Prey Drive (21 page)

Joe was patient and just let the man talk before interrupting with a single word.

“When?”

“Whenever you want. You can go tonight if you want. I’ve got a couple stiffs to take out in the morning. As long as that truck leaves the yard before they notice you’re gone and lock the place down, then you’re home free. You got anyone who can pick you up on the outside? Eventually they’re going to notice you’re gone. You want to be off that truck and on your way before they stop it and search it.”

“I may know somebody,” Joe said. “What’s your name by the way?”

“Nathan. Nathan Felizzi.”

“Okay, Nathan. Let’s do it tonight.”

Nathan smiled and seemed on the verge of jumping for joy. Then he paused and looked over Joe’s injuries.

“Are you sure you can make it?”

Joe considered it a moment. He wanted to get out of here so bad the idea of waiting even until the sunset was killing him. He needed to feed. He needed to find his grandfather and destroy the curse forever. He needed to be free in every sense of the word. But realistically, he’d probably die if he tried to escape now. At the very least, he’d be caught or wouldn’t have the strength to kill his grandfather when he finally found him. He needed to wait until he was stronger, but not too long. The hospital was the perfect place to escape from. If he missed this opportunity, he didn’t know when he’d get another.

“A week. Give me a week.”

“Awesome!”

Joe stared at the man, thinking how much he resembled his old friend, Frank. Older, pudgier, but otherwise the spitting image. He wondered if he’d taste the same.

“Will you be coming with me, Nathan?”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

“I don’t know. I think the screws would notice if we both left. I practically run this place. I wish you
could
take me with you though. I’d love to go on the run with you. Talk about a story to tell the grandkids.”

Joe was already imagining the many ways Nathan could come in handy on a long road trip. Joe watched Nathan as he continued talking about his love of horror novels and how he felt so lucky to have met the infamous serial killer, Joseph Miles, and how they were linked by destiny. He was starting to believe him. What else but destiny could have brought them together right when Joe’s appetite was at its peak? He imagined Nathan flopping around like a fish while Joe plopped sushi-sized morsels of flesh from his vivisected body, rooting around in the trustee’s guts with chopsticks.

“Okay, Joe,” Nathan whispered, shielding his face with one hand to block his face from any lip-reading inmates. “I’ll be back in the morning to talk more.”

Joe nodded and smiled. It was all coming together. He had a couple more people he needed to talk to. Even with another week to rehabilitate, there was no way he could get out of the prison with just him and Nathan. Not without some inside help. He needed to talk to Cindy. He would also need help on the outside and that meant getting in touch with Selene and Dirk.

“Nurse? Nurse? I need to make a phone call.”

Part IV

Yin Yang (Dead and Alive) 

1 dozen egg yolks 

7 1/2 cups ice water 

9 3/4 cups flour, sifted 

One small long pig (alive)

In a large bowl, place the egg yolks. Add iced water gradually, stirring (preferably with hashi(chopsticks)) and blending well. Add flour all at once. Stir BRIEFLY, well enough to coat but leave the lumps and bumps! 

To fry long pig, heat a large frying pan with 6-inches of oil (or more if necessary) and heat on high. Coat selected body parts in batter and fry until golden brown. Recommend restraints be used during this process as there will be much screaming and thrashing about during the cooking process. While coating the long pig's entire body up to the neck in batter and frying whole is preferred, this is often difficult. Frying them piece by piece is acceptable and still produces the desired freshness and crispiness. Long pig should still be alive and breathing, preferably still crying and moaning when served.

Thirty-Two

Waiting alone in the hotel room was maddening.

How dare they keep me from my Joseph
, Selene thought.
I’ll sue the fuck out of these bastards!

The more Selene thought about it, the angrier she became. It had been days since she’d arrived and no one would let her anywhere near her cannibal lover. She couldn’t even call him on the phone because there were no telephones in the prison hospital and the warden told her Joseph was still too weak to walk to a phone.

How could they let this happen?

She could not imagine Joseph ever being weak. He was like a force of nature. The warden said he’d been stabbed multiple times, but that he’d broken his attacker’s leg and shoulder. It was good to know he hadn’t just laid there like a punk and allowed himself to be victimized. That would have completely shattered her image of him. She didn’t know how anyone could have hurt her powerful super-predator. Part of her didn’t want to see Joseph laid up in a hospital, humbled, but she needed his curse in order to finally be free of her own. If she had to scoot his bed pan over and crawl into bed with him in order to get what she needed, she would.

Back in high school, they called her a “cold fish,” “ice princess,” “prude.” At first, the guys had all been afraid of her because of her father’s rumored Mafia connections. Then, it was her puritanical clothing and her conservative ideas, the product of a strict religious upbringing, that had branded her “unfuckable.” Even after Selene had shaken her Catholic guilt and deeply-ingrained aversion to sex, her inability to achieve an orgasm had solidified the painful labels. So, she’d begun faking it to fit in.

She feigned an interest in sex she didn’t really feel, and mimicked and then exaggerated the passion she saw in others. Sex was a dramatic performance done to convince her partners that she actually felt something, that she felt anything. She endured a long procession of inadequate lovers, lying beneath them as they grunted and thrust inside of her or lapped at her clit like they were in a race to the finish, trying to win a prize at a carnival in a maddening effort to bring her to orgasm until, frustrated and annoyed, seething in a silent fury, Selene would scream and moan and fake a quiver in her legs so they’d stop fumbling around with her private parts. When they were done, she quickly ushered them out the door, out of her sight.

By the time she was a junior in college, Selene had completely transformed herself. She wore suggestive clothing, tank-tops, baby T-shirts, short shorts and mini-skirts, walking and talking in a manner that would have made any man within eyesight think she was for sale. She looked and acted like a nymphomaniac, all to profess a sexuality she didn’t possess.

In her quest to avoid total asexuality, Selene began to experiment. She tried both women and men; sometimes simultaneously. The women were better, but in the end, she was still left teetering on the edge of orgasm, never finding someone who could tip her over that awesome precipice. She tried bondage, S&M, humiliation, both as a submissive and a dom. Again, she found the thrill exhilarating, like a rollercoaster that left her breathless, entertained, but far from satisfied. She participated in orgies, gangbangs, tried tantric sex, golden showers, skat, blood play, bestiality, nearly every conceivable act of debauchery known to man short of pederasty. Nothing worked, but every experience altered her, changed her, warped her.

Selene’s father had paid for her to go to Catholic school and wanted her to become a nun. Seeing his little girl strutting around with half her ass hanging out of her miniskirt had almost driven him insane. He was on the verge of disowning her and striking her from his will when, just a month ago, he was shot by an unknown assailant coming out of a whorehouse owned by one of his clients. His death was ruled an attempted robbery and Selene’s inheritance was secured. The only thing in the way of her and daddy’s millions was her pill-popping, bulimic, cosmetic-surgery-addicted stepmom with the drum-tight skin, basketball-sized, saline-filled mammaries, and sausage-shaped, collagen-injected lips. It hadn’t taken Selene long to feed her enough Xanax and vodka to kill her. Everyone assumed she’d overdosed trying to handle the grief of her husband’s death. No one suspected Selene.

When the police tried to question Selene, she’d cried so long and hard they’d given up and had never returned. Orgasms weren’t the only thing Selene had learned to fake well. They buried her stepmother a week ago. Now, Selene had all her daddy’s wealth and still couldn’t get a decent fuck to save her life.

The innocent, prudish Catholic girl she’d once been was a distant memory now. The idea of joining a monastery and becoming a nun, as her father had wished, was laughable considering all she’d experienced. Once, she’d actually taken it seriously. Sex hadn’t meant much to her anyway. Why not marry herself to the “Almighty” and live a life of celibacy? Now, it was almost inconceivable. She still believed in God and could technically still become a nun even after all her sexual trysts, but that would mean first giving a total confession. She’d have to tell some child-molesting priest about her homosexual experiences, the group sex, the bondage and whips and scalpels and cattle prods and dildos the size of a man’s arm, even her experience with a Doberman pinscher. None of that bothered her much. At least she wasn’t sodomizing little boys and girls, though she’d considered it more than once. Even what she’d done to her stepmother could be considered a mercy killing and she’d feel comfortable arguing the point. What worried her was what she’d done to that frat boy. That wasn’t something she could ever see herself copping to in a confessional. On the bright side, no one called Selene an ice princess anymore. Now, she was a slut, a pervert, and apparently a sadist, and had still never had an orgasm.

To date, her little experiment with cannibalism had been by far her most profound sexual experience. It had been her closest near-climax experience. The violence, the blood, even the taste of Mark’s pectoral muscle sautéed in butter and garlic, had been amazing. Biting his cock off while Mark was still alive had been the most exhilarating part, but the taste and texture of the raw meat had been unbearable. Eating the frat boy’s cooked flesh had tasted much better, but hadn’t given her the same thrill. There had to be a way to combine the two experiences. She had to try anyway, either that or wait another month for Joseph to get well enough for visitors. She remembered a dish she’d tried once on a trip to Beijing, China, for the 2008 Olympics. It had been a delicacy called “Yin Yang Fish.” Then, she’d thought it was the cruelest thing she’d ever seen. Now, it sounded like a wonderful idea.

Tired of sitting around the hotel room watching bad horror movies and reality TV shows about obnoxious teenagers and housewives from New Jersey, Selene decided to check out the hotel bar. First, she went online to find a local store that sold electric deep fryers. Just in case she got lucky.

Thirty-Three

Joe walked around the hospital, dragging his IV behind him as he traveled from his bed to the bathroom to the hallway and back three or four times. The doctors and nurses had made him walk the day after surgery. They said it helped prevent blood clots or something. He’d made a ritual of it ever since, gradually increasing his distance until he estimated he could now walk a mile. It wasn’t much, but it was progress and it might be just enough to get him out of here.

The phone call to Dirk was promising. His cousin volunteered to come into town this evening and find Selene. Together they would prepare everything for his escape. As many times as Joe had told his cousin that the prison phones were monitored, the kid had still almost given away the plan several times during the conversation.

“I need you to get a hold of Selene. I think she’s already in town. She’s been trying to get in to see me. Just tell her to hang tight. I’ll see her soon.”

“Don’t worry, Cuz. I’ll handle it.”

“Tell her there’s a truck that leaves the prison almost every morning, taking dead inmates to the crematorium. She might want to find out the truck’s route, where it stops, what roads it takes, where the crematorium is. You understand? And she might want to rent an SUV. Something big like a Navigator or an Expedition.”

“For what?”

“Just tell her.”

“Why not something fast like a Charger or a Mustang or even a Porsche or a Lamborghini? She can afford it with all that money she’s got.”

“Dirk. Just tell her what I told you, please.”

“Okay, sure. I just don’t see why you wouldn’t want something faster. I mean, if we get chased.”

“Dirk. All you’re doing is coming to visit me in prison. Why would you get chased? Now keep quiet and listen. I told you these lines are monitored.”

“Yeah, okay, Cuz.”

“Tell her she needs to get some hair clippers and sunglasses too.”

“Ohhhh! Okay. I got it. That’s smart. That way she can—”

“Shut up, Dirk. What did I tell you? Make sure she understands that I’m still injured.”

“Oh, that’s why you don’t want her to get a Porsche, huh? You can’t be hidin’ in a trunk or anything when you’re all stitched up, huh?”

“Hang up the phone, Dirk.”

“What?”

“Goodbye, Dirk. Remember what I told you to tell Selene.” “Okay, but—”

Joe slammed the phone down and looked around to see if anyone was watching him. No one seemed to be paying any attention to him, but he knew that didn’t mean they weren’t listening to his call from a control booth somewhere or taping it to listen to later. That idiot cousin of his had almost fucked everything up. Now, all that remained was for him to convince Cindy to help get him out of the hospital and down into the morgue. That would be the hardest part. Joe decided to do a couple more laps around the hospital. He was feeling good today.