Ad Nauseam (6 page)

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“You gonna check or what?” Liza clasped her hands behind her back, clearly not intending to.

“Fuck. Whatever!” Chantal reached out, roughly grabbed the front of his pants, and pulled the zipper down, struggling with the button on the jeans for a moment before it gave. She pulled them down to his knees, taking his boxers with them.

“No hard-on, but it looks like he had a nasty case of
something.”
Chantal wiped her hands on her pants in disgust.

“Do you think it’s cuz we dropped him?”

“Christ, I don’t know.”

“So now what do we do? All that and it doesn’t even fucking work. Nice!”

“We try again tomorrow night, I guess. I’ll look and see what other deaths cause it. I know it has to be violent.”

“Are you shitting me? You want to do this
again?
”

Chantal looked at the dead man swinging from the beam, his blistered penis limp against his furry thigh. If they were lucky, the cops might think it was a suicide, but she wasn’t too confident in their luck. She looked Liza in the eye, her own gaze cold and determined.

“Might as well go for it. We’re already murderers.”

***

Liza knelt before the man in the dirt, trying hard to ignore his body odor. It was hard to do when he kept shoving her head down and mashing her nose into his matted pubic hair. She gagged as her mouth was assaulted by the taste of his bitter sweat, and he laughed.

“Come on now, girlie. I thought you was a pro?” He laughed again, swigging from a bottle of gin, then grabbed her head and gave her face a big, upward thrust. She tried to pull away, but he still held her by the hair. “Not so fast now. You and your little girlfriend made me some promises.”

“Yes, we did.” Chantal said from behind him, pressing a throw pillow to the back of his head with an ugly- looking revolver jammed against it. The shot was muffled, but it still seemed too loud in the quiet night. The wooded area wasn’t too far from the park where they had found him and lured him in with promises of booze and sex.

I hope no one heard that and called the cops,
Chantal thought.

Liza shrieked and crab-walked backwards, having been unable to avoid being splattered with blood and brains. The vomit she had tried to hold back erupted out of her mouth and down her blouse in a surprising torrent. She began to sob, tearing handfuls of grass out and scrubbing her face with it. Spying the bottle of gin still clutched in his hand, she pried it out and wiped the neck of the bottle with a clean spot on her shirt, before turning it up and draining it in one gulp. When she was done, she tossed it into the bushes, earning a glare from Chantal.

“Way to leave behind evidence, you idiot. Go get the damned bottle.”

Liza scowled back, but did as she was told. She grabbed a flashlight and shuffled off to the bushes. Returning with the empty bottle, she shoved it in her knapsack.

“Did it work?” She looked over at the dead guy, barely able to make him out in the dark. Only one streetlight was close enough to the wooded area to provide any light, but its glow barely penetrated the trees. They could see each other, but little else. Liza aimed the flashlight, the beam falling on his ruined face before she jerked it away and turned it on his exposed crotch. He had died with an erection, but as they watched, it faded. Along with their hopes.

Liza felt conflicted, upset it hadn’t worked, but relieved that one of them wouldn’t have to fuck the man. He was nasty enough
before
his face looked like grandma’s prize strawberry-rhubarb jam. She also didn’t know how they would’ve dragged his body somewhere remote enough to make their film, while being well-lit enough. The plan had been flawed from the beginning.

Chantal wasn’t taking it so well; she swore and sputtered as she kicked the dead man repeatedly in his flaccid cock.

“Stupid . . . fucking . . . idiotic . . . no dick . . . piece of shit! Why can’t one of you worthless fucks stay hard?” She finished up by spitting in his ruined face.

“Say, I’m not very smart, but isn’t that DNA?” Liza flinched when Chantal turned on her, her face a mask of hatred. The scar tissue twisting down one side was red with rage, and Chantal held her fist back, ready to clobber Liza. She stood that way for several seconds before Liza saw her physically struggling to calm herself. When she was under control again, she spoke.

“DNA won’t matter unless we get caught. And we
will
get caught if we don’t get this right soon and split town with the money.”

“Have you even talked to this guy? How do we know this is real and not some kinda set-up?” Liza felt near hysteria at the thought of getting caught.

“He’s for real, alright. I’ve talked to him.”

“When? How?”

“I answered his ad with email and talked to him on the phone.”

“The phone? This dude just gave you his number? Sounds like a fuckin cop to me!”

“No, he didn’t just
give
me his number. Calm down.” Chantal grabbed Liza by the shoulders and pinned her with a level gaze. “ I gave him my address in the e-mail, and the next day, some dude in a real nice suit and black car shows up at my door. I tried to ask him questions, but he just hands me this envelope and drives off. At first I thought I was being served for something, but then I realized I ain’t got nothing to be sued for. So I open the envelope and there’s this cheap cell phone in there, the kind you get at the department stores that you can pay as you go. In the phone was only one number, you know, in the address book. And I call it and it’s him. He says call me again when it’s a done deal.”

“Really? You don’t think it’s a cop?” Liza looked skeptical.

“No I don’t. But there’s gonna be plenty of cops looking for us if we don’t figure it out. We have to do it now. We get the shot, Dan gets his video, and we get paid so we can split.”

“Dan?”

“That’s what he said his name was.” Chantal waved it off as unimportant.

“So how we gonna do it?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out.”

Chantal and Liza searched the area for anything they might have left behind that could have fingerprints on it. She gave the orders and Liza obeyed, letting Chantal think she was smarter than she was, and that the other hooker would indeed figure something out.

***

Chantal scowled at the screen, her eyes tired from too much reading. She was getting frustrated at the lack of useful information on the internet. All she could come up with was that angel lust happened to the victims of roughly one in three violent deaths, mostly from hanging, gunshots to the head, or poisoning. Well, they had tried the first two and nothing had happened, but she wasn’t sure she could get her hands on any kind of real poison.

Will the third time be the charm?
She thought.
What if it’s not?
She was starting to lose hope. It had been two days since they offed the guy in the woods and she was fast running out of time to come up with something.

Thunderous pounding on the door interrupted Chantal’s musing, and she hurried to it, peaking out of the eyehole. Liza stood on the other side, her head whipping back and forth, looking everywhere at once. Chantal opened the door and Liza rushed in, closing it behind her, as if someone had followed her.

“Get your camera and come with me.” Liza said.

“What’s going on, Liza?”

“No time. I’ll explain on the way. Grab that cell phone from the rich dude, too. Hurry up!”

Chantal grabbed the stuff and shoved it in her purse, then followed Liza out the door. There was a light drizzle falling, and she wished she had grabbed a coat with a hood, but soon forgot her discomfort as Liza explained what happened that evening. By the time they reached the other woman’s front door, she felt flushed with excitement, and a little fear. Liza’s place looked the same as usual, with the exception of the dead guy sprawled across the bed. He appeared well-kept and clean, his gray hair neatly trimmed.

“Oh my god, Liza! Is it really?”

“Yep.” Liza pulled back the sheet thrown across the lower half of the otherwise naked corpse.

“No shit?” Chantal just stared, her stunned face making Liza giggle. “You did it. You fucking did it!”

“Yeah, well, this john rolls up and offers me a hundred bucks for some kink and I bring him back here. So we start getting it on and I start looking at the base of the lamp. I notice how heavy it is and I start thinking about how I could hit him with it. So he’s eating my pussy and doesn’t even notice that I grab the lamp and I hit him real hard in the back of the head. But it doesn’t kill him, just knocks him out, so I wrap the cord around his neck and start pulling. He was already hard when I hit him, but so was that asshole in the park, so I waited half an hour before I came to get you, scared that the boner was gonna go away, but it never did.” Liza finished in a rush, her face glowing with happiness.

“You did great! I can’t believe it. It sucks that he’s in your room, but we’ll figure out what to do about that later. Let’s get the camera set up and do this. Which one of us is gonna fuck him?”

“Wait now, I killed the dude, so I think it’s only fair that you fuck him.” Liza stuck her chin out, resolute in her logic.

“Okay, I’ll do the fucking, but you need to make sure you get good angles and stuff. We wanna give Dan his money’s worth so he doesn’t think about stiffin’ us.”

Liza started giggling and Chantal just stared. “What the fuck’s so funny?”

“Stiffin’!” Liza snorted.

“Oh for Christ’s sakes! Just get the camera!”

It took them fifteen minutes to get the room set up the way they wanted it, and another ten to adjust the lights to amplify the scene and minimize the shadows cast by the furniture. The john had been dead for well over an hour by the time Liza turned the camera on.

Chantal lubed up his erection, straddled the corpse, and slid onto the dead flesh.

“Do you think I should be using a condom?”

“I don’t know, Chantal. It’s not like he’s gonna cum or anything. What does it feel like?”

“It’s really hard but kinda weird. Not cold yet, but not warm either. At least he doesn’t smell like a homeless dude.”

“Crazy.”

“Yeah. Well, let’s do this. Remember to only get the good side of my face, okay?”

“Okay. Yeah, I will. Try to act like you like it.”

“I’m trying to, it’s just really weird. Make sure you get some shots of his cock sliding in and out. Close up, like.”

“I am. Real close up. Grab your tits and make a face like you’re moaning. We’ll edit the sound out. Now lean over and brush them up against his tongue since it’s sticking out like that. Go slow and play it up. That’s good. That’s hot. Do it again.”

“What the fuck? Did he just burp? Aw gross! That smells awful!”

“Try not to push on his stomach like that. I think there’s some shit squirting out when you do.”

“Just get the shots. I don’t know how long I can do this.”

Chantal performed and Liza taped. For over an hour it went on, until Chantal feared she may throw up from the smell of his stomach gases belching out of his mouth and into her face. She maintained her composure, though, thinking of the million dollars awaiting her.

When she felt they had enough, Chantal told Liza to shut the camera off, enduring one more gust of foul wind as she pressed on his chest to climb off of him.
What the hell did this guy eat?
She didn’t see Liza standing behind her until she turned around and bumped into her.

“What the fuck, Liza?” Something cold and hard pressed against her bare midriff.

“I’m sorry, Chantal. But I think I’ll be needing the whole million for myself.” Liza pushed the blade of the knife in as far as she could, wrenching and twisting when she met resistance. The shocked look on Chantal’s face was priceless.

Dumb bitch always thought she was so much smarter than me,
thought Liza.

Chantal fell to the floor, her hands slippery with her own blood, trying to pull the knife out of her guts.

The blade had gone upward, puncturing a lung and stopping her from drawing a breath to scream. As she lay dying on the floor, she could see Liza where she sat calmly at the table, waiting.

“Sorry. I guess I don’t need a best friend.” Liza watched as the life in Chantal’s eyes faded, then gathered a few belongings into a bag. She packed the camera and grabbed the phone out of Chantal’s purse. “You won’t be needing this.”

Grabbing a heavy coat off the hook on the back of the door, she walked out into the night, leaving Chantal’s body with that of the dead john.

***

Liza paced across the grass, stopping every few seconds to scan the park around her. Things hadn’t gone the way she had hoped when she called Dan. Just thinking about the conversation made her angry.

My deal was with Chantal, not you. I suppose I can work with you, but I’m going to need a little something extra.
Dan sounded cold and confident on the phone, and she couldn’t exactly argue with the man.
Take it or leave it. It’s not like you can take me to court for breach of contract.

“Where the fuck are you?” Liza spoke in a low voice. The longer she had to wait, the more antsy she became. It felt like she’d been pacing in the park for hours. Finally, a black sedan pulled up to the curb on a side street. The driver’s window was darkly tinted, the occupant little more than a shadow in the seat. Moving cautiously, she walked over to the vehicle.

When she was a few feet away, the driver’s window slid down several inches without a sound, giving her a partial view of a man’s face from the nose up. From what she could see, he was dark haired, but his eyes were hidden behind sunglasses.

“Liza?” The voice was even, emotionless.

“Who wants to know?”

“I’m an associate of Dan’s. Get in the car.”

“I was supposed to meet Dan here. I’m not dealing with anyone but Dan.” Liza raised her chin, her eyes narrowed.

“Dan doesn’t do this sort of thing, That’s what he pays
me
for. Get in or don’t. I’m leaving.” The window started to close as silently as it had opened.