Undesirable. What a goddamn joke that word was coming from her mouth. How could she sit here in front of him with her marks and her moles and her bony shoulders and try to make him feel guilty? How could she do this after that face? How fucking dare she.
“Answer me one question,” he said coldly. “Why aren’t you beautiful? You’re not even pretty.”
Her face drained of color. “I didn’t mean anything by it, honest. I just…I don’t know what’s wrong all of a sudden. I don’t know what I can do to make you…oh, fuck! I’m sorry, but I just…I can’t keep competing against memories of other women every time I’m with a guy, y’know? I’m sick of having sex be just a one-shot wonder and I can’t…I can’t…” She pressed her chin down into her collarbone, previewing the double chin that would hang around her neck someday.
“Don’t cry,” said Craig. “I’m warning you, don’t.” In her face he could see the traces of the hurt left behind by other men before him. He felt no guilt over adding to this damage, though some part of him whispered that he should. Someday Shelly would be just another unhappy wife who lived in just another unhappy house that was too small and too untidy, who went to church and sat in the back with a husband who didn’t like her very much and kids who didn’t listen to her. Maybe she would wear a scarf around her head to hide the prematurely graying hair. Maybe people would feel sorry for her. Maybe she would join a community group who sponsored bake sales and parking lot carnivals to raise money for charity.
Maybe he didn’t give a fuck.
He climbed out of her bed and reached for his pants. She lurched forward and clutched at his arm.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean for it to—”
A sudden fury unlike any he’d ever known before took hold of him; he threw down his pants, whirled around, slapped her arm away, then grabbed her by the shoulders. “You really don’t get it, do you?”
Her eyes welled with frightened tears and that, almost as much as the candleglow face, aroused him.
He tightened his grip. “You think it all has to be romance and candlelit dinners and poetic declarations of undying love. Try again, sister! Those sensibilities were buried along with Jane Austen and all you’re trying to is resurrect the dead. Take it from me – I found out long ago that you’re better off settling for a good, sweaty fuck than searching for a soulmate who can hold you hand with tenderness.”
“P-please…you’re hurting me.”
He pulled her up onto her knees so that her face was less than an inch from his own. “Even now you don’t know what you want out of this, do you? All you know is that you want something more than what you’ve got and that you’ll spread your legs and grunt and scream and squeal if it will help you pretend that you’re closer to finding it.” He thought her arms might snap off like pieces from a porcelain doll pulled from a dusty trunk in a darkened attic.
She shook her head, her eyes pleading. “I just want it to be special, Craig, that’s all. I don’t expect for a night like this to change my world, but is it…is it so stupid to think that maybe it’ll make it seem less lonely? Isn’t that enough for it to…to mean something?”
Mean something.
With those two simple, harmless words, she released a monster that had been lying dormant inside Craig since well before his divorce, one born of anger, disappointment, heartbreak, loneliness, and unfulfilled desires; this monster made its right arm into a bettering ram that slammed into her jaw, flipping face-down onto the mattress.
The monster wasted no time; it was firm and erect.
It knelt behind her, wrenched apart her legs, and rammed itself deep inside. She howled in agony but the monster didn’t hear; it was looking into the candleglow face that had re-appeared, running a moist, promising tongue over its full lips. The monster pumped on, going deeper, rocking the bed and slamming the headboard rhythmically against the wall. There were noises, terrified noises, pained noises, sub-human noises; there was struggling, clawing, biting, thrashing; there were horrible words screamed into terrified ears, savage acts that snapped the bed supports under the mattress and drew blood. Among other fluids.
And all the time the perfect, loving, seductive face stared from behind its luminous veil; smiling, laughing, moaning, promising.
Soon Shelly was far too damaged to be of any further use. She fell off the bed with a heavy, wet noise and dragged herself over to a darkened corner where she shuddered and bled and whimpered like some thrashed animal while the monster that had once been Craig Larousse stood clutching a torn section of bed sheet in its hands.
“You are really something,” it said. “Pissing the bed like some goddamn three-year-old watching a horror movie.” It heaved the ruined sheet across the room. It fell over Shelly like a shroud.
The monster that had once been Craig Larousse collapsed onto the remains of the bed and lay staring up into the candleglow face. Something about it struck immediately at the core of his dead heart. It and it alone held the promise of all that he’d been missing. A forgotten, decayed part of him had been revitalized and he would not be deprived of tasting more.
Shhhh, said the face. C’mon, baby, close your eyes.
He did. The candleglow passed through his eyelids to warm the corneal fluid, washing over him, pulsing through his veins, turning his blood into a warm summer rain in a place where he walked through the playgrounds of his youth, dreaming of a beautiful princess he would one day rescue, knowing all the while that no woman would ever want him with equal measure.
Behind his eyes the face drifted closer to the newly-awakened part of himself and the two slowly but inexorably coalesced. He felt weightless, freed, and renewed as two soft hands reached beyond the candle smoke to take hold of his own, lifting him higher into a dream corridor upon whose gauzy walls like a movie screen replayed all the women from his life: there was Diana and her crooked front teeth; Linda, his ex-wife, came next, with her lustrous brown hair that she would never let him touch because she was afraid it was falling out – but she could do things with her tongue that should have been illegal; Lori, then, with her small body and lifeless red hair, bent forward on her knees and begging him to fuck her hard in the ass; Kate, next, all blonde hair and big bones, licking his shoulder just before she reached it and then squealing like the pig she was when she finally came—
—others, after that, their faces clear, their bodies lacquered in sweat, their names forgotten, their aromas enfolding him, reminding him that he’d taken some small part of them every time he’d slipped out in the middle of the night while they lay sleeping, leaving not so much as a note, a touch, a kiss, or a pleasant memory behind.
None of them compared to the woman before him; eyes of bluish-gray, breasts that were neither too small nor too large, full and ripe, with engorged nipples that begged for the tip of his tongue, a mouth that was full and moist and pleaded for the taste of his cock, and a sweet, pink cunt that was already heavily lubricated.
She pulled him closer, becoming finite as Shelly and her pathetic surroundings faded away, leaving him suspended on a bed of darkness where he could see only this magnificent, succulent candleglow goddess.
I’m gonna burn you, baby, he thought.
Never in his life had he been so consumed by such wrenching hunger. She stroked his erection with a moist, velvety tongue as her finger slipped smoothly and deeply into his ass, probing, pushing, making him all the harder.
She pulled her mouth away and whispered: “Remember the time Linda asked you to tie her up?” You liked that, didn’t you?”
He arched his back and began to cry out but she choked him with her tongue, her body coiling around his. She pulled out her fingers and began pumping his erection.
“And Lori,” she said. “All the time howling ‘Fuck me in the tail!’ That really got you hot, didn’t it?”
“…oh, yeah…”
She straddled him, her wet thighs sliding against his own as she met him thrust for thrust, throwing back her he
ad and shoving her engorged nipples into his mouth; he sucked at them hungrily.
“You’re right about romantic love,” she purred. “You always…God, yes!…you…
ungh…always were…”
He tried to stop the eruption that was rising inside of him but she was so good…so damned good…
“…love can…oooh, baby, fuck…fuck harder…that’s it…love can only bring heartache and sorrow, this way is so much easier…so much better…so much…God! GOD, YES! DO IT! HURT MY PUSSY! HURT IT!…this way is so much better…”
She bucked and shuddered, and when he finally came, when he finally felt everything inside of him explode inside of her, years of frustration and desire undimmed as his juice shot up until she was so full that it began to run in rivulets from between her legs, dripping over his balls. She dug her nails into his chest as her body shook, the soft groan in the back of her throat rising into a shriek, then a deafening scream as she rammed downward, pushing him deeper, crying out his name again and again and again.
When it was done he fell back, sweating, breath heaving, onto their bed of night.
“I’m so glad you finally let me out,” said his own personal Venus. “There’s so much I’ve wanted to return to you, so much pleasure I want to give back.” She rose onto her knees before him, her body ripe and wet and glistening with sex.
He started to roll over but something had closed about his wrists and ankles. He tried to move but he couldn’t get to her, couldn’t touch her, couldn’t taste her. A hot wind burned against his exposed flesh and he shrieked. He looked down and saw that his legs were chained apart, exposing his cock and balls to the night. He tried reaching down to cover them but the chains and manacles that held his arms were even stronger. Something hard and jagged scraped against his back and drew blood. He turned his head and saw that he was chained to a rock.
Chained to a rock.
Like fucking Prometheus, he was chained.
Venus giggled.
“Now the real fun starts,” she said.
A large lump appeared between her breasts and began to fill with a thick, milky liquid, drooping down past her navel and toward her legs, expanding; light blue veins crisscrossed under the oozing flesh and it touched the ground and began rolling toward him, stopping at the base of the rock. Venus threw back her head, her chest heaving, her body rippling with an orgasm that she seemed to be sharing with the growth. She took a deep breath of the whirling, dark, fiery air and leveled her gaze at Craig.
“Do you know whey you never find it as good in the flesh as it is in your head? Because you forgot that the most erotic thing you can offer to a woman, in bed or out, is imagination. That’s why none of them ever responded to you the way you wanted them to – because there is a difference between imagination and just fantasizing. And only women understand this. Few men are willing to learn how to tell the difference.” She leaned forward and bit one of his nipples, sighing. “But you don’t have to worry about that now…”
The growth began to pulse from within.
“…because I’m here for you and I’ve got more than enough imagination for the both of us…”
The surface of the growth cracked open with a thick, wet, sickening pop! as something meaty and fluid seeped out.
“…I’m all your lovers, baby, rolled into one…”
The meaty fluid congealed as she spoke, its stench forcing bile into his throat and mouth.
“…and I’m gonna burn you, lover.”
The congealed mass exploded outward and upward, spewing a fount of blood and intestines and fire. So much fire.
Venus screamed, the sound shattering Craig’s composure and wrapping around his heart like strands of barbed wire. The manacles dug in deeper as the wind increased, searing his flesh with its heat and tearing away his reason shred by bloody shred. He shut his eyes against Venus’s laughter but it would not go away, would not stop, would not lessen. Only grow louder, becoming the voices of a thousand women. He struggled against the chains until he felt his bones starting to snap under the strain. He tried to breathe but the thick, putrid smoke clogged his lungs. He opened his eyes and stared in horror as the hair on his body turned red, then yellow, then shriveled up to vanish in a cloud of stinking black vapor.
A shadow fell over him.
Tears burst from his eyes but evaporated before hitting his cheeks.
The thing towering over him was Shelly and Linda and Kate and Lori and Diana and all the nameless others, fused as one within a phantasm of flesh and flame; they were of one body, with one massive torso and two wide, thick, tree-like legs that shuddered with the anticipation of feeling his cock plunge between them—
– but each face was separate, jammed in with others like photos in a collage; a hundred malformed hands reached out toward him. Inside, fire pumped through their veins as they shimmered and grew larger, their hair burning down to the roots and vanishing like strips of paper tossed into an open furnace.
The pain was immeasurable.
Craig wished that his mind would just crumble but knew it wouldn’t; they would make certain that the last string of his sanity would remain intact so he would be aware of every exquisite second of their coupling.
The thing reached down and lifted something long and shiny from the ground, strapping it around its waist like a log-sized dildo.
Hands came down, searing his flesh as they flopped his cock over to the side, exposing the soft, vulnerable area between his erection and balls.
“Is it true,” asked the Venus-thing, “that all men who are sexually frustrated secretly wish that they had a vagina of their own?”
“…ohgod, no, please…pleaseGod NO!”
“Don’t be afraid,” whispered the collage of fiery faces. “It only takes a little imagination.”
Bargain
By Gary A. Braunbeck
“Then wilt thou not be loth
To leave this Paradise…”
– John Milton
Paradise Lost
he night grew silent, an almost majestic silence, as if every living thing was holding its breath for fear of breaking the purity.
As the silence became deeper, so did the darkness, allowing a massive shadow to detach itself from a corner of the night and move unnoticed over the city, past every building, every house, every church, over the farmers’ fields and the woodlands, until it reached the north and south forks of the Licking River near Raccoon Creek. Here, the North Fork marked the community’s eastern boundary. In this spot the county began to gradually slope from the Mississippian bedrock it rested on to the much trickier Pennsylvanian bedrock. Shale lay under the surface of the topsoil from the west where sandstone began mixing in.
A small tributary of the Licking River formed in this spot, and it was here that the shadow hovered as still as the point of an ancient divining rod. This sixty-acre plat had always been extremely weak; the ground here was known to often simply collapse without warning, half-swallowing barns, outhouses, even the corpses of abandoned cars rusting in the nearby automobile graveyard. This was not a place many visited anymore.
What better spot, then, for a certain corner of Hell to open one of its back doors?
Beneath the clear, still surface of the tributary, its surface made almost turquoise by the moonlight, lay a series of small, evenly-spaced hollowed boulders, each with a translucent sheet of isinglass covering the top. Inside each of the hollowed objects – which, upon closer examination, the shadow saw were not boulders at all but leathery eggs – huddled a clay-like lump; some were shapeless blobs, others vaguely humanoid in form; some were skeletal, others so corpulent their bodies could barely be contained; still others were mere hand-sized, featureless fetuses. All lay with knees pulled up against their chests, dark, sunken eyes staring up blankly at the draping algae and bodies of insects floating on the surface.
The shadow slumped closer to the surface, whispering Awaken to any of the figures who could hear.
A set of
tiny fingers broke through the gelatinous cover of one egg and began pulling apart the shell, sections snapping off and flaking away until the featureless fetal face poked through, followed by two pink arms, hands moving slowly through the water as the Unfinished Soul pushed free of its prison and swam through to the surface. It pulled itself onto the ground, crawling toward the tip of the shadow.
The shadow reached out and helped the Unfinished Soul to stand.
I need a guide, little one, whispered the shadow. A debt is being collected tonight.
Lift me up, said the Unfinished Soul. It will be my pleasure to show you the way.
The shadow poured over the figure, ink spreading across a sketch, until it vanished completely.
Do exactly as I say, whispered the Unfinished Soul.
The shadow began churning in the air; slowly, at first, curling wisps of smoke from a forgotten cigarette, growing thicker, its speed increasing, soon twisting itself into a funnel and dropping low.
The ground rippled, then began sinking inward with heavy, dry sounds as the shadow threaded itself into the center of the chasm like string through a needle’s eye. Sections of earth spun outward as the shadow-thread drilled deeper, finally disappearing beneath the surface. The ground shuddered, jumped, then grumbled. The remaining eggs in the tributary swirled like flecks around a drain before vanishing down the chasm.
In the heart of the shadow, the Unfinished Soul glanced upward, just once, out of curiosity, and saw the moon vanish behind a blue-tinged night-cloud, then re-emerge a few moments later to reveal it was no cloud at all, but something much more solid – a balloon.
Beneath its death’s-head body and the glowing fire within, his hands gripping the flying wires of the basket, a young man who could no longer remember his name watched as the chasm grew wider. As he stared into the pit he saw a ring of trees emerge around the perimeter – fingers of the dead pushing upward through forgotten grave-soil – and stood helpless as the balloon moved downward, toward them.
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