Hot Blood: Tales of Erotic Horror

then held it back as Miss Fallon reached for it. 'Hold on. I wasn't bora this morning. How do I know I'll get what I want?'

'Because I'm good at what I do. If I say it'll happen, it will. You pay me half now and half when you see the… uh… results. That suit you?'

'Fair enough.' His hand was trembling as he gave her the money. 'I knew you people could help me out!'

Miss Fallon left him in the office while she went out to the store. Dave heard the clink of bottles coming off the shelves. She told Malcolm to go see somebody named Aunt Flavia and bring back some of 'the gunk.' Then Miss Fallon took a cardboard boxload of bottles and bags into another little room next to the office, and Dave heard her pouring, mashing, and stirring. She began to sing as she worked: 'Love Potion Number Nine.' Malcolm returned in about thirty minutes, and Dave heard him say 'Sheeeyit!' in an unbelieving voice as Miss Fallon used whatever 'the gunk' was in her mixture. Dave paced the room. An hour went past. The high, sweet smell of something cooking began to leak into the office. It reeked of burning horseflesh. Stallion balls, Dave thought. And then, abruptly, the door opened and Miss Fallon came in carrying a steaming, dark, and muddy liquid in a Mason jar.

'Drink it down,' she said, and put it in his hands.

Dave smelled it, and instantly wished he hadn't. 'My God!' he said, after his fit of coughing had ceased. 'What's in it?'

She gave him a faint smile. 'You don't want to know. Trust me on this.'

He brought it near his lips. His heart was hammering. He paused, weak-blooded at the crucial moment. 'Are you sure this is going to work?'

'If you can keep that shit down,' she said, 'you'll be a man, my son.'

Dave lifted the warm Mason jar, took a breath, and drank.

Oh, there are times when a human being reaches beyond the mortal coil and grips the fist of a power beyond the earthly realm. This, however, was not one of those moments. Dave spewed up black liquid, and it went all over the walls.

'Drink it down!' Miss Fallon shouted. 'You paid for it, you drink it!'

'I didn't pay to be poisoned!' he shouted back. But she grasped his wrist and shoved the Mason jar toward his face, and Dave Neilson opened his mouth and the elixir flowed in like cesspool sludge. He swallowed it. Images of polluted rivers rioted in his brain. He smelled overflowing garbage cans and thought of the black crud that slides out of drainpipes when the plumber breaks them open. A mist of sweat seemed to leap from his face, and hung like humid haze in the air. But he got all the stuff down his throat without puking, and then Miss Fallon took the Mason jar and said, 'Good boy. One more jarful to go.'

He did it. He never would've believed he could, but he did it. And then the mess lay in the pit of his stomach, gurgling noisily and as heavy as three hundred thousand pennies.

'Now listen to me.' Miss Fallon took the drained Mason jar from him. The whites of his eyes looked tinged with brown. 'You're to let this settle for forty-eight hours. You throw it up, and that's the end of it.'

'Oh, Lord.' Dave pressed his hand to his face. He felt feverish and unsteady. 'What am I supposed to do now?'

'You stay in your hotel over the weekend. See me Monday mornin', nine o'clock sharp. No cigarettes, no alcohol, no nothin'. 'Cept gumbo, and I guess some raw oysters'll be okay.' She was already herding him toward the door. His legs moved like pillars of lead. Dave staggered out amid the shelves, and Malcolm looked up with a grin. 'Ya'll come again real soon!' he chirped merrily as Dave went out the front door onto sunbaked Prince Conti Street.

Night fell, fast as a crash of cymbals. Dave slept like a swamp log, in a Bourbon Street hotel room with a chattering fan and humidity fit for alligators. The damp sheets had a way of coiling around him, and he had to fight himself free on several occasions. And then, as the music of a jazz trumpet curled like steam from a nearby bar and a bass drum beat in a strip joint, Dave sat up in bed, his pulse racing and sweat on his face.

I feel different, he thought. Somehow different. Stronger, maybe. Was that it? He wasn't sure, but his heart was pumping hard and he could almost hear the blood racing in his veins.

He pulled aside the sinewy sheet and looked at the thang.

His euphoria burst like a soda bubble. It was still shrimpy. The damned thang even appeared to be smaller than when he'd gone to Miss Fallon's. My God! he thought, panic-stricken. What if… what if she screwed up the spell and gave me a reverse potion?

No, no, he told himself. Steady, boy. Give it time. He found his wristwatch and peered at the luminous hands. It was twenty minutes after eleven, only eight hours since he'd drunk the gunk. The room was as hot as a bayou prison, and Dave got up with the sludge sliding in his belly. He walked to the window, overlooking the gaudy neon signs and flesh parade of Bourbon Street, and stared down at the throng of sinners. The bass drumbeat pounded at his attention. His gaze found the red neon that said Kitt's House. Beneath that sign was painted Lovely Belles Totally Nude. He watched as a couple of college boys went in, and three Japanese men came out grinning.

Go back to bed, he thought. Sleep. Wait for Monday morning.

He stared at Kitt's House, and sleep was far from his mind.

What would it hurt to go over there? he asked himself. What would it hurt, if I just sit down and watch a few dancers strut their stuff? I don't have to order a drink. What would it hurt?

It took him maybe fifteen minutes to decide for sure. Then he got dressed, and he went down to where the action throbbed.

Kitt's House needed a fumigator. The smoke hung in heavy layers, the red lights pulsed with the jukebox music, and a ham-handed palm demanded five dollars cover charge. Dave found a table and sat where he could watch a brunette girl gyrate in the red glare, her body gleaming with a faint sheen of oil. The place wasn't crowded, but there was enough hollering and laughter to let you know it was almost midnight. And then Dave smelled musky perfume, and a blond girl with very large, very firm-looking breasts came close to his face.

'Uh… I'll… uh… nothing, thanks,' he managed.

'Dude, honey, it's a one-drink minimum. 'Kay?' She popped bubble gum, her lips red and moist. Dave stared at her breasts, his eyes almost crossing. They didn't have anything like this in Oklahoma.

'Beer,' he said, without thinking. His voice trembled. 'Just beer.'

'You got it.' She put a napkin in front of him, and smiled. 'I'm Scarlett. I dance, too. Be back real soon.' She walked away, and he watched her go. The music was thunderous. He took a deep breath to clear his head, but it just got cloudier. It occurred to him that he was inhaling the smoke from twenty or so cigarettes. He began to cough, and it came upon him to get up and get out, but blond Scarlett appeared with a Miller on her tray. She smiled again, a smile that nailed him to his seat. 'Here y'go, dude,' she said, and plunked it down in front of him. 'Three-fifty.' She held the tray down for him to put the money on, and as he stared at her breasts she looked up into his face and said, 'You like what you see, dude?'

'Oh… I… don't mean to…'

She laughed, blew a bubble, and popped it. Then she went on to entice the college boys.

Dave started to drink the beer. Quickly put it down again. No! Miss Fallon had said no alcohol! But all that seemed so unreal now, though there was an unreality to Kitt's House, too; it was as if he'd traded one unreality for another. I threw away one hundred and fifty bucks, he thought. Plus swilled some of the foulest stuff I ever —

'Hi again,' Scarlett said, all blond hair, red lips and bared breasts. 'Want me to dance for you?'

'Dance? For me? I… don't…'

'Table dance. Right here.' She stroked the tabletop. 'Five dollars. You like this music?'

'Yeah, I guess,' he said, and Scarlett climbed up onto the table and he stared at her red G-string that had So Many Men So Little Time stitched across the front in purple.

Dave didn't know what the music was. He only knew it was rock'n'roll, and he liked it. Scarlett stood above him, her eyes locked with his, and she began to circle her hips round and round as she teased her fingertips in swirls around her nipples. I'm a long, long way from Oklahoma, Dave thought, and he took a deep swig of beer before he knew what he was doing. Scarlett's flat belly writhed. She turned around, clenching and relaxing the muscles of her behind. Dave drank more beer and watched wide-eyed as Scarlett hooked her thumbs in her G- string and began to work it down, inch-by-inch, over her oil-glistening thighs. And then Scarlett whirled around, in