Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions

by John Everson

  He shook away a spoonful and she spilled the Cheerios on his chest. She bent down and tongued him clean.

  “Mmmm,” she grinned lasciviously.

  “Cut it out,” Charles complained. “You say you only borrow power. Then you’re going to give back these things you put in me?”

  “The Direkits? No. This is not a borrowing. I’ve worked for years to understand, to communicate with the Direkits. We have traded gifts. This pendant I wear,” she fondled the necklace lovingly. “This is of a Direkit in its adolescent form. And you have Direkit babies inside you. They agreed to give me eggs to join with your seed to hatch here. They will grow in this house, they will be my consorts, my protectors. And they will get me whatever I want.”

  “What do you have to give in return?”

  “Nothing,” she laughed, and looked away. “Nothing at all.”

  He didn’t believe her. Suddenly her elfin features seemed indefinably drawn and pinched, her childish charm only a facade covering a heart of black bile. He divined from her evasiveness that he, somehow, was the currency of exchange in this serpentine contract, and that he would not survive.

  “Eat some more now,” she coaxed another spoon into his mouth. “We’ve got to keep your strength up for the birth.”

  He glared at her, but accepted the food – his stomach growled even as he swallowed another mouthful.

  “OK. Say I believe that you’ve inserted alien dragons into my balls because you have the unique ability to open some kind of interplanetary doorway.”

  She brushed her hand between his legs. He winced at the touch. “What’s not to believe?”

  “So what does the sex stuff have to do with it?’ he asked, looking around the room.

  “Nothing really,” she answered, touching the tip of her tongue to the edge of her front teeth. “I just enjoy it. Helps me clear my mind.”

  She bent to work on his cock with her mouth then, and despite his repeated negations, his tool was quickly receptive to her advances. She threw a leg over his middle and sat on him. The ache in his balls flared to an unbearable mix of pain and ecstasy as she rocked. As he came, he screamed, and she joined her voice to his, a bizarre wailing of shared desperation. When he quieted, she moved forward a bit, resting provocatively astride his chest. She watched his face in silence for a moment, and then poked his nose.

  “Beep.”

  She was almost to the door when Charles cried out.

  “Why? Why me?”

  “I thought you were cute, and you looked lonely,” she answered. “I thought you deserved at least one good time.”

  The door slid closed.

  The day went by slowly, the churnings in Charles’ lower anatomy growing more painful, more frequent. He looked down at one point and swore he could discern an eye staring back at him through the enraged veins of his distended scrotum. He might have been suffering from having his penis connected to a gas station air pump. Normally slightly smaller than golf balls, he thought his testicles now appeared the size of baseballs.

  They hurt like hell.

  He felt feverish too, probably the result of his body’s immune system going haywire trying to fight this strange invasion. Dizziness passed over him in waves, and he fought the urge to puke several times – Ceiran hadn’t been around for hours, and he didn’t want to lay trapped in a pile of vomit until she returned. He had a plan if she would only untie his feet; but now he didn’t even know if he could carry it out. He was drifting in a sea of red; all that mattered to him anymore was a release from the pain. Death would be fine.

  “Wanna screw?”

  The tinkly voice of Ceiran wrenched him from his haze.

  “Sorry I was gone so long, but I had to work my shift, you know.”

  She was wearing some kind of sheer black leotard tonight, with neon blue lipstick. She began peeling off the outfit and Charles began begging.

  “No, Ceiran. I can’t. It hurts so bad. Please don’t.”

  She began humming the theme to “American Bandstand.” He didn’t think he wanted to hear the words.

  “Please, just undo my feet,” he cried. “I can’t go anywhere with my hands tied, and I’ve got to be able to move my thighs, the pain is killing me…”

  “I’ll tell you what.” She stood naked beside the bed, hands on her hips. Reaching out a hand, she touched the bloated surface of his balls and watched him twitch and moan. “I’ll release your feet after we fuck once more. It shouldn’t be too much longer anyway and you’ll be free of them.”

  She climbed on him again and seemed to be making an effort to be gentle, but his resultant cries and grunts of pain as she slid down his shaft didn’t convince her to stop. The feel of his swollen testicles beneath her was an incredible turn-on. When she finished, she did undo his foot restraints, and kissed him once more.

  “Thanks,” she said, crushing his cheeks between her hands. “You’re a nice guy. You make a girl feel real hot. G’night.”

  She laughed and left the room singing: “I’ve been in heat forever…”

  Charles waited until the pounding, racking pain in his groin subsided, until the tears on his face had dried. And then slid his legs to the edge of the bed. Every motion was an agony; his calves dangled in space for minutes before he stopped biting his lip and committed himself to going over.

  The shock of his feet hitting the floor sent a rip through his balls that almost made him scream. Instead he bit down on his tongue until it bled. He took several deep breaths. He willed away the nausea. And inched his feet along the floor near the bed, stretching and straining his back and arms to give his legs the farthest possible range. Sweat poured down his forehead into his eyes and ran in rivulets down his chest. He was going to collapse soon, he knew it. Rhythmic bites of pain shocked him from his unwanted babies, and he fought back tears.

  Then a toe poked something cold.

  He got his big toe on top and began dragging the object towards the bed. Maneuvering his lower back on the edge of the bed to act as the fulcrum, he pulled his upper body flat to the sheets, and grabbed the metal between his feet. He fumbled it the first time, opening a stinging gash on his right foot. He tried again, this time losing it as his blood greased it away.

  The third time he got it up on the bed.

  He lay still for a few minutes to catch his breath, and then, with a silent “now or never,” he inched Ceiran’s discarded ritual knife up the bed with his left leg bent backwards. Every inch was like pushing a hand into the fire – his entire mid-section burned with throbs of retribution. When it was high enough, he levered his body on top of the steel, and inch-wormed it up his back, nicking himself several times in the process. At last he gripped the knife in his hand, and used it to saw the leather straps restraining him. The angle was tight, and he dropped the knife with exhaustion twice, but he finally freed one hand, and then quickly slashed free the next.

  The next step he’d considered for hours, and it was no more acceptable now than it had been upon first rejection. But he also didn’t have a lot of choices here. Doing it, he might have a chance at coming out of this alive. Without? Dragon food.

  His entire body felt swollen and hot now, and he hoped what he was about to try was worth the effort. He slid from the bed to the floor, sitting down with legs splayed as far apart as he could get them. Something moved in one of his veined grapefruits, and he stared at it closely, trying to separate the monster parts from himself. Then he placed the knife over the spot where a dark shadow twisted. Gritting his teeth, he pushed down.

  A stream of milky liquid spurted from the wound. Charles lost his breath from the pain and stars swam across his eyes. His testicles deflated in an expulsion of white and yellow pus, a tide of dark crimson oozing behind it. He lifted the knife and saw that he had, indeed, spitted one of the monsters. A cold blue eye stared blankly at him from the head of what looked like an iridescent green toy crocodile. Only this croc had vestigial wings and eight fingers. Its tail whipped feebly a time
or two before the entire creature went limp. Ivory ichor dripped from its breached midsection down the blade of his knife. Charles swung the knife in the air and the creature flew off to splat on the ground a few feet away.

  And then he did scream, as a tearing sensation worse than the rip of the knife bit into him and he rolled back on the floor in anguish. The other Direkit had apparently witnessed the fate of its brother and wasn’t having any. Charles screamed again and then pinching feet tread across his thigh, trailing a wreckage of wetness. Charles craned his head to stare at the creature which had moved across the room to investigate the Direkit corpse. A thin shaft of white hot flame met him in the forehead, shriveling his hair and causing him to roll over again.

  These things really were mini-dragons.

  The door slid open.

  “I heard you yelling and I…” Ceiran stopped as she saw the empty bed, Charles’ curled, bloody body on the floor, the knife in his hand. Then she saw the dead creature at her foot.

  “Oh, Charles-with-a-C what have you done?”

  She put a hand to her mouth.

  “Where is the other one?” she asked quietly, her tone more serious than he’d ever heard it.

  “I don’t know,” he answered weakly.

  “Do you know what will happen if they realize we killed one of their babies? Do you know what will happen if the other one gets loose in this world without being impressed on me? Damn.”

  She quickly confiscated the knife he’d momentarily forgotten in his hand, and looked around the room sharply. She paused then, thought a moment, and returned to the sing-song voice that had so bewitched him.

  “Let me help you over here to the circle. There’s some magic I can do to heal you up at least.”

  He didn’t believe her. Didn’t buy it at all. This was his exit cue. But he had no defense. She dragged him to the circle, which he now saw was inter cut with a pentagram. He left a trail of blood behind.

  “I thought you didn’t do magic,” he coughed.

  “I don’t, silly,” she answered quickly, then realized she’d negated her ruse. “Oh. I mean…” She didn’t continue. They both knew what was happening here.

  She knelt with him at the circle’s center, began chanting the runic words to “Mandy,” and then sliced her finger with the knife, pressing the damaged member to the center of the pentagram.

  Charles threw himself at her with his last strength then, catching her by surprise. Grabbing her knife hand with both of his own, he shoved it into her belly.

  She yelped in surprise and he rolled himself out of the circle. Ceiran was clutching her middle and screaming now, the runic language interlaced with “No, No.”

  He was sliding through the doorway when he heard the explosion crash. It lit the hall before him and Ceiran’s cries grew frantic. Without looking back, he stumbled to his feet and lurched down the stairs and out the front door into the chilly night. He limped as fast as he could down the sidewalk and the world became a blur of shadow.

  The ground rose up to meet him.

  He awoke in a hospital bed, a wealth of tubes and machines charting his life signs around him. The police were waiting. He’d been brought in, an officer explained, following a neighbor’s call to 911 to report that a bloody, naked man was lying on the sidewalk in front of her house. The woman’s call probably saved his life. A fresh-faced officer prodded him for a reason someone would cut his balls and leave him for dead. Charles gave the cop an annotated story of a bar pickup gone bad. The officer smiled oddly at him as he related the events of the past two days (minus any mention of ball-burrowing lizards, of course). The cop went away then, and he drifted back to a troubled sleep. When he woke again, he flipped the hospital TV on, thumbing through channels for the radio feed.

  “Oh Mandy, well you came and you stopped me from shaking…” blared the speaker with unnerving synchronicity.

  Charles punched the station switcher angrily. He settled on the news. A trench-coated reporter was standing in front of the violent orange glow of a house fire. Charles’ car was behind the reporter.

  “Firemen have been battling this blaze for many hours now, and are puzzled over its tenacity. Chief Dobrin expressed concern that some explosive material may be contributing to its stubborn hold on the house, which as you can see, barely has a timber of its original structure left. The building has sat empty for several years, according to neighbors, so there’s no telling what caused, or is sustaining, the blaze. Back to you Chuck.”

  Charles clicked the TV off and lay back on the bed. No mention of Ceiran. Had she gone through to the world of the Direkits? Had the baby escaped – or was it the source of the unquenchable fire?

  A taxi dropped him at the site to pick up his car a few days later. The police had left him alone after a couple more visits – no body had been found in the fire, so there was nothing to charge him with. Nothing remained of the house but a plain of black rubble. The yard’s evergreens had burned to a few spiny skeletons. Charles walked over the ruined landscape, questions still burning in his head. He found that for all she’d done to him, he hoped that somehow, Ceiran had survived. Why? he thought. So she can sing warped Manilow to other victims? He didn’t know. He just felt as though, sex aside, she had actually liked him.

  His foot knocked a charred scrap of wood aside and the sun glinted off something amid the charcoal at his feet. He bent, pushed aside more debris, brushed away ash.

  The sparkling eyes of the silver Direkit pendant stared back. He picked it up and wiped it off, considering the implications of Ceiran’s abandonment of the medallion. Then he shrugged it over his head, adjusted it beneath his shirt and hobbled stiffly back to the car. His skin tingled oddly at the touch of the cold metal. She’d want this, if she ever returns, he thought. In the meantime, he figured he’d be scanning the supermarket tabloids. Looking for headlines like “Scientists Discover Dragon.”

  A shiver of anticipation shook him at the thought.

  Pornography can give people the release they need without the dangers of reality. But fantasy holds the obsessive seeds for its own dangers. We all need a little fantasy in our lives, but like any other obsession, the single-minded pursuit of its enjoyment bears a high price. And if we need fantasy so, what does fantasy need from us?

  Every Last Drop

  is breathing grew ragged. In the shifting kaleidoscope of electric light, his gray eyes reflected obscene plays of color, did not shine out their own. The woman was tan, California style – no lines. Her lips were shiny pink, an erotic complement to the nipples of her bobbing brown breasts, currently matching – or more correctly, setting – the rhythm of his respiration. She flipped a strand of sand-blonde hair away from her face, ice-blue eyes flashing with lust, sweat collecting on her forehead, lips pursed and moaning…

  The holovision abruptly went blank-blue, and Tony zipped up.

  That was not your ordinary porno-blonde, he thought in admiration. Most of the blondes they used these days were like plastic dolls – the parts were all there, but the energy, the spirit – the spark that sometimes transfigured a 3-D bimbo into an orgasm-inducing fantasy – most just didn’t have it. They looked bored. They looked… faceless. Tits and ass a dime a dozen – sex goddesses were hard to find.

  On the cyberbooth door he paused a moment to read the obscene graffiti. He didn’t know why, it was depraved and depressing and yet he always did.

  “Looking for black cock to suck? Call 546-…”

  “My wife screws you while I watch – ask for Leo (313)…”

  “Homos go to hell…”

  “The perfect blow job: no names, no faces, no price, all privacy, unspeakable pleasure. Cum to Redroom Hotel #112 after 9 p.m.”

  He read the last one again and shook his head. Nobody gave the perfect blow job for free. He couldn’t pay Loni to give him one anymore at all. Tucking in his shirt he pushed open the door and walked quickly out of the back hall of the peep show. Men paced in the shadows, faces illuminated by
the orange glow of silently smoking cigarettes, looking for the newcomer to proposition, waiting for the booth they wanted to free up. He grimaced in disgust and left the place, nodding at the wrinkled, bored cashier watching a “Dick Van Dyke Show” rerun.

  Back when Loni had first gone out with him, she’d been eager to please, spreading everything for him just about anytime. She’d never been nuts about fellatio, but she serviced him dutifully. Their first couple years he’d nearly forgotten what the insides of these peep houses were like. Guys looking for anonymous sex with other guys, just for thrills or because they were too scared to admit they were gay and come out of the closet. Here it wasn’t gay or straight, it was diversion. Businessmen on a lark, husbands on desperation runs. He wouldn’t let these desperate men touch him, but he had no problem touching himself. If you couldn’t get it at home, you had to go somewhere…

  Tony gunned the car and screeched out into traffic. He hoped Loni was in a good mood tonight – the blonde with the ice-blue eyes and pure-copper bod had left him wanting more. The new cyberbooths at the adult video store he’d frequented for years were great – but even though the women surrounded you like real life, you still couldn’t feel them. But thinking of that last scene made the crotch of his pants uncomfortable. He shifted in the seat and willed away an erection – which only served to increase its growth. Gripping his thighs together, he aimed the car onto the freeway and tried to relax. That place was supposed to relieve the tension, not create more, he grinned to himself.