Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road

by Keene, Brian

  Arrianne approached him in an unhurried way, doing a slinky hip sway that was a product of extreme arousal. It was how she often felt after drinking too much wine and making out with her man as they danced to slow, sexy music. She felt like dancing now. So she did, the screams and pitiful, wailing whimpers of the man she had shot functioning as music.

  Then she stopped dancing and stood over him.

  He held up trembling hands, shaking his head in a weak, pitiful way as tears continued to stream from his bleary eyes. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

  “Too bad.”

  Arrianne shot him again, this time through the chest.

  He was dead a few moments later. After she watched the light fade from his eyes, Arrianne returned the gun to her purse and tossed the purse aside. She then wriggled out of her capris and panties again and positioned herself so she was standing over the dead man’s face. Her feet were planted to either side of his head. She stared down at him for a long moment, enjoying the juxtaposition of her dainty, toenail-painted feminine feet next to the dead bum’s crusty, disgusting face. There was an essential wrongness to it that added to her arousal, which was already at a level that had her pussy dripping wet. Her body quivered with intense erotic need as she bit her bottom lip and lowered herself to him.

  She let out a loud, ecstatic groan as she pressed her pussy to his mouth and began to grind against him. She pitched forward and braced her palms against the earth, her moans steadily growing higher pitched and quavering as she increased the tempo of her pelvic gyrations. An odd thing happened as she did this. She could swear she felt the dead man’s tongue come alive and flick at her clit. At first she took this as a product of an overly stimulated imagination, but then the tongue slid up inside her. Her face contorted as she dug her fingers into the ground. She should have felt terrified at this development, but she did not. It only stoked her arousal further into the stratosphere. She continued thrusting her sex against the dead man’s face while the ghost tongue sent her into orgasmic oblivion. After several minutes of this, she let out a scream so explosively loud it could have shattered cathedral windows.

  Her tempo slowed considerably, and she soon raised up a little to look at the dead man’s now very moist face. He was still as dead as he had been minutes earlier. Arrianne figured she should maybe get up now and put on her clothes, perhaps think about putting some distance between herself and the scene of the crime while she still could. But some other nameless, initially formless impulse kept her where she was a bit longer as she continued to admire the grimy, gross, ugly—yet somehow beautiful—visage of the first man she’d ever killed.

  Then she smiled.

  Lowered herself to him again.

  And pissed all over him.

  She tossed her head back and laughed with unrestrained abandon as the glorious perversity of it all filled her with an exultation unmatched by any other experience in her life. This was subsequently forgotten, however, as an abrupt tide of nausea sent her rolling away from the defiled corpse. She got shakily to her feet and staggered over to a big tree, where she held on to a low-hanging branch and retched uncontrollably for many seemingly endless minutes. It went on and on and on, and her effluvium contained slimy chunks of things she recognized from previous episodes—pieces of animals, etc.—but now she saw what she recognized as human eyeballs and genitalia.

  When the retching at last ended, the delirium gripping her abated and was replaced with a total, all-consuming horror at what she had done. She cried and cried and muttered many helpless, hopeless, useless denials.

  Then, some twenty minutes after entering the woods with the doomed old veteran, she at last pulled herself together, got dressed, and wobbled out of the woods. The dogs were overjoyed at her return. She tried to take some meager comfort in their happiness but was unable to do so as she put the car in gear and tried to find her way home. She thought about stopping when she spied the dead man’s grimy old duffel still on the passenger-side floor. Logic dictated getting rid of it. It was evidence, a clear link between her and the heinous crime she’d committed. She frowned as she stared at its lumpy shape and wondered what might be inside.

  The thought piqued her curiosity in a way that overrode her common sense. She decided she would take it home and get it into the house, maybe squirrel it away someplace where Chuck wouldn’t be apt to discover it. That way she could take it out sometime for a leisurely examination of its contents. In light of what she’d done, it was a ghoulish thing to contemplate, a form of postmortem gloating. But she just couldn’t help it. She wanted—no, needed—to see what was inside the bag.

  She could always get rid of it later, right?

  Right.

  Rationalization firmly in place, Arrianne continued home.

  Chapter Fourteen - Bryan Smith

  It had started as one of those notions she would sometimes pursue out of a combination of boredom and her ceaseless desire to see what kind of random crazy shit she could get away with. Not for one moment prior had she really believed she could spring the infamous Nicci Forrestal from the asylum.

  But Lily Fontana had done just that.

  And it had been easy.

  As the three of them—Lily, Nicci, and Eric—walked out of the facility and out to the visitors’ parking lot earlier that afternoon, she kept expecting someone to come rushing out to reclaim the frail, wounded-looking asylum inmate. Surely, she thought, someone somewhere along the chain of command would note that no one by her name was authorized to sign Nicci out for the day, ostensibly to visit a terminally ill relation in a nearby hospital. But miraculously, that had not happened. The initial wild exhilaration of getting away with something so big was fading, however, as Lily was quickly learning that having a genuinely crazy person for a traveling companion was overrated.

  Who knew, right?

  “It wouldn’t stop vomiting into my mouth.”

  Lily nodded. “Uh-huh. Right.”

  “It had this weird hand. Big, like a giant’s hand, but all warty and knobby. It went all the way up inside me. It turned me on.”

  Lily pressed her lips together and glanced at the rear-view mirror. She had no idea what to say to that. “Hmm.”

  “It was a monster.”

  “Of course it was.”

  Lily suspected getting Nicci out would have been harder—if not impossible—during an earlier phase of her involuntary confinement. However, the institutional review board had recently declared her no longer a threat to anyone, despite an ongoing disconnect from reality. The review board subsequently authorized a transfer from the locked dormitory unit to a facility with a far more lax attitude when it came to security.

  Even so, getting away with it had been very exciting indeed.

  Now … not so much.

  “There were pieces of Sam everywhere. I didn’t kill him. I slipped on his cock and fell on my ass. It was like something out of The Three fucking Stooges, only with more cock. And more blood. Talbot had a monster cock. The mafia killed him. I ain’t killed nobody and anybody says different don’t know shit. Fuck you if you think I’m lying.”

  Lily smiled at Nicci’s reflection. “Relax, sweetie. I believe you.”

  I also believe you’d benefit immensely from a frontal lobotomy.

  Listening to the loon’s random brain-salad mumbo jumbo had become tiresome, but it still beat the hell out of anything else she might feasibly be doing today. At least it was something different and weird, which were qualities she valued. Regular life was such a drag so much of the time. With the sole exception of Eric, the people inhabiting her little corner of the world were all unimaginative slugs and dullards. In her bleaker moments, she wondered whether the whole world might be that way. It was a depressing thing to imagine. A whole planet populated by simpletons. People like her double-digit-IQ uncle, for instance, a man who—despite his own deep intelligence deficit—couldn’t stop yammering away about “sheeple” and conspiracy theories so absurd that being repeatedly struck in
the head with a hammer was a prerequisite for believing in them.

  Enforced daily proximity to such overwhelming stupidity might well have driven Lily to the brink of suicide had she not hit upon a brilliant coping mechanism. She possessed an active and vibrant imagination and desired a means of exercising it that involved something other than staring at a computer screen all day. Though she enjoyed creating the fantasy worlds of the stories she wrote, she needed something that got her out of the house. So she decided to engage the world around her in creative exercises that were part elaborate deception and part performance art.

  With the aid of Eric, her frequent partner-in-crime, she thus embarked on a series of outrageously inappropriate endeavors and adventures. Things like crashing a funeral and pretending to be the grief-stricken young mistress of the deceased. Or like the time Eric helped her convince a local priest she was possessed by Satan. Or like …

  Well, you get the picture.

  Early on, Lily had worried that maybe this time they were getting in a little over their heads. There was a world of difference between the type of obnoxious but ultimately harmless pranks they normally pulled and something like this. Here they were a little more solidly into an area one could accurately describe as not quite within the bounds of the strictly legal. They could get into some actual, serious trouble if their false pretenses were uncovered or if they failed to return Nicci to the facility within the next few hours.

  But Lily had no intention of allowing either disastrous scenario to come to pass. She meant to have Nicci back at the asylum well before sundown. The whole point of the excursion had been to break into the house at Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road to see what effect a return to the scene of the crime would have on her. Which, okay, was maybe a little cruel, but it was looking like it wouldn’t matter anyway because apparently the house was no longer uninhabited.

  She parked her Ford Tempo at the side of the road near the long driveway that led up to the house. A glance in the direction of the house brought a flood of relief as she saw Eric returning from his information-seeking expedition at the front door.

  He opened the door across from her and dropped into the front passenger seat. “That dude’s an asshole.”

  “Who?”

  Eric tilted his chin toward the house. “Guy who lives there. Motherfucker looks like Mitt Romney.”

  “Gross.”

  Eric laughed.

  Lily frowned. “And you’re sure he really lives there? He’s not just some real estate agent checking the place out?”

  Eric shook his head. “Nah. Got a glimpse inside. There’s furniture and stuff. Definitely got the look of a currently inhabited abode.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what now?” Lily looked at the house again. Despite her concerns regarding the risk they were taking, this development was a bitter disappointment. Today’s scheme had started out looking as if it had the potential to become her greatest triumph yet in the field of “LARPURPing” (Live Action Role-Playing with Unsuspecting Retards and Pinheads), as she called it. Now it seemed the whole thing would end with a fizzle rather than the expected bang, which was a damned shame.

  Lily sighed. “I guess we take her back to the loony bin.”

  “I’m no loony,” Nicci quipped from the backseat. “I saw what I saw and it’s not my fault nobody believes me.”

  Eric snorted. “You keep telling yourself that.” He twisted in his seat and leered at her through the gap between the seats. “We read all about you on the Internet. Here’s a newsflash, you goddamn lunatic. There’s no such thing as monsters.”

  Nicci sneered. “That’s what everybody thinks … until they come face to face with one. I’ll suck your dick if you don’t take me back to the nuthouse.”

  Eric cackled at the non-sequitur and winked at Lily, who rolled her eyes. “Now who’s being insensitive to the plight of the mentally fucked in the head? Nuthouse. Jesus.” He laughed again and shook his head. “Would you really suck my dick?”

  “I would. And I’m really fucking good at it. I used to be a blowjob whore before I got sent away.”

  “How many dicks have you sucked in your life?”

  She shrugged her bony shoulders and tugged at a strand of her stringy hair. Dunno. Hundreds? Thousands? Hard to say for sure. But I’m sort of out of practice, what with being locked up the last ten years.”

  Eric nodded. “You could probably use a refresher course.” He glanced at Lily. “You mind if I let this crazy chick gobble my knob?”

  Lily glared at him. “Don’t be stupid. Pretty sure the law frowns on taking advantage of bitches with diminished mental capacity.”

  “I am not a bitch. You got no right to judge me.”

  There was a fierce edge to Nicci’s voice, a barely restrained rage that served as a disturbing reminder of her instability. Hearing it added fuel to Lily’s growing belief that her grand scheme had been ill-conceived from the start. Based on what she knew of Nicci’s case, she doubted she’d had anything to do with her brother’s death. On the other hand, the state had spent the better part of a decade doping her to the gills. There was no telling how much additional damage had been done to her already-fractured psyche. The sooner they got this whack job back to the asylum, the better. Lily could then set about devising some bigger and better scheme, one preferably not involving mental patients and perhaps a little less flagrant disregard for the law.

  Lily tried a placating tone. “You’re right. I was out of line. I shouldn’t have called you a bitch.”

  Nicci grunted. “Damn right. And besides, you’re not my cousin, you fucking liar. You’re the bitch, not me.”

  Lily nodded as she gave the key in the Tempo’s ignition a twist, bringing the engine sputtering to life. “Again, you are absolutely correct. I lied about being your cousin to spring you from the asylum. That was wrong of me. I am a lying bitch. I will now atone for my sins by taking you back to where you belong. And then—”

  Nicci let out a screech and flopped over in the backseat. Her body spasmed and her hands clawed at the upholstery. Lily, in a panic, popped her seatbelt loose and twisted around to get a better look at what was happening. Nicci’s eyes had rolled back, and foam rushed from the corners of her mouth. Her foot kicked against the rear window hard enough to crack the glass.

  Lily looked at Eric. “Holy shit. The fuck is happening?”

  Eric had gone pale and looked more rattled than she had ever seen him. “She’s having some kind of fit. Ah, shit, what if she dies on us?”

  Lily slugged him on the shoulder. Hard. “Don’t say that.”

  Eric grimaced and gingerly put a hand to his shoulder. “Ouch.”

  Lily slugged him again.

  Eric glared at her. “Goddammit! Stop doing that!”

  Lily’s heart was pounding so fast it felt like it would blast itself out of her chest at any second. Any remaining sense of fun or play utterly deserted her in those moments. She was suddenly embroiled in a situation that was a little too real for her taste, and it had happened so rapidly it made her head spin. “Do something, goddammit!”

  Eric laughed. “What the fuck am I supposed to do? I’ve got no experience with this kind of shit.”

  The force of the spasms gripping Nicci’s body abruptly began to diminish. Her muscles relaxed, and she began to breathe audibly through her mouth again. But any relief Lily felt at this development was short-lived thanks to the even odder thing that started happening next.

  Nicci moaned in an unmistakably sexual way. She arched her back and hiked her skirt up over her waist, exposing bare thighs covered in a sheen of sweat. She slithered out of her panties and tossed them aside. The undergarment struck a flabbergasted Eric in the face before dropping to the floor. Nicci reached between her legs and slid the fingers of her right hand into her pussy. Her fingers flexed as she simultaneously rubbed her clit with the fingertips of her left hand. She moaned some more and whipped her head from side to side, fl
inging her stringy hair about in an increasingly wild orgasmic frenzy. The volume of her moans rose and steadily grew shriller, achieving a pitch that made the car’s other occupants cringe.

  Eric shook his head in wide-eyed, astonished wonder. “The fuck is this fucking psycho bitch doing?”

  Lily gave him a look of squinty-eyed disbelief. “She’s masturbating, you idiot.”

  Eric scowled right back at her. “I know that. But this has got to be the first ever documented case of anyone rubbing one out right after having a motherfucking seizure in the backseat of a stranger’s car. I mean … goddamn.”

  “First of all, nothing about this will be documented in any way if I can help it.” Lily grimaced as Nicci lifted her ass off the seat and began to thrust her pelvis at an imaginary lover’s groin. Her hands had come away from her pussy to clutch again at the upholstery. She let out a nasty, chuffing, spittle-spewing grunt with each thrust of her pelvis.

  “Secondly, sit the fuck down and strap in because I’m about to burn rubber back to the goddamn asylum, where we are gonna dump this crazy bitch out and then hopefully never fucking see her again.”

  And Lily had every intention of doing just that.

  Except something even more insane happened in the very next instant.

  Nicci began to levitate.

  Eric reeled backward, his back cracking against the dash behind him. “Holy mother of fuck!”

  Lily was inclined to agree with that sentiment. There could be no doubt regarding the reality of what she was seeing. It was no carefully or cannily crafted illusion enhanced by gravity-defying gymnastics, a feat Nicci wouldn’t have been capable of performing anyway. This was a genuine case of something unnatural—or supernatural—occurring in the backseat of Lily’s fucking Ford Tempo, a notion that would have seemed hilarious were it not so goddamn terrifying. She was floating in midair, with her head tilted back and her hair hanging down. Her mouth was open wide and was continuing to emit those high-pitched squeals of ecstasy.