five bibles, twenty-eight crucifixes, three boxes of candles, holy water and every cheap-ass tacky-looking ornament I could find. I threw it all in the back of the truck and headed for home. Lenny Warner was waiting for me.
Or maybe not for me. Just waiting. That’s how it looked anyway. He sat in the prowler across from the house, smoking a cigarette, looking at nothing in particular. After I pulled up and stepped out, I went up to the porch and stood there awhile, thinking he was going to come over. But he didn’t. He stayed right where he was.
So I took all the crap I’d bought inside and stood at the window, watching him, waiting for him to leave. He didn’t. At last, I stormed back outside and was halfway to his car when I heard chatter blaring out of his radio, saw him flick the cigarette away, and he started the engine up and drove off.
He never looked at me once.
Cleaning up the putrid stain in the kitchen took a long time, but I did it. Then I went around the house, locking all the doors and windows, barricading myself in as best I could. I put a bible in every corner of my bedroom and nailed every crucifix to the wall. I washed the door and floorboards down in holy water and arranged little plastic and porcelain Jesuses and Virgin Marys on every spare surface I could find.
Then, as the blazing sun went down, I climbed into bed with a bottle of whiskey, the pistol and a bible.
And I waited.
You might be surprised by how quickly sleep took me. I was so exhausted, I’d been through so much, and even after all I’d seen, I couldn’t help the feeling I’d beaten her. She was gone. Chopped, scattered, to sizzle in the late summer’s blistering warmth, to be dissolved away to sickly mush by thousands of ravenous insects. And, wrapping myself up in the warming comfort of this knowledge, I went to sleep.
I woke up soaked through in spilled whiskey, half the candles burned out, and I couldn’t find the pistol.
And she was at the door.
I felt her before I saw her. Felt the gaze of her shriveled eyes and the chilling blast of night air from the doorway. I turned towards her and saw her limping, lop-sided calamity, towards me, slapping one torn and repackaged foot wetly down and dragging the wilted other behind.
“Mmmmmm,” she said. “Mmmmmmmm… ”
“No!” I shrieked. “Fuck you!” And hurled the whiskey bottle at her. It struck her left shoulder, knocking pieces of flesh loose. They spattered upon the floor with a soft thud.
I tossed the sheets, hunting for the pistol, threw away the pillows and found only the leather-bound bible I’d taken to bed with me. “Mmmmm,” Deanna said, clawing her way onto the bed beside me.
Turning, I swung with the bible, swatting her in her misshapen face, and again. She grabbed my arms in her iron grip and pinned me down. This close in the candlelight I could see the joins where she’d put herself back together, all the pieces going mostly where they were supposed to, but at an angle. That was a little-known fact about Dee—she was a real whiz with a needle and thread. She clambered up on top of me like a crooked jigsaw puzzle.
Against all protestations and struggle, she forced herself upon me, straddling with discolored, lumpy thighs, seeping with ripening pus. Her cunt was one improbably long slit, cutting up across her belly, threatening at any moment to cover me in her leaking yellow innards.
As she rode me, I saw one of her tits had already popped its clumsy stitches and flapped wanly over her navel, useless clump of hanging dead flesh. And then there was her face.
“No,” I cried, as she bent down to me. “No, Deanna, no!” As her stitched and sun-burnt mask peered into me. “Noooo!”
She opened her mouth wide and closed it over mine. Her swollen black tongue slid between my lips, quivered suddenly and exploded… flooding my throat with maggots.
“Oh Jesus… ”
Reluctantly, I awoke.
“Mother of God in Heaven… ”
Still tasting the rot of her final kiss, the tightness of dried spit and slime over my face.
“My, oh my, oh my… ”
I opened my eyes one at a time, blinking queasily into the morning’s light, and saw Lenny Warner standing at the foot of my bed. Flanked on either side by deputies. Turned out Dee had left the door open when she’d come up. And a trail of bloody footprints to follow.
“Shit, Ray,” Lenny said, hand over his mouth, too much in shock to be much in any mood for retribution. “Just… shit.”
I went resigned to my death.
The lawyer—cheapest in the county but a real nice guy—did everything he could and I did absolutely everything he told me, but everyone could see there was no way I was escaping the electric chair.
And that was fair. I’d murdered her. I couldn’t deny it. Everything I did, I’d done to myself and, if it was oblivion, then to oblivion I would go, stoic and resigned.
When the time came, I declined the last meal and offered no final words.
Somebody threw a switch… and I died.
Thankful for the embrace of nothing at all.
When I woke up I was six feet underground, sealed up tight in a cold pine box and Deanna’s lips were pressed against my ear.
“Hello, handsome,” she said.
THE HUNTRESS
Emily Veinglory
Her breasts felt full in that way that meant her blood had started. We had our usual conversation.
“No, not this time of the month… ”
Indeed, I rarely saw Phoebe at all when she was menstruating; it was as if she was observing some strange ritual of seclusion when she bled. How it infuriated me to see her least when I wanted her most.
She simply did not understand. Although I kept raising the issue, I never pressed it. Phoebe was a bright, beautiful and passionate girl and I had no desire to lose her. But when she left and I heard the shower come on with its muffled patter, it occurred to me that the shower was the perfect place, clean, warm and her naked within.
I dropped my clothes in the hall and stepped into the murky bathroom, it was small and full of steam. When I stepped into the small shower stall, she looked over her shoulder. A slight frown creased her pale forehead, but she did not rebuff me.
I felt the soft weight of her breasts in my hands as I kissed her delicate neck. Her new, short haircut bristled against my cheek. Every day she seemed to be moving to push her femininity further away, even as I treasured it more.
I let my right hand drift down to her hip and, as I drew her close, my index finger slid over her mound of Venus and into the top lip of her labia. I knew her body well; I found the soft, small nub of her clitoris and stoked it firmly with the rough pad of my fingertip. Her whole body softened as my own cock hardened. I could feel the slickness of her menstrual blood even as the water ran down my hand and washed it away.
I moved around in front of her and she moaned a soft complaint, but went quiet again as I dropped my head to bite and suck softly on her nipple. The shower water hit the back of my head, but as I knelt, I descended into the foggy zone below the spray.
Phoebe stiffened a little, she had not wanted this, but she was not going to stop me. My firm tongue delved as my finger had, caressing the soft ripples of flesh and the nub of the clitoris. Phoebe arched her back and spread
