her aching vagina with her hands. “Well, yeah, I guess that’s true.”

  Clonner held up his stumps. “So, dang, girl, the least ya could do is thank me. Jiminy Christmas, gal’s’re so ungrateful these days, ain’t they, boys?”

  Shot Glass and Clayton were the only ones who remained. They drank beers up at the bar. “Ee-yuh, they’se shuh are, Clonner,” Shot Glass agreed, then Clayton, “Ungrateful, ungrateful, ungrateful!” Both men hopped off their stools, Clayton bringing Clonner another beer.

  Hazel sat up on the table’s edge and winced at the old man. “Let me get this right. You want me to thank you for not making me drink everybody’s cum?”

  “Dang tootin’, and I’se a bit offended ya ain’t already.”

  Hazel’s face lengthened in despair. For God’s sake... She knew she had no choice. “All right,” she sighed. “Thank you, Clonner, for not making me eat everybody’s cum.”

  Clonner clapped his stumps together and guffawed. “Who’s ta say we didn’t?”

  Clayton appeared, with his big fat shuck-and-jive uneducated redneck grin. He was holding an aluminum cake pan. When he declined it slightly Hazel saw a slew of semen in it.

  “You didn’t!” she shouted.

  “We ain’t a bunch’a dopes ‘round here, hon,” Clonner said.

  “Afore we started fuckin’ yew,” Shot Glass informed, “we put this heer pan on the floor, so’s when all that nut fall aout yer pussy, it landed in the pan.”

  “And guess who’s gonna drink it?” Clayton added.

  Am I really going to let them do this to me? Hazel wondered. She took the pan. If I don’t, they kill me, and they kill Sonia. If I do...

  She looked narrowly at the aggregate sperm of twenty-eight men. The pan lay covered with the pearlescent slime, and it all drooled down to the corner when she tipped it some more. And some of those guys came twice, she dismally recalled. That a LOT of sperm...

  “Well?” Clonner urged.

  Hazel’s head droned. She looked at the pan one more time, then sighed.

  “Un-fuckin’-believable!” Clayton railed.

  “This heer gal should win some kind’a award!” Shot Glass exclaimed.

  “Hardest-core tramp I ever seed in my life!” Clonner added.

  Hazel brought the pan’s corner to her lips, tipped it up, and let all that sperm slide into her mouth and down her throat.

  “There.” She smacked her lips. “Happy now?”

  “Yer one of a kind!” Clonner cracked. “Would’a bet everything I got you wouldn’t’a done it.” He winked. “The test’s almost over now, hon, and so far, you’se got straight-A’s.”

  Hazel sneered, ignoring the snotty aftertaste. “Test?”

  “Ain’t but one more thing you gotta do, and if’n ya do it...you can go.”

  Hazel laughed. “What kind of an idiot do you think I am? You’re never gonna let me go.”

  “Shuh we are,” Shot Glass said. “Durn’t need ya for nuthin’ reely.” He walked back to the bar with Clayton.

  “Serious?” Hazel said to Clonner.

  “Shore.”

  “And Sonia, too, right?”

  “Well”—Clonner shook his head—“ain’t gonna lie to ya, but yer knocked up friend ain’t here no more. I had a couple’a the boys drive her out the minute she got here.”

  “Drive her out where? ”

  “Don’t matter none. See, she’s important. But you’re...not. So, if’n ya wanna walk out’a here, all’s ya gotta do is one more thing.”

  Hazel was about to ask what but then heard muted chuckling behind her—plus a whizzing sound. She looked toward the bar and saw Shot Glass and Clayton simultaneously urinating into a beer pitcher.

  Fuck, she thought. What else could I expect? She said a brief, feeble prayer as she heard the pitcher filling. God, please let it be so that if I do this, I’ll walk out of here alive. Okay? Please?

  “Help an old fella out, Clayton,” Clonner said next. Shot Glass brought over the pitcher, which looked about two-thirds full not including the foam. Clayton pulled down Clonner’s zipper, fished inside with his fingers, and withdrew—

  Holy shit...

  —a little corroded, fleshy nub.

  “What happened to your dick? ” Hazel had to ask.

  “Aw, no big deal. That swami doc gave me what they call a penectomy. Cut my willy right off, he did, on account it was goin’ ta rot, juss like my hands. Gangrene, he said, from the blammed dye-ur-beet-iss. All’s he left were that little nub. But I cain’t complain, had plenty’a nuts in my time,” and then Clayton hoisted him up from behind, while Shot Glass positioned the pitcher. “Ahhhhhhh,” the old man sighed as he let it all come out. The stream frothed, whipping up more foam. But Hazel was wincing...

  “What’s wrong with your piss? It looks—looks...pink. ”

  “Aw, some glommerus shit’re some such—you’d have to ask the swami. Somethin’ out’a whack with my kidneys, so’s my piss always got a little blood in it.”

  It looked like pink lemonade whizzing from the nub of flesh. Hazel’s stomach was already roiling. When the old man’s bladder was drained, the pitcher was almost full, and tinged with the faintest pink. Being coerced to drink piss was bad enough—as the past several days could attest—but, somehow, the idea of blood being in it made the prospect infinitely worse.

  Hazel sat sullen on the table edge. Her eyes dimmed when Shot Glass, uttering, “Heh, heh, heh,” placed the pitcher into her hands.

  “Come on, reddy!” Clayton hooted.

  “Shows us what yer made of,” Clonner added.

  “Durn’t disappoint us,” Shot Glass finished. “Heh, heh, heh...”

  Hazel raised the pitcher and began to drink. She tried to pace each swallow, to get as much into her as quickly as possible: Chug...Chug...Chug..., like that. The taste, of course, was unmentionable, and worse was the foam and the heat. The process seemed to pump the heat into her belly in fast, even measures. Chug...Chug...Chug...With each swallow, her toes involuntarily flexed, and her pectorals clenched, causing her breasts to jerk. Her mind reeled by the time she’d drained the level only by half.

  Chug...Chug...Chug...

  “She’s shuh gonna dew it!” Shot Glass yelled.

  “Shore is!” came Clayton.

  Clonner: “I ain’t had me this much fun since my first Hock Party!”

  Chug...Chug...Chug..., and then the remnant foam spilled into her mouth and she was done.

  The men clapped heartily, well, at least Shot Glass and Clayton did, but Clonner clapped his stumps as well. The plastic pitcher clattered to the floor, and Hazel fell back on the table. She held her belly through the most dispiriting moan.

  “You wasn’t kiddin’, Shot Glass! She shore chugs piss like a champ.”

  “Tolt yew.”

  “And all that nut ta boot!” Clayton chimed in.

  Hazel grunted when she sat back up. “Now. Let me guess,” she said. “I ask if I can leave, then you rednecks all cluck laughter and say no, right?”

  The three men all looked at each other. “What’choo talkin’ ‘bout?” Clonner piped. “We done said if ya drunk up all that piss
, ya could scoot. So...scoot.”

  Hazel did not, could not believe it. Belly pushed out, she slowly slid herself off the table. No, she felt sure. They’re bullshitting. I KNOW they are... She took several careful steps toward the door, then glanced over her shoulder.

  “Thinks weer jivin’ her,” Shot Glass laughed.

  Clonner laughed harder. “Go on, git! Ain’t no reason fer us to keep ya here!”

  Clayton grinned, “So ya best leave...‘fore we change our mind...”

  “And we’se know blammed well ya ain’t stupid enough to go to the cops.”

  Hazel eyed them.

  “‘Cos we got thirty-some witnesses—includin’ the sheriff—who’ll swear you come in here all drunk’n disorderly, tryin’ to hustle guys for tricks, and actin’ all crazy,” Clonner added. “You don’t count fer shit, so git’cher dirty ass out’a here’n go back where ya come from.”

  Shot Glass nodded, squinty-eyed. “Forget abaout that preggered friend’a yours, forget abaout this taown’n forget yew evuh came heer.”

  The old man traversed his chair and rolled toward the bar. “Clayton, git that TV on and see’s if ya can find a sports ticker.”

  “Ee-yuh,” Shot Glass said, grabbing more beers. “Dyin’ ta see haow the Sox done against the Yankees.”

  Hazel’s mouth fell open. Could it...really be true? She still didn’t believe it. She tiptoed toward the door, took one last glance behind to see them all looking up at the television. Then she ran out of the bar.

  No one stood in wait outside. Crickets throbbed, and the parking lot lights blared. Piss sloshed in her belly when she jumped in the car, started it, and slammed it into gear. She’d need to turn left to take the road out of town, but this idea made no conscious presence in her mind. She cut the wheel hard-right.

  Then floored the gas.

  The Prius plowed right through the front door into the bar, begetting a sound like a wrecking ball. The deafening crash made her grin. The vehicle’s penetration crossed the tavern’s front section, exploding windows, flinging tables and chairs aside, and then it collided with the long bar itself, where Shot Glass and Clayton sat. Shot Glass was jettisoned ten feet to the right, while Clayton and his bulk was thrown left, right into a very surprised Clonner, whose chair toppled onto its side. Clonner’s stumps flailed when he tumbled across the floor.

  Planks fell on the car’s roof, while more clattered here and there. The television squawked something about someone named Wang throwing a “perfect game” and the Red Sox losing twenty-six to nothing, but Hazel didn’t know anything about hockey. She got out with a great grin, walked about the wreckage, then poured herself a draft beer.

  NOW it’s Miller Time...

  She traipsed around, looking at her handiwork. Oh, goodie! she thought. I think they’re still alive. Each of the men lay in some state of serious disarray, but it was Clayton she approached first: face bloodied, nose smashed, one foot twisted all the way around. He blubbered, shuddering on the floor.

  Hazel prodded his big belly with her foot. “Hey! Clayton! Don’t die! Don’t pass out!”

  Puffy eyes and a ballooned face looked up at her. “Ya crazy tramp! Look what’choo done ta me!”

  “Well, what did you expect, after the twenty-eight-man gangbang?”

  “Shee-it! You tolt us yerself ya was a nympho! Alls we done was give ya what’cha asked fer!”

  “Clayton. I did not ask to drink a cake pan full of sperm or a beer pitcher full of redneck piss.” She stepped on his smashed ankle, and he screamed. “Tell me where Sonia is.”

  His crushed voice sputtered. “I don’t know, I don’t know–”

  “Really?” The lemon-squeezer on the bar was practically calling her name. It took Hazel no time at all to snatch it up and haul Clayton’s pants down, revealing his terror-shriveled genitals. She placed his right testicle into the lemon-squeezer’s cup, and with no preamble pressed the handles together...

  The sound–actually a wet crunch! —thrilled her, but much more gratifying was the deep, walrus-like caterwaul that exploded from Clayton’s fat throat.

  “Clayton. Where’s Sonia?”

  “I don’t know, I’se swear!” he bellowed. His face looked twisted, eyes flipping back and forth.

  She placed the left testicle in the squeezer.

  “Wait, wait!” he begged. “I ‘member now! They’se took her to the bus station!”

  Hazel looked at him, said, “You’re lying,” and then–

  cruuuuunch

  –the left testicle was pulped. He doesn’t know, she determined, and neither does Shot Glass. The only one who might know was Clonner.

  Clayton now lay as a mass of convulsant, whimpering fat. From the bar she plucked a glass swizzle stick, lubed its end with spit, then slipped it all the way down his urethra.

  “Naw, naw, I’m begging ya’s...”

  Snap, Snap, Snap!

  That done, she approached Shot Glass, who lay bulge-eyed, both legs broken at the shins. Should she use the lemon-squeezer? Hmmm, she thought. Evidently, Hazel was on a urethra kick today, for after another sip of beer, she grabbed the lamp next to the cash register, pulled it around, then turned it off. She shattered the bulb, baring the two lead-stems. Then...

  Down came Shot Glass’s pants.

  He boo-hoo’d like a baby when she arranged the flaccid meat of his penis. Once or twice, he tried to jerk away, but for this he was rewarded by Hazel’s hand squeezing the fractured area of a shin. “In ya go,” she said, daintily working the bulb’s first lead-stem into the despairing piss-slit. Then she merely inclined the lamp a few inches until the second stem touched one hairy ball.

  And she turned on the light.

  It was a rock ‘em, sock ‘em good time watching Shot Glass stiffen up and convulse on the floor. Several times she clicked the lamp on and off, to cause his yowls to alternate. After a minute or two, the whites of his eyes turned tomato-juice red, his balls began to smoke, and his cock began to turn gray and shrink, for in a sense, it was cooking.

  When it looked like he was about to croak, Hazel removed the lamp. “Haow yew like thet? ” she asked.

  He blubbered something, barely conscious now, his tongue protruding.

  “Could’ve been worse, though, right?”

  He must’ve heard her, for his reddened eyes widened at the words.

  “I mean, I could’ve been a real asshole and crushed both your balls like I did Clayton. The way I see it, you should thank me, and frankly I’m offended that you haven’t already.”

  He made coarse, hacking noises, trying to speak.

  “Say ‘thank you, Hazel, for not crushing my balls like Clayton.’” She wagged a finger at him. “If you don’t, I will crush ‘em and electrocute your dick some more.”

  Shot Glass’s cheeks gusted breath, his tongue still sticking out; however, in spite of this impediment, he made feeble noises that crudely repeated what she’d ordered.

  “You’re welcome,” she said and—

  cruuuunch

  cruuuunch

  —crushed both balls with the lemon-squeezer anyway.

  That was about it for Walter “Shot Glass” Brown. Okay, she thought. The television still jabbered on, now about someone with the name “A-Rod” getting two grand slams. Hazel presumed that this person must’ve won the hockey game so he’d been rewarded with two free breakfasts at Denny’s. She glanced over and saw Clonner trying to move away from her on all fours. “Oh, don’t leave, Clonner. We need to have a chit-chat.”

  She poured herself another beer behind the bar, then hunted around. This’ll have to be good...Ah! On a shelf she found a roll of duct tape, and in the corner, a plastic bucket. She brought them around, grabbed the plastic bag out of the car, and slammed her foot down on Clonner’s back which threw his legs and stumped arms out.

  “Crazy bitch!” he cracked. “I’m calling the sheriff!”

  “Really? How? ”

  “Fuckin’ women are all nuts, th
ey is! I’m handicapped, fer shit’s sake!”

  Hazel waved the pistol in his face. “Listen, Clonner, I could shoot out your knee caps and elbows with this gun, electrocute what’s left of your dick with the lamp, and crush your balls with my lemon-squeezer, and you’d probably tell me where Sonia is, right?”

  His waxen face glared, stumps struggling on the floor. “I don’t know where she is’n even if I’se did, I wouldn’t tell ya’ cos what those things’d do to me fer spillin’ my guts is a million times worse’n anything you can think of!”

  “What things, Clonner?” Her eyes thinned. “The Tentacle People?”

  “The minions’a Yog-Sothoth!”

  Hazel still refused to believe it. Those had been hallucinations, or tricks of light when she’d stared into the jpeg of the Shining Trapezohedron.

  “You’re going to tell me where Sonia is,” she said and pulled the plastic bucket over. Then she stuck her fingers down her throat...

  It was a Niagra Falls of vomit that gushed out of her mouth: sperm, beer, but mostly sudsy urine. Lots of it. With every depression of her fingers, her stomach sucked in, and out gushed more, one dizzying heave at a time. It took several minutes to get it all out, and upon doing so, her abdomen ached fiercely. Yet in spite of the discomfort, she smiled in deep satisfaction, for the bucket now stood about half-full. But it has to clear his nose, she knew, so, to add to the level, she squatted over the bucket and urinated. It had been awhile, and she was delighted to see that her own contribution had increased the level by another inch at least.

  “Get it yet, Clonner?” she asked.

  “You’se the one who don’t get it, ya crazy psy-kerpath! I don’t know where yer friend is!”

  “But you told me you ordered your men to take her away.”

  “Yes!” he spat, and then the poor man’s dentures fell out. He gummed the next words, “It were the emissary who tolt ‘em ‘zactly where to take her!”

  The emissary, she thought. Frank. Instantly she got the hunch that Clonner was telling the truth. By now, of course, and quite understandably, Hazel was in the middle of a solid bout of temporary insanity, yet some aspect of her reason remained very much intact, proof of her mettle. From the bag, she removed the Shining Trapezohedron.