journalist named Thorndike McHatchet had the low-down on this sickening affair, as well as an amusing article entitled RAPIST CROSSED THE LINE TO MURDER, AND THEN WENT BACK TO RAPING AGAIN . . . WITH THE SAME VICTIM!
That’s when he heard the door open on the other side of the wall. He looked up at Greg, startled, although he’d been expecting it. “Give me the knife,” he whispered.
He glanced at the issue of
The music within the club stopped long enough for them to both hear a fly unzip, and then two rolled up twenties were pushed through one of the holes. After a moment of indecision, the consumer slid another five dollars through. Greg pocketed the money.
Von held his hand out for the knife, waving his fingers. Greg put something in it; it was a Swiss army knife. Von’s eyes flew open like window blinds. He got close to Greg’s ear and whispered as loudly as he dared, “Are you out of your mind? We’re not lost in the woods on a camping trip, you retard!”
“It’s all I’ve got,” Greg shot back.
The customer cleared his throat impatiently. Von looked down, and sure enough, the guy had eased his meat through one of the holes.
He gave Greg another disgusted look, and flicked out the Swiss army blade. He noted the faint beginnings of rust along its edge as he tentatively reached for the man’s engorged member, like a timid schoolgirl picking up a dead frog for dissection in a biology lab. It jumped in his hand when he finally seized it, and the guy moaned.
Von’s skin crawled, but the sleaze element was what had allowed for this whole caper in the first place after an amusing anecdote shared by a friend of theirs who got blown away just a few weeks ago, minding his own business at a stop light on the street corner of 37th and Garren as he walked home from the Electra Complex. The whole thing had been his idea, but he obviously didn’t have any use for it now after a shotgun blast to the face courtesy of some whack job Greg claimed to know from Movie Heaven. The fact that he had only been kidding when he said it was no deterrent to Von and Greg, who practically had dollar signs in their eyes.
“Use your teeth,” the man behind the wall gasped. “Please. I’ll pay extra—”
The request came as no surprise, but it still made him feel queasy, like those magazines where fellas wanted a high heel crammed in their dickhole.
In a passable falsetto, Von asked him to lean into the wall. The customer obeyed. Von had the knife poised over the base of the shaft like a guillotine. The touch of blade on skin earned a groan that almost made Von physically ill. The tendons in his forearm tightened as he gripped tightly and began sawing with the army knife.
“Oh, baby . . . that’s so sweet it’s almost painf—” And then the guy dispensed with the “almost” diagnosis and began bleating like a slaughtered lamb. The rust made the cutting a grueling process, and Von had to keep the organ in an ironclad grip while his other hand burrowed through the shaft. He did an admirable job of working from the initial wound, like a lumberjack burying his axe in the same groove swing after swing. The blood was deep red, gushing from the stump-in-progress like a surrogate orgasm. The guy struggled as his screams became almost feminine shrieks, which however heart-felt and desperate could not exceed the volume of “Too Fast for Love” on the club speakers. His knees had given out, but the member in Von’s hand could only elongate as the customer pushed off from the wall, trying to squirm free. Once the rusted blade had slit and hacked through enough of the shaft, the frantic gyration provided the final ingredient to the castration. The last inch and a quarter came free in a moist surge of ripping meat and veins.
Von stumbled backward, dropping genitalia and implement alike. A renewed spray of crimson jetted through the suck-hole and then through two more of the descending holes as the newly minted eunuch pitched over to his right and hit the deck, a faint thud barely audible on the other side of the wall and undoubtedly lost to the nearest bouncer beyond the door.
“Come on!’ Greg seized the severed sex organ and bolted.
Von slipped in the haphazard puddles of blood, but his sudden paranoia that Greg was trying to make off with the penis gave him the proper coordination to stand erect. He grabbed the knife with a blood-soaked hand and tore off after Greg. He was quick enough to catch the side door before it slammed shut behind his companion, and he emerged into a stifling wall of humidity.
Greg was tearing through his pockets in a mad search for his keys. The contraband was slumped on the roof, losing rigidity as blood tapered out and slid down the driver’s side window.
“I can’t find them!” he shouted in panic.
Von felt something uncomfortable digging at his thigh, and remembered he’d last used the keys to open the trunk for Angelique. He dug them out and tossed them over the roof to Greg, who dropped them in his haste. Four attempts later, the key slid in. Greg bounced across the seat to unlock Von’s side. Von was shutting his door as Greg turned the ignition, and Greg didn’t even pause to slam his own door until he was peeling out.
“Slow down!” Von snapped. “People act crazy trying to get
Greg eased up all of five miles per hour, gunning for the exit. He came dangerously close to sideswiping a Civic before hooking a right. The horn of the other car faded, though the driver raised a middle finger for good measure. Greg remained oblivious to the whole sequence, painfully unaware how close he’d come to blowing the whole deal. “We did it!” he whooped. “The most daring tool theft ever!”
“We’ll need to clean that blood off the windows soon as we get to some back roads,” Von said, praying the Civic didn’t chase after them. He glanced backward until he was sure there would be no road rage retaliation, his head almost lighter than air. The millwork of his veins and arteries decided to do their thing again. He exhaled and resumed his train of thought. “We’d never be able to explain to some pig why holy mother of God,
Greg plowed the brake pedal with both feet, the tires screeching and the body swerving uncertainly. He pulled an illegal U-turn into the thankfully empty oncoming road and punched the accelerator, hanging a left back onto Seymour Street and past a Burger King. The Electra Complex grew bigger, like a mouth about to swallow them.
“It’s by the back door!” Greg reasoned. “We didn’t bring it in after I set it on the roof, and it must’ve fell off.”
“
Greg had no reply for that as he barreled through the parking lot to approximately where they had had been before. “Shit, hang on,” he said as Von reached for the door handle. “There’s no light back here.” He put it back in reverse and flipped on the high beams. The car hitched slightly before it came to a stop.
Greg sprang out of the Nova, searching the lot frantically. Von moved more slowly, as though weighed down by a heavy heart. He immediately walked in front of the car, into the glare of the headlights, and quietly said, “Here.”
Greg followed Von’s gaze and gasped in horror.
“That’s our jillion dollars,” Von said, pointing. “You just made road kill out of our meal ticket, sumbitch.”
Greg dropped to his knees in horror and disbelief. His dramatic collapse afforded him a closer look, which he held as though the organ would regenerate back to its original—and surely pricier—form. The member was curiously white now, all its blood shot through the vessels and glans by the weight of the car; white except for the distinctive treads of Michelin tires. What had been inserted through the suck-hole just minutes ago now resembled something you’d fling on a plate with a spatula and douse with maple syrup.
“We gotta get outta here,” Von announced. “We can’t let him know we got nothing to bargain with. We’ll have to take it with us.”
“Him” was Edward Rochester, the latest addition to the men’s soprano choir. He blew a thousand bucks a night at the Complex, and seemed to arrive in a different luxury car each time. On Saturdays at 9:45, he always visited the Vacuum. Even a destitute man would find five million dollars an agreeable price for his lovewand, so Von and Greg figured Edward would be only too happy to ante up—and right quick at that. Every second counted.
Greg gave Von a doubtful look, but made talons of his fingers and tried to slip them between the flattened organ and the asphalt. Von worked the other side. It was like trying to peel the label off a packaging envelope— getting a sizable piece to come up with no problem and then losing it as it tore from its body. The member was the
