As exciting as the spontaneity of folding Mary Jane’s arms had been, I needed to plan things carefully from then on. If I broke a woman’s knees or ankles, if I dislocated hip flexors or tore Achilles tendons, it was likely my little rope bunny would pass out from the shock or perhaps even die from spinal cord injury or blood loss. I was a smart man, smart enough to know that it is nearly impossible to get rid of a dead body without a trace. Besides, I had no interest in fucking a corpse. What was the point of folding these women into flesh accordions if I couldn’t stick my cock in them as a grand finale?
When it was time for my first foray under this new protocol, I checked into the motel, slipped a lozenge into my pocket, and walked the three blocks, past the dilapidated housing and run-down Mini-Mart to The Atlas Cafe, a tavern with the square footage of my living room whose wood-paneled walls and cement floors I guessed hadn’t seen a bright light in about a decade. There, sitting with her gazelle-like legs folded neatly around each other under the barstool, was my first experiment. Her hair was long and shaggy and dyed a teenie-bopper purple color over black and grey roots; her eyes were large and brown and heavily lined in black. She looked to be at least forty years old, even in the dim lighting, and had a silver ball piercing in her cheek dimple like a metallic beauty mark. I slid into the stool two chairs down from her: close enough to start a conversation but with enough distance as to not raise suspicion. She nodded her head at me and within a record twenty minutes, Keri (spelled like the lotion, she made certain to explain) and I were walking back toward my room, me fingering the door key in my pocket and her tonguing the lozenge she had accepted from me without a quiver of suspicion.
By the time I wrestled the sticky door open, Keri had begun to sway a bit on her feet. “Phew,” she said dreamily, the word coming out as foooyood. “This really does pack a wallop.” She draped her long fingers along my shoulder like she was trying to regain her balance.
“Have you taken an opioid painkiller before, miss?” I asked, somewhat amused. I was starting to suspect I wouldn’t need to slap one of the patches on her skin after all. It was just as well: they could take hours to take full effect. Keri walked purposefully over to the polyester-quilted bed and sat down on the edge. She rubbed her palms over the tops of her thighs over and over, like she was petting a cat. The faraway look in her now-glassy eyes told me that she was ready. I crossed my arms in front of my chest and waited for her to initiate payment specifics.
Instead, she stuck her hand out toward me like a parent beckoning a child. “C’mere, you big silly,” she said, half smiling, half yawning. She crossed and uncrossed her slender legs, then crossed them again; her legs were so thin, she could tuck her foot around her calf, a second cross. This phenomenon made my mind race.
I unfolded my arms and walked over to the bed. Keri looked up at me expectantly. “I have a very specific preference when it comes to sex,” I said. “How flexible are you?” I touched her hair. It felt like matted straw, and I pulled my hand away in disgust.
She smiled a drunken smile and put her hand on my stomach. “Oh, I’ve been known to do an impossible yoga pose or two,” she said. “For the right price, that is. $200 for straight sex, but for anything kinky, the price doubles.”
“Good,” I said, reaching over to my duffel bag and unzipping the top. “Because I’m a big fan of achieving the impossible.” I snatched the pile of fifties I had laid beside the Ziplocked patches and grabbed the thin, yellow rope from the top of the bag.
For a moment, I thought I saw a flash of concern fall across Keri’s face, but it was soon replaced with contented calm. The Fentanyl was working overtime; I hadn’t considered the interaction it might have with the alcohol, or how much Keri had drunk before I arrived, for that matter. She began unbuttoning her shorts and pushed them to the floor, along with her panties. As she lifted her t-shirt over her head, I felt the same pang of conscience I had felt with Mary Jane. I had wanted the Fentanyl to numb my partners; I hadn’t wanted to dope them beyond the point of rational consent. I counted out eight fifties, folded them, and shoved them into Keri’s shorts pocket on the floor.
“Thanks, darlin’,” she mumbled. “My goodness…mmmmm, I don’t think I can feel my face anymore,” she said. “Hey, slap me across the face.”
I snorted and unrolled the rope.
“I said, slap me,” she repeated. “Come on, baby…I just want to see how it feels.”
Laying the rope on the mattress, I grabbed Keri gently by the shoulders and pulled her so that her head could lie comfortably on the pillows at the top of the bed. She obliged without objection, and when her head touched the pillow, she lowered her eyelids into a squinting position and smiled at me again. I drew my hand back and slapped her half-heartedly across the face. She did not react but kept smiling.
I back-crawled down to her legs and grabbed her left calf firmly by her ankle and beneath her knee. Holding it parallel to the floor, I folded her leg backwards so that her knee was touching her hip. She still did not react. Now was the time to see if my plan would work. I tightened my grip on her leg and with a quick jerking motion, pushed it toward the mattress as hard as I could, feeling the tight snap as the knee ligaments ruptured. Keri’s face changed but she did not cry; instead, she looked confused. I tested the new freedom of her appendage by wiggling her lower leg in her knee socket. It felt disconnected, like her knee had turned to Jell-O. When I straightened and dropped her leg onto the mattress, it bounced once, and I could see the outline of her kneecap shift freely beneath her pale skin.
I picked up her right leg and repeated the process, feeling the snap of the ligaments and the gelatin wobbliness once more. Once again, Keri moved her head but did not cry out in pain or protest. I could feel my heart racing in my chest in excitement. My groin throbbed. I snatched the yellow rope and moved it into a pile between Keri’s upper thighs. Grabbing her right calf again, I turned it inward, then pulled her foot upwards to rest next to her right hip so that her leg formed a V-shape. I mimicked the action with her left leg and leaned back to admire my work. I had made a perfect W. W for Why-didn’t-I-think-of-this-sooner? I thought, and chuckled to myself.
I ran the yellow rope back and forth, around and under each calf and thigh, pulling the V’s closed so that they resembled chicken wings. Keri began to moan, and I wondered if the lozenge had begun to wear off. Reaching into the duffel bag, I felt for the plastic bag of snipped patches. “Don’t you worry, my little yoga master,” I said. “This will make it all better.” I peeled the backing from the patch piece and pressed it firmly onto the left side of her abdomen. Then, in one swift motion, I flipped Keri over onto her stomach and her tightly folded legs spread to each side of her hip. I grabbed the ends of the rope, brought her wrists together to the bottom of her spine, and tied them securely together.
When I was done, I climbed from the bed and stood at its foot, admiring my work. With the bright purple hair concealing her face, Keri resembled a strange insect of some sort, her tiny leg wings splayed helplessly to each side. I angled my phone to take my photos before allowing myself the final indulgence, but I found I could only take three shots before giving in. “I can’t feel my feet,” Keri called out weakly from under the nest of hair.
“I know, sweetheart,” I said. “And that’s probably for the best.” I unlatched my belt, unbuckled my pants, and climbed onto the bed.
VI. Rebekah
I had just finished the three-hour session with one of my regulars, a high school Special Education teacher who called himself Sean, when my cell phone buzzed with vibration from the dresser. Sean, who was shaped like a fleshy Weeble-Wobble but sported an incongruous sandy blonde crew cut like a Marine, was in the hotel room bathroom, running his arms under cold water to quell the sting of the burns he’d special-requested at the start of our meeting. Ever since America had banned clove cigarettes, I’d had to special order packs from Canada on eBay just to avoid the disgusting remnants of Newports or Marlboros in my mouth a
nd hair. You’d be surprised how many people want their flesh singed as part of their session. I’ve seriously considered a GoFundMe page to finance an indoor grill and fire poker set. Nothing shocks me anymore.
“Speak,” I commanded into the receiver. This was my business-only iPhone; I deducted it and the separate bill off of my taxes as a work expense.
“It’s Jesse,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “I need your help. Can you come by?”
Sean poked his head into the room. “You got any more of those Band-Aids?” he asked. I moved the phone to my other ear, felt around in my travel case, grabbed the blue and white box, and tossed it to him. “Thanks,” he said and disappeared back into the bathroom.
“I’m a little tied up right now,” I said, “and not in the way you’d prefer.” I tried to wrestle my suit pants back on with my one free hand.
Jesse was silent on the other end, and for a moment, I assumed he had hung up. Then he said, “I can wait. You’re the only one who can help me with this.”
I tucked my wallet, now fat with earnings from the day, into my case and glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. “Let me drop some stuff off at my apartment and I’ll be over. Where are you, exactly?”
Two hours later, I was walking briskly along American Legion Highway after departing the subway, glad my wallet was hidden safely away in my jacket’s inside pocket. A plane flew by low overhead, temporarily deafening me. The only thing separating me and the traffic whizzing by was a battered guardrail, and each time a particularly noisy car sped by me, I flinched, readying my body to take the impact of a hit and run. The sun was just beginning to set, and I was relieved to see the rainbow-accented blue hotel sign just ahead of me in the exhaust-filled haze. I made a mental note to call a car service to take me home later.
Jesse was sitting in the lounge of the hotel’s resident Mexican restaurant, Tio Juan’s, at a counter-height table with three other stools, his back to the window. He was sipping a dark-colored beer. “‘Pick a shady enough location?” I asked. “What’s the matter: all the motels in downtown East Rob-Me booked solid?”
He smiled and put his glass down. “Well, you know the old adage: Lynn, Lynn, City of Sin: You never come out the way you went in. Gotta represent.”
The waitress, a tiny waif of a thing with thinning hair and an owl tattoo on her inner elbow, appeared at my side. “What can I bring you?” she asked.
“Uh…an appletini, I guess,” I answered.
When she was out of earshot, Jesse leaned back in his stool and looked at me, wide-eyed. “Well, don’t you look fancy,” he said, motioning to my pantsuit and tidy hairstyle. “Just outta work, are we, madam?”
“Yes, wiseass,” I said, suddenly self-conscious. “Now what is the emergency? And you’re buying this drink, by the way,” I added, as Owl Tattoo placed the light green martini in front of me. I fished the maraschino cherry from the bottom of the glass and popped it in my mouth.
Jesse stopped smiling and started to run his index finger along the rim of his beer stein. “So, I think I may have killed someone.” He said it so nonchalantly that I thought I had misheard him. He didn’t take his eyes off of his glass, and he didn’t remove his finger.
“I’m sorry—what?” I asked, taking a big gulp of my drink.
“I told you about the Fentanyl, right? How I’ve been using it?”
Ever since our first breakfast together, Jesse and I had been meeting for monthly meals in seedy diners. It was our chance to swap stories in our self-created judgement-free zone. Neither of us were out to our friends or family: hell, my mom still brags about her daughter landing a corporate office manager job in the financial district with only a handful of college courses under her belt. I didn’t know where Jesse lived or even what his last name was, but I knew he was a nurse by trade and that he was fixated on turning human bodies into unnatural shapes: it was his own little fetish puzzle, a Sudoku or New York Times crossword to be completed naked and with a lot of illegal painkillers.
He stopped touching his glass and rested his hands on the table between us. “Well, I finally ran out. But a few weeks before that, this patient came into the emergency room, whacked out on some drug—we initially thought it was a heroin-speed combo of some sort—and since he was stable, we let him fester in the waiting room for a bit. You know, give him time to ride the high down before monopolizing a bed. We could still see him from the desk, just in case anything did happen.
“He was sitting in one of the chairs on the end of a row, his left arm kinda dangling over the side, toward the floor. All of a sudden, this guy, this twenty-something-year-old guy who’s there with his grandmother, he gets really irate with the in-take staff, screaming that his nana’s sugar is through the roof and they’re out of insulin and we need to see her right away. The triage nurse took a blood reading and yes, her sugar was high, but not astronomical, so she told him to have a seat and we’d get to her as soon as we could. The guy was so pissed, he wheeled her to the back of the waiting room, practically running while he was doing it, and he wheeled right by our zonked-out druggie. He cut the chair too close to the row of seats, though, and as he passed, he caught the man’s dangling hand in the wheels of the chair and mangled it, almost severing the damn thing off. Blood everywhere. The grandmother starts yelling in Spanish, the girl next to the druggie starts screaming like it’s her hand that just got Ginsued, even the damn grandson is screaming in panic. But the guy? He just looks down at his hand like he’s watching a movie on his cell phone screen. No cries of pain, not even a complaint.”
“What? How is that possible?” I asked, swallowing the rest of my martini.
“Our orderly ran over to him with a wheelchair and threw him in it and brought him back for medical attention,” Jesse continued. “And while he was in recovery, his hand all stitched up and bandaged like a mummy, I stopped in to ask him how he was feeling. The drug he had taken had long since worn off, but he was on an opioid drip and was still feeling pretty fine.
“I asked him, ‘Off the record, what did you take this evening? I’ve never seen anyone react to such a traumatic accident as calmly and coolly as you.’ ‘Grab me my coat, would you?’ he said, and motioned to the plastic hospital bag of his clothing on the other chair. I did, and he fished a tiny vial half-full of white powder out of his tweed pocket and threw it at me. ‘One snort and you’re on the moon, buddy. A hundred bucks and you can keep it,’ he said.”
“So, what did you do?” I asked.
Jesse drank a healthy gulp of his beer. “I gave him the eighty I had in my wallet and told him to count his blessings.” He fished his hand in the front pocket of his pants and pulled out a plastic vial with a red cap and placed it on the table. “They call it Apache Chief. Twice as effective for numbing as Fentanyl with none of the drowsiness.”
“Apache Chief? Like the SuperFriends character?” I picked up the container and turned it over in my hand. “Wow, way to disparage the Native American one more way, America: name a deadly street drug after one of their few cartoon superheroes.”
Jesse emptied his glass and pointed at me. “I’m not sure Apache Chief is considered part of the graphic novel canon, but point taken, Elizabeth Warren.”
I handed the vial back to Jesse. “So, what do you need me here for? What happened?” I looked down at my fingertips. “Fuck: now my prints are all over it.”
Jesse smiled and put the container back in his pocket. He waved at the waitress for the check. “You’re only at the top of the rabbit hole, sister. Just wait until you see what I have in my hotel room.”
VII. Jesse
It’s not enough to be sorry when you commit a crime, even if it’s purely by accident; society mandates that the offender must pay. That seems like a pile of bullshit to me. If I honestly—for real—honestly did not mean for someone to die, and whoops, someone’s airway is closed off for longer than allotted by natural law, am I really at fault? Isn’t God, or Allah, or fate, or insert-ma
gical-deity-here the one at fault?
I never intended for her to die. Her name was Lisa, just like the perfect teenage-spank-bank-fantasy girl in Weird Science, the one Anthony Michael Hall and that other guy create while wearing bras on their heads as Robert Downey, Jr and his terrible pre-capped teeth snicker and seethe. Just like that Lisa, my Lisa was a dream girl: buxom breasts, firm stomach and thighs, round hips and ass, a headful of bouncy hair like a Wella wet dream. Truth be told, I wasn’t thrilled with her teeth: they were about three sizes too big for her mouth, forcing her to keep her lips slightly parted to make room at all times—but come on, if she had been perfect, she probably wouldn’t have been working as a prostitute. There are no Julia Roberts walking Hollywood Boulevard, Pretty Woman fans. There are no Elisabeth Shues riding the barstools in old Vegas. Sorry, Virginia, there isn’t a Santa Claus after all.
But Lisa was a bargain, especially since she had to transport herself all the way to this airport hotel a good mile away from any subway stop. I’m not sure why I chose that hotel in the first place, except that I never used the same location twice and I could see the Mexican restaurant sign from the road and suddenly had a hankering for a chile relleno. I actually had met Lisa at a bar at the airport, just having returned from a nursing symposium in Oregon. We were the only two in the bar at eleven in the morning, and I got her number, passed her a fifty, and made arrangements for her to meet me later that afternoon at a location I would text to her. I knew she’d show up: I had made certain to work in that I was returning home from a medical conference, and it’s always been my experience that women, whether pros or not, can’t resist the idea of fucking a doctor.
Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 4 Page 10
