Relief

Matthew worked from home, taking tech support calls for an internet provider. His interactions with the customers on the other end of the phone were a studied performance, fancying himself a combination of Han Solo and Captain Kirk, his wry masculine voice resonated against the popcorn ceiling of his apartment. He took command. “This is Matthew. With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

“Carla”

“Well, Ensign Carla, how can I help you?” 

“Um. My internet doesn’t work.”

“I can solve this problem in 12 parsecs. Restart your modem. Make it so!”

He ate dinner at the pub near the school. Some days, dinner at the pub would be the only time he left his apartment. He liked the waitresses, especially in summer. They wore short skirts and some of them didn’t wear bras. He sat alone at a picnic table on the patio. He stared into his phone, absorbed.

“You will love me, old son,” a cockney-accented female voice whispered, with it a spike of cold air hit his ear canal and the smell of mildew made him turn and look.  But there was no one. Must have been someone at another table. He took a gulp from the pint of beer in front of him and continued reading Star Trek fan fiction on his phone. 

The waitress dropped off his bahn mi in a plastic green basket. “Here you go, enjoy,” she smiled a perfunctory smile, looking towards her next task.

“Why thank you, fine maiden,” air escaped from Matthew’s nose when he spoke, “I will indeed heartily enjoy this sandwich.” By the end of the day, Matthew would grow tired from the cheerful mask he wore at work, and his shadowy side, the angry child, would make itself felt. He hated himself, hated the angry child, but it was familiar. He reverted to it unconsciously when he was tired.

A crow perched on the edge of his table. “Scram!” He dropped his performative voice, the word came out nasal and nasty. The subterranean river of rage that coursed through him, skimmed the surface. Matthew lashed his hand out at the crow. Another crow landed on his table, keeping itself just out of reach. “Get the fuck out of here!” The crows were undeterred by his hand flailing. In two hops they were upon his sandwich. One screeched in his face while the other landed atop his bahn mi bun. She fluttered her wings hard enough to catch air, clutching the bun in her long black talons. Pickled carrots, cilantro, and barbecued pork rained down onto the table and Matthew’s lap as the crow rose higher, eventually finding her ballast and carrying the bun away. 

“Uh! Did you see that?” Matthew stood from his seat but the other patrons ignored him. He brushed the food off his shorts and looked around for the crows. They had flown a few yards away and landed on the sidewalk. They took turns picking at his bun. Matthew walked over to them, not that he would eat the bun now, but he needed somewhere for his rage to go, needed to at least scream at these crows. Every time he got within a couple of feet, the crows picked up the bread and moved.  The further he got from the pub, the more he seethed, “I will stomp you out,” he said darkly.

He followed them up the sidewalk and past the apartments. The traffic noise and the pub’s music fell away. He heard the harsh squawk of a crow. It occurred to him that he had never noticed crow calls at night. There were fewer street lights and it was difficult to see crows in the dark. He followed the sounds of the crows to the edge of the schoolyard. He walked along the row of elm trees that lined the sidewalk, scanning the dead yellow grass and chain link fence. “That’s my nosh, innit,” came the same strange whisper again. The cold mildewed air crossed over the space tattoos on his bare legs. Away from the lights and noise of the pub he couldn’t trace the disembodied voice. A crow screamed. Matthew saw it. It was perched on the wooden sign that read, “Elliott Smith Waldorf. The little school under the elms.” It was pecking his bun.

“You little fuck…” Matthew began, but the words dropped away as Alukah materialized from the tree next to him. Her dense black hair enveloped her body, hiding her earth colored tunic. Matthew attempted to mask his surprise, “Ah. Hello. With whom do I…”

Two crows landed on either side of Alukah and dropped the bahn mi bun at her bare feet. Her toenails were black and the veins stood out on the thin skin. Matthew watched the crows transform their shape into two young girls in brown tunics, smaller versions of Alukah with long, shining black hair. “Are you aliens?” Matthew spluttered.

“Nah,” Alukah answered. The two girls stared at Matthew with illegible blankness. “You will love me, Guv,” she said again. She held him in her gaze, chin raised to look up at him.

“Why would I do that?” Matthew thought she was probably just a crazy homeless woman, but also she was kinda hot, in a goth hag way. He couldn’t really see her body under all that hair, but he could tell she wasn’t fat at least. He wouldn’t mind violating the prime directive for a little outdoor sex with a random weirdo. Though he’d have to get rid of the freaky crow girls. “Are you some kind of witch?” He hoped she would find this complimentary.

“I am the demoness, Alukah. These are my daughters,” she gestured to either side of her, “I am here to offer you relief, my darling.” 

“Relief from what?” He chuckled, assured that he was in control of the situation. He stared at her black lips. Was that lipstick or just the color of her lips?

Alukah raised her hands out towards Matthew. She arched her back and tilted her neck, as if ready to receive a kiss. Matthew moved closer, anticipating how her body would feel against his. Alukah cupped her hands around the back of his neck. She pressed her chest into his torso, her nipples so hard they drove themselves into the soft flesh between his ribs. 

Just as Matthew bowed his head for a kiss, Alukah’s long black thumbnails lengthened to dagger sharpness. Her nails sliced through his neck like baking twine through dough. It happened so quickly that Matthew’s tongue was still probing the air, seeking her mouth. His detached head slid forward on his neck and rolled down the front of his body. It lolled at the base of the elm tree Alukah had emerged from. Her daughters stepped aside to make way for it. His body stood there stupidly for a moment before collapsing at Alukah’s bare feet. 

“You have a good feed now, my little luvs,” she instructed her daughters. The two girls knelt down at either side of his neck and drank from the fountain of blood that rhythmically pumped out with each dwindling heart beat. They lapped like cats. The pooled blood soaked into their black hair and dribbled down their chins. 

As the flow of blood decreased, they cried out “More, more,” each in turn, their screechy scratchy voices bouncing off the brick school building.

“More, more, yes, mama will get you more shayna punims” she said absently.

Her daughters picked up the head and disappeared with it through a hole at the base of the elm.

Alukah stood over Matthew’s body, she closed her eyes and drew symbols into the palm of each hand. Matthew’s shorts unzipped themselves, his underwear rolled itself down, and his erect penis unfurled. Alukah straddled the body and sat down on it. “I said you would love me, ain’t I?” She laughed lustily with the lungs of an ancient smoker. Cobwebs and dust rattled around in her breath. Her matted black hair lifted off the crown of her head, cascaded over her shoulders and swept across his knees. His leg tattoos singed black each time her hair brushed over them.

She ground her hips in a circular motion and moaned. Her mouth opened in pleasure, revealing a black tongue and crooked teeth. She placed her hands on his chest and pushed hard as if she were administering cpr. Fresh blood spurted from his neck. She leaned forward and drank, slurping up blood. She raised herself up and hit his chest again, the sound of his sternum cracking made her laugh, “I ain’t drained you yet, geezer,” a fountain of dark liquid gushed from his neck. She leaned over it, drinking and moving her hips. Her black fingernails clawed at his shoulders, tearing the sleeves of his NASA tshirt and ripping into his flesh.

The grinding of her hips quickened, the slurping became more frantic until her body grew rigid and she let out a guttural moan of pleasure. She lay still, savoring the orgasm, shivered once, then said, “Blimey, you was tasty, guv.” 

Alukah dismounted from Matthew and stood over him, “I reckon that’s you sorted then.” 

Hung

Bending over the bathroom sink, Harold Miley splashed cold water on his face. He had vomited in the hall. But that could wait. Call 911, he told himself. Not that this was an emergency.

Becky was dead. Paramedics couldn’t do a thing for her. Except cut her down, he thought. Or perhaps the police would do that . . .  

The house would soon be packed with people. Beat cops. Detectives. Crime scene technicians. Medical Examiner. The detectives would ask him questions. Endless questions. Harold was in for a long night, long and emotionally draining. 

Having wiped his face with a towel, he deliberately avoided his haggard reflection in the mirror. Don’t go back in there, he thought. You don’t want to see her again. Once is enough. Make the call and wait for the cavalry. 

Harold exited the bathroom and stood in the hall just outside the master bedroom. He frowned at his phone. But he didn’t call. He wasn’t ready for the circus. Not yet. Not with so many unanswered questions throttling his psyche. 

Steeling himself, he reentered the bedroom and made a beeline for the window. He raised the miniblinds, unlocked the window, pushed it up. Mild night air rushed into the room, helping to lessen the awful stench. Becky’s bowels had evacuated when her neck snapped . . .  

Face twisted with anguish, Harold looked for a suicide note. He found it atop the nightstand on his wife’s side of the bed. She had used a blue ballpoint pen and a single sheet of yellow legal paper. Becky’s cursive script filled the entire page. It amounted to a confession and apology. The phrases “bad wife” and “selfish person” appeared repeatedly but there was no mention of her lover’s identity. 

Whoever the guy is, Harold thought, he’s in for one hell of a shock. He almost felt sorry for the bastard. Almost. 

Harold looked at the overturned chair beneath Becky’s dangling bare feet. It was an old straight-back chair she had gotten for a song at the flea market. She had sanded and painted the piece before relegating it to the laundry room. 

Harold returned the note to the nightstand, placing it beside Becky’s phone which he combed assiduously. Such a breach of his wife’s privacy had been all but impossible until now; she had guarded her phone with her life, never letting the damnable thing out of her sight . . . 

The vulgar text messages from an unfamiliar number—a burner, Harold reasoned, if the guy was married—were bad enough. 

But these were nothing compared to the photos. 

Dick pics. 

And the guy was huge.

No doubt, he had shown Becky a very good time. Harold could almost forgive her. Almost. She was entitled to pleasure, entitled to a level of satisfaction and fulfillment which he had been unable to provide with his comparatively diminutive member. 

Still, vows were vows . . . 

Harold studied her photos in search of a face but came up empty. He decided to dial the number. He wanted to hear the sonofabitch’s voice. He wanted to tell him that the affair was over, that Becky had gone off the deep end and killed herself, that he hoped the sorry motherfucker was happy. 

“Hey,” somebody picked up after the third ring. 

A male voice. Unmistakably familiar. 

Harold hung up on his next-door neighbor. 

***

Chuck was piddling in his garage. 

Good, Harold thought. He didn’t want to ring the doorbell. Last thing he wanted was an encounter with Chuck’s wife and/or kids. He didn’t want to be reminded that his neighbor was a husband and father. It would be easier that way . . . 

After taking the photo with Becky’s phone, Harold had retrieved the .32 from his nightstand drawer. The compact handgun was for home protection. He had tried to teach Becky how to use it, but she showed no interest. “Guns are like snakes,” she had told him, “and I’m scared of both.” Now, phone in hand, gun tucked between his belt and lower back, he crossed the small section of grass between the two houses and entered Chuck’s garage. 

His neighbor’s truck occupied half of the cavernous space. The other half was a makeshift workshop. Chuck was hunched over a table tinkering with an old-fashioned alarm clock. Restoring antique clocks was just one of the handyman’s side gigs. He also repaired fitness equipment and copy machines. A regular jack of all trades, Harold mused as he approached his neighbor who had yet to see him. 

“Chuck,” he stated bluntly. 

His neighbor jerked. “Jeez, man. You scared the hell out of me.” He put down the clock and wiped his grimy hands with a grimy towel. “What’s new, neighbor?” 

“Quite a lot, actually,” Harold said. “I want to show you something. Check this out . . .” 

Standing beside the table, he proffered Becky’s phone. Chuck regarded him strangely. 

“Go on,” Harold urged. “It won’t bite.” Then, “That’s right, asshole. Becky’s phone . . .” 

“Look, Harold, I don’t know what—” 

“You know Becky. My wife. Well, late wife . . .” 

Harold watched Chuck’s eyes, watched them fix on the photo of Becky hanging from the light fixture. The color drained from his neighbor’s face. He gasped audibly. 

The kitchen door swung open. Chuck’s freckle faced twelve-year-old daughter appeared. She was eating a Kraft single. “Dinner’s ready . . .” 

“Go back inside, Trish,” Chuck told her. 

“Mom said—” 

“Inside! Now!” 

No sooner had Trish shut the door than Harold pulled his piece. 

“Now wait a minute.” Chuck raised his hands. “Just calm down. Don’t do something—” 

“You fucked my wife!”

Chuck started to say something about calling 911 when the bullet ripped into his throat. He tried to plug the wound with his fingers. Gagging and sputtering, blood oozed between them. The second round bored into his gut, silencing him forever. He lay sprawled, leaking and still, on the concrete. 

Towering over his dead neighbor, Harold eyed a pair of heavy-duty hedge shears hanging on the wall. He walked over, grabbed the tool, and returned to Chuck. It was a gruesome affair, severing his neighbor’s cock, gruesome yet immensely satisfying. Blood was all over the place. The garage looked like a slaughter house. 

Harold sat on the smooth concrete with his back against the wall, torn between waiting for the police and blowing his brains out. 

Sirens cut the night.

A Bull’s Work

Busy with my army work and a couple of other needy cunts, I hadn’t seen my married bitch couple for several days, until she texted, begging me to fuck her again. The first time she had confessed that she wanted to be degraded and roughly used. Being Master Tark, their bull, I complied. And, please, she also begged, make her husband Danny squirm. Make him suck you. My dick strained against my jockstrap just imagining the two of them on their hands and knees.

I drove to the cunt’s house after my gym workout, where I had been lifting weights and noticing a few male and female bitches eye me up and down. I’ve got a hard muscular build, not just from army drills, but from years of regular weight training. I always wear form-fitting, wife-beater tops to display my muscles. My legs are pretty well-developed, too. 

I had told her to be ready for me, to kneel naked on the living room sofa cushions and lean over the back of it, her ass exposed for a good spanking, her fine round tits pressed against the back. I’m not obsessed with tits but I appreciate a good pair, especially when nipple clamped, which was going to happen to her tits eventually. Too much time had lapsed, and she needed a reminder of her position and function. As instructed, Danny her husband stood, stripped to his underwear in a corner. He had also been emailing me scenarios like he was some kind of movie director and I was an actor. He had a thing to learn: I was the boss and he was nothing more than a piece of meat that needed fucking like his wife. Face the wall and don’t look until I give you permission. Understand, bitch? Sir, yes Sir, he replied. 

I also instructed Kim the wife not to look at me or say a word unless I gave her permission. She said in the email that she had been a bad girl and needed a good spanking. How bad were you? I asked in a reply. What did you do? She said that she had wicked thoughts about a high school boy down the road. She wanted him to pretend she was his teacher and fuck her on the desk. She wanted to suck his cock and swallow his young load while he pressed her head against his groin and called her slut and cunt, just the way I did. She played with her pussy, pinching and rubbing her clit, until she came, fantasizing about the student sitting on her face, his hard young tasty cock down her throat. And then Danny walked in and when he saw the high school stud face fucking his wife, he fell on his hands and knees like a dog, whimpering. Wasn’t that a bad thing to imagine, daddy? Is daddy angry? she wrote? I prefer to be called Sir or Master rather than daddy, but to humor the horny slut, I replied in the same spirit: yes, daddy was angry, and his little girl deserved a good spanking.

When I entered the room, I didn’t speak. I admired her still taut body and firm ass, not bad for a mature cunt. She was forty at least. They had eighteen-year-old twins, a boy and girl, both away at college. And I wondered if one day I’d be fucking them as well, create a private bull-owned family. Just a fantasy. For now, what was real were the parents waiting to be used. I dropped my coat to the floor, then I began caressing her ass, fondling, tickling, pinching, running my fingers up and down her pussy. She was already moist. She moaned in expectation and pleasure and when I suddenly smacked her ass cheeks hard, four times in a row, she yelped, but whimpered thank you, daddy, thank you. Then I slapped those fine cheeks harder and harder.

“Daddy’s little girl’s been bad, hasn’t she? Answer me!”

She groaned with pleasure:

“Yes, daddy, your little girl has been real bad, daddy.”

“Daddy’s little girl wants a high school boy to fuck her, doesn’t she?” And I smacked her so hard across one cheek that even my hand smarted. She yelped like a dog.

“Yes, oh, yes, daddy.”

“What a fucking cockwhore, you are, just a horny housewife bitch, aren’t you?”

Her “Daddy” whacked her buttocks so hard, she cried out and my hand was stinging, and her flesh blazoned hot red. She began whimpering and crying and begging Daddy to stop, but Daddy, getting warm, just smacked her ass several times harder and harder, even thought of flogging the hot bitch, but decided there would be another time for that. Shackle her arms and legs, spreadeagled. I’d have to see how far she wanted to go. Get that high school kid to fuck her. The way she was wiggled her flaming red ass and moaned proved how much she enjoyed and needed the spanking.

In the corner Danny whimpered and even begged to be allowed to turn around. I pulled my black belt off my military fatigues, looped it in one hand, and approached Danny who stood about 5’9 to my 6’3. He had a narrow waist and nicely rounded ass cheeks and looked like he took care of his body.

“What did you say, bitch? Did I give you permission to speak?”

“No, Master Tark, Sir.”

Then without another word I whacked his ass hard and loud with the looped belt and he screamed out “Holy fuck!” Which almost made me burst out laughing. But he didn’t turn around, although he tried to cover his cheeks with his hands. I must remember to tie them next time. Leather wrist shackles would do the trick.

“Move your fucking hands, bitch.”

And he obeyed just in time for me to apply another resounding whack over his cheeks which immediately flamed. I dropped the belt and stood closely behind him, the fingers of one hand probing his asshole under his boxers. He flinched and seemed to fall back into my chest as if expecting to be embraced like a woman. I inserted two fingers in his mouth for him to suck and he noisily slurped on them as if he had been starving. Then I pushed the two fingers up his ass right to the second knuckle. With the other hand I reached around and grabbed a hold of his small but erect cock through the underwear and squeezed. He jerked and bucked as I finger fucked him, but releasing his pathetic dick, I grabbed him by the waist and pulled his body onto my fingers and probed faster, pushing a third finger in, as he writhed and moaned and begged please, Sir, please.

“Please what, bitch?”

That was all he said, please Sir. I fucked him a minute or two longer with three fingers, my own cock rigid as a telephone pole. I was ready to fuck him in the ass, but I hadn’t finished with Kim yet. Besides, I wanted him to pant and imagine how much more was coming to him.

I pulled my fingers out and ordered him to suck his ass juices off them, which he did hungrily. My fingers practically down his throat up to the knuckles he clenched around them as if he had been starving for that particular food. Thinking he had pleased me, he begged again: “please, Master Tark, Sir, may I turn around and watch?”

“First, lick my boots, cunt.”

I had expected resistance, but he fell to his knees and hunched forward like a dog and his tongue shot out to kiss the toe of my sand-coloured, army boots. He ran his tongue along the rim of one sole. I had a terrific urge to straddle his body and piss all over the wimp’s face, but decided to leave that pleasure for another time. My cock, proudly poking out of my fatigues, glistened with precum, as it always did, and I gave him permission to sit up and lick the tip of its thick rounded head. Not to take it in his mouth, yet, but just to pleasure himself with the taste of his bull’s cum. His tongue shot out and lapped at the piss hole leaking precum. I pulled away from his tongue, and leaned over to whisper in his ear:

“You want your bull to fuck you senseless, cuntboy?”

He looked up with tears of joy in his eyes.

“Oh, yes Sir, yes Sir, yes Sir.”

I ordered him to keep down on all fours like the dog bitch, but he could watch from the corner. And I turned my attention to his wife.

“You’re my private little cumslut, aren’t you bitch, just a whorish fuck doll.”

“Yes, daddy, please, please spank me. Been so bad, spank me.”

I slapped those cheeks six more times for good measure, hard, with my hand although one day she’d feel the belt also, then immediately stuck my fingers in her pussy: fuck, it was sopping wet! Pulling her hair back with one hand, I fingered her cunt with the other, eventually slipping my entire fist in her hot pussy as she pushed back as if she wanted to fuck my arm!! I stroked with my fist in and out and she cried out, “oh, daddy, daddy, please please.”

“You still want that high school kid to fuck you, bitch?”

She didn’t answer. But the murmurings, the panting, the groaning, the pushing back of her cunt onto my fist was answer enough. My cock was so fucking hard and huge it throbbed visibly and was ready to explode a geyser of hot white bull cum.

I turned her around on the cushions and lifted her legs around my shoulders. My cock reared like a stallion’s and I pushed between her pussy lips and rammed it home. I could feel the bulging veins of my shaft bruise against the soft wet walls of her cunt, and I jackhammered it furiously. She screamed out, and so did Danny, like I was fucking them both at the same time. I grasped her thighs and bulldozed her deeply; my balls pressed against her pussy as my cock bellowed its way home to her womb. It felt as if it were expanding wider and growing longer and reaching boiling point. My fatigues down to my ankles, my soldier’s tags dangling over her mouth as I pressed forward, her cunt muscles gripped tightly around my thick hard cock as she pushed up to meet every one of my down strokes, Danny’s saliva dried on my boots, I pummeled relentlessly, the cum boiling in my balls, aching to explode inside my bitch.

Then, fuck, without permission Danny crawled over to the sofa and with one hand touched my ass. I was so taken aback I pulled out of Kim’s cunt and turned around to face him, ready to give the disobedient wimp a powerful back hand just as my cum erupted. A heavy load shot out directly at his face, splashing over his eyes and nose and lips and his tongue sticking out. I couldn’t stop it, it just shot out in great streams of hot cum. My hand instinctively grabbed his hair and pulled him to closer, his mouth open.

“You fucking disobedient cunt! You’ll be punished for this.”

Then I rammed my cock, still hard and erupting down his open throat and pushed his head against my pubes and he gagged and bolted as if about to bring up what he had no choice but to swallow. 

Not the way I had planned it, but it showed me what Danny craved, what they both needed. And Kim just folded herself on the sofa and moaned, a strange smile on his face, her eyes open but glazed as if hypnotized. I knew I still had a lot of work to do.

Where Are You?

The actor John, portraying Uncle Ted, opened the door slowly, stepped through the shaft of light into semi-darkness, and, accompanied by a grin reminiscent of a lusty demon and a rumbling raspy voice born in a Kolkata sewer, said, “Where are you?” He hunched his back like a leprous wolf, spittle dripping from the corners of his gaping maw.

“Cut!” called the director. He pondered the moment as he gestured to his First A.D., Amy, to open the closet where the children were huddled. “John, you made some interesting choices there. Good for you playing with the words. The downside is that this isn’t a horror film. It’s a happy story about Uncle Ted playing with his niece and nephew when he’s babysitting them.”

“So, too much, then?” asked John, determined to do the best he could in his first film.

“Yeah,” said the director. “Rein it in, perhaps say ‘where are you?’ as if you’re playing a game of hide-and-seek, which is actually what you’re supposed to be doing.” The director remembered John was the grandson of the woman who was financing the movie. “Oh, and don’t step through the light. Stop right there so we can see your face.”

“Got it,” said John.

The children in the closet had finally stopped crying, and they were all ready for another take.

After the standard lightscameraaction, John opened the door and stepped into the light. “Stepped” is not the correct word. It was more of a hop/prance/pirouette/twirl followed by an ancient Greek eunuch’s “Where are you?”

“Cut!” said the director.

The children ran out of the closet to their respective agents, and were never seen again.

“How can I say this?” said the director. “That was a little too ‘light’, if you know what I mean.”

“So, somewhere in between,” said John.

“Good note,” said the director. “Amy, can you find a couple of kids who aren’t so easily, uh, terrified?”

“On it,” said Amy, who immediately called her sister, who had her kids on set within three minutes because they were waiting outside, expecting the prima donna kids to fail. Amy and her sister understood that their family progeny were too “animated” to originally get the parts but they knew the film biz was mercurial, so…

Takethreecameralightsactionallthat.

John opened the door and stepped into the light. As neutral as neutral can be, he said, “Where are you?”

The new children exploded out of the cupboard. The little boy launched himself at the waist of the drained ogre, and knocked him to the concrete carpet. The little girl sank her teeth into John’s left cheek (face, not bum), tore away a chunk of pasty flesh, and spat it out.

“Method actors,” said the director to himself, disapprovingly.

The little boy stuck his fist into the left side of John’s mouth, and yanked, creating a perfect twisted smile on John’s left-half-face.

John convulsed for a few moments as his face gushed. The camera continued to roll while the kids explored their characters and the inside of John’s skull.

John’s body shuddered three times and then was still. His death scene was better than Spencer Tracy or Walter Huston or Robert De Niro ever did, probably because none of them ever died on screen and in real life at the same time.

The camera continued to roll as Amy’s nephew and niece pursued their acting careers.

There was a lot of blood but actually not as much as you might expect.

Peace. Depending on your definition.

The set settled.

Someone called Emergency Medical Services but they were apparently busy with other things.

The director said, “I think we have something here.” He wandered around the set for a while, then said, “We might need a re-write. Maybe something that fits in with these new, uh, uh, developments… Where’s the writer?”

“I’m over here,” I said. “In fact, what you have here is the original script I wrote before all you assholes tinkered with it beyond recognition and turned it into some lame Hallmark weepy. Well, ‘original script’ except for the idea you killed the actor. Outside of that, it’s pretty much the same screenplay. How about we shoot the scene where the kids eat Uncle Ted? I mean, he’s already there, and I think we have a small window of opportunity before EMS shows up.”

Sigil in Silk

The nanospiders arrived at dawn.

Kandy Fontaine lay sprawled across her velvet-drenched mattress, one thigh draped over a copy of Hand of Doom, the other tangled in a pair of shredded fishnet—last night’s ritual, pushing the outer limits of flesh, where pleasure and pain collapsed together like a quantum waveform.

Her lipstick was smeared across her cheek like blood. The air was thick with absinthe vapors, strawberry incense and the faint metallic tang of sex magick.

She blinked awake to the sound of clicking—tiny, rhythmic, a thousand stilettos tapping across her hardwood floor.

They were everywhere. Crawling across her notebooks. Her vinyl collection, hundreds of rare pressings of Deathrock and Goth classics. Her altar of broken glam figurines, Rozz Willliams in a bondage harness, Gitane Demone in bandages, and melted candles. Self-archiving nanospiders, sent from some future where memory was currency and every orgasm a data point. They skittered across her skin, whispering in binary, recording her dreams, her moans, her whispered curses.

She didn’t scream. She arched her back and let them nest in her hair. They skittered through her Siouxsie-style bed hair and seemed to be enjoying themselves. She felt the first rising “thwang” of gorgeous blood in its lakelet surge towards her pussy. 

One of them paused on her inner thigh, just above the sigil tattooed in ultraviolet ink. It pulsed once—softly, like a heartbeat—and then the mirror across the room lit up with a message etched in acid green bile:

“The Horror Clown is coming.”

Kandy sat up, her body aching in all the right places. She lit a clove cigarette with a match struck against her nipple ring and stared at the message. The Horror Clown. Not a man. Not a myth. A woman named Miranda Vex, once a promising horror novelist, now a greasepainted stalker with a vendetta and a cracked psyche.

Miranda had sent her lipstick threats on torn Fangoria covers. Had left voicemails reciting Sylvia Plath in a helium voice. Had once mailed her a dead hummingbird wrapped in a rejection letter.

She believed Kandy had stolen her career. Her voice. Her soul.

Kandy exhaled smoke and whispered, “Let her come. And not in the good way. Although…” 

She dressed slowly, deliberately. A corset laced with barbed wire. Thigh highs held up by safety pins. A trench coat made from repurposed Cradle of Filth merch. Her lipstick was black cherry, her perfume was called “Funeral Kiss,” her boots blessed by a drag priestess in a condemned church.

The nanospiders followed her, crawling into her purse, her cleavage, her hair. Her witnesses. Her archivists. Her familiars.

Outside, the Hollywood sky was bruised purple. The Rainbow Bar & Grill glowed like a haunted jukebox. Kandy walked past the ghosts of glam rock, past the alley where Lemmy once pissed on a paparazzo, past the mural of Wendy Dio that someone had defaced with glitter and semen. 

She felt the presence before she saw her.

Miranda Vex stood across the street, face painted in cracked white, eyes smeared with rage. She wore a tutu made of rejection slips and carried a balloon sword that pulsed with psychic venom.

Kandy smiled. “You’re late.”

Miranda didn’t speak. She raised the sword.

And then the hearse pulled up.

Joe Oroborus at the wheel, eyeliner smeared, cigarette dangling. Reynaldo, the World’s Smallest Circus Bear, in the passenger seat, sipping absinthe from a thimble and muttering Latin hexes.

Kandy didn’t resist. She let them bind her in neon duct tape, gag her with a vintage tour shirt, toss her into the velvet-lined coffin in the back. And leave her there, twitching, moaning and drooling. 

She was aroused. Beyond fucking belief. 

This was ritual.

This was revenge.

Inside the hearse, the air was thick with patchouli and static. Joe played a bootleg cassette of Magica backwards, letting the reversed riffs summon something ancient. Reynaldo lit a candle shaped like a severed tongue and whispered, “She’s watching.”

Kandy writhed against the velvet, her body a sigil, her breath a spell. The nanospiders crawled into her bloodstream, activating the glyph etched into her thigh. Her orgasm built like a thunderstorm—slow, electric, inevitable.

Outside, Miranda Vex followed in a rusted ice cream truck, its speakers blaring distorted readings from her unpublished novel The Clown’s Gospel. She believed she was the chosen one. She believed Kandy was the devil.

She was half right.

Kandy came like a cathedral collapsing.

The sigil detonated. The nanospiders pulsed. The hearse shook.

Miranda screamed from the street, clutching her balloon sword, her face melting in the heat of psychic backlash. She saw every phantom enemy she’d ever invented. Every imagined slight. Every silenced scream.

She collapsed, twitching, her career ended not with a scream—but with a whimpering laugh.

Joe lit a cigarette. Reynaldo toasted Kandy with a thimble of blood.

Kandy Fontaine walked away, heels clicking on broken glass, nanospiders trailing behind her like a bridal veil of vengeance. She was already writing the next chapter in blood and eyeliner.

The Horror Clown was gone. The archive lived. And Kandy? She was just getting started.