by Keene, Brian
The screensaver on Chuck’s computer was not on, nor had the computer gone to sleep, which was what he had it set to do after one hour of inactivity. Instead, the screen was active, as if it was being used.
A pornography website was on the screen.
What the …?
Arrianne stepped into Chuck’s office, and her revulsion hit the stratosphere.
On the screen, a fat homeless-looking guy was giving it to a dumpy-looking woman doggie-style. They were in what appeared to be an abandoned building; the floor was littered with trash, and there was graffiti on the walls. They were fucking on a very worn, very dirty mattress. The homeless-looking guy had no teeth; the woman had very greasy hair and looked dirty. Just as he reached his climax, he pulled out. Only instead of the requisite money shot, fatso maneuvered himself over toward the woman’s face as she simultaneously switched positions, lying on her back. Fatso wasn’t even stroking his puny dick at this point. Instead, he leaned over the woman …
“Arg-a-lar-gur-lar-gur-larrrrrrrr—”
… and unleashed a stream of vomit on her face.
“What the fuck!” Arrianne said.
The vomit hit the woman’s face in a clumpy mess; it looked like chunks of soup and gravy all mixed together. The woman was making moaning sounds, as if she were enjoying it. She was masturbating with one hand and smearing the vomit around her face and shoving chunks into her mouth with the other. Fatso had only vomited one great upheaval of stomach contents. He gagged, appeared as if he were going to vomit again, and then seemed to catch his breath. As if realizing his nausea had passed, he resumed stroking himself again. His pudgy fist whipped his skinny little dick. Fascinated, Arrianne could only stand there in numb silence as fatso ejaculated, spattering spurts of milky semen on the woman’s face. The woman mixed it in with the vomit, licking her vomit- and semen-encrusted fingers.
“Chuck!” Arrianne yelled. This was really fucked up, and they were going to have words about this. Now.
“Chuck, get your ass in here. Now!”
No response from Chuck. He was zonked out.
As quickly as her anger and disgust hit her, it was starting to dissipate. Okay, fine. She’d talk to him about this tomorrow before he left. She knew Chuck had looked at online pornography before—what man hadn’t?—but this was just crossing the line. Why the fuck would anyone want to watch videos of homeless people throwing up on each other? Was this how Chuck felt about women? While she knew intellectually and personally that the answer was no—she knew Chuck too well, and he was not like that—part of her wondered if she hadn’t stumbled on some dark and dirty secret he kept under lock and key. She wondered if he’d forgotten to close the web browser when he was finished with work. It would be just like him. The bastard.
Arrianne stepped up to the computer, and grabbing the mouse, she clicked out of the browser just as another video started. She clicked out of a few pop-up ads that had appeared on the screen (“One woman, five dicks!” “Dumpster sluts!” “Monkey Love!”). Then she put the computer to sleep and exited Chuck’s office. There was no way she was getting to sleep now, and even if she got tired she didn’t think she could go back to bed. It looked like she’d be sleeping on the couch tonight.
Which was what she did. Arrianne positioned herself on her end of the couch, and feet up, she flipped through the channels on the TV to find something to cleanse her mind of what she’d seen. She found an old movie on Turner Classics—Hitchcock’s North by Northwest—and settled into it. An hour later, she began to feel drowsy. She flicked the TV off with the remote control, and right before she fell asleep she thought she detected the faint odor of something rotten, something so foul that at first she thought it was part of a dream.
Chapter Three - J.F. Gonzalez and Brian Keene
Arrianne had coffee going and had almost finished her first cup when Chuck entered the kitchen. He was already showered and dressed and ready for his business trip. He headed straight for the coffee pot, grabbed a mug from the cupboard, and poured himself a cup.
“Did you sleep on the sofa last night?”
“Yeah, I did.” Arrianne finished her coffee and glared at him from the breakfast nook. “Guess what I found on your computer?”
“My computer?” Chuck looked puzzled as he turned to her, but when he saw the expression on her face, his puzzlement turned to concern. “What? What happened?”
“Guys throwing up on women? Really, Chuck?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You were surfing porn yesterday afternoon before you closed out of work for the day, weren’t you?”
“No!”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” Chuck’s denial had been automatic and genuinely assertive. She knew instantly he was telling the truth. “I was too goddamn busy to surf for porn. What the fuck, Arrianne!” Chuck looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“So you don’t deny that you’ve ever surfed for porn on your work computer?”
“What is this about?”
“Just answer the question! Have you ever searched for porn on your computer in your office?”
There was a slight hesitation, and then he said, “Yes, I have. And so what? I get curious, and I do a little trolling for smut. What guy doesn’t?”
“And you didn’t search for any yesterday?”
“No, I did not.”
Hard as it was for Arrianne to admit, she believed him. Part of her wanted to be angry at him, but she just couldn’t do it. She knew Chuck too well. Knew what turned him on and what turned him off. And she knew he simply would not have been into watching people throw up on each other during sex. That was as bad as being shit on or pissed on. Only sick fucks did that. The furthest they’d ever gone, prior to Arrianne letting Chuck take her up the ass, was some light bondage. Harmless stuff. No humiliation at all.
“When was the last time you surfed for porn on your computer?”
Chuck shrugged. “I don’t know. A few months?”
“It didn’t seem that way last night,” Arrianne said. She suddenly felt cold and drew the robe tighter over her breasts. “The stuff I saw on your computer … it was sick.”
Chuck set the coffee cup down and headed toward his office. Arrianne debated following him and then got off the stool and tailed him.
She got to his office just as he reached his desk. He woke his computer up and stared at it for a moment. The computer looked normal. On the screen was his normal backdrop—a desert scene from their vacation at the Grand Canyon last year.
Chuck turned to her. “What did you see?”
“It was sick. This fat guy, he looked like a homeless guy, was fucking this chick, and instead of pulling out and coming all over her, he just … he threw up on her.”
“He threw up on her?”
“Yeah.” Arrianne felt embarrassed now. “I know it sounds weird, Chuck, but I swear—”
Chuck opened a web browser. The Google home page came up. He clicked on history and scrolled down to the day before. And there it was:
SKIDROW SEXCAPADES!
“What the hell is this?” Chuck clicked on the page, and when it came up Arrianne saw the same layout she’d seen the night before, all high-end graphics rendered in florescent blue and red with blinking animated gifs. In the center of the page a video started up. This time, the scene was an alley of some inner city. A woman with heroin-sculpted cheeks was on her knees in front of an emaciated guy with pus-laden scabs running up his arms, blowing him. They both looked like they’d been living on the streets for years. Even their dirt had dirt on it.
Chuck pulled up the history tab again and, ignoring the slurping, sucking sounds coming from the computer, noted the date stamp on yesterday’s time slot. “What time did you see this?”
Arrianne shrugged. “Around one in the morning.”
“The time stamp on this is twelve thirty.” He scrolled through the previous site— Diseased Whores and Suppurating Dicks. The time
stamp on that was shortly before midnight. They’d gone to bed last night around ten thirty. Chuck clicked out of the web browser. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I didn’t access that site. You saw the time stamp.” He looked at Arrianne, his features grim.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Arrianne said. She felt at a loss. “How the hell did this happen?”
“I don’t know.” Chuck clicked around various folders, opened files, read things. “I’d hate to think a hacker got in. I don’t have file sharing turned on, and I don’t have time to look through my logs to see what kind of network activity was going on at that time.”
“Maybe …”
Chuck pushed away from the computer and stood up. “Listen, I’m sorry I got mad at you, but you see this wasn’t me that was surfing those sites last night, right?”
Arrianne nodded.
“I’ve really got to get out the door and to my meeting, and I have a three-hour drive. Call your IT people and have them do a check on your system and our home network. Ask them to look at the time period between eleven last night and two in the morning. If somebody outside our network hacked in, they did it when we were asleep, and they breached our firewall and gained remote access to my computer. Speaking of which …” Chuck reached over to his mouse and shut down his computer. As the computer shut down, Chuck looked more relaxed. “Tell them there was an intrusion attempt on my computer last night. They’ll run tests and probably run an anti-Trojan horse program on your computer to see if somebody tried to gain access to it. When I get home, I’ll run a more thorough scan on my computer.”
“Okay.” She nodded, pouting. Her lower lip quivered with emotion, her embarrassment and frustration evident.
“Hey …” Chuck rose from the chair and crossed over to her. Then he took Arrianne in his arms and pulled her close. “It’s okay. I’m not angry. I would have probably freaked out too, if I’d seen that crap on your computer.”
She nodded again, into his neck. Chuck held her closer. Arrianne’s nipples stiffened as she felt his breath on her skin. She let her hands slide down his body, her fingers gliding over his muscles.
“Hey, now.” Smiling, Chuck gently pushed her away. “I’ve got to go. I’m late! We’ll pick this up when I get home Thursday night, okay?”
“That sounds good.” Arrianne returned his smile, trying not to let her disappointment show. “Call me when you get to the hotel, and let me know you made it safe.”
“Will do.” He kissed her forehead. “I love you.”
“I love you too. Be careful.”
“I will. You too.”
Arrianne stood in the bay window, watching him leave. Perspiration formed on her upper lip. Her breathing grew heavy and her legs trembled. She waited until his car had left the driveway and passed from sight before rushing to the couch and masturbating until she’d received two orgasms in quick succession. When the frenzy was over, she was covered in sweat and deliciously exhausted—but also a little disturbed. Her libido had never been this demanding, this frantic before. There had to be an explanation for this seemingly sudden change, but what could it be? Could it have something to do with their marriage? Arrianne had heard about all the various hills and valleys a married couple’s sex life went through, but this didn’t seem like that. She wondered if it could be a hormonal issue. Surely she was too young for any premenopausal symptoms. Wasn’t she? Arrianne frowned. Maybe she was ovulating. She considered the possibility but decided it didn’t make much sense. She ovulated every month after all, but it had never left her this horny before.
Still frowning and pondering, she got up from the couch and headed for the shower. As she walked, she ran through a mental checklist of tasks for the day. Arrianne had always found that when she was feeling stressed or overwhelmed or confused, it helped her to make lists and check things off them.
“I have to remember to call the IT guys when I’m done,” she said aloud.
But there was something else that Arrianne hadn’t remembered. She’d been so intent on satisfying her carnal needs, she had neglected to lock the front door after Chuck had departed.
Chapter Four - Brian Keene
Zito drove slowly past the house on Stirrup Iron Road two more times in his red Ford pickup, trying to decide if what he was contemplating was worth the risk—and if he really had the stomach to go through with it. He also wondered what would happen if it all went wrong, and just where in the blue fuck this crazy idea had come from in the first place.
Originally, the plan had been simple. According to Benny, the house had been deserted for years, ever since a prison guard had supposedly been murdered there a decade ago. The victim’s sister, who had also lived in the home, was now in the loony bin. Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road had sat vacant ever since. So at the time, it had sounded like a good opportunity.
Zito and Benny made their living selling scrap metal. They’d started back when both men were still employed by Globe Package Service. Every evening, after a grueling nine-hour shift of loading delivery trucks, they’d sit on Benny’s back porch, drinking cans of cheap beer and talking. They then tossed the cans into a fifty-five-gallon drum Benny had swiped from the employee parking lot. Eventually, when the drum was full, they took it to the local salvage yard and sold the contents as scrap aluminum, splitting the meager profits fifty-fifty, and promptly spending both shares on more beer, which equaled more cans. Then they discovered the prices the salvage yard and other recycling centers were willing to pay for metals like copper and brass—and when both men were laid off from their positions a month later with no hope of being called back, they began scrounging metals and flipping them for cash. Brass and copper brought them an especially good payday, but they were also hard to find—legally.
Which was how Zito had gone from blue-collar ne’er-do-well to petty criminal in his thirty-eighth year of life.
They’d started by stealing chopped copper and aluminum plates from the local foundry, but after three such late-night raids, the police had opened an investigation, and the foundry’s security guards were extra-vigilant. So then the two men had moved on to stripping abandoned houses, deserted industrial centers, and new homes under construction of their brass and copper fittings, copper pipes, and copper wire. Thanks to the country’s ongoing economic crisis, they had plenty of such locations to choose from.
But after six months, their pickings ran slim, and their thefts had begun to make the local news. Neither man wanted to get caught and go to jail. But they also didn’t want to end up like “Fishboy Lenny”—the nickname for a former coworker who had lost his job and then his house and now lived among the homeless on the streets, dirty and sick and mumbling random nonsense at uneasy passersby. Nor did they want to graduate to bigger crimes.
Zito and Benny had a friend named Carl who’d supposedly done a few odd jobs for some guys he insisted were connected to the Marano crime family. One night, Carl flashed a wad of cash, told them he was delivering a load of heroin to a Central Pennsylvanian strip club called The Odessa, and then he disappeared. Nobody had seen or heard from him since—and that had been a year ago. Publicly, the police called it an open case, but Zito had heard through the grapevine that privately, the police didn’t feel that Carl would ever be seen again. Fishboy Lenny and Carl were both cautionary tales, and Zito thought about them a lot.
Zito wished he had some other talent, some skill that would allow him to earn a living. Writing or acting or playing an instrument. He could move to New York City, live in one of those artistic communes like The Works. Or maybe just a technical skill, like HVAC repair or automobile maintenance or an IT professional. But he didn’t know how to do any of these things. He was a grunt, like his father before him.
So, when Benny suggested they broaden the range of their “recycling efforts” to surrounding counties, and suggested this place on Stirrup Iron Road as a potential location, Zito had agreed to check it out. He’d set out on the reconnaissance mission earlier this mo
rning and had driven to the location, intending to scope out the house, verify that it was indeed deserted, and then report back to Benny. If it seemed safe, they’d raid it after dark and strip the pipe and wire.
But it hadn’t been safe. Upon his initial drive-by, Zito had been surprised to find two cars in the driveway, along with a recently mowed yard, freshly trimmed shrubbery, curtains in the windows, and other signs of habitation. He’d been just about to write the whole thing off and suggest to Benny that they find another target when he’d seen a man come out of the house. Briefcase and suitcase in tow, the man got into one of the cars and drove away.
But what Zito’s eyes had really been drawn to was the woman in the window. She stood there between the parted curtains, watching the man leave. Zito didn’t know if she was the guy’s wife or daughter or maybe even the maid. All he knew was that he had to have her.
Zito wasn’t a rapist. Indeed, the very act of rape was one that had always sickened him in the past. He’d thought it a vile, repugnant thing to inflict upon another human being, ranking right up there with child molestation and animal cruelty. When coming across depictions of rape while watching a movie or reading a book, Zito had always felt uncomfortable, especially if the scene seemed gratuitous.
Yet here he was, thinking about …
Well, thinking about what, exactly? Busting inside the home and raping this woman? No. No, it wasn’t that. It couldn’t be that. But he felt drawn to her—a desperate, driving need that eradicated all sensible thought. He had to have sex with this woman. It was a compulsion that could not be denied. His cock ached, and he took one hand off the steering wheel and stroked the bulge in his jeans. Maybe the woman felt the same way, he told himself. Maybe she needed it too. If the guy had been her husband, he was obviously going away on a trip of some kind. The suitcase he’d wheeled behind him indicated that. Zito fantasized that it might be like a porno movie. He’d knock on the door under some flimsy false pretense. The woman would answer, dressed in some skimpy, see-through robe, and through the course of conversation would reveal her loneliness and longing. A few meaningful glances and sexually charged double entendres later, they’d be fucking on the couch.
