Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror

streamed through stained glass. Overhead, the Virgin Mary held a little lamb; its fleece was dark with soot.

“You bastard,” she said, “you didn’t wait for me.” But there was no anger in it, and it made Adam smile, made him laugh.

He touched her face with his sole remaining hand, an act she would relish for however long it might last. Not forever. Elle curled in closer, pressed her mouth over the smooth pink stub that jutted from his left shoulder, flushing in pleasure as he gasped.

“Has anybody ever gone all the way?” she wondered. “Cut off everything?”

Adam nodded. “There’ve been a few.”

She groaned, murmuring wordlessly with fantasies of narrowing herself to a focused bundle of overloaded nerves, a single vast erogenous zone. “I wonder what it’s like.”

“I don’t know. But I get the idea that … that it’s like being a god.” Adam stirred, flexed; seemed to ripple with each caress of hand and mouth, breeze and dust mote. “By that time, you know, it’s up to everybody else to care for you. Take care of your needs. You’re mostly a receptacle by then.”

“What did the others say about it? And where are they now?”

“They quit talking,” he said. “And pretty soon … they quit eating. But they still smiled.”

They knew something, she thought. Or felt something the rest of us aren’t even close to yet …

Yet.

She forced his hand down to her hip, the exposed stump hot, tingling. Raw and alive with promise. “I’ll be better at it than you will. When I get that far. I’ll feel more than you.”

Said this with a tremor and a smile.

Could she cut herself down an inch at a time, feel gradations of pleasure with each successive chopping? If she lopped off a finger herself, would it be a new form of masturbation? Such paths to explore, down this avenue of the blade.

“We’ll just have to see about that,” he said, “won’t we?”

And Elle wondered if she could convince him to hang onto that one last arm at least until she went in for her other leg, so that Adam might be the one to hold the scalpel for that first ceremonial incision.

That would be divine.

It would almost be something like love.

Every Last Drop

John Everson

“Every Last Drop” was first published in Bloodsongs magazine, Spring 1998, and reprinted in his collection Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions, Delirium Books, October 2000.

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John Everson is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Covenant, Sacrifice, The 13th, Siren and The Pumpkin Man, all released in paperback from Leisure Books. Limited collector’s hardcover editions have also been released from Delirium, Necro and Bad Moon Books. He has had several short fiction collections issued by independent presses, including Creeptych, Deadly Nightlusts, Needles & Sins, Vigilantes of Love and Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions. Over the past 20 years, his short stories have appeared in more than 75 magazines and anthologies. His work been translated into Polish and French, and optioned for potential film production. For more on his fiction, art and music, visit www.johneverson.com.

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I wrote a lot of erotic horror stories in the ’90s for a variety of small press magazines, and “Every Last Drop” is one of my favorites. I think it really captured what can become an obsessive compulsion to follow the lure of the forbidden into the dark. I’d write about that theme again years later in my novel Siren.

His breathing grew ragged. In the shifting kaleidoscope of electric light, his grey eyes reflected obscene plays of color, did not shine out their own. The woman was tan, California style—no lines. Her lips were shiny pink, an erotic complement to the nipples of her bobbing brown breasts, currently matching—or more correctly, setting—the rhythm of his respiration. She flipped a strand of sand-blonde hair away from her face, ice-blue eyes flashing with lust, sweat collecting on her forehead, lips pursed and moaning …

The holovision abruptly went blank-blue, and Tony zipped up.

That was not your ordinary porno-blonde, he thought in admiration. Most of the blondes they used these days were like plastic dolls—the parts were all there, but the energy, the spirit—the spark that sometimes transfigured a 3-D bimbo into an orgasm-inducing fantasy—most just didn’t have it. They looked bored. They looked … faceless. Tits and ass a dime a dozen—sex goddesses were hard to find.

On the cyberbooth door he paused a moment to read the obscene graffiti. He didn’t know why, it was depraved and depressing and yet he always did. “Looking for black cock to suck? Call 546- …” “My wife screws you while I watch—ask for Leo (313) …” “Homos go to hell” … “The perfect blowjob: no names, no faces, no price, all privacy, unspeakable pleasure. Cum to Redroom Hotel #112 after 9 p.m.”

He read the last one again and shook his head. Nobody gave the perfect blowjob for free. He couldn’t pay Loni to give him one anymore at all. Tucking in his shirt he pushed open the door and walked quickly out of the back hall of the peep show. Men paced in the shadows, faces illuminated by the orange glow of silently smoking cigarettes, looking for the newcomer to proposition, waiting for the booth they wanted to free up. He grimaced in disgust and left the place, nodding at the wrinkled, bored cashier watching a “Dick Van Dyke Show” rerun.

Back when Loni had first gone out with him, she’d been eager to please, spreading everything for him just about anytime. She’d never been nuts about fellatio, but she serviced him dutifully. Their first couple years he’d nearly forgotten what the insides of these peep houses were like. Guys looking for anonymous sex with other guys, just for thrills or because they were too scared to admit they were gay and come out of the closet. Here it wasn’t gay or straight, it was diversion. Businessmen on a lark, husbands on desperation runs. He wouldn’t let these desperate men touch him, but he had no problem touching himself. If you couldn’t get it at home, you had to go somewhere …

Tony gunned the car and screeched out into traffic. He hoped Loni was in a good mood tonight—the blonde with the ice-blue eyes and pure-copper bod had left him wanting more. The new cyberbooths at the adult video store he’d frequented for years were great—but even though the women surrounded you like real life, you still couldn’t feel them. But thinking of that last scene made the crotch of his pants uncomfortable. He shifted in the seat and willed away an erection—which only served to increase its growth. Gripping his thighs together, he aimed the car onto the freeway and tried to relax.That place was supposed to relieve the tension, not create more, he grinned to himself.

* * *

Loni was not in a good mood.

“You’re an hour late and I’ve got to make that train,” she fumed, shimmying out of her skirt in their bedroom. At 34, she looked good, he observed, better than when they’d met. Her chest, while not that of the goddess, was ample, if over-nippled. Her middle was potting out a bit but her hips always nailed his eye to their hidden valley, something which, at this particular moment, did not work in his favor.

“I’m changing Tony, you’ve seen it before. Go get something to eat.”

He reached out to massage her exposed behind. She slapped his hand away. “Go. There’ll be plenty of time for that next week. Right now I’m late and you’re pissing me off.”

Her dark eyes pierced the mental fog that arousal always drew around him. Loni grew easily irritated with his physical obsessions. Sometimes it was flattering; now it was in her way.

“Alright, alright,” he grumbled. “Did you leave me anything?”