Image of the Beast / Blown

by Philip José Farmer

  which curved out and overhung the genitals so far that

  they could not be seen in the shadows and folds, the hips,

  sackish with fat, the tree-trunk legs, repulsed him. He

  doubted that he could have gotten a hard-on even if he

  were in full strength and had not had an emission for a

  month.

  Mrs. Grasatchow said, "That spook-bitch sucked you

  dry, heh?" And then she laughed. She was close to him;

  the blast of alcohol made him feel like vomiting. There

  must be almost two gallons in that pony-sized gut.

  She had brought into the room a large bear-skin-purse

  and a bottle of wine and a bottle of Scotch. She poured the

  wine over his belly and genitals and then got on her knees

  and licked them off. He did not respond.

  She came up off her knees like a boulder tossed up by a

  volcanic explosion. Her hand struck him on the side of his

  jaw. He saw comets and fell back, half-unconscious,

  against the wall.

  "You little asshole!" she screamed. "You may look like

  George, but you sure aren't the man he was!"

  She waddled to her purse and took out a silvery cone

  about two inches long. "This will put some life into you!

  Once it's in you!"

  Grinning, she approached him. He shrank back against

  the wall and then leaped out at her, striking at her.

  Laughing, she caught his wrist and turned it until he cried

  out in agony and sank to his knees as far as the chain

  would allow. Choking, he tried to stand up again, but she

  forced him down until he was almost unconscious again.

  He regained his senses to find himself turned around, his

  face to the wall. Something—he knew it was the cone—

  was being shoved up his anus.

  "You've never had anything like this, little man!" she

  crooned. "Never! You'll not forget this night, as long as

  you live! Oh, little man, I wish I were you just now, so I

  could fuck me!"

  The cone burned at first and made him feel as if he had

  to shit. After about half a minute, it seemed to turn icy

  and to become heavy, as if it were a lead sinker just re-

  moved from a freezer. The coldness and heaviness spread

  out, up his intestines, coil after coil, like a snake racing

  ahead of the Ice Age but too slow, into his testicles, which

  became bells ringing with chilliness, into his solar

  plexus, and, at the other terminus, into his penis. Liquid

  nitrogen pumping into every tube of his body.

  He squirmed as the stuff fell down the shafts of his

  legs and flapped slowly spiraling up the shaft of his trunk.

  The powerful hands of the fat woman tightened, and she

  said, "Quiet, little lover. This won't hurt you, and you'll

  be a man such as you never were!"

  The icy weight lapped at the base of his brain. His

  neckbones and hindbrain felt crystallized. He could dis-

  tinguish each vertebra and each cell of the cerebellum as

  a frozen entity. He could also feel the individual vessels

  of his penis slowly filling with half-frozen blood. By then,

  Mrs. Grasatchow had turned him around again and was

  down on her elephantine knees and sucking on his penis.

  She grunted as if she were a sow tearing into a corncob,

  but, as far as he could detect, he was being treated gently

  enough. Her jaws did not move, only her lips, shaped

  around the glans, moved. He could feel nothing. He might

  as well have had a hundred local shots of morphine over

  his body and one massive shot in his penis. But if his

  brain was receiving no tactile message, part of his body

  was. The penis, like an independent creature, a leech

  stuck in her mouth and drawing blood from her tongue,

  was gradually filling up.

  When she felt that it was as swollen and rigid as it could

  be, she stood up. She said, "You're not going any place,

  not now!" She unlocked the collar and put the key in her

  purse. He tried to run from her to the door, but his legs

  would not move.

  She lay down on the floor and spread her thighs open

  —it was like the Red Sea splitting to make passage for

  the horde of Moses—and she said, "Eat me!"

  Obediently, although his frozen brain tried to push out

  a message of resistance to his nerves, he got down and

  spread the slit open and prepared to tongue the clitoris

  first, as was his habit.

  She said, "No, idiot! The other way! Sixty-nine!"

  He crawled up onto her and swiveled around. She took

  in his penis until his hairs pressed against her lips. He

  could not feel this, but he looked through the space that

  existed briefly between their bodies and saw the hairs and

  the narrow band of the root. He flicked the tip of his

  tongue over the "little penis." A "little penis" this clitoris

  was. He had never seen such an enormous one. He did

  have some difficulty getting to it, however, because her

  belly was so huge. It was like having to curve over a hill,

  hanging upside down, to lick at a spring in a crevasse at

  the bottom of the hill.

  The worst of it was, he felt no sexual stimulation, only

  disgust. But he had to do exactly as she said, and his or-

  gans, outside of the brain, must be responding to some

  sensory input.

  At another order, he withdrew his penis from her

  mouth and turned around and inserted it into her vagina.

  He began pumping slowly but soon speeded up in re-

  sponse to her command. She began groaning and moan-

  ing, turning her head from side to side, crying out in

  a foreign language, rolling the great hips sideways and

  then thrusting and now and then lifting herself up from

  the waist and grabbing his buttocks and pulling and push-

  ing him.

  He did not know how long they were in this position

  nor whether or not he had an orgasm. But the time came

  when she rolled him off her, the uncoupling wetly an-

  nouncing itself, and got above him and eased herself down

  upon his penis and moved the great body as lightly and

  swiftly as a toy balloon on the end of a string. After what

  seemed to be a hundred orgasms, judging by her number

  of frenzies, she got off him and went to the corner after

  her bottle of whiskey. He seemed able to move a little of

  his own volition, so he turned to watch her. She sat on

  the rug, leaning against the wall, looking like an over-

  yeasted mass of dough.

  Childe became aware that he was gasping. He could

  hear his breath rattling in and out, but he could not feel

  the thudding of heart nor the moving of his ribs.

  Mrs. Grasatchow downed at least a fourth of the quart

  and then looked at her wristwatch.

  "Forty-five minutes," she said. "Igescu will be furious."

  She heaved herself up and said, "Hmm! What's wrong?

  He said he'd send somebody after me."

  She opened the door and looked down the hallway.

  Childe tried to run toward her then, hoping to knock her

  down with his momentum and get away down the hall.

  He only ma
naged, after a seemingly long time, to get to

  his feet. If he had exerted himself prodigiously, he did not

  know it. Reception from his muscles was still cut off.

  On seeing him move, the woman's eyebrows went up,

  and she said, "Do you feel that suppository burning

  now?"

  "No," he said. "It's still cold and heavy."

  "You'll feel it in a moment. You'll think a hot-air bal-

  loon is going up your ass!"

  A laughquake shook her. Afterward, she said, "That

  stuff has a very peculiar effect. You didn't feel anything

  while you were fucking me, but wait. I wish I could take

  advantage of you then, but you'll have to enjoy yourself

  with yourself."

  She looked at her wristwatch again. "Maybe I won't

  go. I think Igescu has forgotten me. Or he knows I'll be

  very angry indeed if I don't get all of you. Now, you just

  stand right there, little Georgey Porgey Pudding Pie. I'll

  fix you up again, and double the effect. I don't want you

  acting up on me."

  As if a bore tide had reversed and was running back to

  sea, the coldness and heaviness became warmth and

  lightness. The second effect started where the first had

  ended, in the brain and the tip of his glans. The warmth

  and lightness raced inward from all borders and met in

  the region of the cone, in his anus, where, for a second, it

  burned as if a meteorite had just ended its fiery curve

  there.

  He cried out with the pain.

  The fat woman said, "Oh, oh! It's happened!" and she

  charged, one hand open to grab him and another cone in

  the other hand. She seemed to grow as large as the wall.

  Her flesh shook like a loose robe in a stiff wind. Childe

  launched himself at her, his hands out to grab her ears,

  because he meant to tear them off. He would have to fight

  savagely to get past her to the door. Even when he had

  his full strength, he would have been outmuscled by her,

  not to mention outweighed.

  His hands caught her ears, and his face thrust into one

  breast as violently as if he had been dropped from the

  ceiling onto her. She screamed, because he had bitten

  down on the excrescence suddenly appearing between

  his teeth. It was her nipple, as he found out when he

  got up from the floor where she had thrown him. He spat

  out the piece of flesh—the nipple and some white skin

  around it—and rose shakily. She was still screaming and

  rolling back and forth and clutching her mutilated

  breast.

  Childe did not wait to completely recover from the

  impact of the floor. Fighting dizziness and a pain in his

  shoulder, he kicked her between her legs as she started to

  roll toward him. His big toe disappeared momentarily

  in her slit. She screamed again. A flailing arm knocked

  his leg out from under him. He fell crosswise on top of her

  belly. She clamped her arms down on his buttocks and

  then one hand slid down to grab his testicles. With a des-

  perate jerk, he turned over to face her, still crosswise,

  seized a breast, and twisted.

  Her arms came up; she screamed again. Childe rolled

  away across her belly and down her legs. It was like roll-

  ing down a small hill. He got out of the way of her

  kicking legs and leaped up and came down with both

  bare feet on her face. Her head was driven back against

  the floor; her nose was smashed; blood burst; her eyes

  crossed.

  Again, he leaped and came down with both feet on her

  belly. He sank deep. Her wind whooshed out, as if some-

  body had opened a big door to a distillery with a strong

  cross-draft. He almost gagged. But he jumped a third

  time, once more on her face. Her nose became even flat-

  ter. Her eyes rolled up until only the whites showed. Her

  mouth was wide open, braced like a sail against the

  wind of her agony to get her breath back.

  And, at that moment, the cone reversed its effect. It

  was as if the entire coition with her had been recorded

  with a glass window between himself and his nerve end-

  ings. He could see but could not hear. Now, the glass was

  gone, and he could hear the rerun. With this difference,

  He was no longer frozen. He now felt everything exqui-

  sitely; he could feel his cock in her mouth and between

  her breasts and in her cunt, even though they were no

  longer there.

  During the fight, though he had not been aware of it,

  he had had an erection. Now, he jetted, and the delayed-

  reaction orgasm stormed his body. He fell to the floor

  and writhed helplessly, if ecstatically, in its lightnings.

  There was nothing else, for the moment, he could do.

  17

  When he could regain control, he got up and staggered

  toward the door. Although his penis no longer spouted,

  it remained as hard as before and did not have the

  delicious emptied-to-good-purpose feeling of an after-

  orgasm. It did feel pleasurable, increasingly pleasurable,

  as if he were again working up to coition. He could,

  however, ignore it for the present.

  Mrs. Grasatchow still lay on her back, arms and legs

  outflung, her mouth open, and her eyes open and showing

  white, as if hardboiled eggs had been stuffed into the

  sockets.

  He noticed a large turd spread out on the rug between

  him and Mrs. Grasatchow. So, he had been "scared

  shitless" sometime during the fight. He had not known

  when he spurted out the excrement; it did not matter.

  He was sure that he had expelled the turd and not she,

  although it was possible that she had when he had

  jumped on her face. It was, however, so far from her

  that he doubted it.

  Gingerly stepping by the turd, he walked to her purse,

  which was near the door. In it he found the key to the

  door. She had locked the door after looking down the

  hallway the last time. He unlocked it and, carrying her

  purse, went down the hall toward the room in which he

  had originally been imprisoned.

  First, though he hated the idea of any delay, he had

  to investigate the other rooms along the hall. There was

  always the chance of other prisoners there. Perhaps Sybil

  was in one. Six doors were closed. Three were unlocked

  and contained not much of interest. Three opened to the

  key from the fat woman's purse.

  The first two were small rooms with padded walls and

  floor. The third contained some furniture, modern Dan-

  ish, with a color TV set, a well-stocked bar, a pool table,

  and cartons of cigarettes and cigars and boxes of

  marijuana sticks and bottles with pills of various sizes,

  shapes, and colors. It looked as if it might be a rest

  room or recreation room. The occupants could relax here

  between their working bouts in the other room. There was

  also a large bureau with a mirror, which he did not

  think was one-way. The top of it was crowded with

  cosmetics and held some wigs.

  He opened the drawers, hoping t
o find some clothes he

  could wear. Before he could examine one, he was over-

  come with another semi-epileptic orgasm and jetted over

  the clothes in the top drawer. There was a washroom

  which he used to clean his genitals, face and hands,

  and his mouth. He drank several glasses of water and

  returned to the bureau.

  There were some T-shirts and gym shorts. He found

  some that were near enough to his size and put them

  on. Then it occurred to him that he was going to have

  another ejaculation soon and would be very uncomfort-

  able. It was either that or stick his cock out. He decided

  on the latter, although he felt ridiculous. And he looked

  ridiculous in the mirror. A knight with a stubby delicate

  lance. Some knight! Some detective! A private dick be-

  come public.

  There were some socks but no shoes. He put the socks

  on and continued his search. If only a weapon were here.

  No luck. Too much to hope for, of course. The two

  lower drawers were crammed with flat transparent plastic

  envelopes containing something unidentifiable. He opened

  one and shook out the contents. It fluttered out like a

  transparent flag to a length of about six feet. It had

  four extensions, a thick mass of hair on one end, and a

  circular patch of hair in the middle. Just beside the thick

  mass of hair was a small red valve like that on a

  child's plastic inflatable swimming pool. He blew it up

  and felt weakened by the exertion before he had com-

  pleted the job.

  After seeing what he had, he was horrified, although

  he had suspected what the result would be.

  Somehow, Colben's skin had been stripped from his

  body and made into a balloon. The apertures: earholes,

  mouth, anus, and the mutilated penis, had been sewn

  over with flaps of skin. His eyes had been painted blue,

  and the mouth was painted with a facsimile of labial

  red. The pubic hairs were still attached, and these, to-

  gether with the sewed fold between his legs, gave him a

  womanish appearance.

  Childe did not have time to deflate him. He pushed

  him sailing away, and frantically removed the contents

  of the other envelopes. One was the head of Budler. He

  presumed that the wolf in the film had eaten the rest of