Deadly Nightlusts

by John Everson

  Beth laughed, and reached out to finger the thing that had betrayed me all of my life. "It never did grow up, did it?"

  And then she was the Allysa I remembered again, the sparkle in her green eyes still full of both humor and the cruelty that only children can display, before the pain of life has taught them the real weight of the hurting.

  She guided my hands down from the wall and back to the shovel, and flanked by naked ghosts, she pointed at a spot in the earth that seemed relatively level. "Dig," she said. "And make it deep and wide. You're going to have a lot of company."

  I dug. The cellar earth moved easily, but my hands were quickly raw. The sweat poured off my head but I didn't feel hot. Every time I looked up from the earth, I saw the empty eyes of all the girls I'd buried here on Halloween nights past. All the girls I'd loved. In my own way.

  Under their silent eyes I stabbed the shovel down again and again and dug the grave deep. I didn't protest when Allysa put her hand on my head and told me lay down in it. I knew there was no point; they were not going to let me leave, and honestly, I'm not sure I wanted to. After a while, maybe that hollow place inside you just grows so much that the shell left around it simply doesn't care to move anymore.

  "Do you know what day it is?" Allysa asked, as I crouched down in the damp earth. I shook my head, momentarily confused.

  "It's Halloween," Allysa said. "Your day of green apples."

  I lay down and waited for the girls to join me. I figured when Allysa had promised company that they planned to torment me even beneath the earth for my crimes.

  But then something hard hit me in the head. And something else bounced off my chest. I reached out and found the smooth skin of an apple. I held it up and saw the glowing eyes of the girls peering back down at me from the edge of my grave.

  "Take a bite," one of the girls said. And then another said the same. And another.

  "Take a bite," they whispered in unison, over and over again, as more and more apples rained down on me, painfully bouncing off my knees and hip and ribs and face. I held the apple to my mouth as the grave began to fill with the fruit. It was cool and hard against my skin, and soon I could feel nothing but the weight of green apples against my chest.

  I bit into the apple in my hand, and the taste was sour and sweet, both at the same time.

  Just like a woman.

  I looked up and saw the girls above me growing into women, their pert breasts and boyish waists filling out and curving, and their eyes lengthening into slits both sultry and feral. The apples continued to rain down on me until I could no longer see the beautiful dead nudes who were stoning me in fruit that should have still been maturing on the branch.

  "All wasted," Beth's adult voice came from somewhere far away. "All of it wasted like apples gone wrinkled and brown, left to rot on the ground untasted.

  All around me, the immature fruit began to change, growing older, ripening. The smell of vinegar filled my nose, and then I was drowning in the scent and drip of bitter age, covering and crushing me until I cried out again and again that I was sorry.

  But there was nobody left to hear or care. They were all dead.

  Star On The Beach

  "No, don't!"

  He caught my hand in mid-throw before I could let go and cast the shell back to the ocean. It had an odd shape, apricot and cream in spirals, but it was not so strange as to make me want to keep it. Still, when the wiry little Cuban boy gripped my arm and yelled, I listened.

  "What?" I barked, and released my grip on the shell. He scooped it from the sand excitedly and said "Star, star!"

  I shrugged and went back to shoveling sand with my whole arm into the shape of a wall.

  * * *

  We'd met on South Beach.

  Miami.

  Home of skates and tons of sand... and... T&A. I could literally taste the sex in the air. Or was that just the ocean?

  After a long walk down the beach from my hotel, where I'd left my wedding ring in a drawer under a stack of underwear, I'd finally convinced myself to turn my attention to the earth, instead of the well-displayed (and endowed) but unachievable women. Like countless men before me, I'd taken to architecture to release my creative urges, building phallic representations of my unsated lusts.

  Sandcastles.

  I was building sandcastles instead of scoring some choice 36-24-36 when the teenage brown-skinned boy joined me.

  "You build?" he asked.

  He took my nod as an invitation and soon both of us were shoring up sand walls to protect an unimpressive, tentative squat tower from the crush of the ocean.

  Story of my life.

  'Til I dug out the shell.

  Then he freaked.

  "It's just a shell," I said, but he kept on.

  "Star, star."

  He forced it out of my hand, chocolate eyes serious with concentration.

  "Keep," he nodded.

  I stuffed it in my pocket and went back to shoring up a beleaguered moat wall. We worked in silence until sunset, he pointing to areas gone weak and smiling with teeth as white as the moon when I filled the gaps with sand.

  When the sun set and the conga music began filtering over the berm from Mango's on Ocean View, I announced that I had to leave.

  He looked alarmed.

  "Some time?" he asked.

  English came hard to him and he struggled with each word.

  "Some," I admitted. "But I need to meet some friends from work for dinner."

  I don't know how much he understood, but he motioned for me to follow.

  He took me farther down the beach than I had gone before - past the rows of hotels to the very end of the island.

  "How far?" I asked and he only nodded his head quickly and said, "Yes."

  Finally, he turned and grinned at me and nodded again.

  "Now, now," he said and ran up, away from the water and in-between an old boarded up shell of a building. Maybe it had been a small motel, I thought, though they didn't seem to have anything else around there. He pointed to a mound of sand and then to my pocket.

  "Star," he said and without question, I gave it to him. But he refused, instead motioning for me to place the shell at the top of the pile. Or the bottom. Who could tell? Once placed, he clapped his hands, then cupped them and began shoveling sand off the center of the mound. After a moment, I took the hint and joined him. The sand slipped through my hands like water, but still I scooped, armful after armful, some sliding back as soon as I'd removed it. Little by little, we made progress towards his unmentioned goal.

  Her belly was bronze.

  Beautiful.

  And more than a bit frightening when I realized what it was we were digging up.

  Again, the kid egged me on.

  "Okay, okay," he nodded and proceeded to uncover more of her perfect, nude body.

  She was like every celluloid queen I'd seen strutting up and down the beach, playing volleyball in bikini suits too small to cover all of their privates at any one moment.

  Her nipples jutted round and proud from out of the sand like copper ice cream cones, her thighs looked taut and strong, and her oil-gloss pubes shed sand like liquid gold.

  I was in awe. And scared to death.

  The kid was uncovering a dead body. A beautiful dead body, but dead, nonetheless. We hadn't yet seen a face, and there was no way she'd been breathing under all that sand.

  And then he did the worst thing.

  Pointing at me, he began to rock his hips back and forth. Then he'd stop, motion at my crotch and grind in her direction again. It looked silly, coming from a boy. What could he know?

  "No way!" I said, and he smiled again, pointing to himself.

  "Me?" he asked.

  I shrugged and he dropped his shorts to reveal his finger-sized erection. It may have been small, but he knew what to do. In an instant, his twelve-year-old hips were slapping with doglike speed against the half-buried body.

  I couldn't look at him, not really, and walked aw
ay in the middle, but he caught up to me a few minutes later, slapping the shell back to my hand.

  "Star," he said.

  I looked closer at the shell this time. It wasn't a starfish... wasn't like any shell I'd ever seen before, really. I shoved it in my pocket, wondering what I should do. I didn't want to report a body. That was local stuff... and I didn't want to be involved. I was just passing through. Have a few drinks, build a couple sandcastles, slip my ring back on, and head home. No entanglements.

  * * *

  That night, I sat on the beach outside my hotel and watched waves drag sand in and out of the ocean. In the sky, the Big Dipper pointed the way to infinity, while the moon lit the blanketed couples scattered along the shadowed length of the sand. The pull of their sighs was lost in the rhythmic sway of the surf.

  I wanted to join them.

  I wanted to plunge into the ocean.

  I wanted to plunge into her.

  Night birds scattered like ghost crabs across the sand as I restlessly walked the midnight coastline, the occasional rotted coconut washing in from the deep like a dark skull, tangled vines like veins trailing from its shattered brainpan. Sea foam sucked the sand from beneath my toes and shoveled shells and secrets home, then gone again. The full moon reflected off the receding waters in a shining beacon.

  There were eyes on me.

  Silent eyes. Nervous and lustful.

  The eyes of nocturnal birds and stone-white crabs and furtive humans coupling nervously in the shadows, their lovemaking open to any, yet seen only by the stars. I could feel them all, watching me, secret yet bright in the night.

  In my mind, I wondered about her. Had she been one of these hidden women? Brashly naked and stealing sex on the beach in the midnight hour. Had her lover taken her hard, with liquid cries and writhing need, and then, at the end, throttled and buried her, far from the surf and the crabs and the pounding feet of screaming kids and jogging businessmen?

  How had the kid known about her? Had he buried her? Had it really happened at all?

  The ocean breeze was warm and humid, but goose bumps covered my neck and spine, and I shivered. Without looking back, I strode through the mostly empty beach chairs and made my way back to my room. On the way in, I stopped at the bar and ordered a drink.

  Bombay gin martini. Evaporate-on-your-tongue dry. Extra olives.

  A fuzz of alcoholic evergreen filled my eyes and nostrils, and eventually, moon shadows kissing at my bed, I slept.

  * * *

  The next day was a maze of hotel room meetings and endless, pointless committee discussion. I cinched at my tie often, and desperately wished that I could be one of those carefree patrons who I saw during breaks in the hallway, sandals slapping the tile as they headed, clad in shorts and bare-chested, towards the sun-haloed doors leading to the pool and beach. The day seemed endless. Then it was 6 p.m., and a reception was playing itself out near the pool, and I... slipped away after five handshakes and a Chardonnay.

  Free.

  Back in my room, I considered heading down the crowded pavement of Ocean View towards the clubs and restaurants, and then decided not to. I could eat anytime. The ocean, however, was not an option near my home. Without a second thought, I pulled on my still slightly damp swimsuit, slipped on an unbuttoned paisley shirt, and slipped my key into a pocket. I was leaving suit-ville for swimsuit-ville.

  I made a wide circuit around Chardonnay and Cheap Beer city (the stuffy reception by the pool) and quickly found my feet in the sand and my face kissing the salt breeze. The sun was slipping low on the horizon, but not setting, and I started south once more, the same direction I'd gone the night before. In moments, I'd settled into a sand-kicking rhythm, sometimes bending to examine an interesting shell, but mostly heading straight south along the surf, reveling in the feeling of escape and adventure. I didn't stop until I'd reached the curve at the bottom of the island.

  Now the sun was setting, and the beach was draining of patrons. I could see the line for the crab shack not far off, and hear the slight jingle of steel drums somewhere along the line of eateries and greeteries.

  The ocean would soon be empty as sun worshippers turned their bodies to bait. Why else had they bronzed their skin, if not to attract prey?

  I was alone on the end of the island.

  I was yards from the buried woman in the sand.

  It struck me that this was the moment I'd been waiting for all day.

  I started up the beach, away from the ocean and towards the space between the buildings where the boy had taken me the day before.

  I started towards her.

  Sometimes it's funny how we fool ourselves. How we focus on other distractions while moving towards a goal.

  I'd been moving towards her since my first sip of gin the previous night. I'd been putting it off, and steeling myself for it at the same time. And now, hands in the sand near a slight hill in the otherwise level beach, I began to dig.

  Slowly at first, then faster, suddenly tasting the desire I'd denied the day before. Would she smell when I uncovered those tawny thighs today? Of fish or carrion? Would I take her anyway? I wasn't sure what I intended - or, at least, wouldn't admit it to myself - as I continued to scoop armful after armful of sand away.

  And then...

  "No, NO!" came the voice.

  "Star, STAR!"

  A hand pulled me back from the mound, shoved me over, and I saw the Cuban boy, eyes bulging and flashing with excitement.

  He pushed me again, hard, and I fell back from the dig, not expecting such passion.

  "Star," he said and pointed at my hip.

  Now I wished I had stayed at the reception. I could have drowned my lusts in liquor, like usual, and avoided such a scene.

  Hands felt me up as the boy ignored my resistance and felt along my thighs, ferreting out my pockets to see if I still had the shell from the day before.

  Since I'd been thoroughly drunk and exhausted when I'd returned to my room and hadn't emptied my pockets before stripping and falling into bed, the boy found a reason to smile. Reaching past my slapping hand, he extracted the orange and cream shell he'd given me with such ceremony during yesterday's sandcastle excavation.

  "Star!" he proclaimed, and placed it on the portion of the beach where I imagined her head would be rotting.

  I could almost see the crabs feasting on her eyes beneath the sand.

  I no longer felt like continuing the excavation... in fact, I wondered why I'd gone there at all. She may have looked pretty yesterday, the bits that I saw, but after all, she'd been dead.

  The boy didn't waste time, however. After dragging the shell from my pocket, he proceeded to drag me to the mound, pushing aside more and more sand and grinning flashes of white teeth in the slowly creeping twilight.

  "Much fun," he proclaimed at one point, and gesturing at my swimsuit, made his own crotch push forward and back.

  Then he dove into digging in the sand, and, I regret to say, I followed suit. I'm not sure if I wanted "much fun," but I did thirst to see her golden thighs and belly one more time before I flew home.

  I was not disappointed.

  My hand suddenly scooped against a layer that did not give, and I found myself moving sand away from succulently bronzed flesh.

  A buried woman's thigh.

  The boy laughed and dug into the work with renewed vigor.

  At one point he chuckled at me and pushed his trunks forward and back three times.

  "Much fun," he said again.

  This time, I insisted on unburying her face. Call it morals or curiosity. I knew by now that I was going to do what the boy had wanted me to yesterday.

  She was too beautiful to waste.

  And, damn me to hell, but she certainly was in no position to complain.

  We left the shell above where I imagined her hair trailed beneath the sand, but uncovered the slight jut of her jaw and the thin line of her nose. Her eyes were closed, but seemed wide with promise, and her lips, despite th
e scrub of sand, still looked ruby red as if slathered with raspberry lipstick.

  There was no smell, as I'd feared, and I longed to put my tongue to those lips and my body to the rest. She was a perfect specimen of beach fuckability. She was what the bleach blonde, electric-bikinied girls skating down Ocean View wished they were. And she was buried and silent in the place where she should have been queen.

  She was mine.

  Mine and the boy's.

  This time, though, the boy could wait.

  I looked around the beach to see that no one was around. Like the night before, this stretch was a wasteland. The waves crashed against empty sand yards away, and nothing but salt air disturbed the grass that led away from us towards the empty road. Ignoring my provocateur, I pulled my shorts down.

  With one hand slipping through a mountain of loose sand, and the other massaging her gorgeous, perfect breasts, I slipped myself between her sandy thighs. I needed no more foreplay than to look at her body.

  I could almost feel the slippery lubrication of excitement from her, as I entered her missionary style. And how appropriate that was. Wasn't I bringing satisfaction to the dead? A true vocation of the saintly.

  Yeah right.

  This wasn't religion, except in the sense that I worshipped her perfect body.

  Perfect dead body.

  At some point in my plumbing of her soft, clinging depths, it did occur to me that I was knee-deep in necrophilia, with a minor as an accomplice/victim.

  Try getting out of the charges that could bring.

  No matter how the courts looked at him, he was an anchor around my neck. As I came, violently, in an intense and satisfying series of shudders and groans (the boy giggled), I determined that no matter how he'd found me today, he would not see me tomorrow.

  When I came here.

  Double entendre intended.

  "Much fun," he enthused, as I slipped my sloppy, half-flagged dick out from the beach babe. Beached babe. Babe of the beach.