allowed by law to practice his craft. Who still liked to keep his hands active. It was an ideal arrangement, and the discarded parts were safely burned in an industrial incinerator.
Elle had him begin with her foot.
She found that phantom pains were scarcely a problem when you had done away with something voluntarily. She grew new skin, and beneath it, it seemed, new nerves. It was an awakening, and while the world slept beneath snow, she was healed enough to give this new sexual organ its first workout. Found she could come without a single touch between her legs.
At the bookstore sympathy flowed freely, especially from Jude, and they all remarked what a wonderful attitude Ellen had in spite of her accident. She was deliberately vague on particulars, felt touched by Jude’s concern that it might now be more difficult for her to find a man, one who would overlook her handicap.
“If you have one tiny flaw,” Jude said, “they can turn around and be such cold-hearted bastards,” and then she smiled nervously and checked herself in a compact mirror. Ellen assumed it was time for another nip or tuck.
And Elle, with her mind already made up to proceed, wondered how she would ever be able to explain away the rest of her leg.
She was up and around again by spring, the itch of healing and new growth mostly behind her. Spending most of her free hours at the former church, crutching her way about as she explored both edifice and companions. They were an insular group, came to be with each other even when they left their clothes on. Of course — who else could they talk to? They’d cut themselves apart in more ways than one.
She often lay with Adam in the dying light of afternoon, both of them washed in colors the sun picked up as it 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.”
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
John Everson is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels
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.
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
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,
