Steamy Screams: Anthology of Erotic Horror

The men here treated her like a goddess when she danced for them. Moving her lithe body on that stage took away the annoyance of being born a boy. Here she was the queen of the night. And the rest of the girls felt the same too; though street crawlers to everyone else, they were family to Coco: natural women. They took her on their gaudy adventures throughout the city, initiating her into the night culture. They taught Coco about tricking on the corners, who paid well and who didn’t. They showed her how to flex her body, as if rubber, around the silver pole in the center stage and the benefits of fishnet stockings, the power of baby oil and how it made skin glint like diamonds. They taught her how to reveal just enough of her body so a client’s rum stained lips could kiss her ankles from where she danced, and how to lower her cleavage down the edge of their noses for more money.

The girls also told her how night made their jobs easier: they couldn’t work during the day because they’d surely be arrested. So Coco avoided daylight like some kind of plague, slowly realizing that when people gave her the eye, as if she were some kind of famed painting, it wasn’t from her striking natural beauty, or her angular bones. Though New York was liberal, she was sick of feeling as if she was being watched all the time. Behind the makeup, dark eyeliner and sweet colored scarf around her neck to hide the adam’s apple, people were always able to tell: boy. Day was when the truly mean people of the city flooded the streets and pushed you out of the way just to get to work. Day was when the traffic could crush you like rotten fruit under a boot and no one would give a shit.

After that, her girls began referring to her as Vamp the Tramp because Coco paled quite quickly from her up all night and sleep all day schedule. And there was also her Black Irish heritage. If the ladies weren’t trading tricks or sharing flasks and the occasional hallucinogenic, they gossiped like straight-laced people; the same women who were beaten in public by their pimps, their teeth a thing of the past, smashed out of bleeding gums, and the police turning the other cheek because it saved them paperwork. Coco’s nickname once sparked a thought about the taste of blood, mostly because it was the memories of when she used to cut her wrists, suicide ghosts still fresh, hoping the testosterone would drain from the wounds. She considered a possibility that she liked it, if not just for fun.

Tonight, Coco asked the DJ to play Coal Chamber’s version of Shock the Monkey for her entrance music. And as the metal band finished packing their gear, the clean up crew began to wipe the stage down. When bands played in the club it always made the filthy patrons drink more, which meant better tips.

Coco looked out from the back room. The club was hazy and not too crowded for a Thursday. She could see every little Asian man clasping their hands and clinking their glasses as if waiting for her.

“You gunna kill ‘em tonight, ain’t you?”

“I always do, don’t I?” Coco said.

“Girl, if I had half your body, I’d run this joint.”

Lenithia was the name behind the voice. She was graciously tall, brown, and wore extravagant wigs and frilly dresses each night she danced. Her nose was wide, eyes large and black; it made Coco almost fearful for her androgyny. On the occasion that she and Coco went to the intestinal corners of Fourteenth Street, Lenithia would usually go out bald because her hair had broken off months ago from a freak dying accident. But her topless attire always got her a client first.

“I’m up in a few,” Coco said as she applied the last of her white face makeup and eyeliner.

“Yea, sugar, and guess who’s here?”

“Oh, God… ”

“Yep, your biggest fan!”

He always came to the club on Thursdays. Never did he talk; never did he wear anything other a moth eaten black trench coat, a ratty hat and oddly enough, sunglasses. It was so dark and filmy in the club that Coco never understood why. But he tipped her generously, though never touched her. Sometimes she saw him reaching for his crotch and running quickly to one of the private booths.

Then the music cued; googly synthesizers and crunching industrial rock beats filled the club. The combination of Dez Fafara’s galvanizing tone and Ozzy Osbourne’s razor vocals sent static into its patrons. But the men were as still as dead air, patiently waiting for the Queen of the Night, as the DJ called her, to take the stage.

Coco pushed passed the black silk curtain and entered with one long leg first. Then the men began to whistle. She walked onto the stage in a velvet frock coat clutched tight to her boyishly skinny frame. As the music went into a crescendo, so did she. Her body undulated and it made her strip to her lingerie. Her limbs melted into flaccid twigs, making the pole wrap around them with tight precision. Then she crawled around the stage, whipping her hair back and forth recklessly as the music took her away from the planet and turned her into the queen. She was fed her cash as she spread her legs, feeling up and down her crotch to make the guys gave more. Some of them put money right in her g-string line, others just cupped her ass cheek, but were ghosts by the time she turned around.

Then she moved over to her biggest fan. He was rigid while smoking his joint as Coco stood above him and gyrated. He caressed the straps of her heels with his skinny gloved fingers, and then rubbed her sweat over his lips. He was careful not to let his collar reveal anymore than a sliver of pallid cheek as he placed the crisp twenty on the table. Coco bent down and revealed her tiny cleavage, glistening from the baby oil, just as the girls had taught her, and scooped up the cash.

Then a small acid-tongued Chinese man got rowdy, but Coco ignored him and kept to the industrial rhythm. Hormones, or maybe the drugs and liquor had turned the guy reckless; he reached over and put his tiny finger up Coco’s asshole as he pulled her face to his and forced her lips open with his slug tasting tongue. Before Coco could react she felt his hands release and a spray of warmth bathe her face. The music cut off; her admirer was gone and Coco was left with dead weight on top of her. The bar crew pulled the headless man away. When Coco lifted her hands she was expecting to see a shimmering ribbon of blood, maybe a bone-white tendon from the man’s gashed neck, but all she noticed was the note. It told her exactly where to go.

* * *

Twilight came, absorbing daylight and spitting it back out dark purple, reminding Coco of the club. There were no stars to be seen thanks to the tawdry lights and spiraling buildings, but the moon was orange from her view on the corner where Twelfth Street ended and the dredges of foul people from Union Square skittered her way. Coco’s eyes were bright as a lynx, skin oiled and hair free flowing, pin straight. She wore a shiny green jacket, black pleather mini skirt, thighs and calves hugged by lace leggings. She let her hair cover her tits since the jacket was zipped opened with no bra beneath; a method taken from Lenithia.

The guy from the club wrote to wait here, and she wanted to look good doing it. She heard the dissonant wail of police sirens, probably some punk causing mayhem, or maybe a drug bust in some archaic crack den. The cars and people seemed to be almost moving in on her as if a premonition. They were shadowed and large like black holes in the earth.

In her mind she wasn’t interested to know what this person wanted because he was like the rest of the men at the club, but he had killed for her and that was intriguing enough to find out about him. Then a small black car pulled aside her and as the windows rolled down she smelled the fresh green spice of pot smoke, and needed no invitation to enter.

“You’re from these parts?” the voice asked behind shadow, sucking on the joint.

“A transplant, but yes.”

“I’m not. The name’s Eel.”

“Eel? Like the thing in the ocean?”

“Yes.”

They shook hands and not only did he still wear gloves, but his voice was suave, almost feminine.

“I wear these because some of you girls love to attack with needles and teeth,” he said as he raised his hands. “I’ve seen it done before. But there’s something about you, Coco. You’re too sweet.”

“I am?”

“Yes you are, Vamp the Tramp.”

Coco’s ears folded into her skull like a sad dog. “How did you know that?”

“I go to the club every week to watch you dance. People talk loud.”

Eel moved his eyes into lamplight and although they were hidden behind ridiculously dark sunglasses, Coco saw that they were carnivorous and gem green. They meant something to her, but she didn’t know what.

“What the hell happened last night?” She asked.