Seeds of Fear

cheaper rates. Because he was a cop and could close it up anytime he wanted.

It was like eating your cake and having it too. Have sex with Celandine and strangle the head, tear at the skin, ravage the face. All without killing anything, because Celandine Tomei's decency was long buried.

Rexer thought of the jewel case of eyeballs. The cops passed a row of two-flats that displayed either plastic palm trees, plastic crucifixes, or promo photos of Richard M. Daley in the front windows.

Thunder rolled in the distance.

'The money mostly goes for reconstructive surgery,' Stelfreeze said. Both wondered what they would say to Valent. The heavens suddenly opened and the April rain came down.

Jack Stelfreeze had met Rexer in the hallway, all right. He had taken the smoking gun from his partner's shaking hands. Rexer had been disgusted by what he had seen in that room, what he had watched his own friend and sometimes partner doing with that deformed freak.

This was the part he tried to deny, even though Internal Affairs had all the facts:

Rexer had waited all of three heartbeats before pulling his privately owned.38 from his waistband and shooting at Valent. For what he was doing. For what he had been enjoying. The younger cop was taken by surprise, falling from the bed half-erect, his face smeared with the freak's lipstick. It made him look like a clown.

Two steps in then, before the freak could scream. Didn't matter, though, with the iron thunder of the gunshots. Rexer grabbed the deformed head, pulled it from its stalk of a neck, laying it over the freak's face like a pillow so he wouldn't have to see her pleading eyes as he blew her brains out. Because he felt pity for her.

The freak's body going limp, spasming once, scaring him. Stumbling down the stairs, meeting Stelfreeze, Mama Tomei already dialing 911 out of rote.

Nicholas Raymond Rexer smiling, happy, victorious.

Back on Belle Plaine, Rexer smiling from his window, a beautiful vantage point for watching a rabbit blown to bits by a Gran Torino with missing plates. Rexer smiling at the smear, waiting for the knock on the door, the gentle sound his fellow officers would make as they took him into custody, out of the crazy room and off to Stateville. The big and burly coppers making a polite taptaptap, like he was considered a damn psycho.

Keeping his trigger-grip at the ready, rolling the exercise balls in his palms. His own special kind of exercise balls, better than the ones at the Academy, the ones you had to buy at the shop on Racine where you bought your winter shirts and plastic coverings for caps when you're slated for traffic control in winter.

The exercise balls Rexer had in his hands, practicing to fire a gun he'd never hold again, were two small glassine eyeballs. They were gold-flecked and, of course, unstaring.

This story is for Lee Seymour.

I AM JOE'S PENIS Scott H. Urban

Sure, I'm curled up behind stone-washed jeans and briefs so old they're barely attached to the waistband, but I have ways of finding things out. For instance, I know Joe's chin is about twelve inches closer to the bar than it was about an hour ago, thanks to three whiskey sours.

It's almost Zero Hour at The Wail-Eyed. The beautiful people have already paired off and headed out for the Jacuzzis. The remainder — Joe included — are trying to decide just how desperate they are. Scan the options. Christ, what are we still doing here? Catch the bartender's eye. Things'll look better through another highball. Is it worth the night's warmth to wake up with someone you'd cross the street to avoid in daylight?

No, she's never gonna grace the cover of Cosmopolitan, Joe thinks, but when was the last time you were out with a model, huh? I try to tell him don't bother, it won't work, but does he listen? Of course not, he never does.

Back at her place, they clink glasses, dim the lights, and pull back the bedspread. She steps out of her slacks. Revealed are thick pasty-white thighs that would look better in front of a Greek temple. I don't want any part of this. As a matter of fact, I try to crawl back up inside.

'It's okay. We've both had a few. Let me see what I can do,' she offers.

She starts working me with her hand. I suppose it's good enough for the moment, because I stand up at attention. But it takes too long, and when she pulls away I begin to wilt like an hours-cut blossom on a hot afternoon. She stretches back against the stacked pillows. Joe positions himself between her knees. Both of them move with the exaggerated care of a lush trying to walk a straight line under the trooper's steely glare.

Talk about loose lips that could sink ships! I mean, let's face it. Great sex boils down to the gradual buildup of friction. Without something to work against. well, forget any fireworks. For all the friction these two have, they'd be better off trying to start a campfire by rubbing two bars of soap together. It's like diving into a sponge — no, worse, more like sinking into a platter of Jell-O.

Joe closes his eyes, tries to conjure up the face of the little nymphet in the skin flick he jerked off to last night. No good, his head is making him feel like the mattress is turning barrel rolls. She squeezes his ass, but I'm already in retreat. Joe slumps to the side with a groan.

'S'all right,' she murmurs, rubbing his shoulder. 'We'll try again in a li'l bit.'

Luckily they curl up and let their eyelids shut. Within minutes they're snoring in each other's face. By the time morning arrives, I'm ignored, quickly tucked away like some embarrassing old uncle who drools uncontrollably out of the corner of his mouth. They politely blow each other off and scurry to work.

I've got to do something. I can't go through that again. It's time to take charge, for Joe's sake as well as my own.

I wait until the following evening. Fortunately he didn't try to hit the bars; too much to do the next day. I let him drift into REM sleep. I despise looking in on his dreams; they're so predictable, I can't even get a Peeping Tom thrill out of them. Oh great — his mother, in a see-through negligee, pirouetting in front of him. Gimme a fuckin' break.

I begin forcing the tissue I'm made of — the corpus spongiosum — back up into the rest of Joe's body. The spongiosum contains cavities I can engorge with blood — that's how I pop a boner when I need it. I begin superseding — supplanting — the normal muscle tis sue with my own.

It's easy as far back as the scrotum, the anus, and the seminal vesicles. But all that's familiar territory. It's more difficult once I reach the lower abdomen. The deep abdominal muscles set up some resistance. I realize I can't encompass them entirely. I'm going to have to settle for a less-than-total takeover.

Deep within his Oedipal fantasy, Joe feels some thing moving up inside him. His stomach churns, and he draws his knees up toward his chest. I have to be careful. I don't want to make him so sick he wakes up. All I need is for some doctor to discover penile tissue running throughout Joe's body. Joe groans low in his throat and turns to the other side.

It's slow going up through the chest cavity and along the spine, but it gets easier with practice. By the time I'm spreading down through his arms and legs, I feel like an old pro.

It's a lucky thing the body works as a democratic unit.

I have the majority vote.

A week later. Joe's back at The Wail-Eyed. He tried to line up a date for the evening but hit bottom like a diver belly-flopping into an empty pool. I'm doing my best to keep him from drowning himself. He knows he came in here wanting to get blotto drunk. But now, three hours later, he's still on his second drink and doesn't even have a buzz on. He's been making eyes at this brunette, but she's hanging out with a bunch of her friends. Besides, she's not any better-looking than Miss Hand Job. As a matter of fact, I'm surprised she doesn't have a wheelbarrow beside her chair, to help her cart that ass around.

No, I didn't go to all that trouble so we could judge a dog contest. I'm more interested in the blonde in the corner booth. She's almost too beautiful to be in here. She's wearing a short floral print dress with a low scooped neckline. Her hair is piled on top of her head, with golden ringlets spilling down either side of her ears. Her legs look