Ad Nauseam (22 page)

“What the hell?” He picked it up, reading the jagged writing on the top. No return address, just a name and a New York City address.
How the hell did you get here?
It was much too early for mail delivery and there were no postal markings on the box, anyhow. Someone must’ve hand delivered the box. Stew set it on the table and sat down on his porch swing, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Dominik Bettancourt. Now where do I know that name?”

SISTER ALICE’S SUITOR

Plop!

Alice leaned forward on the toilet. A wriggle of white had caught her attention and she looked down at the crotch of her panties pushed to her knees. A plump white worm stuck to the cotton, its eyeless front searching the air for food.

Oh God! Oh my God! It’s a maggot!

Alice dropped to her knees and turned to face the toilet, bile burning her throat as she leaned into the bowl to retch. She sat back and tried to hold it in at the last moment, but vomit splattered over her gown and onto the pristine bathroom floor. Clamping a hand across her mouth, she choked back a sob and fought a fresh wave of nausea, her eyes bulging out of her pale face. Cold sweat ran between her shoulder blades and she began to shake.

I’m dying and I can’t tell anyone!

She closed her eyes and prayed it would all go away. She opened them again, peered into the bowl, and shrank back at the sight. Dozens of maggots floated amongst her partially digested lunch, but they hadn’t come out of her mouth.

A band of pain tightened around her midsection, and she let out an involuntary
Oooh!
The labor was starting.

Alice crawled haltingly across the tile into her bedroom and pressed her face against the plush carpet as another ferocious contraction hit. She kicked off her nasty panties without a second thought. As the pain eased, she felt a half-hearted kick, causing her inexplicable panic.

She hadn’t wanted this pregnancy, had been so horrified by the circumstances behind the conception that she told no one these last nine months, secretly hoping she would miscarry. She had even tried to abort it herself with herbs and drugs, but to no avail. As the pregnancy progressed, as she grew larger and felt the infant stirring in her womb, Alice felt an attachment forming. She felt a mother’s love stir within her, causing her to abandon her quest to terminate the pregnancy. She feared for the baby now. What if the baby didn’t make it? What if she had damaged it? She knew this child wasn’t natural, but it didn’t matter. She loved it. No matter what it turned out to be, she would care for it and love it as a mother should. No one would take it from her. No one. She would kill for her child, with her bare hands if necessary.

Her baby would survive.

Alice clawed her way up the comforter and onto the bed where she laid back on the pillows and clutched at her swollen abdomen. The pains came quick and hard, and she tried to breathe shallowly through them like she read in the childbirth books, but it was difficult not to pant.

She clumsily peeled off her gown and spread her hands across her distended belly. Mottled, dark patches that had appeared months ago had now spread into a horribly bruised mass of purple and black flesh, tight, shiny, and somehow putrid looking, like the lividity of a week old corpse.

Her contractions became relentless.

Alice’s water broke with an alarming pop and foul smelling amniotic fluid gushed from between her thighs; her white sheets were now the dirty grey of used mop water. In the late afternoon sunlight, she could see the gleam of dark clots of blood and slimy, green mucus pooling on the sheets. She screamed as another cramp struck, leaning her head back and squeezing her eyes shut.

With her eyes closed in the half-trance of childbirth, Alice remembered back to a night nine months ago. As sick as it was, whenever she was overwhelmed she sought comfort in that night.

***

Alice earned the nickname “Sister Alice” decades before in college, being the last virgin in her dorm. Coeds had wagered on when she might give it up, most of them placing their money on never—a bet they would’ve won.

At forty-five, she was the stereotypical, dowdy librarian. Despite her mousy features, she perfected a stern countenance which silenced the rowdiest group of teens with merely a glance. Her work was her life. She returned home every night to a spinster’s cottage located on the edge of town. Small and tidy, she decorated it with doilies on nearly every surface and kept company with six cats. She had no other friends and nothing in the way of a social life. Her only living family was Sheila, a younger sister, happily married with three children and living across the country in New Hampshire.

On the verge of menopause, Alice had long ago given up on having a family of her own, something she had always desperately wanted. She was now content with her solitude and with her simple life. It didn’t even bother her that her romantic life was non-existent. She hadn’t had a real date since college, and even then, the captain of the chess club had quickly broken up with her, accusing her of being frigid and dull. Her lack of prospects was a subject that Sheila never failed to harp about in their bi-monthly phone conversations.

The phone calls were always the same. In the first half hour, Sheila would dominate with tales of her children and their various activities. Alice would struggle to sound interested and amused as Sheila recounted how well the oldest had done at her dance recital and how Junior had once again shoved peas up his nose. Then for about ten minutes Sheila would gush about her husband Frank and whatever wonderful thing he’d done for her lately, while Alice silently endured with gritted teeth. The conversation would then turn to Alice’s activities and Sheila questioning whether or not she had met any interesting men. This always led to at least fifteen minutes of Alice defending herself against her sister’s well-meant prying. Finally, it would end in an uncomfortable silence with terse goodbyes.

It had been a particularly hard day and Alice had so far consumed a half a bottle of red wine after coming home—something she rarely did—when the scheduled phone call came. She continued to drink while Sheila chatted on, and she was quite drunk when the conversation took the inevitable turn towards her own sorry, single existence.

“I just don’t know why you don’t do anything social, Alice. You certainly aren’t going to find Mr. Right sitting behind a desk all day, cataloguing dusty, old books.”

“Maybe there is no Mr. Right for me. Have you ever thought about that?” Alice felt proud that her voice carried only a hint of a slur. “Besides, I’m very busy at the library right now. I wouldn’t even have time to date if I wanted to.”

“But don’t you want to? I mean, I hate the idea of you festering away in that house all by yourself with nothing but those mangy cats for company! You need interaction, human interaction!”

“My cats are not mangy!” Alice snapped. “And has it ever occurred to you that maybe I don’t want a husband and kids? Maybe I don’t like goddamned children?!”

Sheila was silent for a while, and Alice felt instantly sorry as she searched for the right words to apologize when Sheila spoke again in a softer tone.

“I will pray for you, Alice. It’s all I can do. Maybe God can heal your bitter heart by bringing a wonderful man into your life.”

This was the final straw. Having also been deeply religious her entire life, but now drunk and furious at Sheila’s presumptions and meddling, Alice gripped the phone and spoke through tightly clenched teeth, words flowing out of her mouth before she could even consider the lack of wisdom behind them.

“You just go ahead and pray to God. Because I’m not going to. He hasn’t done a damn thing for me in that area. I think I will pray to the devil tonight; maybe he will send me a man.”

Alice hung up the phone without another word, hot tears of shame and regret stinging the backs of her eyes, and finished her bottle of wine in one long pull before stumbling off to bed. As her eyelids closed, the sound of her sister’s voice echoed in her mind. She flinched at the recollection of her own hostile words and pressed her eyelids tightly together to block them out. Soon enough, her persistence and the bottle of wine she’d had helped her off to the Land of Nod where a dream awaited her. A vivid dream. A sexual dream.

***

Alice was in the garden, the warm August mist thick around her body, obscuring her from passersby on the street. She had no memory of getting out of bed to come here, or of removing her gown and sensible panties. But here she stood. Bare to the world.

She ran her hands over her breasts, delighting in the moist feel of condensation on her flesh. Suddenly, she was aroused by the act of being so brazen, so nude in a place where she could be easily discovered. Her palm slid down her slightly doughy belly to tease between her thighs.

The mist parted and a young man stood before her in the haze, his pale, naked body glistening in the glimmer of the moonlight. No more than twenty, he was beautiful.

Alice’s eyes followed the muscled indentation of his hip as it curved deliciously toward his cock, which stood in impressive arousal. Her eyes widened. Despite his fierce erection, his skin lacked the flush of sex. Instead, his flesh was an unhealthy shade of grey, his eyes milky and unblinking marbles, and his throat opened from ear to ear in a grisly and gashed grin. She could see knobby cartilage in the mostly bloodless wound on his neck as her eyes took him in from head to toe.

For all his youthful sexuality, the man before her was obviously dead.

The sight of him should have sent Alice screaming into the night. But she did not fear him. She felt unable to resist placing her palm upon the cold, hard muscles that formed the ridge of his abdomen. It surprised her when he unexpectedly fell over, landing on his back with a meaty thud, his glazed eyes moving slowly up to her.

Stunned by this turn of events, Alice knelt by his side, the warm night air caressing her body as her eyes moved from his, and rested on his erection. A jolt of sexual awareness sizzled between her thighs. She knew she should be horrified by the feeling, disgusted by the corpse that lay before her, but she couldn’t quell her arousal. Years of burying her sexuality beneath the mundane details of life, came crashing down on her, causing a hunger that needed fulfillment, despite the morbid circumstances.

Up this close, she could smell him, a rotten, yet slightly sweet aroma. She still felt an overwhelming need to feel that rigid, young flesh inside her. She had no idea how his penis could be erect with no blood flow, but didn’t care. Instead she marveled at the thick, sturdy veins that ran darkly beneath the bluish skin.

He was dead, but he was here, and he was hers! Leave it to the devil to deliver a dead man to her door. Even in her dream she had vague recollections of issuing that challenge, and she would take what she could get. Finally she could know the carnal bliss of coupling with a man. She could experience all the pleasure that the girls in the dorm had moaned about, taunting her mercilessly.

Alice moved to straddle the boy, her hand caressing the silky, hard skin of his cock. It was cold as she guided it slowly into her own hot flesh; the delicious feeling of stretching to accommodate him caused her to groan aloud with pleasure.

He didn’t move, but remained erect, allowing her to slide and grind against him, building her own pace, her hands clawing at chilly, hard pectoral muscles. She wished he would touch her breasts, but his arms remained stiff at his sides, so she grabbed them herself, fondling and pinching her own nipples with abandon as she felt her orgasm approaching. Alice continued to ride him, rocking hard as her climax crashed over her in exquisite waves that seemed endless. He made an odd garbled sound, like a choked moan, and then his cock moved, spasming inside her as it gushed forth, flooding her insides with cold semen.

***

Alice slept in the morning after the dream until well after ten, the mid-morning light streaming through the blinds, assaulting her eyes. She hadn’t slept this late in years, but it was Sunday, her day off, so it didn’t matter.

Her head hurt from all the wine, but she felt a pleasant throbbing in her groin, and debated on whether to get up at all. Her thighs felt sticky, and she vaguely remembered her erotic dream.

Must’ve been a real doozy.

Throwing back the covers, she felt stunned to realize she was naked, having shed her sleeping garments in the night. Her hand flew up to her mouth and she uttered a horrified shriek when her gaze fell to her thighs. Opaque in places, a thick, black slime coated her skin from crotch to knee.

It smelled like dead fish rotting in the sun.

Alice jumped from her bed and ran to the adjacent bathroom, turning the water as hot as she could handle before scrubbing her body. She continued to wash long after the filth was gone, grunting out harsh sobs and shaking with disgust. Her mind refused to accept that the episode had been anything more than a perverse dream, despite the evidence that swirled down the drain. She got out and threw the soiled washcloths (it had taken three to remove all traces of the foul slime on her thighs) into the trash.

Wearing an old t-shirt and jeans, she had just begun stripping the linen from her bed when there was a knock at her door. She froze, suddenly nervous. No one ever came to her house. She debated ignoring it, her hair was still wet and she hadn’t bothered to put on a bra, so intent was she on cleaning up the bed. The knock came again, more insistent this time, and she went to answer.

A young man in a suit stood on her porch, his badge gleaming in the afternoon sunlight when he held it out for her inspection. He smiled at her, but it didn’t touch his eyes. Alice stared, wondering why a police officer was at her door.

Must be official business.

He cleared his throat and spoke. “I’m sorry to bother you. Miss . . . ”

“Collins. Alice Collins.”

“Ms. Collins. I am Detective Dunlavy and I’m here in response to a call from a pedestrian that saw something in your garden this morning when he was walking his dog.”