Ad Nauseam (3 page)

Jimmy didn’t bother handling the guts this time, but he did retrieve the collar and toss it in the garbage can. When he returned and the slimy pile of intestines still lay there, he stomped his foot next to the hole. Sure enough, the guts disappeared in a flash. It left a larger hole behind, and the phantom fragrance that now made him uncomfortably hard after the evening’s exploits. Jimmy walked away to tend his garden.

After the gardening, Jimmy spent the better part of the day cleaning house. He didn’t know if Charlene would want to come home with him, or if he would even summon the courage to ask, but wanted to be prepared just in case. Hours of scrubbing and dusting chased away his hangover and left him spent but happy. He thought about having a beer for a reward, but then he remembered. Charlene wanted to go to a church function, and though he might do things just to irritate his mother’s specter, he certainly didn’t want to show up at a social hung-over. He had a feeling that one beer would end up being several.

The phone only rang twice before Charlene answered with her usual cheery demeanor. Jimmy found it much easier to speak to her on the phone. He actually felt
cool
as they chatted and made plans to meet at the picnic the following day. After a half an hour, Charlene said she needed to go and they exchanged their goodbyes, with promises of seeing one another soon. Jimmy fell into bed with a smile on his face.

He awoke around midnight feeling uneasy. It was hotter than hell in his little bedroom and the electric fan by the window pulled in humid air. He was also aroused to a painful degree, sporting the most impressive erection of his life. He lay there for a while; his mind foggy as he tried to determine what had disturbed his sleep. Though he had abstained from drinking that evening, he felt drunk and confused. Another warm breeze blew across his body and he noticed the smell. It was the odor from that hole, only strong enough that he could now smell it in the house. He
felt
it coating his body, teasing him with need.

I wonder if the hole uses that smell to attract its prey.
As quickly as this thought came, it was gone.

Still uncomfortably erect, Jimmy formed a fantasy in his mind about Charlene. He blended the scenes from the videos with her face, imagining her taking him in her mouth like those actresses had, willingly, eagerly.

Her mouth.
His mind skipped to the day before, the feeling of the hole tightening around his finger, tingling,
sucking
at his finger. He tried to push it away, but then his Mama crept in, her voice disgusted and scornful.

Figures you’d turn out like him. All you men are the same. Just like your Daddy, only worried about getting some whore to play with your worm!
Worm. He thought of the hole again, his mind pleasantly fuzzy. The hole. The tingly, sucking hole. The women on the video, sucking shiny purple penises into their crimson mouths. Did it tingle? From the looks on the men’s faces, he thought it just might.

Jimmy was out the back door and on the porch steps before he even realized he’d left his bed. The hot night air caressed his body where he stood, wearing nothing more than thin boxer shorts. He couldn’t see the hole yet, but the odor was strong, drifting over to him in almost tangible waves, luring him on. He should’ve been afraid. The piles of guts should’ve been warning enough to stay away. Jimmy moved as if in an intoxicating dream. He
told
himself it was a dream. Nothing could hurt him while he slept.

Jimmy dropped his boxers and sank down to his knees. Locating the hole with his hand, he could feel its slickness, ready for him like the ladies on the television. On hands and knees he eased forward, plunging himself into the warm, wet earth. The hole began to suck immediately, causing him to cry out with pleasure. The tingling felt so intense that it became almost painful. He bucked and shuddered as the ground tightened and pulled at him, his climax coming hard and fast, but still it went on.

Over and over he found completion, but still the hole sucked at him, the pressure changing from ecstasy to pain, then agony in a second. He cried out and tried to pull back, his limbs weak and worthless. Laying prone on the ground for what felt like hours and unable to struggle, Jimmy screamed his lungs raw, aware in one small, sane portion of his mind that this was no dream and his nearest neighbors were too far away to hear him.

Jimmy heard the smooching sounds of his body being sucked into the ground, inch by inch. His bones cracked like kindling. Electric fire coursed through his veins as his insides turned to liquid and were steadily consumed. Then his spine gave way in one brilliant flare of hot pain before he blessedly lost sensation in his body. His fragmenting mind conjured up the image of an insect, injecting its victim with paralyzing enzymes before slurping up the soupy insides left behind. He clearly heard a sound like a straw at the bottom of a milkshake, sucking up that last little bit of ice cream with noisy enthusiasm.

The last thing Jimmy heard, before the darkness claimed him for its own, was the phantom sound of his Mama’s voice.

Filthy, drunken whoremonger! I always knew you were a dirty, stupid boy!

***

Charlene had built up quite a head of steam on her way to Jimmy’s place, and by the time she pulled into the driveway next to his beat up old truck, she was more than ready to give him a piece of her mind. She’d been stood up by a lot of guys in the past, but this really took the cake.

I’ve been stood up by the goddamned village Idiot!
Jimmy had been mooning over her for the last year, practically drooling every time he got a glimpse of her ass or down her shirt, and he had the
nerve
to leave her at the damn picnic alone! The only reason she had even considered him was because she needed a date and he seemed nice, if a little slow. He was also kind of cute in a devoted puppy sort of way. She stomped around the garage, her hands balled into fists, sweat from the hot afternoon collecting in the small of her back and under her breasts.

Slowing as the smell hit her, Charlene stopped and looked around. It smelled like sex, heavy and musky. It seemed to come from near the little vegetable garden Jimmy obviously spent much time in. Wrinkling her nose against the odor, she felt an electric jolt of arousal that started in her chest and shot like lightning to her groin. Charlene gasped aloud at the power of the sensation, her gaze falling upon something gleaming in the sun several yards away. Sweating profusely and taking small sips of air, Charlene approached the mound. The throbbing between her thighs was so deep that she ached to press herself against something, a fence post,
anything,
to relieve it.

A stained pair of men’s boxers lay crumpled on the ground, next to a pile of intestines. Part of a pale organ, heavily veined in blue, protruded from a hole in the ground that was easily the size of her thigh. Alarmed, but still painfully aroused, and now starting to feel light headed, Charlene inspected the heap of guts, nudging it with her foot, unmindful of the fact that she wore only a pair of flip-flops. Her mouth opened in an
ooooh!
of surprise.

Charlene’s foot began to
tingle.

WIDOW

Dang it!

Susan swatted the back of her neck, responding to the sudden, searing pain. Her hand squashed something crunchy and soft. Sticky guts squirted between her fingers, causing her stomach to lurch. She slowly brought her hand up before her eyes.

Not a spider, anything but a spider,
she thought
.

She examined the crumpled black body and green gobs of insides stuck to her fingers. It was indeed a spider. Susan shuddered, repeatedly wiping her hand on a cardboard box to remove the mess.

The back of her neck still stinging, Susan slumped onto a nearby box. Tears filled her eyes.

I can’t even clean the basement without drama!
she thought.
Oh how Bill would chuckle at me if he could see this, crying over a spider bite.

Waves of revulsion and self-pity sent shivers through her body. Bill didn’t understand. He would never
get it.
He wasn’t a mother.

“It’s a clear cut case of Empty Nest Syndrome.” Bill had asserted in a smug tone that made Susan want to kick him in the shin. He’d been the first to notice the signs of depression as they had taken their toll on Susan, and he was quick to diagnose, as well. “You should find a hobby.”

For over twenty years, Susan had dedicated her life to the raising of their two children. Bill made enough money for her to stay home. Twenty-two years of cooking for, cleaning up after, and doing laundry for those children. Soccer games and dance classes, parent teacher conferences and school performances. She had wiped every nose, every tear, and their little butts when they were babies. Broken bones, first periods, first dates and first broken hearts had all been her domain.

Bill had dealt with none of it.

Their youngest daughter had followed in her sister’s footsteps and left for college a few months ago, leaving Susan with nothing to do and too much time on her hands. The big house and all its silence echoed faintly with memories. Her kids had been her whole life, and now she felt as empty as the house. She had nothing.

No
purpose.

It became her mission.
What will you do with yourself today, Susan? What is your purpose?

Bill had his
purpose
in every day life. Oh, sure he did. He had his job to go to five days a week with meetings and phone conversations. He had his football games on the weekends, which he watched while propped in his armchair relaxing after such a hard work week. He had his drinking as well, empty beer bottles and the occasional pint of hard stuff taking up more space in the garbage can lately. Of course, he also had that little slut at the office. The one he had been having an affair with for years.

Susan had known for a while now. The many nights that he worked late, only to come home smelling of perfume. Credit card receipts for mystery gifts that had never shown up under the Christmas tree. She hadn’t considered divorcing him. The embarrassment for both her and the girls would be too much to bear; besides, she was comfortable where she was.

She had everything she could possibly want, except a
purpose.

***

Bill lay snoring next to her when Susan awoke late in the night, her body soaked in sweat and wracked with chills. Her head pounded fiercely and waves of fever washed over her. The muscles spasmed in her neck, clenching into knots, as she scurried to the bathroom. She barely made it in time before heaving her dinner into the toilet, then further suffering an attack of diarrhea like she had never known.

Please let me die,
she thought as she sat on the pot with her face in the garbage can, losing fluids from both ends simultaneously.

After several minutes, the vomiting seemed to subside and there was nothing left within her to excrete, so Susan drew a warm bath. Weak and thoroughly spent, she climbed over the edge of the antique, claw-foot tub into the tepid water and settled in slowly. When the back of her neck touched the edge of the tub, she sat back up with a gasp.

Ouch!

Susan fingered the tender lump on her neck. The spider bite had swollen into a large, hard boil, throbbing beneath the skin. Careful not to slip, she got out of the tub and found her makeup mirror. Angling it so she could see her back reflected in the larger one above the sink, she examined the lump. It was an angry red around the edges, with a head of festering puss that looked as though it may burst at any moment, the skin stretched thin like the surface of an overinflated balloon.

Hmmmm,
Susan thought.
All this from a silly spider bite? I think I’m going to have to get this looked at by a doctor in the morning.

Some time during the early hours of morning, the boil on Susan’s neck burst, leaking foul yellow pus onto the ivory sheets. As the wound oozed, her fever broke and she traded in the fitful slumber of illness for a much more restful sleep.

***

Susan slept through the rustling of the sheets and the sound of Bill’s electric razor as he started his morning. She even slept through a full hour of her alarm’s blare later, before it finally gave up and shut itself off. It wasn’t until after lunch that Susan awoke, feeling, not groggy, but as refreshed as if she had just returned home from a long trip to the spa.

Her depression seemed to have lifted, as well. With a renewed energy and vitality that she hadn’t felt since her twenties, she got out of bed humming the tune of
Whistle While You Work
, a song from her daughter’s childhood that
she hadn’t thought about in years,
as she tucked the sheet corners under the mattress and smoothed the rumples in the blankets on the bed. And best of all, the pain her neck was gone.

Susan attacked the house with manic energy, cleaning and cooking at an almost frenzied pace. She busied herself with chores that she had put off for too long, things that weren’t part of her every week routine such as washing curtains and organizing closets. Then she baked muffins and cookies and breads, enjoying the task more than caring who would eat them. She felt a satisfaction in the work that had been missing for some time.

When Bill returned from work, late that evening, she met him at the door eagerly.

Ha! Work indeed!
she thought, as she caught the scent of soap on his skin. She could detect the musk of another woman as well. It was faint, but she could still smell it, and she felt her anger glow hot. She hadn’t cared about the affairs for a long time now, but tonight she wanted to rip his head off.

Bill stopped short when he saw the fury in her eyes. “What’s going on, Hon?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Susan forced a civil tone and tight smile. “I made your favorite dinner, stroganoff. Hurry, it’s getting cold.”