This Is The Way The World Ends
An anthology of apocalyptic erotica
Edited by Catherine Leary
A Freaky Fountain Press anthology
Published by Freaky Fountain Press at Smashwords.
This Is The Way The World Ends is copyright 2011 by Freaky Fountain Press. All rights reserved.
Artwork on the cover, “Train Commute, Toyko Series 1 of 5” is copyright 2011 by Rebecca Meredith.
Cover font is Uglyface, copyright ©1996 by Greg Meronek.
Registered with Library and Archives Canada. ISBN 978-0-9866812-3-3
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.
All characters depicted as engaging in sexual acts in this book are eighteen years of age or older.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.
Dedication
For Mama Siamese
and Ivan:
Thank you for loving me no matter what.
Acknowledgments
Catherine
would like to thank the authors for their bravery, their diligence,
and their unwavering attention to their craft. Without their
imagination and hard work, this anthology would not be possible.
She
also wishes to thank the following people for their unwavering
support of her over the years: Robin, Sian, Cindy, Lili, Alex,
Bayley, Danielle, Erika, Piro, Liv, Blythe, and Amanda. Hugs, kisses,
fanfic, and a glass of wine: to the work. You guys are the best
friends ever.
A note about trigger warnings
Being “triggered” is when someone has experienced psychological trauma in the past, and as a result, experiences psychological distress in the current time when they read, see, or hear about something similar to their experience. A “trigger” is something that causes a particular person to re-experience some of the emotions or sensations of their past trauma.
Due to the nature of Freaky Fountain content, our publications may have a higher risk of triggering people. As we don’t wish to cause our readers distress, we have provided a “trigger warning” list at the back of the book (check the Table of Contents for the exact page number). If you have triggers, you can scan the Trigger Warning list to see which stories you may want to avoid.
(Note that triggers are different from “squicks”; squicks may leave people feeling disgusted or mildly disturbed, but they are not psychologically traumatizing. Common squicks might be necrophilia, bestiality, or sex play involving unusual bodily fluids. We do not warn for squicks.)
The triggers we warn for are: domestic violence, child abuse, incest (consensual), incest (non-consensual), rape or dubious consent, drug and alcohol use, body issues/eating disorders, self-injury, cutting, extreme violence, and some other common triggers.
Though we do our best to make sure that the Trigger Warning list is as complete and as detailed as possible, triggers may sometimes slip through the cracks, and while the Trigger Warning list is a helpful tool for helping you decide which stories you’d like to read, ultimately the decision to read some or all of our material is your own. Any psychological or other consequences thereof are your own responsibility.
Table of Contents
1. Dedication and Acknowledgments
7. man/woman
8. Sparks
11. Come On Down
13. Blood Plague
Introduction
For as long as I can remember, I have held a special love for dystopias of all kinds. I devoured them in my growing-up years and they filled my imagination with images of human struggle set on a sparse stage---early in my life, I saw the apocalyptic story as a device to peel back the layers of human existence, plunging deep, searching for a way to lay bare the core.
Then one day, as I was enjoying my DVD copy of V for Vendetta, it occurred to me: where, in all of these humanity-driven dystopias, is the sex? Not the familiar we-must-save-the-world sex, but the real sex, the raw stuff triggered by the gritty unpleasantness of day-to-day survival, the desperation, the rage, the primal love, the defiance? When it came time for me to choose the theme for this anthology, apocalyptic sex was a natural choice.
I
tossed that question out into a sea of writers and hooked ten unique
answers. For me and for you, they have built a pretty box and filled
it with angels and apples, death and rebirth, aliens and vampires,
personal devastation and global annihilation, all of it held together
with the glue of sex: steamy sex, angry sex, desperate sex,
negotiated sex.
Enjoy.
Catherine
We Angels Eat Roses
Gigi Brevard
D hit the deck and rolled underneath the pharmacy counter in a single fluid motion. From beyond his hiding spot came the crunch of teeth on glass. Was it ten feet away? Twenty? Less than three days without Adderall, and already his brain struggled to determine the origin of any sound save for that of his own surging blood. His fingers closed more tightly around the tangerine-colored bottle he’d looted. He prayed it would kick in soon.
“Hello?” called a tenor voice choked with blood. “Anyone in here?”
The sound of feet crunching on glass differed from that of teeth. Through anxiety that felt like a million fish flopping in his brain, D forced himself to hear that difference. The volume, the tonality, the direction.
Better.
His trembling hands stilled. But he kept low just in case; fixing his eyes on the fluorescent lights in the ceiling that had long since ceased to glow, the shelves strewn with empty bottles in every flavor sans his preference, the carpet with its… how many shades of gray? He counted. One, two. Plus some dots of yellow, turquoise, beige, and pink. Looking closely, he saw dots within dots. Every color of the spectrum existed in that carpet. One just had to know where to look.
The tenor wasn’t alone. Two more sets of footsteps followed him, stepping over the remnants of their glass meal and into a supermarket stocked wall to wall with real food. Bagged, dried, canned… all here, untouched. You sick bastards. Those of us who are left should be ruling the world right now.
“Hey,” a female voice reached D’s ears from slightly behind the tenor. As fashion dictated, she wore no shoes. D heard the dainty touch of her bare feet juxtaposed with the heavy fall of the tenor’s loafers. “We’re not gonna hurt you. We just wanna see if you got any food.”
In this game of manhunt that was all their lives, she may have been telling the truth. Or she may be itching to try out a new weapon on someone with whom she hadn’t yet made a truce.
“Come out,” a third voice encouraged. “You won’t be harmed.”
This voice destroyed all D’s defenses. It sounded female, yes. But with no trace of glass or ash or plastic. Perfectly clear, resonant. Glorious.
He started shaking again despite the drug in his system. Had they invented some new vocal modifier? Had vintage voices become sexy and chic? Or did they travel with someone like D… someone who hadn’t obliterated her voice box by eating the inedible?
He named each color in the carpet one more time, steadying his heartbeat; then stood.
The man whirled. Blood trickled from the cracks in his lips and the corners of his mouth. Blood stained his shirt, too, but not the same blood. The shirt was several sizes too small for him and made of spandex and lace. It might once have belonged to a twelve-year-old or a fat six-year-old. When D saw it, he knew he’d made a mistake.
The man approached. His female companions flanked him, composing a triangular formation. Both stood a full head taller than the man, of fashionable height. They wore enough lingerie to be considered modest by the majority. Nonetheless, D’s cock twitched in his pants. One was black, one Caucasian. Wings sprouted from their backs. D wondered if he had overdosed in his impatience to feel the Adderall’s effect. Maybe these were real angels, coming to take him away. But more likely, because their mouths were also rimmed with blood and tiny bits of glass, they were corporeal forms of Satan: commonly known as former lingerie models.
“Why were you hiding?” the man laughed. “Wanna keep your shirt, huh?”
The white model echoed his laughter, hacking up shards of the supermarket door in the process.
The man drew close. He leaned on the counter, eyes flickering over the cluttered shelves behind D. “Well, barkeep. What’s your special tonight?”
“Barkeep? You and your LESO words, man.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess that may have been before your time.”
“Just get the pills, J,” the white woman rasped.
D’s eyes riveted on the black woman. By process of elimination, it must be she whose voice had brought him out of hiding. She was prettier than the other. Her face lacked definition, as if he observed her through a soft focus lens. It struck him that she had no facial surgeries. Not even the usual ones. What had possessed her, then, to get those wings?
“All right, so you control the pills at this store.” The man shrugged. “I get that. You selling, or what? We haven’t got much to offer.”
“I don’t want anything.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You crazy, man? There’s gotta be something. What, you some psycho killer? You gonna psycho killer us to death if we take your drugs? Or maybe even if we don’t? You sick fuck.” It was a joke. They knew he didn’t condone blood fashion, despite his red-stained shirt. They knew he’d either pinched it from a corpse or broken into an IHOP and sprayed strawberry syrup all over it. He was not one of them.
“Nah,” D assured. “I got what I wanted outta this shithole. The rest is yours.”
J cocked his head. The white angel’s smirk deepened. The black angel’s face remained expressionless.
“And what is it,” J asked, leaning forward so far that D could smell the bile on his breath, “that you got?”
What the hell, D thought, and held out the bottle for inspection. Adderall wasn’t cool. They wouldn’t take it from him.
J took it and glanced over the label. Then, grinning, he held it up for the angels to see. “Adderall,” he announced. “Adderall was what this guy wanted.”
The white angel rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah fucking right. He’s hiding all the good shit, J. Kick his ass.”
The world moved into a tragically familiar slow motion dance. D tore his eyes from those of the black angel to duck under the counter as J reached into his belt for a handgun.
D’s mom was LESO, or Liberal Elite Surgery Only. Politically she leaned slightly right of center, but the term had lost its literal meaning by the time anyone got around to using it on her. Instead it served as a derogatory description of someone who A) went to college, and B) could count his or her cosmetic surgeries on two hands. Hers were boobs, butt, leg extensions, two facelifts, root color alteration, nail color alteration, lip injection, chin lift, and tummy tuck. She insisted on calling him David, and his sister Ginny. D and G didn’t sound personal enough to her. When he looked into her eyes, there was some semblance of his birth mother there. He could count on her to look the same two days in a row.
Not so their neighbors. K had a vaginal opening under each armpit, and her skin swirled with LiveTats of giraffe skin and snake scales. L was surgically attached to a miniature poodle whose root color alteration caused the fur to grow in iridescent purple and green. Ginny lived in anticipation of what they’d wear next.
David wondered if his mom regretted being lame. While most stay-at-home parents staved off boredom with the latest clothes and electronics, she had started a line of salad dressings; and found little time for the simple pleasures in which every other citizen of Miami indulged on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, the market sucked for salad dressing. That became apparent the night K and L swept in butt naked underneath the plastic dry cleaning bags they wore over their heads.
“Is that salad you ordered for dinner?” L shrilled as David’s mom removed a bowl of shredded greens from the Express Tube. Often L let the poodle do her emotional dirty work. Any rumble of disagreement from its throat could be interpreted as if it had come from L herself. But the poodle just stared with glassy eyes from underneath the dry cleaning bag. It shared a set of lungs with its mistress, so David couldn’t tell which of them caused their chest to heave so rapidly. All he knew was that it was impolite to stare at that particular area long enough to figure it out.
“Yeah,” confirmed his mom. “I told you, I make salad dressing now.”
“Still?” K exclaimed. “You started, like, three months ago.”
“I know. And the discouraging part is, I’ve barely sold any.”
“Discouraging. Haha, you’re too much.” K lit a Vodka-Red Bull flavored cigarette. The smoke filled her bag so they could no longer see her face. “What did we tell you about those LESO words, C?”
“And salad is so old it’s not even cool enough to be vintage,” L added, snatching the lighter.
“What do you two eat, then?” C asked, pressing a button on her automated salad tongs to mix in the dressing.
“I’ll show you.” K groped the counter for an ashtray. David held it up to her. His sister shot him a jealous look through the open door of their parents’ room, where she rooted through the dry cleaning pile for a sufficient bag.
“Thanks.” K crushed her cigarette out. Then she bit down on it.
Hearing the gasps, Ginny ran into the kitchen. Her carrot-colored curls were so long she almost tripped over them. Like many young girls, she wouldn’t let a pair of scissors within ten feet of her hair. “What? What did I miss?”
K tore off the burnt end of the cigarette, chewed, and swallowed. “Isn’t that badass?”
“Yes!” said Ginny. “Can I have a bite? Please?”
“Sweetheart,” said her mom, “dieting isn’t for kids. You’re thin enough.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said L. “M Cyrus’s daughter is only six, and M says it’s done wonders for her.”
“No. I was a big fan of Miley growing up, but I don’t need her telling me how to raise my family.”
G burst into tears. “That is so unfair!”
C brought the salad bowl to the living room so they could eat in their VR helmets. “Life’s not fair,” she called over her shoulder.
K lit her cigarette again. Took another puff. Crushed it out. Took a bite. “You kids know your mom is lame, right?”
David kept quiet. He was eleven, and everyone insisted that by this age he should no longer love his mother. Sticking up for her would do neither of them any favors in the cool department.
“Yeah.” Ginny rolled her eyes. Two years her brother’s junior, she had already learned to shun the right people.
“It sucks that she won’t let you diet. She lets you exercise, right?”
“Sure.”
K laid her cigarette in the ashtray. “Wanna see a cool new workout? They just started this class at my gym. It’s like fashion and exercise at the same time. Plus it keeps the lame people out of your life.”
“Oooooh, let me see!” cried Ginny.
K grabbed a knife from the counter and stood by the living room door.
C’s voice called, “Come on in, kids. We need to say our prayers before the show starts.”
“I have a better idea,” K called back. “Why don’t you come back in here for a sec?”
David swallowed a very uncool word of warning. This couldn’t be real. K was his neighbor, his friend, and she was considered by the majority to be perfectly stable. What did she have to gain by bringing his worst nightmare to life?
So he just watched as his mother trotted in. Watched as K lunged forward and buried the knife deep in her stomach.
C’s eyes widened. She gripped the doorframe. A feeble choking sound struggled up from deep in her larynx. Blood gushed from the wound, staining her shirt. Even through his shock, David realized there was a rhythm to it. Slow. GuuuuuUSH… guuuuuuuuuuUSH… guuuuuuuuuuuuuuUSH…
K gave the knife a good twist, then pulled it out. “Quick! Help me get her shirt off.”
Ginny hopped up. She took her mother’s sleeve in one small well-manicured hand, lower hem in the other.
“This part tones your arms,” K explained, tugging hard to guide the shirt over her victim’s breast implants. “Plus it gets your heart rate up like nothing else.”
C sat heavily. Her daughter and neighbor followed her down, prodding her arms into position above her head. Her eyelids fluttered and shut. The wound no longer gushed, merely pulsed. PuuuuuuuuuuULSE… pulse… pulse…… pulse.
Her back hit the floor a split second after the shirt came off.
Ginny cheered. K waved the extracted garment like a flag.
L screamed. David looked at her. Here was the sanity he needed. Here was an adult on his side, on his mother’s side. An adult who would know what to do. His body tensed, waiting to follow whatever orders she gave. Would she tell him to call the police? Did she know how to stop the bleeding? Damn his heart, pounding in his ears! He held his breath, fearing he would miss the most important directive ever given, fearing he would cost his mother her life.
“My dog,” L groaned. “My poor, poor dog.”
The poodle had suffocated. It stared unblinking at the opposite wall, eyes cloudy with reflected smoke. Its tongue lolled, long and discolored, dropping no drool on L’s shoulder. The mouth was dry, the lips pulled back over the teeth, as if the poodle had created a horrifying mask with the strength of its last wish.
K laughed. L shook her head, horrified by the lack of empathy.
D’s emotions and perceptions scattered in all directions. His vision blurred. His hands shook. Though he didn’t know it yet, that was the first time he needed Adderall.
Ten years later, J fired his first round over D’s head. D rolled several feet to the right. The next two rounds put holes in the wall under the counter. If he’d stayed, those holes would have bored into his head.
He paused, ready to move again. Few people could locate more than three rounds at a time nowadays, but D knew that anyone with enough connections to locate three could potentially locate four.
J’s heavy footsteps sounded. Another round went off.
D flinched. Not fast enough. He looked down at his shirt, expecting to see the red stains multiply.
Nothing. Miss.
The Adderall in his system informed him that the fourth sound hadn’t come from the same gun. Damn. Now they’re all firing at me. He rolled again and flattened himself, pressing his stomach hard into the floor. There were no more holes in the wall. That last one had been a lousy shot.
Or had it? He thought of the black angel’s soft, unmarred features; of her silence while the others laughed. Maybe the shot from the second gun had hit its mark, after all.
J’s footsteps took on a bizarre pattern. It sounded as if he were tap-dancing. Then there was a loud crash.
“What the fuck?” the white model shouted.
Another shot. Bare feet tap dancing. Another crash.
An aluminum can rattled across the terrazzo floor outside the pharmacy. It hit something soft, something like a lump of dead flesh, then went silent.
The gunfire ceased. No one spoke. D held his breath.
His Adderall-enhanced brain perceived no footsteps to preface the entrance of the black angel. He jumped when she walked through the pharmacy door, smoking gun in hand. An aura of light may have pulsed from her near-naked body. Or maybe he imagined it.
“I took care of them,” she said in her rapturous voice. She tossed the gun aside and extended her hand to him. “Come for a walk with me.”
D popped another pill, still shaking. At this rate, he’d get through the bottle by sundown.
He stole a glance at his angel. He had taken to calling her “his” not due to any mistaken sense of ownership, but to a sense of connection he hadn’t shared with anyone since his mother. They’d walked the perimeter of the supermarket twenty times without speaking; yet he knew that on the next lap, she’d feel no more inclined to kill him than on the first.
“How do you do that?” he asked finally.
“Do what?”
“Silence your footsteps.”
“Oh.” She laughed. Her next footstep echoed thunderously through the rafters, startling a sparrow into brief flight.
“That’s exactly what I mean. You can change the volume. It’s unreal. How do you do it?”
They headed into lap number twenty-one. She slowed and stared out the doors into a blazing Miami afternoon. D followed her gaze, and was blinded by the sun on the white sidewalk. His eyes snapped back to her. He didn’t remember when the blood and glass bits had disappeared. But her face glowed clean now. “I’ll tell you,” she said.
“When?”
She sped her gait. He matched pace with her.
She stopped, turned to the right, and ducked into the florists’ corner. He followed.
Dry, dead matter crunched beneath their feet. It was like walking into a forest that nature had neglected. D inhaled, half expecting to smell the flowers that had once crowded the shelves. But all that remained were the pots, full of cracked dry earth and shrouded in fading foil.
His angel stooped to pluck a leaf from the floor. D didn’t believe anything could top the beauty of her voice, but her ass in that lacy thong did the trick.
He chastised himself for the thought. Sex was a luxury afforded only to those badass enough to take a life. D had resigned himself to celibacy.
His angel sat cross-legged on the floor, indicating he should do the same.
He sat across from her, trying not to stare at the thin panel of fabric that barely concealed her pussy.
“I’m an Angel of God,” she said.
“Not a lingerie model?”
She smiled. “With this face? No.”
D considered. She might be lying. Or crazy. A surgery might allow her to change the volume of her footsteps.
She nibbled at the leaf in her hand.
“You don’t eat glass? Or cigarette butts?”
“We angels eat roses.” She swept her arm to indicate the untouched aisles of groceries behind him. “Don’t you want anything to eat?”
“Not right now. It’ll take the edge off my high.”
She stared at him blankly.
He held up the bottle.
“You’re taking another one?”
“Damn straight.”
“The danger is gone.”
“I don’t know what shit’s like in Heaven. But down here, the danger is never gone.”
She lowered the leaf and fixed her deep coffee-colored eyes on his face.
Blood rushed to his dick. The challenge of celibacy mounted. He needed more focus. Without breaking eye contact, he removed the lid from his pill bottle again. “Why are you here?”
“To summon the righteous who remain. They must fight in the Lord’s Army.”
“Those two back there weren’t righteous, I take it.”
“No. They did not love God. They proved incurable.”
D paused, three pills cupped in his palm. “Am I righteous?”
“You’re not a glass eater.”
“No.” He swallowed the pills and snapped the cap back into place. “I’m not.”
“And you don’t wear anyone else’s blood on your clothes.”
“Nope.”
She leaned close to him. Her breasts threatened to pop out of their jewel-toned pushup bra.
The pills caught in his throat. Her breath was the opposite of J’s. Floral. The way feminine used to be.
“How do you pass your time?” she asked.
“What? How do you mean?”
“You don’t expend your energy on fitting in. And yet” --she nodded toward the bottle in his hand— “you have plenty of energy to expend. What do you do with it?”
No one had ever asked him such a question. Most assumed that a loser like D needed all his energy just to survive. “I walk a lot. Once last summer, before the storm, I went for a swim at the beach.”
“Did you like it?”
“It was beautiful.”
“As beautiful as me?”
Her face had expanded to fill his entire visual field. There was nothing but her now; nothing but smooth skin spread over imperfect facial features, nothing but eyes that glittered like liquid, nothing but the joy of an angel’s attention. “No. Not even close.”
Her hand slid up to his shoulder. He gasped at the warmth of it. He had forgotten he could feel another person’s body heat even through a cotton shirt. “Do you believe in angels?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he whispered back.
“Do you believe I am one?”
He opened his mouth to lie, found that he couldn’t. “I’m not sure.”
She closed the gap between them. Her lids closed over her shining eyes like clouds passing over thermoses of coffee at a picnic. It occurred to him that it had been many, many years since he’d been on a picnic.
Her lips pressed into his.
His pressed back.
One warm gray morning the previous June, as pounding waves heralded the storm that would snub the lights out for good and send the city spiraling into mayhem, D stood outside the church he’d attended as a child. It was the tallest one-story building he knew of. Stained-glass vestiges peered down at him through the mist with a majesty that invoked melancholy.
Bells chimed.
He straightened a garbage bag raincoat around his shoulders and took the limestone steps. A rush of weather chased him as he opened the door. Then everything grew still, comforting. The rich merlot carpet lay soft and thick as ever. He’d once yearned to feel that carpet beneath his bare feet. Now that his prayer had been answered, he felt nothing. Other sensations leapt and danced and fought one another to register in his brain. But years of walking barefoot had left the soles numb to anything but vibration.
They felt a vibration now, growing closer. He looked up and met Father W’s eyes.
“It’s nice to see you here, my son.”
“Thank you, Father.” He extended his hand to shake.
The pastor stepped backward, grasping his hands in front of him. “Service is about to begin. You’re welcome to stay. Someone will find you clothes from the donation bin.”
D shuddered at the thought of those blood-stained rags, donated by the wealthy Episcopalian families of his old neighborhood. “No, thank you, Father. But I will stay for service.”
Father W nodded, a glimmer of understanding in his eye. The Church forbade its employees to engage in any activity as impure as blood fashion, but Father W needed to maintain his upstanding position in the community in order to spread the Word; so he sacrificed a life or two a year for his faith. D had chosen the road less traveled, and sacrificed his own life. They could never voice their mutual respect. Not in public.
D selected a pew in the back and knelt to pray. Before bowing his head, he looked around. He rarely set foot in a crowded room. The screams of children and the rebukes of their parents accosted his ears. The Episcopal religion had resurged after years of neutrality in the minds of cool people. D knew why.
He squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his hands before him, and bowed his head. Greasy hair fell in thick clumps around his face. Dear God, if you still love me, she won’t come.
The seat in front of him creaked. He opened his eyes. Despite the intervening years of both natural and artificial growth, he managed to confirm it. His heart sank.
Her adjustable breast implants, on their highest setting, protruded amply over a neon colored shelf bra; the nipples perfectly aligned via some miracle of medicine. Her ears looked more pixie-like, and her neck longer. But her hair remained the same: a mane of carrot colored curls, cascading down the back of the pew in front of him. Her sole identifying feature.
He didn’t know why he needed to test the rumor that Ginny had adopted yet another sick trend. All he knew was that, after years of stillness, his blood boiled again at the sight of her.
He wrapped his hand around a fistful of those long locks and yanked.
She cried out.
A few people stole glances, then faced forward again. D didn’t fear their attention. They’d never murder the star of the show.
“So this is what gets you off?” he hissed, lips brushing the reshaped flesh of her ear.
Organ music began to play. The rest of the congregation rose.
“Please let me stand up,” Ginny whimpered. “I went to this church as a kid. I don’t want to be rude.”
“You don’t want to be rude?” D tightened his grip on her hair. “How about sitting in back and letting homeless men jack off to your bare tits? You don’t consider that rude?”
“Let go.”
The instant she said it, a shadow fell over them. D looked up to see a barrel-chested guy nearly twice his height. The long white scar over his right eye contrasted with his tan. “There a problem?” he growled.
D let go.
Ginny smoothed her hair. “Not anymore.” She fawned on her protector. D caught a glimpse of her eyes. They had been altered to look more Asian, though she had kept the pale green color. She didn’t look at her brother long enough to recognize him.
The man nodded and shuffled back the way he’d come. He sat nearer than before.
Ginny stood to pay her respects to the Church. She wore no panties. Just fishnet thigh-highs and platform heels.
D stood more slowly, hatred hot as welding torches on his joints. He wanted to bend her over the pew and fuck her until she bled. At the same time, he feared she might enjoy it. “You sicken me. You and that big fucker. Who is he? Your boyfriend? Or just your pimp?”
She tossed her hair, flicking him in the face with it. To suggest that she would take money was beyond insulting. “If you hate us so much, why don’t you leave?”
The question threw him for a loop. He knew the answer. But he couldn’t have predicted the question. Like all cool people, she didn’t need Adderall to operate several steps ahead of him.
The choir reached their destination. Their robes glowed in the candlelight, the only white spots in the church. Everything else was dark carpet, dark paneled oak, colored glass. Father W stood at the pulpit.
Silence killed the organ music.
“The Lord be with you,” Father W intoned.
“And also with you,” the congregation replied.
“Be seated.”
They sat. Hymnals rustled. Pews groaned. Ginny’s bare ass slipped out of sight.
His palms felt soft where they’d touched her hair, as if a trace of her conditioner had rubbed off on them. Every part of her was soft. Soft hair, soft skin, soft plump ass. Such a contrast between that softness and his hard hate. How could something beautiful affect him this way? And how could he consider something evil to be beautiful? Inside that body, all grown up and surgically altered to turn him on, his little sister’s shriveled soul still lurked. She hadn’t changed. She followed the trends. The self-destructive trends. The mass-destructive trends. The trend that cost him the only person he’d ever loved.
As the rest of the congregation sat, D knelt. He leaned over her shoulder and inhaled through his nose. She didn’t smell like his sister. He wondered if she wore perfume, or if her scent had been surgically altered as well.
She leaned back, letting his chin brush her shoulder. “Are you going to behave now?”
“You’re such a slut.”
“Mmm, yeah. You like that, don’t you?”
He didn’t, but his dick hardened anyway. The warmth of her skin, those plumped-up tits, the unfamiliar scent… he wanted this woman. He wanted to love her body and rape her soul.
The service continued, though D felt hundreds of peripheral eyes on them. Gazing over the mountains of Ginny’s breasts, he unzipped his fly. He knew how this was supposed to go. The uncool bum came in and sat in back. The cool slut came in and sat in front of him. He didn’t touch her, didn’t talk to her. Just jacked off and left. The pastor took it well, thankful for the asses in the seats.
“What do you like? Strange men? Dangerous men?”
“I like cock,” she whispered.
“Whose cock, mine?” He gripped it in his hand.
Scar Face glanced back at them. Ginny gave him a dismissive wave. He faced forward, feigning interest in the service, as they all did.
Ginny arched her back. Her tits rose a couple inches toward his face. “I like your cock.”
D jacked himself. “Say that again.”
“I like your cock.”
“Again. Again.”
“I love your cock. I want to suck your cock til your come drips down the corner of my mouth and runs down my chin and onto my neck.”
He rubbed faster. “What about those tits? You wanna feel this cock between your tits?”
“Oh fuck yeah. I want you to fuck these tits.” She pushed them up with her hands. He caught a glimpse of her pussy. The carpet still matched the drapes, but she trimmed it closely. Her clit swelled and reddened. Clear liquid smeared on the cushion underneath her.
“You’re getting wet? You’re enjoying this, you fucking stupid whore?” His cock ached for her. Pre-come dotted the tip. Without missing a stroke, he took it in his palm and smoothed it over his shaft, imagining himself inside her; imagining what it would be like to fuck her too hard, too fast; imagining he had the strength to tear up her insides while tears streamed down her face.
“Oh, I’m so wet,” she whimpered, throwing her head back to expose her unnaturally long neck. “I want your cock so bad.”
He leaned forward. Opened his mouth. Inhaled through his nose. Savored the moment. His tongue was so close to touching a tit for the first time.
She let them drop. It wasn’t an accident.
“Lying bitch,” he moaned, burying his face in her shoulder. “Lying, lying cunt.”
She jerked away at the sensation of his greasy skin.
“No.” His hand groped the empty air next to her, searching for some body part he could touch without retribution. “Please, no.”
She glared at him.
His hand retreated in midair. He lowered his head, letting his hair once again conceal his identity.
With a disgusted sigh and a shake of her head, she dropped to a kneeling position. Out of reach.
A cold sweat sprung up on his forehead as he lamented the speed with which he’d just lost her warm body. Of course she didn’t want a bum. She wanted a bum to want her. That was the best he could hope for. He couldn’t bring himself to take her by force.
He fixed his eyes on her ass, and pretended with all his might that he could. He heard her screams as he mounted her from behind. Saw her protesting fingernails dig into the hard wood of the pew in front of her. But he kept going. His cock was too big, too hard, too desperate for the hole of a degraded slut he could fuck and throw away. He grabbed her by her ribcage. Shoved his cock in her. Fucked her again and again as she begged him to stop. Dismissed the human being that squirmed beneath him as if she were no more than a lewd picture.
At the last second before he came, he looked at the organ his hand. Not big enough to hurt anyone. His body released the tension in a rush of sadness and disgust.
She didn’t return to her seat to say good-bye. She played by the rules now, allowing him to wallow in loneliness.
Father W droned on at the pulpit. For the first time, D realized that the sermon was based entirely on the phrase “Blessed are they that mourn.” But he’d come in too late to grasp the specifics, and his star status had ended the moment he’d ejaculated. He needed to get out before these people called for a post-service soccer game using his head as a ball.
He zipped his fly and stood. Took one last look at his sister’s ass. Opened his mouth.
Words caught in his throat.
Just say her name. Let her know who you are. That will be enough.
But it wasn’t enough. Should by some miracle he manage to live a full life, nothing would be enough.
He wrapped his makeshift raincoat around his shoulders and stepped out.
Like so many exiled, he lingered at the beach. The waves came at full force. The surfers stood with the rest of the crowd at a safe distance, watching. It seemed a testament to the end of senseless self-destruction, the dawn of a new camaraderie. But then, D was LESO from way back. What did he know?
Blessed are they that mourn. The line popped into his head as a spectacular wave crested and threw itself over the beach, smothering every grain of sand. He wished with all his heart that he could turn back time. That he could listen to that sermon instead of jacking off to his sister.
The rain didn’t feel as cold as it should. He popped an Adderall.
His body shifted into hyperdrive the instant his lips met the angel’s. His heart wanted to bust through his chest and run screaming from the supermarket.
But she leaned even further forward, pushing him onto his back, pressing his shoulder into the terrazzo with a steady hand. He felt her knee on his outer hip before his brain registered where her pussy was. When that realization came, his cock swelled to accommodate. It pulsed, just like every other part of his body; but slowly, with long periods of recovery in between. He focused on those still times. He commanded his rattling body to find that rhythm.
His angel didn’t make it easy. He heard every sssssschwick of friction as her panties rubbed against his fly. They caught briefly in his zipper. The lace peeled aside a quarter of an inch. For less than a second, the sound changed to that of flesh on denim— smooth, soundless, natural as air. Then her muscles flexed, and she freed herself. The panties snapped back into place, concealing her labia once again.
“You have to believe in me,” she whispered. “Otherwise there’s no hope for you.”
He was fully erect; his cock still throbbing with its death-knell-low frequency, the rest of his body still shaking as if undergoing an exorcism. “Is that your job? To make me believe?”
“No. It’s your job to make you believe. It’s my job to be here when it happens.”
No trace of a rape fantasy crept into his mind. This was someone who’d done him no harm. Besides, she wanted him. They wanted each other. He urged himself not to overcome her, but to slow, to gentle, to match the steady power of her lust.
He raised his hands to her face, cringed as he realized he nearly crushed it. He pushed his tongue clumsily into her mouth. Withdrew. Tried again more slowly. Ran it in erratic circles, exploring every nook and cranny, inhaling the taste of roses.
Her hand left his shoulder. He felt the loss.
For an instant he floated in space.
It reappeared at his fly. His zipper jingled as her index finger and thumb took hold. She raised her body just enough to ease the zipper open. Then she reached in and gripped his dick. He felt every molecule of her fingers. They had the same composition as cream.
She tore her lips from his and sat up straight, squeezing his hips with her knees for balance. Using her free hand, she drew her lace panties aside, exposing her flared clit and red-rimmed hole. Her other hand guided the tip of his cock inside.
D felt like he had dipped himself into a volcano. He pressed his pelvis toward her, felt her sit down hard, meeting him halfway. The volcano feeling shot further down his shaft.
She moved her hand. He watched his cock disappear inside her. She paused there a moment, eyes rolling back in her head as she enjoyed the sensation. He held his breath. Her unscarred chocolate-colored tummy reared up like a column, connecting him to the cleavage spilling over her bra.
Then she moved. Up and down, up and down, smearing lava all over him to the hilt, even dripping some on his balls.
“Oh, yeah, that’s so good,” he moaned.
“Do you believe I’m an angel?” she breathed.
He didn’t answer. He was too busy reining in his body. He’d lost what little control he’d obtained. He spasmed against her now, rather than rising and falling with her. He had turned a beautiful union between two human souls into some blasphemous pairing of human with hummingbird.
“Answer me,” she demanded.
He didn’t. He had no wind.
She unfastened her bra. Her tits began to bounce savagely. She struggled to keep up as he sped their pace. She flung the bra aside. Pushed her tits up toward her face. Her tongue shot out from between her lips, met flesh just above her left areola.
His eyes alternated between the shimmering wet spot and her piercing gaze. Then they traveled down her midriff, past the visual obstruction of her panties, to the spot where their bodies met. Every muscle in her toned legs tightened and released, tightened and released.
“Answer me.”
He was about to come. His balls tightened with her. His cock pulsed once. His eyes squeezed shut.
“Answer me!”
He felt a flash of pain. The world went dim.
All the sounds he usually deciphered with an expert ear, all the little feelings, the vibrations… everything muted.
He took a single breath. His angel still rode his dick, but he was numb to it. He couldn’t count the number of times she slid up and down. And he didn’t care. He was finished caring. The slew of niggling details that kept him alive had lost all meaning.
He braced himself for panic. For any emotion at all. But none came.
He exhaled.
He opened his eyes. He was still inside his body.
He looked up, saw his angel on top of him. She let go of her breasts and arched her back. Her wings stretched out to either side. The halo of light around her pulsed. He realized his body thrummed in tune with his cock, just as he’d wanted. And his angel shared that rhythm. Slow. Strong. Centered. Heavenly. The connection he’d striven for all his adult life.
“Answer me,” she said again. Her voice was inside his head now.
“Yes,” he said. His own voice was nothing. Quiet. Flat.
She came. Her glorious scream reverberated off the inside of his skull. The light expanded around her.
He rose. Rose above his own body, pinned to the floor by its still-hard cock. He saw himself and his angel as the sparrow would see them from the rafters. She was rubbing her clit to catch what remained of her orgasm. A bit of ass crack peeked up at him over her panties. But he felt no lust.
He hovered near the ceiling for a moment. Somewhere above, his mother waited. No wound gaped in her stomach, just as no damaged heart remained in his chest. No pain could touch them. They were at peace. And now they would be together.
“David,” his angel’s voice purred through the insubstantial substance of his soul. “Welcome to the Army of the Lord.”
The movement of her lips did not match the pacing of the words. He stared, detached, as she shook his limp body, begging him to wake up.
Gigi Brevard
Dedication
For my mother. My childhood fear of losing her invokes nightmares to this day.
About the Author
Gigi Brevard is the author of numerous short stories; including “I Love Vegetables,” which appeared in the UK publication Forum; “Kingdom of Sweets,” which appeared in the anthology ‘Twas a Dark and Delicious Christmas; and “New Girl, New Pearls,” which appeared in Hustler Magazine. Her first novel, The Aquarians, will be available for purchase from Freaky Fountain Press in May 2011. She enjoys a wide range of erotic genres.
About the Story
God is all there is.
God is love.
Love is all there is.
Slave King Fuck Star
Mickey pushed the old hospital cart through the dark, humid tunnel, his nose long accustomed to the body odor and stink of death as he ladled out cupfuls of tepid water from the faded orange Coleman cooler to the emaciated human slaves. Many were naked; most wore the tattered remains of the same clothing they’d had on, a year back, when the Indrodi had dropped into orbit and laid waste to the world. The slaves were all dying, Mickey thought, and the water he doled out like a king to his subjects only prolonging the inevitable.
“I am the fuck star,” he said, smiling as he handed out a cup of water.
It was a stroke of pure luck. After the Indrodi had leveled the cities, decimated the militaries, and killed off ninety percent of the population, they’d marched the survivors to the mountains, issued them pickaxes, and put them to work breaking apart rocks. He’d been pulled out at random, shown the spring and issued the cart and the Coleman, along with the little metal cups he scooped the water out with. Though he couldn’t understand the slimy, octopus-like aliens, he knew what his job was.
And it was a hell of a lot better than mopping up jism at Big Jim’s House of Porn out on I-20, despite the stink and the death. At least in the tunnel he didn’t have to just watch the people fucking, rubbing his dick raw as he did. He could have any one of them he wanted. They had, of course, tried to evict him from his throne, but soon learned the octopus Indrodi would only let him out the gate. They had no choice; they had to worship him and after a hundred people had died in an attempted escape six months back, no one had even bothered trying anymore.
“I like your shoe,” he said, rolling to a stop behind a big man in the shredded remains of a three piece suit. When they first got to the tunnel Frank had been a big, muscular man, and had bragged that he worked out five days a week every morning religiously. The muscles, then, had literally bulged through the suit. A year in the mines, however, had taken their toll. His muscles were gone, the stretched skin hanging like sheets on the clothesline, his suit shredded and filthy, and one of his shoes already traded away.
“Fuck you, Mickey,” Frank growled, his voice still deep and threatening. Mickey thought of it like a bad check. It looked impressive, but there weren’t any funds to back it up. “You don’t get the other one.”
Mickey looked down at his own feet, one clad in a Wal-Mart brand running shoe and the other in Frank’s other shoe. Frank’s shoes were quality leather, the kind that held up to wear and tear while the Wal-Mart shoe was falling apart. It would be nice to be even, he thought and then shrugged, dumping the cup of water he was going to give Frank back into the Coleman and heading back down the tunnel.
“Wait,” Frank said, the edge of desperation thick in his voice, “you can have the goddamn shoe.”
Mickey ignored him, spooning out water to people further down the line, the steady tick, tick of pickaxe on stone in beat with his heart. Some, closer to Frank and so that the big man could see, he gave two cups. They knew the game Mickey was playing but no one complained about the extra water. Frank’s axe was louder, him taking his frustration out on the rock.
And so he pushed down the line, trading cups of water for a rag here, for a watch there, on and on until the Coleman was empty and then he’d make the long trek back to the surface and the spring, to hide his stash, refill the water, and start once again. On his second trip down that morning he came to Michelle.
My Michelle, he thought. So sweet and only seventeen when she first came to the mine. Today was her birthday.
“Hey, Mickey,” she said with a smile. She was much like the others, starving and emaciated, but there was a spirit about her. She always had a kind word to say him and he always gave her water willingly, without cost, and had even shared some of his stash with her.
“Good morning,” he said, scooping her out as much water as she wanted, “happy birthday.”
He presented her with a newspaper wrapped gift, complete with a pink bow he’d painstakingly cleaned and made from a traded t-shirt.
“Really?” Michelle said, taking the present from him, “it’s today?”
“I’ve been keeping track.”
She unwrapped the cylindrical present, a poorly preserved girl’s arm, complete with ring-studded fingers. The big diamonds sparkled in the dim light. “Oh, Mickey. It’s so much. You…ah…you don’t have any regular food left?”
The Indrodi didn’t care if the humans ate or not. They believed in water, yes, but the slaves were on their own for food, “No, sorry. All we have is people. I can’t remember her name, but she didn’t die from sickness. She got hit in the head with a pickaxe,” he told her, skipping the part where he’d done the hitting.
“Well,” she said, sniffing at the arm, “thank you. I greatly appreciate it.”
“I am the fuck star,” he told her with his mischievous grin.
She took three more cups of water before being satisfied, smiled at him, and then turned back to the wall with the pick axe.
“Ah, Michelle?”
“Yeah Mickey?”
“It’s your birthday.”
“Okay,” she said, confused, “what does that mean?”
“That means you’re old enough to be mine, now.” He couldn’t have fucked a seventeen year old. The judge had said so.
“Oh Mickey,” she said, the condescending tone making his blood boil, “we’re just friends, right?”
That’s the way it had always been with Mickey, even with the whores at the truck stop. Mickey, we’re friends. I don’t want your money, Mickey. No, Mickey, you can’t see my tits. They’d giggle and leave him to peek through the curtains while they sucked the filthy trucker’s dicks, sometimes even looking up and smiling, showing them the thick roots in their mouth covered in saliva.
That was the old Mickey, long before he was King of the Slaves. “Sure, Michelle. We can be friends. But if you want any water any more, you’re going to suck my dick first.”
“Mickey…” her voice begged, but she suddenly knew that she was no longer special. She had to give it up if she wanted any more water.
“It’s okay,” starting to push the cart away, “see you in a few days.”
“Wait.”
Unlike with Frank, he did stop. He really wanted to feel her lips around his cock. He’d felt most of the woman’s mouths in the tunnel, but he’d waited for Michelle. She had to be eighteen.
“Yeah?”
“I can do it tonight, when everyone’s sleeping?” she asked hopefully.
Mickey didn’t think that was right. The only way it was any good was if everyone was watching, like he had the truckers getting their dick sucked by the whores at Big Jim’s. They knew he’d been watching, rubbing his dick until it was raw, and that was part of the show, he knew. “No, I sleep when everyone is sleeping.”
He started to push the cart away again, even skipping the slaves that were around Michelle and they knew what he meant. One, a crippled old woman he was sure they’d all be eating in the near future, said, “Honey, just do it already. We’re all thirsty and at least the boy keeps his dick clean.”
“Right here?” Michelle asked, indignant, and the cart scooted a bit further down the tunnel. “Okay, okay. I’ll do it.”
“I changed my mind,” Mickey said and the people within earshot groaned. “I think I’ll fuck you instead.”
“Mickey, please,” she said as tears began to stream down her cheeks.
He shrugged. He was tired of negotiating. The Slave King Fuck Star didn’t have to negotiate. “Yes or no?”
Her shoulders slumped, her spirit broke. “How do you want me?”
“Naked.” Michelle untied the knot holding the remains of her red jogging suit’s top, letting it fall to the floor. She then stepped out of her ragged pants and folded both neatly near her pickaxe. The people around her went back to work, but he was sure they were watching as well. Everybody watched the Slave King Fuck Star. She was bonier than she had been a year ago, and her ribs protruded through loose folds of skin. The color of her hair was hard to determine under the sticky grime, but he knew she was a true blond and her thick tuft of pubic hair only confirmed it for him.
“Well?” she asked.
“Get down on your hands and knees,” he ordered, already rubbing his crotch.
“Are you going to be able to get it up?” She said in that same tone those whores had used at Big Jim’s when he tried to pay for blow jobs, mocking and condescending.
He didn’t answer and watched as she kneeled over in front of him, her ass crack covered in bits of feces and debris. She’d asked for water once to clean with, but he’d told her it was too precious. The inside of her thighs were dirty, as well, but his cock grew just looking at the pitted flesh. She let out an oomph as her knees hit the rocky tunnel floor, cutting them. Mickey let his pants drop to his knees and knelt behind her, first playing with her anus, running his finger in and out until the area was moist and smeared with feces.
“Really, Mickey,” she asked, turning and looking around at him, “you’re going to fuck me in the ass?”
He again ignored her, instead impaling her with one powerful stroke. She sank to her elbows and groaned, much like the whores faked when they’d been sucking trucker cock. He pulled back and thrust again, trying to climb all the way in her ass. She cried out in pain.
“Not so hard, Mickey. You’re tearing me.”
“I am the fuck star,” he said, gaining a steady rhythm, not too slow, but not too fast, not even hearing what she’d said. He didn’t want to waste himself in a quick climax; he’d been waiting for this day for too long. Something, however, was missing. He turned to the old woman, who he was sure was going to be a meal soon, and told her to go get Frank.
“What?” she croaked.
“Go,” thrust, “get,” thrust, “Frank.”
Mickey slowed down even more, savoring each thrust as if it were the last. When Frank the former muscle man finally showed up, Mickey grinned. “Hold my nuts, Frank,” he ordered, spreading his legs.
“No.”
“No water. Ever.”
“One day you’re going to be gone,” Frank spat, “and those fucking aliens are going to have to let someone else go up for water.”
“Not today, Frank.”
“Fuck you.”
“Balls, Frank.”
Frank grunted, but knelt down on his knees and cupped Mickey’s testicles as he pulled and pushed.
“Rub them or something, Frank.”
“Fuck man,” the slave spat, “what are you going to do next, make me suck them?”
“Yeah,” Mickey said, “actually. That. That sounds good. Do it.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Water, Frank,” Mickey reminded him. “I am the fuck star.”
He perched precariously, legs spread, his thrusting slower as Frank took his nuts in his mouth. His tongue was warm and the little nick of teeth on ball, along with Frank’s slurping sounds, drove him mad. He imagined the whores at Big Jim’s watching him, nodding their approval as he worked his dick in and out of Michelle’s ass. She groaned, though he couldn’t tell if it was from pain or pleasure.