Aberrations (12 page)

Goat Boy says, “I hope you know I only help guys with small dicks.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m small.”

“Show me. Then we can get started.”

For a while, I stare at the red crescent on my pinky toe, where I ripped off most of toe nail the night before. Then I unbutton my jeans and present my shame.

“You call that small?” Goat Boy taps his crotch with his hoof and what looks like a large pimple appears between his legs.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Yeah, well.” Goat Boy stares at crotch until the mound disappears. “I guess you’re small enough.”

“Great.” I zip up.

The demon uses the remote control to scratch his back. “After we become one, you gotta think of a happy memory of the two of you together. You gotta think of this memory seven times a day, for seven days.”

“Seven days counting today?”

“Yeah, counting today.”

“Okay.”

“Alright then. Let’s do this.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

I pick up Goat Boy and he’s warm in my hands, like a pet with a fever. “Is this going to hurt you?”

Goat Boy bleats with what seems like laughter. “What the fuck do you think?”

At that point, I put Goat Boy in my mouth. He feels too big to swallow whole, so I chew him a few times. He only shrieks from within my skull for a moment before I crunch his throat.

I swallow, and for the next couple hours my burps taste like black licorice and ant poison.

After Monica kisses me hello, she frowns and suggests I get myself checked for gingivitis.

* * * * *

I feel like Peter Pan, lying in bed with my eyes closed, thinking of a happy thought.

The memory I choose is from four or five years ago.

In the memory, I’m rocking back and forth on a metal bar stool, watching Monica paint a dying horse in a field of wildflowers, or a polar bear stranded on an iceberg. I can’t remember the exact painting. The reason why I’m watching Monica paint is because she asked me to. In this sense, Monica’s nothing like me. She thrives with an audience, and withers without one, even when it comes to painting. Sometimes Monica calls me her muse, but I get the feeling that after a while, she forgets I’m sitting there behind her. She loses herself in her work, and loses me somewhere along the way.

Anyway, here I am, staring at the mole on the back of her neck, and out of the blue, I tell her I’m thinking of giving Carl my kidney. I can’t explain exactly why I say this to her, because giving Carl my kidney is the last thing in the world I want to do.

Monica turns around and says, “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” I say.

Then Monica smiles at me, and she gives me a look that I’ll never forget. She looks at me like I’m more than a husband to her.

She looks at me like I’m her hero.

* * * * *

It takes about a week to fully digest a demon, but by day two, I’m already feeling better about myself. As I please Rosalind with my tongue, I close my eyes and remember the time when I watched Monica paint a picture of our house in flames.

“I’m thinking of giving Carl my kidney,” I said.

Monica turned around, frowning. “Carl. Your cousin Carl.”

“Yes.”

“Do you really want to waste a kidney on a fucking wino? He’ll be dead by liver failure in a few years anyway.”

“He’s family.”

Monica sighed. Then she gave me a look that I’ll never forget. She looked at me like I was less than a husband to her.

She looked at me like I was her enemy.

Goat Boy must be doing his job, because after I leave Rosalind’s apartment and go home to Monica, I hardly feel guilty at all.

* * * * *

Now, Rosalind’s squirming on top of the bed and Monica’s squirming underneath, but for very different reasons. As Rosalind shrieks with pleasure, I imagine Monica screaming in silence, gagging on the black T-shirt she always wore when painting.

I close my eyes, and I remember the time I stood naked in the studio as Monica used her nylon rigger brush to paint my penis on her tiny canvas. With each little stroke, she giggled.

“I’m thinking of giving Carl my kidney,” I said.

Monica turned around, frowning. “Carl. Your cousin Carl.”

“Yes.”

“Why would you give your kidney to a fucking wino instead of your own wife?”

“But…you don’t need my kidney.”

“You have no fucking clue what I need, Matthew.”

“I’m sorry.”

Monica sighed. Then she gave me a look that I’ll never forget. She looked at me like I was less than a husband to her.

She looked at me like I was her prey.

After Monica knocked me to the floor on my stomach, she held me down with her hooves, and used her teeth to rip open my flesh.

“Monica, stop!” I said.

She bleated with laughter.

And as she chewed up my kidney, I screamed like a maggot from hell.

When the memory fades, I cum.

Even after everything Monica’s done to me, I’m still too human to finish her off. But I’m not worried.

After all, this is only day three.

Tested

by Lisa Morton

As Ben fought the wheel of the spinning Lexus, his chest pinned beneath the inflated airbag, his wife screaming from the passenger seat, everything was slowed down and magnified. He could see every tree picked out in the gliding headlights, he was deafened by the shriek of the tires on the rough asphalt, he felt a sharp snap as an axle was sheared beneath him, and one thought kept repeating in his head: Please God don’t let me be crushed please God don’t let there be blood please—

And then the car was still and it was over.

In that first second, as the flow of time returned to its normal speed, Ben looked down at himself. The airbag had already deflated and he was covered with a residue of white dust, his neck hurt and he couldn’t seem to stop shaking, but he was whole. He started to call out, “Angie,” then turned his head (a small eruption of pain) to look at his wife.

There was blood on her head from where a pine branch had smashed through the windshield, and her eyes weren’t open.

“Angie! Angela! Honey—!”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t even move.

Ben tried to reach for her and got tangled in his harness. He was struggling to release it when the sound came: An agonized bellow, a moan too deep and savage for any animal he knew.

He froze until the sound finished, then looked around frantically. The car had come to rest in a ditch by the side of the road, just below the shoulder. They were at a slight angle, tilted towards the car’s right side, and he could only see part of the roadway and the relentless rain forest. The sound had come from his left, behind the car. Whatever had made that noise was just a short distance behind them.

His mind raced back to the seconds before the crash: He’d been maneuvering the Lexus along the winding mountain road, driving through a patch of dense growth, the only travelers on this back country two-lane blacktop. And then something had appeared before the headlights, revealed as the road hairpinned. It had been huge — at least seven feet tall — and black, and fixed him with two startled eyes.

The car hit it. Ben had tried to swerve aside, but he’d felt the sickening crunch and the steering wheel had wrenched itself from his grip.

The impact had caused the Lexus to spin at least twice; Ben thought they’d jumped a log on the right and that had sheared one, maybe both, axles in two. The thing that had been hit had probably been thrown, and was now badly injured. It should have been killed.

But another shriek, this one closer, assured Ben it was still very much alive, and filled with the mindless fury of a wounded beast.

Ben’s first instinct was to start the car and get the hell out of there. Without thinking he tried the keys, but turning the ignition produced only a dry clicking sound. The windshield was smashed in front of Angie, but the tempered safety glass had held on the driver’s side, although it had spiderwebbed across Ben’s field of vision. He could see smoke pouring from the front end of the Lexus, even while the headlights were still functioning.

He thought of his cell phone next, and grabbed at his jacket pocket. There it was. He withdrew it, flipped it open — and saw that it wasn’t receiving a signal. He moved it around, saw its glowing face flicker uncertainly. If he got out of the car, walked around, maybe he could find a signal—

And the thing outside screeched again.

Ben locked the doors.

What was it out there? Ben tried to picture it in his mind’s eyes, the flash he’d had of it in the roadway. It had been on two feet, walking upright. Oh Christ, it hadn’t been a man, had it? A hiker, maybe? No, it had been covered with what looked like black fur, and had been too tall. A bear? That must have been it. He tried to recall facts about the wildlife of the Pacific Northwest. They were only two hours outside of Seattle, were there really bears here?

Of course he’d heard the other stories, the ones about the things that were neither bear nor human—but those were ridiculous, fairy tales manufactured by crackpots and conmen. Ben’s world was a well-ordered one that didn’t allow for such absurdities. He was a critical thinker, a strategist. He had an MBA, for Christ’s sake. He believed only in what could be proven—

A shadow crossed through the headlights.

Ben craned his neck, trying to find a spot of uncracked glass to peer through, but he saw only steam and trees. He thought he heard a scrabbling off to his left, but it was dark there and he couldn’t make out anything. Whatever it was, it had come from where he’d hit it, maybe ten yards back, and had circled around towards the front of the car.

He needed a weapon.

There was nothing in the car he could use. In the truck was a solid, pigiron crowbar; outside were sturdy branches and rocks.

In here, though, was his only chance for shelter.

He tried the cell phone again—nothing—then turned to his wife.

“Angie…can you hear me? Angie!”

Still unconscious. He tried to feel for a pulse in her neck, but it was sticky with warm blood. He pulled his fingers away quickly, then dove under the shattered windshield for the glove compartment and the tissues Angie always kept there. He tore the pack open with trembling fingers and wiped the blood off. He saw he’d left a smear on the glove compartment, and he started to dab at it until he realized how ridiculous it was. His wife was bleeding to death (maybe already dead), and he was worried about staining the glove compartment. He turned to her and tried to clean her neck, but the blood was still issuing from some wound and the entire pack of tissue was sopping in seconds. Nevertheless, he kept the soggy bundle pressed to her neck tightly, not even sure if that’s where the wound was.

As he did, he tried to force his breathing (when did it become so rapid?) to slow, his mind to focus. He thought about where they were—on a little-used back road that wound through the Washington state rain forest to the little French restaurant where they’d dined. The one Angie had read a rave review of in a national food magazine, and had wanted to go to, even though it was a two-hour drive. The meal had been spectacular, although neither Ben nor Angie had been in much of a mood to appreciate it. They’d started fighting before they’d even been seated. Ben had brought up the idea of the sailing vacation again, the one that involved just the two of them renting a boat alone on the high seas for two weeks, and Angie had exploded. A vacation, she’d reasoned, was something you did to relax, not put yourself in life-or-death situations. Why couldn’t they just enjoy two weeks in a Caribbean beach retreat? Was he going through some mid-life crisis ten years too early, or did he just feel some inexplicable need to prove his masculinity?

The fight at the restaurant had escalated and ended badly. Ben thought Angie was too unwilling to take risks. Angie thought Ben had been playing too many power games lately, that he’d brought them home from the office after the last motivational retreat.

Now Angie might be dying, by the side of this roadway at least an hour from help, and it would be partly his fault. He felt her blood and knew he loved her and couldn’t imagine life without her and wished to hell he could tell her that right now.

He had to get her out of this. It had been several minutes now since he’d last heard anything outside. If he could just find a signal, or pick up a good solid club…maybe he’d get lucky (he thought he deserved to, god knows) and flag down a passing car. They couldn’t be the only traffic out here.

He unlocked his door, then opened it slightly and listened. Nothing. He opened it wider. It creaked and stopped, only a few inches ajar. The frame must have been bent out of shape and he’d have to work to get out, plus he was at a disadvantageous angle. It would make noise.

But he had to risk it.

He flashed on his grandfather, the family’s one authentic war hero, who’d earned two purple hearts in World War II; he’d been a big, blustering man who’d liked to recount his exploits on the islands of the Pacific, of charging into battle and eating lunch on the bodies of  “dead Japs”. He knew his grandfather would have already had the door open and been out of the car; in his mind he saw his grandfather thumping his chest while his grandmother sat in a corner, smiling blankly and never saying a word. His grandfather had told Ben he’d never be a “real man” until he saw combat, and just before he’d died a few years ago he’d given Ben a copy of a book about “the greatest generation”, namely those like himself who’d fought in WW2. Ben had dutifully read the book, and had to admit he was envious: Up until now Ben’s life had been lived in classrooms and offices, without any chance at glory or raw experience. The closest he’d ever come to danger had been when his grandfather had taken him skiing at 14 and he’d broken a leg on his first quarter-mile run while the old man had laughed. Ben wanted to know what it was like to be really tested, not in a corporate boardroom, but a real life-or-death struggle. He’d desperately wanted to find that human, inner strength he thought he might possess, that sense of honor, of personal faith.

But this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. This was a situation where he had no control. No gun. No map. No general. All he had was something that he didn’t believe existed.