The Hungry Guest

Like Dracula, I needed to be invited in, but not for the same reason.

Barry was very chill and didn’t seem surprised when I showed up yesterday at his house without even texting. He said, “Dude! Come on in! Want a beer?” 

Of course I did. And something more.  

We were in the same crime fiction class at the local college, currently reading Raymond Chandler who we both liked. Barry and I had talked about hanging out some time, but a bar was out of the question for what I had in mind.

Wearing our school colors of red and white, he waved me inside the mid-century ranch house that his parents had bought for him. He’d confessed when we first sat next to each other in class that they’d made the purchase so that he wouldn’t have to share a dorm or even a condo with “riff-raff.” He laughed. I didn’t, but I didn’t mind their view of our student body. They had no idea that people like them (and Barry too, of course) were sheep to my wolf.

“Gross, huh?” he said, pointing around the open living room after he closed the front door.

I nodded. The house must have come furnished because everything had a tacky nautical motif: curtains, rugs, lamps, painting, knick-knacks. I couldn’t see that as being his style; he’d never mentioned sailing or boating when we chatted after class.

“Sit, sit, sit. I’ll get the beers.”

I studied him as he padded barefoot to the open kitchen. He was blond and bland but looks never mattered to me. What mattered was that he took hot yoga off campus and had bragged before our fiction class one day about “victorious breath,” being able to keep the same steady audible breathing in and out for a whole session. It supposedly worked to calm yoga practitioners and somehow energize them too. 

Barry was apparently the only one in the yoga class who could maintain that breathing and the instructor often said, “Listen to Barry.” He thought it probably pissed off the women who were far more flexible than him and could even do handstands, but couldn’t breathe the way he did.

I loved the idea of victorious breath, of breath that was a victory because I was a victor. Barry didn’t know that yet.

He brought us two Leffe beer bottles and glasses with the Leffe logo on them and I was impressed. He had good taste.  And probably tasted good too.

Sitting on a couch with an aggressive anchor pattern on the pillows, we sipped the excellent beer and compared the prose style of The Big Sleep to The Maltese Falcon. He was smarter than he looked, which was I guess was like your typical high school jock. 

“But that classroom really sucks, doesn’t it?” he said, shaking his head.

“It’s the worst.”

Fifteen of us, mostly English majors, were meeting twice weekly under fluorescent lights that were so bright they could have worked for torture if they stayed on all day and you were hogtied to your chair desk. The white cinderblock walls made everything worse. Our teaching assistant–the kind who wanted to be your buddy–called out “Welcome to the operating room!” every time he walked in and we dutifully laughed because he was a nice-enough guy. 

Barry was halfway through his beer when he said, “I’m really looking forward to reading The Incredible Mr. Ripley. I want to see whether the movie was true to the book. Not, like, word-by-word. But the essence, the vibe.” 

That’s when I realized he looked a bit like a beefy Matt Damon. 

He set down his glass on the atrocious knotty-pine coffee table and said, “I want to share something with you.” And he seemed to wait for me to respond but I could wait too, and I did. He breathed in deeply before letting out a sigh that was music to me–and more. Much more.

“I’m gay.” He hesitated. “That’s why I wanted to hang out together, because I’ve been wondering if you are too.”

“Well. . .I can be.”

He frowned. “What does that mean?”

I put my beer glass down, moved to his side and said, “I’ll show you.” I leaned in and kissed his red lips softly, then hard, then forced his mouth open and he was utterly helpless. 

When I eventually pulled away, sweat had broken out across Barry’s forehead and his eyes were blinking fast. He was breathless and could barely speak, just the way I wanted him. He needed to feel swept away by passion, unaware that I was actually a predator, a thief, stealing some of his air.

“Shit, man,” he said after a while. “That was awesome.”

He tried to pull me back on top of him, but even though I was rock hard, I wasn’t ready. Sex would be dessert after the meal I’d just enjoyed. I could wait.

“How about another beer, Barry?”

He grinned and said, “Let’s party!”

As he headed a bit back to his kitchen, I reminded myself not to be greedy. I had been running low lately for some reason and needed him to stay alive as long as possible until he died of “natural causes” and nobody would think I was anything more than a friend.

Group Dynamics

“Huh?” Joey said. “What’s that?”

“An industrial sociologist,” I tried to explain, “studies how somebody’s job, and where they work, affects them. Like mentally, and physically.”

We both looked around and laughed.

The usual room, in the same budget motel. Still reeking of sex from last night’s shoot.

Tonight we’d pick it back up, with a different script. Or maybe work from the same one.

“Group dynamics,” I said. “You know.”

“Wow,” Joey said. “Val, you’re even smarter than I thought.” 

I stiffened. “Me?” 

I sat up in bed, blew on my too-hot coffee. If I was smart, Lars would never have conned me. Instead of being “personal assistant to the Fetish Porn King of Shangri-La Productions,” I’d be analyzing workplace dynamics somewhere.

“You are.” Joey set down his coffee. “Usually. But this time, you let your heart . . .”

I knew what was coming.

“Ass-fuck you.”

Out of nowhere, tears came. Rapes. Beatings so bad, I could only be filmed from the chest down. Choking. Lars doing it, for fun. It made him cum harder, seeing panic in my eyes. Last night, I froze up, praying . . . that he wouldn’t stop . . . until . . . until . . .

Joey nuzzled me, careful of my bruises. We hadn’t fucked this time. Just held each other, nude, enjoying the comfort of skin. His chest and head hair, both curly, were like a security blanket. Usually, he smelled like nobody else. Today, like sweat, ‘cos we hadn’t showered yet, but Joey-sweat smelled good to me. And cum from last night. But this time, it wasn’t just his. 

When his phone pinged, my heart raced. Lars! We were here, “after hours,” without him. We’d never snuck in here before. 

Would he hurt us?

As Joey reached behind for his phone, I clung tightly to him, as much as it hurt.

“Carlos.” His body felt tense. He set the phone down on the bed and turned over.

“I . . . gotta see him later.”

“Why?”

He shook his head.

Joey and Carlos: Lars’s biggest bi stars. It was Carlos who I smelled on Joey. And maybe not just from the shoot. 

Maybe more than I wanted to believe. Smart as I was.

But Joey loved me, didn’t he?

I loved him: Beautiful, perceptive Joey, who wrote songs he wouldn’t show me. Who’d stood up to Lars for me and literally got kicked in the stomach. Doubling over in pain, Joey’s eyes were twice their size. “Let’s run away,” hoarsely, he’d whispered in my ear, that night.

Carlos, too? I wondered now. 

Group dynamics, we’d call it. No fancy degrees or turned-up noses. Just a cheap motel workplace stinking of pleasure. Sometimes against our will. 

But not always.

I got dressed, slowly.

Foot Monster

She was a goddess with her stilettos on, a devil with them off.

Marcus Malley sat at the edge of his coffee table as he watched the girl take off her high heels in seductive fashion. But when the first one came off, disgust surged in his chest.

“What’s wrong, Marc?” she asked as she stripped off the other heel. “Don’t like what you see?”

How could he? They were massive, jointed things, simian, with as much hair and articulation, too. They moved with an alert intelligence, crawling up his jeans and laying on his crotch, the toes like knobby fingers. As for the nails—ugh—they were black-and-yellow, warped with fungus, and a few of them jostled like loose teeth, showing the bleeding skin beneath.

Marcus almost vomited—the stench of those dogs was apocalyptic—and made to get up but the woman moved down on the couch and caught him around his neck…with her feet!

“Getoffmeyou—” but Marcus’ windpipe was shut by the vice grip of her talons. He tried to undo them, but the musculature running through her arches, her soles, felt like a hemp rope.

She raised herself up, and in doing so, caused Marcus to trip on his coffee table and fall onto the ground.

“You said you love feet, you said you’d suckle on my little piggies.” Her hair fell down along her face in long, seaweed drapes. Her big toe stretched out and played with the corner of his tightened mouth, trying to gain entry. Marcus tried to say something, but she shushed him good

by forcing the toe into his mouth, breaking a few of his teeth in the process, her toenail breaking off like a shorn trapdoor. “Suck, Marcus, suck it good—be a man!”

But Marcus bit. Bit like a man with the teeth he still had.

The succubus howled, trying to get free, but Marcus held fast to that bleeding, hairy toe, even as his jaw felt like it was being dislodged. Her other foot finally released from his neck, reared backward, formed into an impossible fist, and cruised into his nose, shattering it. Marcus opened his mouth in pain, and the bitch went stage right onto the floor, inspecting her wounded foot.

“Get the fuck outta here!” screamed Marcus.

“You aren’t man enough, anyways,” she said, getting up and grabbing her heels. She forced her hideous feet into them and then turned with an attitude toward Marcus’ front door. She scuttled away and disappeared into the night.

Marcus lay there, hand moving to his face to inspect the damage. His mind roved through the events that led to that moment.

Back in the club, he admitted to her his foot fetish—he always laid his cards out beforehand.

“Cute,” she said, over the thumping music. “Well, I’m a foot monster.”

He had laughed at that, seeing nothing wrong. But hindsight’s a real motherfucker, isn’t it?

He crawled to the couch, got on his phone, and dialed 911.