Hot Blood: Tales of Erotic Horror

'Oh, a few days,' Stanwell grunted. His silver surgical instrument suddenly flashed like a murder weapon as the window curtains ballooned with the late afternoon draft. No feeling. Miss Allair, observed Edmunster, had left the room now. 'Basically, it depends upon you, Larry,' Stanwall said. 'Your own mental outlook.' The scalpel stopped moving, and pricked. God! Edmunster's nerve ends sought to scream, but he managed merely a subdued, rather sickish whimper. 'There are neurotic types who experience severe psychological trauma.'

'Bruce and Rodge, they didn't mention that at all,' Edmunster said hastily, 'so what if —»

'Hold perfectly still!'

He was a statue, an icon; he was a mountain rooted in time, unbudgeable granite. An earthquake's rebuke.

Dr. Stanwall's head completely blocked the horrid view now. Once more, while he might have imagined it, those sensitive ganglia which had served Lawrence F. Edmunster faithfully and with passionate devotion sent shrill, psychic protestations careening through his hair-trigger brain.

'You knew my wife.'

Vague, being polite, Edmunster managed a smile at the top of the physician's head. Why had Stanwall put it in the past tense? 'Yes, I know Stephanie.' He attempted to call up her face, but all he saw hoving into view was the shockingly naked body of another Stephanie. 'Charming girl.'

'Not actually charming,' said the doctor. 'Indescribably lovely, and sensual. Thrilling and precious, to me; she's eleven years younger. Larry, mistakes that happen during this particular phase of surgery are rare. They do tend to be irreversible, however; I thought you should know the worst. Yet the main concern is what can go on in one's own mind. Some men — a minute percentage of those who undergo vasectomies as out-patients — are never able, quite, to achieve another orgasm. A somewhat smaller figure, generally due to their immature way of mentally coping with bodily modifications — and their own, ongoing guilt feelings — never manages an erection again.' Dr. Stanwall's fingers — maybe they were sutures, it was impossible to see through his goddamned head! — clenched firmly on Lawrence Edmunster's member. 'You knew my beautiful wife in the Biblical sense.' And the member went totally numb.

He did mean that Stephanie! I never was much good,

remembering names, the patient admitted to himself. 'Listen, Doctor, I —»

'Do not move a muscle!' The command was from an infinite professional remove. Again the window curtains billowed, as if something ghastly entered. 'Not if you want a chance of ever doing it again.'

'Please.' He whispered it, got no reply. Frozen, Edmunster heard the word irreversible pound at him, echoing. He craned his neck exactingly, as painstakingly as it was possible for a human creature without using extraneous tendons and musculature. With all his heart he tried to witness the older man's last, terminal handiwork… and couldn't make out a damned thing. 'For God's sake, Doctor — what've you done to me?'

Stanwell smiled and stepped back. He held his hands high as if in a gesture of innocence, or perhaps remorseful repugnance. 'What you came to me to do, Larry. A vasectomy. Only what you sought.'

When he attempted to stand, Edmunster was too weak. Staring down in absolute apprehension, handsome features a blur of terror even to himself, he saw he was still taped in place. But now he wore a tidy, white dressing. Edmunster inhaled sharply. One ruby-red drop of blood was seeping through. He had experienced no pain, he had no feeling, there. Not a bit.

'Sometimes, of course,' Dr. Stanwell ruminated, 'we men don't know exactly what it is we seek. Patients have been known to go to their physicians for very deep-seated, intimate reasons they can't acknowledge, even to themselves. On occasion, Larry, due to the enormous and influential power of the human mind, men go because of shame — or guilt — and want their doctor somehow to expiate their sins. Odd, isn't it, that can seem the only way?'

There was more going on beneath Edmunster's waist. Miss Allair was pulling up his shorts, then his trousers, with the brisk competence of a mother dressing her little boy. That was the first time today Edmunster observed that she was beautiful, and statuesque; and when he tried to think about her sterling physical attributes in the old, motivational way that had unfailingly elicited highly stimulating re-suits, he felt only a sharp, disagreeable tugging sensation there… and a sense of ballooning, cosmic loss.

When Allair had zipped him up, Edmunster was shaken and relieved.

'The procedure wasn't too bad, was it?' Stanwall was energetically washing his hands, scrubbing the hell out of them, at his basin. He smiled more, now he was finished. In Edmunster's memory he couldn't recall ever seeing that smile on the doctor's homely face. 'Once a man is no longer doing those nasty things that rest so heavily on his shoulders, Larry, he usually becomes a different person. Entirely. Remember, you did the right thing today.' He bobbed his head, let his merry eyes watch Edmunster's expression in the mirror above the basin. 'Just use that as your consolation, all right?'

Nodding, the space in his brain that retained visual images going on staring at that hearty, open smile, Lawrence Edmunster went out to the waiting room. The nurse, doubling as the doctor's secretary, was making out his bill. A physician who did that for a living wouldn't need a great many secretaries. Allair was bent over her desk and Edmunster might easily have stared down her capacious uniform blouse.

On stiff legs, moving cautiously, he crossed the carpeted floor to the window and stared, straight ahead, through the pane. Peering down, just then, did not seem advisable; prudent. Instead, Edmunster looked at the drab sky as if seeing it that way for the first time and wondered, dully, about psychological trauma, psychosomatic illnesses. Responsible decisions made too late in the game; safe sex; guilt; and little medical horror stories.

Finally Edmunster turned his gaze downward, toward the busy city streets on which he'd strode with manly confidence, then toward himself, below the waist. By comparison, the streets did not seem so distant, so out of reach. It usually works out all right; depends upon the individual man. Edmunster's sigh made his whole body tremor from head to toe.

And behind him, from the physician's inner office, there was the sound of chuckling and someone starting to sing. Miss Allair was smiling when Edmunster turned — smiling as if she, too, might begin to sing with satisfaction or shared amusement at any moment.

But regardless of how hard he tried, Edmunster couldn't feel a darned thing. Not anger, not even the gratification of having done the right thing. All he wanted to do was hold perfectly still, forever.

REUNION Michael Garrett

'But you don't really love me,' Carla sighed as she pushed Jason's persistent hand from her unsnapped jeans.

Jason Strong slumped against the back seat of his '66 Mustang, then rolled down a steamy window. Cool air rushed inside, bringing with it the endless chant of night creatures from the rural darkness outside.

Jason returned his attention to Carla. Moonlight glistened from teardrops that dampened her cheeks as she sobbed quietly at his side.

'We've been over this,' Jason complained. 'I've told you a thousand limes that I —»

'But not like you really meant it,' she interrupted. 'Not like it means forever.'

With a groan of frustration, Jason massaged his temples between the outstretched fingertips of his left hand. College was getting rough, and Vietnam was breathing down his neck. And now this unexpected restraint from Carla. He had hoped she would at least give in to heavier petting tonight. They had dated for weeks, both of them virgins, and Jason was determined to end that condition soon.

'Jason?' she interrupted his thoughts. 'Do you promise we'll always be together?'

'Of course!' he stormed impatiently.