VISCERA
AN ANTHOLOGY OF BIZARRE EROTICA
Edited by Cara Bruce
First Printing 2000, Published by Venus or Vixen Press
ISBN 0-9673638-0-2
Cover Art by Trevor Brown , Cover Design by Bonnie Barrett, Book Design by David Van Ness
Copyright © 2000 by Cara Bruce, All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publishers.
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A version of “Petty Intrusion” first appeared in Noirotica 2: Pulp Friction (Masquerade, 1997) “Knife” first appeared in Leatherwoman (Masquerade, 1993)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the following people for their guidance and support: Shawna Kenney, Dave Newman, Lisa Montanarelli, Thomas S. Roche, Marcy Sheiner, Missy Axelrod, Dani Bauter, and, of course, my family.
For more information: www.lifesabitchbooks.com
CONTENTS
Introduction
Bedroom Virology by Thomas S. Roche
The Decapitation Party by Paul Bradshaw
The Bang Gang by M. Christian
Nosferatu Meets Gamma House by Blag Dahlia
The Difference by Patty Cursed
Pure Love by Simon Sheppard
I Am Joe’s Penis by Sue D’Nimm
Petty Intrusion by Lydia Lunch
Knife by Carol Queen
Lifer by Astrid Fox
The Muse by m.i. blue
Wages of Faith by Michelle Scalise
Fingers by David Beran
Restoration by Heather Corinna
Blue by Jerry Juarez
Two Sides to Every Story by Dani Bauter
Now by Cecilia Tan
The Eucharist by Jarboe
In Her Wake by AmyJ. Rasmussen
Branded by Rebecca Kissel
Bethlehem’s Burning by Eve Rings
Crash 97 by Kevin Lano
A Girl on the Train by Sonia Greenfield
Cheng by Cara Bruce
Contributors
INTRODUCTION
“You know about the detachable heads, don’t you?”
—Baron Munchausen
In this part of the film Baron Munchausen is talking about the moon king, who constantly tries to separate his head from his body; disgusted by his own base desires and wanting to follow “otherworldly pursuits.” The age-old argument of body versus intellect rears its ugly head. But in real life one helps the other: our minds eroticize so our bodies can feel. Sometimes when our minds tell us things are bad it makes them more desirable, granting us the taboo.
Many of the stories in Viscera focus on taboo, erotica and death: the taboos of necrophilia, of blasphemous religious symbols and murder, all presented with their polar opposite— the life-giving force of sex. Pleasure mixed with pain, as well as shame, grief and fear.
When I came up with the idea for Viscera I was feeling numb—attempting to shut out pain. I daydreamed about throwing myself through windows and being cut with glass just to feel something. I also fucked like a banshee. I had sex more frequently, rougher and harder than I ever had in my life. All in the hopes of feeling something. I figured if neither the fear of death nor the pleasure in sex could make me feel again I didn’t know what could.
To be safe I decided to combine the two.
I asked for sick stories. I asked for murder, disgust and, of course, sex. I wanted pain, suffering, blood, guts, or just plain weirdness. Instead most of the stories I got made me laugh. They were so ridiculous I couldn’t help it: from a modern day Salome to a decapitation party; a frat boy’s date gone horribly wrong to a lonely night at the morgue. I thought I had needed to feel more pain to heal, or to feel the pain I thought I deserved. I didn’t. I needed to laugh.
Nevertheless, a good portion of Viscera is eerily beautiful or downright creepy. These stories are the ones that will probably turn you on when you pull up the covers and snuggle into bed with this book. So go ahead—if nothing else, I hope I make you feel something.
Cara Bruce
San Francisco, 1999
****
BEDROOM VIROLOGY
Thomas S. Roche
As she undresses in front of the mirror, she can see the outline of her pale flesh flickering. She takes off her suit coat, her skirt, kicks off her shoes. She unbuttons her blouse and stands in the blue-white light as it washes in waves, on-off-on—like lightning—over her half-clothed body.
“...stolen from a San Francisco hotel room earlier today. Police officials say this is not a general health threat for the people of San Francisco, but could be a threat...”
She shrugs off the blouse, runs her hands down her body. Neatly hooks her panties and slides them down. Takes the bra off last; she’s always liked the way her breasts look in under-wire. Slowly, she unhooks it, eases it over her tits. Her nipples are erect.
“...for whoever discovers the vial. The vial contains cultures...”
She shrugs off the bra. She takes a step back from the mirror, watches herself while she plays with her tits a little, while she runs her hand down the inside of her slightly-spread thighs. She slips a finger inside. She is dripping.
“...consists of a glass vial approximately two and one half inches across and eight inches wide. The vial contains a white gelatinous substance which is the medium for the virus culture...”
Still standing, she reaches out to where she’s laid the thick glass tube on the counter beside the sink. God, it’s fucking huge. Can she even take it? She purses her lips, licks two fingers with her swollen, hungry tongue and sticks them neatly inside her pussy. She moans softly as she feels her flesh closing around her fingers. Tight. Unyielding. But desirous.
“...vial is considered fragile, and if dropped could shatter, releasing the virus into the air...”
She inverts the thick glass vial, with one hand holding the plastic airtight lid, with the other—using just two fingers— guiding the head of the thing to the uppermost juncture of her lips. She starts teasing her clit, moaning softly and then louder as she draws the head around her erect member in little circles. It’s ridiculous to call it a head—it’s a smooth cylinder, its bottom rounded just so... perfect for fitting into tight spaces...
Why did she take it? It’s not like she needs the money, not really. But she had to—that doctor was stupid enough not to check her hotel door as she left. You should always check hotel doors. And she’d left the door just a slight bit ajar... oh, she couldn’t have just left it there, half-open, or maybe not half-open, but a little bit open at least... that would have been such a waste, to walk by without exploring a little. And then, once she was in the doctor’s room, among her things, among her dirty underwear on the bed and her disarrayed luggage... feeling the woman’s aura shot through the room, smelling her expensive perfume, once she’d seen the monogrammed leather bag. Well, how the fuck was she to know the doctor was a researcher? She’d just wanted to look through the bag, just to know she’d stolen it. But then, when she saw the vial, saw its simply too-perfect dimensions...
But of course, the moment she had known she was going to do it was the moment she heard the first news broadcast.
She’d been fighting this war with herself since childhood. Kleptomania, the doctors called it. But she knew better. It wasn’t just kleptomania. It was an addiction to risk. An addiction to danger.
She has her own name for it: Kleptophilia. What better way to consummate her union with danger, with theft? The best criminals do it for love, not money.
She watches herself in the flickering light, listens to her panting moans mingling with the news broadcast. It feels like the thing’s got a mind of its own—like the cultures inside are directing her actions, like the collective mind of the deadliest virus on the planet is fucking her—just as eager to screw her as she is to be screwed. But no, she tells herself that’s impossible. She has to guide the tip of the vial to her pussy.
She lets the vial nuzzle its way into the entrance to her cunt. Rocks back on her heels, takes a deep breath, lets it out as she pushes the vial home. Feels the tightness of her cunt resisting. Moans—in mingled pain, pleasure, and terror—as she feels the thing entering her, penetrating her. For a second she thinks she’s going to pull it out, it’s going to hurt her— but no, she gets it in. God, her pussy feels tight. Christ, that thing feels big in there. If she clamped her pussy-muscles down now, she’d pop the thing like a balloon. Shatter it, shred her flesh, inject herself with death. She’d crash and bleed before she finished coming.
But no—she’s going to come. She keeps fucking herself with the vial. It takes a dozen thrusts, hard thrusts into her while she works her clit, a dozen hard thrusts—then two dozen, then another dozen in rapid succession as she throws back her head and screams. Just as she reaches her climax she realizes her muscles are going to implode with tension—and the fear seizes her just at the moment her orgasm explodes through her. She totters on her feet as she hears the shattering glass—then as her head spins with asphyxia, her knees give way and she falls, hard on her ass, thrusting her hips up at the very last instant—
“...that’s right, I’ll say it again! We’re smashing low prices!”
The sound of breaking glass.
She can’t have been out for more than a minute. She shudders in fear and relief as she feels her ass against the hard, cold linoleum floor of the cheap motel bathroom. So cheap there’s not even a door—so she can see the plaid-jacketed used-car salesman throwing a sledgehammer through the window.
Delicately, she feels the entrance to her pussy, terror shivering inside her. But the only wetness she feels is her juice, leaking out of her as she eases the thick vial out of her cunt.
“As a follow-up to our previous story: Tonight, police and public health officials are asking what a top-level researcher was doing travelling with a vial full of deadly virus cultures.”
She knows what the good Doctor was doing with it. Engaging in a little virophilia.
Nothing like a little bedroom virology to get the blood moving.
Softly, she smiles. Stands up, walks to the bed. Tucks the vial, its outside slick with her secretions, under the pillow. Sits on the side of the bed, naked, and lights a cigarette. Smokes it, feeling the afterspasms of her orgasm.
“Repeat our earlier bulletin: A vial of potentially deadly virus cultures has been stolen from a San Francisco hotel room.”
She hits the remote control; the TV flickers and dies.
Methodically, she slides her stockings up her legs, hooks her garter belt and attaches them. Puts on her bra, climbs into her skirt and blouse. Packs her things in her single shoulder bag, slings it over her shoulder; tucks her clutch purse under her arm. Turns off the light. Exits the hotel room, leaving the vial under the pillow. Closes the door behind her.
She finds a house phone and dials 9-1-1.
Later, walking briskly down the corridor to the terminal, forty minutes before her flight, she pauses in mid-step, her heart beating faster all of a sudden, her breath catching in her throat. She finds a chair and her purse on the little ledge beside it. She rifles through her purse, takes out her wallet.
She digs until she finds the hotel check-in receipt.
Takes out the identification and credit card.
Checks the numbers carefully, just to make sure they aren’t hers. She smiles, takes a deep breath, mops her brow with a discarded towel she finds on the counter.
She puts her wallet away, slings her shoulder bag, puts her clutch purse under her arm again. Walks to the gate smiling and humming to herself, a spring in her step.
****
THE DECAPITATION PARTY
Paul Bradshaw
Cedric just wasn’t the same after being decapitated. He sat in the armchair, headless and immobile, with warm blood bubbling from the gaping point of separation. I had never known him to be so silent, and I recall thinking to myself: I ought to have beheaded my husband a long time ago.
Samantha was the first to arrive. I wasn’t really surprised, for I always regarded her as the most inquisitive of my close friends. Cedric remained in the chair, as I didn’t have the heart to remove his lifeless form, and what’s more I didn’t possess the strength to do so.
“Where is he then?” Samantha inquired with a sinister enthusiasm, rushing past me through the hallway and heading directly for the lounge.
I had placed the head on the coffee table beside the armchair, after I had composed myself of course. Immediately after I had committed the foul deed I found that my body was shaking violently. A claret pool spread across the formica, and I conjectured that an abnormal amount of cleaning would eventually be required. I watched Samantha intently; curious as to how she would react upon discovering Cedric in his headless state.
“Oh, my God!” she screamed, and I was almost forced to laugh facetiously, for her facial expression was both incredulous and fantastic.
“You didn’t believe me, did you?” I said.
She shook her head, apparently horror-stricken and unable to speak, standing stark still mere feet from the deceased body slumped in the chair. His blood trickled over his neck and onto his shirt, dark red and as thick as treacle.
“What made you do it, Lucy?” she asked with a trembling voice, obviously having regained her speaking abilities.
I recreated the events of the three hours previously in my mind, before beginning to relate the freak occurrence to my friend. It began like this: Cedric disturbingly preferred the television to my company. Indeed, he was in the act of watching some inane trash when the argument started. We seemed to quarrel more and more as the weeks passed, but I never expected our verbal combat to reach such a delirious conclusion.
“But surely that’s not reason to slick off his head,” debated Samantha.
“Perhaps not, but let me finish my story.”
Most times our contentious exchange of views resorted to sex. I don’t mean we ended up wrapped in each other’s arms and overcome with a morbid passion, as I regard that both foolhardy and unexciting. No, my meaning is that we began to argue on that subject, and that was when things got distressingly chaotic. Cedric revealed some frightful and sickening home truths concerning our shared intimacies, and I found myself buried beneath an avalanche of emotion.
“So what happened?” asked Samantha.
I then knew she was back to her usual prying self, as she was practically begging with her eyes for me to relinquish the gory details. However, before I was able to describe the bloodshed that took place in the lounge I heard the doorbell sound a second time. This caused us both to literally jump in fright, and I sort of half-expected Cedric to do the same, but then I realized how silly that particular notion was.
It was my other friend Rachel and I beckoned her inside, taking the bottle of wine she presented to me. I was shocked to receive such an offering, but then it dawned on me that the gathering I had arranged following the gruesome slaying—the get-together procured by way of a series of surreptitious telephone calls—could indeed be classed as an unholy celebration of my newly-discovered freedom.
“Jesus!” cried Rachel upon viewing Cedric’s corpse, and she collapsed on to the settee. “I think I need a drink.”
I obliged; as a matter of fact I hadn’t realized until then that I too required a shot of some alcohol-based beverage.
“Put some music on,” Samantha urged me.
I found the proceedings most macabre at that point, as I selected Lionel Richie from my extensive compact disc collection. The wine, the music, the brandy that Rachel and I began to share; it was turning into a party, an unnatural celebration of my husband’s savage death.
I continued the devilish tale I was recounting to Samantha just prior to Rachel’s arrival. It was one of those long-handled axes that Cedric kept in the garage for some unknown reason I could never understand, as he never seemed to use the implement. The hefty tool was quite sharp, but even then it took some minutes before the head was severed completely. Although my heart was pounding inside my chest I committed the act with great ease and abandon with little thought of the agonizing consequences, both for myself and for Cedric. It was only after I placed his dripping head upon the table that I came to my senses, and dashed to the bathroom to vomit horrendously.
“So what happens now?” asked Samantha.
“God knows. I just feel so confused.”
Rachel was silently demolishing the brandy, eyeing Cedric’s cold features as she drank her way to oblivion. She was certainly the quiet type, and I didn’t expect any hysterics from her. In fact I reckoned the both of them were taking the whole thing rather calmly. I wondered how my third friend would react to facing the decapitated Cedric.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” explained Melinda as she crossed the threshold with a bottle of Pinot Noir in her hand, “Glenn insisted on giving me a good rogering before I left. You know what he’s like!”
Melinda was bubbly and energetic, and completely gorgeous. I’d lost count of how many men she’d been involved with, but every one of them was a nefarious character in some way or another. She always dressed in as little clothing as she could get away with, and underwear was entirely out of the question as far as she was concerned.
“Let’s see then, is it true?” she remarked as she made her way along the hallway. “Oh, Lucy. I don’t believe it!”
It was all rather weird. Lionel Richie was singing, Samantha was observing Cedric with a terrible awe, Rachel was guzzling the spirit, and Melinda was standing in front of my unfortunate partner. My trio of friends, all sharing my horrible grief. At that moment I felt most relieved to have such faithful companions.
“You well and truly did it then, didn’t you Lucy?” said Melinda. “Come on, get that booze out. Let’s have a party!”
She was insatiable, dressed in her little white dress, her high heels, and nothing much else. From that moment on we began to really let our hair down. I put on more raucous music, Rachel organized the spirits and the wine, and Samantha remained with Cedric, reluctant to leave him for some unspeakable reason, bearing a strange fascination for his bleeding head and the stump of his neck.
“It must have taken a lot of guts to do such a thing,” said Samantha, her eyes still fixed on Cedric’s decapitated head.
“That’s right,” said Melinda, “I wouldn’t mind doing the same to Glenn, although it wouldn’t affect his brain that much.”
As I admired the subtlety of her fiendish joke I found myself recalling yet again the gross misdeed I had performed earlier; it was difficult to erase such a wrongdoing from my mind. I pictured an image of myself swinging the bloodied axe time after time, connecting with Cedric’s opened neck, the awful gurgling sounds that emanated from the back of his throat. Then Samantha interrupted my thoughts.
“Oh, my God!” she cried, “His eyes moved!”
We all turned abruptly to face Cedric’s head. At first I thought it was the drink causing her eyes to play tricks on her, but the events that followed proved my supposition to be incorrect.
“That’s impossible,” said Melinda. “There’s no way his eyes could move.”
“You’re imagining things,” I pointed out to her.
“Look!” Rachel suddenly screamed, pointing to my deceased husband’s groin area.
Our attentions were then turned in that direction, and I was horrified to observe the unique protuberance at the front of his trousers.