Characters and Situations

A crisp walk through Lake Hollywood Park would have been refreshing—for anyone but Morty Gelber. Sunday night depression was rolling in. How he hated getting his sneakers wet in the grass. And how he loathed walking. 

But, he was meeting a woman. All the better to buoy his spirits before the Monday morning meetings with the studio chiefs. Judging from the pictures on Instagram, this mystery lady could be just the ticket. 

The name was Sarah. (With an H, the slut spelling.) Or, at least, that was the name she used on Instagram. 

There, Morty saw her sitting on a picnic table, with the glorious Hollywood sign hovering in the periphery. That must have been her, with the tight, long-sleeved, low-cut top. The soft hands turning in her lap. Nervous, cute. She could have been a Latina. But possibly a gypsy, with those Eastern European cheekbones and that bumped nose. Morty had visions of a Moldovan vampire right out of a sleazy seventies Lesbian Horror flick—or, a porno. 

Sunset cast the rising figure in a warm orange glow. The Rubenesque hips swiveled as she walked to meet him. Yes, she was just the ticket. 

Morty extended his hand and introduced himself. Though he knew, to these young women, he required no introduction. 

Sarah placed her small, dainty hand into Morty’s sweating paw. “Wow,” she said. “I’m so glad I could finally meet you.” 

“It’s always nice to meet a fan,” Morty said. “I get lots of mail and kind messages on Instagram. But there’s nothing like actually getting face to face with people.” 

Sarah’s was certainly a face Morty wanted to face. He so much enjoyed these encounters with fans and admirers. But he had to be careful these days. The Hollywood whisper wheel was always turning, and if it turned for you then Heaven help you—because no one else will. One bad meeting. One bad phone call. One inappropriate comment at a party. And it would all be over. 

But meeting women through the Internet was always risky. You never knew exactly who would appear on the other side. 

“Tell me about yourself,” Morty said, as they started walking through the gathering fog. 

“Well,” Sarah said. “What can I say? I’ve been a fan of your show since high school. I’d sneak down to the living room in my nightgown and make popcorn and scare myself to death. But it was so exciting. The violence and the sex. Hot explosive blood shooting on the camera lens. I read all the novels too.” 

“Really? That shows dedication.” 

Sarah bit her lip and giggled. “Well. The scene in book five, when the ripper uses the device on the nurse. The way you described it. That scene taught me how to…pleasure myself.” 

“You know, you’re not the first girl to tell me that. Yes. The novels are still dear to me. When the show got picked up, the studio changed everything around. Those suits like to poke their grubby fingers into everything.” 

Fingers. Morty visualized getting his fingers into other things as Sarah’s warm body butted up against his. “But I still have a great deal of…input.” 

How Morty despised the way the studio execs tried to excise him from the show. They even changed his credit from “Based on the novels by” to “Characters and situations by” Mortimer Gelber. Characters and situations. 

Morty had his pride. He also had his ego, but that was nothing unusual for Hollywood. He had used every trick in his Machiavellian playbook to secure the deals necessary to worm his way into the Hollywood elite. He became a player in spite of the best efforts of the studio hotshots to snub him. 

But “Characters and Situations” was an embarrassment, a total diminishing of his creative contribution. For was that not all of life? All the world was a stage to Morty Gelber, and all the men and women but characters and situations. 

The woman walking beside was a character in all caps and bold print. Morty looked over and saw himself in Sarah’s big adoring eyes. That was exactly where he wanted to be. 

“Even so,” said Sarah. “It’s a fascinating idea for a series. Is it your actual belief that Jack The Ripper was an extraterrestrial surgeon?” 

“Oh, yes, Sarah. It’s quite clear to see that, if you make a careful study of the evidence. In doing research for the novels, I took many trips to London to observe the very locations where the murders took place.” 

“That’s amazing,” Sarah said. 

“Yes. You take the first slaying, Mary Ann Nichols. Witnesses claim she was speaking to a man that evening. Likely a gentleman John, a suitor, a paying customer. She was a whore, you see. The man was wearing a deerstalker cap, like Sherlock Holmes. A sophisticated alien being would easily be able to disguise its true appearance with period-appropriate garb. We demonstrated this in the pilot episode. The test audiences ate it up.” 

Morty loved dazzling women with his perspicacity. His intellectual prowess was his chief asset, at least he thought so. 

“Tell me more,” Sarah said, her anxious breath pushing her chest out into the open night air. 

“Well, you take the so-called ‘botched’ slaying of Elizabeth Stride. It was a chilly September evening in London. A night just like this one.” 

Morty grabbed Sarah’s hand and tickled her wrist. She gasped and wrapped herself around his chubby arm. 

“Her throat was slashed,” Morty said. “The Metropolitan police bore down on the scene. The killer had to flee before he had a chance to operate. They found the woman’s body lying there. Still warm. They searched the ground. Not a track left behind. No trace of a killer. Now, you tell me, Sarah, how could the killer have so quickly withdrawn himself, unless he—or, it—was a creature with advanced alien technology?” 

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “But it’s horrifying. If that were true, then it’s possible the Ripper is still out there somewhere.” 

Sarah’s slender arms fastened tightly to her evening interlocutor as he continued his titillating sermon. “You are correct, Sarah. Just think about it. How many bizarre slayings go unexplained to this day? Right here in L.A., even?” 

“Hundreds?” 

“Thousands.” 

Sarah listened in abject fascination as Morty recounted multiple Ripper-like slayings from Victorian times to today. This was the premise of his show. 

The original Ripper Case Files novels were more doorstopper than blockbuster. But the TV show made Morty famous. Now, he had fans all over the world. 

The Ripper show was an instant hit with the younger female demographic. You couldn’t go wrong, Morty knew, with sizzling subplots and serial slayings. 

Morty was also a student of hypnosis. And he knew just what to say when he got his female fans alone. They instantly fell under his spell. 

His life’s work did most of the job for him. For that was the nature of fandom. Those women wanted to live in the narrative universe that sprang like a Big Bang of Genius from Morty’s mind. 

In those golden days, Morty would prefer to have multiple partners at once. But he was getting older now, and one was quite enough. For he had known many a Mary, Sue, and Sarah. All different characters, in different situations. 

“Parts,” Morty said. 

“What do you mean?” 

Morty made a pontificating face. For he was wont to be philosophical in these matters. 

“The Victorian era in England was rife with controversy regarding vivisection. That was when surgeons would experiment on living animals. Cutting them open to see how the inner workings function.” 

Sarah made a disgusted, but simpering, face. 

“I think that was the Ripper’s motive,” Morty said. “No doubt about it. An intergalactic being would be just as curious about us as we would be of it. And what better way to learn than to experiment on living tissue. After all, kid: it’s what’s on the inside that counts.” 

Sarah jumped as Morty poked her ribs. 

She was like all the other fans who adored Morty from afar. She read his social media posts. She subscribed to his newsletter. 

Morty scanned through his social likes for women like Sarah. And when the time was right, he would send a masterfully orchestrated direct message. Conversation, and some mildly inappropriate innuendo, would ensue. Eventually, a date. 

“It’s beautiful out tonight,” Sarah said. 

They walked into a shady glen. Slivers of moonlight peeled through the trees, blanketed by fog. 

Sarah sat down on the root of a large oak tree. It was just big enough to form a seat for two. 

Morty could see a question forming on Sarah’s round, strawberry face. “Mortimer?” she said. 

“Call me Morty.” 

“Morty. What made you want to write about Jack The Ripper?” 

“I don’t know, Sarah. But I know I’m fascinated by characters. I wanted to know his mind. Or it. Whatever he was. But alas, I could only get so close. The door of history is shut to me.” 

“What was the most—I don’t know—gruesome part of the story? What really inspired you?” 

“The final ‘canonical’ victim. At 13 Millers Court. Mary Jane Kelly. She was the most mutilated of all the victims. Because she was in a locked room with the slayer all night. How did he, or it, get in there? Again, I suspect some sort of technological inducement. All we know is, he had plenty of time. There was no rush.” 

The air between their faces smelled of perfumed mist. Sarah drew closer. Morty could feel her breath tickle his nose. 

“What’s it like being famous?” Sarah asked. 

“I’m not famous,” Morty said, though he didn’t mean it. “I’m just like you or any other person walking down the street.” 

“No, you’re not. You’re special. You have ideas. You’re a writer. You just invent things out of your head. And they become the dreams of others. I don’t know. It’s something special.” 

“I admit. I have my moments.” 

Morty let a dramatic pause linger in the air between them. Sarah’s breasts pressed against his chest. 

“Do me now,” she whispered. 

Morty was taken aback at her insistence. This new generation was more forward than what he was used to. “Not here,” he said. 

“I want to. Right here. Please.” 

She lay him down between the roots of the tree, where the formation of years made a natural bed. Concealed on both sides, they could undress with abandon—and even some privacy. 

But Morty was not into rush jobs. He liked to take his time. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he said. “Slow down. I want to enjoy this fully.” 

“Aren’t you enjoying it?” 

Sarah pulled off her shirt, unclipped her bra. 

“Sarah,” he said. “It’s OK. You can stop this.” 

“Why? Don’t you want to?” 

“Of course. But not like this. Not soaking wet in this cold natural setting.” 

Silence fell. Sarah breathed slowly. Her chest shook with apparent anticipation. 

“I’m opening to you,” she said. 

“I can see that.” 

“You said you wanted to get closer to me. This is your chance.” 

Morty was confused. His eyes searched Sarah’s face for some clue toward what she was getting at. 

“I’m opening the door of history to you.” 

Before Morty could blink, Sarah slammed a long needle into his jugular. A sensation like dipping into a hot bath overcame Morty’s entire body. 

“You’re as close as you’re ever going to get,” Sarah said. 

Morty watched as a blue mist surrounded them. He couldn’t move. 

A glowing white fire outlined the Sarah frame and dissolved it. The girl was gone. What appeared now was a floating, pulsing, jelly creature. The bloated bulk had no face but a grinning maw full of needle-sharp teeth. From its oily appendages, alien surgical implements sprouted through sheaths of fleshy tissue. 

It went to work on him. There was no rush. They had plenty of time. 

Bark for Reinhardt

Her wedding dress spread over his body like a puffy white cloud fallen to the bed as his tongue slid into her cunt and his hands held her by the waist. The taste of her juices, the perfume of her body and the gentle rocking of her thighs around his head; all intensified the hardness and strength of his cock, and he wanted to turn her onto the bed, push deeply into her body and flood her womb with his superman seed. He wanted her to become pregnant with his power and brutal beauty. How easy it had been to reach this point. Hans struggled in the binding ropes on the chair, forced to watch his cousin fuck his willing wife, and craving to crawl on the bed and suck the cum out of her cunt, and to feel Reinhardt’s cock, to see it, to lick it, to smell it, to submit to its glorious power. 

                                                                                      *****

Yes, Reinhardt remembered, when he was an exchange student in London, fucking whom he pleased, he used to think of sex as mere fun and games, nothing important. After his return to Germany, sex became a business: impersonal, professional, profitable. And now, it had become essential, the thing itself most worth living for. As long as he kept his body prime and seductive, he’d have no end of customers, and no end of pleasure. In his mirror, he saw a magnificent Ubermensch whom inferiors would properly adore and serve and pay. 

Seduction of his cousin and his wife had been unsurprisingly easy for him to achieve his desires. The first three visits to his cousin’s house after their wedding had been pleasant, included a tour of the University of Leipzig, and general discussions at lunch with Jane about nothing in particular. They became increasingly comfortable and familiar in his presence. In the university laboratory where Hans spent half his day among beakers, Bunsen burners, Petrie dishes, retorts, and cupboards of chemicals, he had attempted to demonstrate his latest bit of research, to which Reinhardt paid respectful attention, standing close to Hans, even at one point placing a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. Wearing a muscle-hugging black T-shirt and jeans fashionably torn at the knees, Reinhardt casually flexed and rubbed his biceps, noting that Hans glanced at them when he did so. Hans did not shirk the hand off his shoulder. In fact, he seemed to enjoy the sensation of Reinhardt gently rubbing his neck, and even admitted, that feels so good.

“Maybe I should give you a massage. You’re so tense, Hans.”

And he rubbed the neck and shoulders more firmly, allowing Hans to step back against his body.

“That feels so good.”

“I will make you feel better than this. I know what you need.”

Before Reinhardt could feel if Hans had a boner, which he was sure he did, a lab assistant walked in, so the two left. Hans liked his company whenever they happened to be alone, and now he eagerly wanted Reinhardt’s approval on what he was doing, and embraced him longer than necessary upon arrival and departure. 

On the fourth visit within five weeks, during dinner when he listened to Han’s gabble on about research work, he had kept his eyes on his cousin, who had trouble returning the gaze. Eye contact was crucially important. Reinhardt liked to fix his subject or prey with his steady, penetrating glare, his eyes often sparkling like sun on water, forcing the weaker one to look away, but also to return, half-mesmerized, sometimes frightened, but connecting and not wanting to be let go. Sooner or later, the prey’s eyes sparkled with a “please fuck me” look. When that happened, Reinhardt knew that he had subtly established the proper relationship between the Master and inferiors, male or female or whatever gender anyone was pleased to call itself, all potential slaves. 

Usually, he was paid to play the role of master, but now he wanted to experience the thrill owning and enslaving someone like his cousin Hans, and maybe his wife also, not only because it would shock his mother, if she ever knew, but also because he simply wanted to. He would put into practice his belief that a superior alpha male had the inalienable right to control, dominate and fuck, regardless of social morality. No money would change hands in this transaction. Fidgety under Reinhardt’s confident and friendly demeanour and steady gaze, Hans drank too much wine. More abstemious than most, Reinhardt nursed his single glass of Riesling, to maintain complete clarity and command.  

Jane interrupted to praise her husband, and then to ask Reinhardt if he ever regretted not pursuing his scientific studies.

“Your mother says she’s sorry that you dropped out of university given how exceptional you were in physics.”

‘Well, she only knew what I told her,” he replied.

“You mean you weren’t gifted?”

“Perhaps I was, perhaps I am, but not in the way my mother means.”

Then Hans reached over the table and touched Reinhardt’s hand and said:

“Not everyone wants to be an academic, darling. Look at him, Reinhardt could be a movie star. Already he’s had a few parts in movies. 

Reinhardt wondered if Hans had actually seen the porn flics he fucked in, aside from the bit parts in had in mainstream films. 

‘Have you ever seen a professor with muscles like Reinhardt’s?”

“You’re being silly, Hans.”

“No, seriously, I mean it. Reinhardt is gifted in his own way.”

Reinhardt wore a black T-shirt under a sports jacket, which he had removed before sitting down.

“No, really, I mean, it takes dedication and talent to create a body like Reinhardt’s. It deserves recognition and admiration.’

“You’re drunk, Hans.”

Reinhardt noticed how Jane kept her eyes on his body as Hans praised his cousin. And then he locked onto her eyes and saw the depths of her own desire for him. Yes, the please fuck me look. He knew that she’d fall before him like her husband, and soon his alpha cock would be deep inside emptying his seed into her receptive womb. From the moment he saw her emerged from the limousine at the church, her wedding dress billowing around her slender body, he wanted to fuck her and make her his bitch. And, of course, he’d also degrade and enslave her husband. His cock surged under the table.

In the kitchen, Reinhardt stood by the sink as Hans stacked the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Reinhardt stood close to him, and when Hans bent over his back side touched Reinhardt’s groin, which responded, and Hans didn’t move, so Reinhardt just pushed gently against his cousin’s buttocks. Hans stood up, turned around, his face beaming with a red flush, his mouth open as if to speak. Reinhardt knew there and then Hans had fallen for him, thunderstruck by envy mixed with lust. Hans ran his fingers along Reinhardt’s biceps.

He needed Reinhardt’s muscles and power; he needed to serve; he needed to absorb the strength and virility that he lacked; he needed to adore Reinhardt. But he had to show it first; it was imperative that Hans respond to the presence of his superior by explicitly acting upon his desire. Reinhardt simply raised an arm and flexed, and Hans instantly raised a hand to touch and let his fingers trace the shape and veins of his cousin’s ripped abdomen. Reinhardt gripped his cousin’s neck and pushed his face closer to the muscle. 

“Remember how you used to follow me around when we were kids? You always wanted to be with me. And do what I told you. Remember?”

“Yes, Reinhardt, I remember.”

“I think you still want it.”

“Want what, Reinhardt?”

“You want to do what I tell you, don’t you?’

Without waiting for an answer, Reinhardt pressed his cousin’s face against his pec and gripped his neck. Hans at first seemed to resist then relaxed against Reinhardt’s muscles and began moaning as if entering a private state of bliss. His wife was still in the dining room, waiting for them to return. So easy to lead his cousin into the bedroom and tie him to a chair and then fuck his wife in front of him. So easy once they gave into their deepest desires. And he, Reinhardt, was there to fulfill them.

Yes, Hans would worship him. He was an academic wimp secretly hankering after muscles and men of merciless power and would willingly lick the boots of his Master. Wasn’t there also a kind of primordial beauty in brutality, now rendered impotent and shameful by contemporary morality? That’s what Hans needed: to submit to power and violence. The bitch needed to renounce his pathetic humanity and crawl for his master. Reinhardt would reduce him to the level of dog and make the professor bark on command. The very thought of it made Reinhardt’s cock, still trapped in the jeans, harden to its fullest glory. His hands still gripping the professor’s neck, Reinhardt led Hans to the dining room where Jane slowly rose from her seat, her eyes shining with lust, as they approached, and accepted Reinhardt’s extended hand.

In a Garden – Bitter

The corpses were fresh, tide not receding from the barrows of Hell, little bodies of children and adults – some of my brethren mere babes when they had rebelled, following my pennant of red and pride to an early grave.

I wept. Alone. No others had fallen. It was only me.

Cast off. Broken, bruised.

“Proud, brother?” I begged Michael in my mind, his sword wound hot on my head. “Proud to be rid of you.”

I remembered how he damned me with 

A kiss.

It takes an eternity to build. Several more to heal. More centuries to farm, plow, govern, for Mammon to scope the metals to build some semblance of edifices, for Moloch to raise the graves of the fallen and arm us, for Mulciber to get the electricity up and running on ether.

Beelzebub warms my bed, clings to me.

I am alone, though, even when I plow deep into his soul, this husband infernal mine.

Why? Well, of course, I ache.

Everyone knows me. Proud Lucifer, wise ruler, Tempter of Eve, King of Hell. First for freedom. Liberty’s spark.

But my eyes? Always, skyward – though we gaze up at sulphur and caverns. Beelzebub finds me weeping as I have drawn a whole tapestry of stars in blood with my claws on my thighs. I dig them, pick, shred, deep, deeper.

Lilith’s pudenda cannot anchor me. She tires of me, weds Asmodeus. Eve wanders, cast off into Hell, gets a job under my husband. The Infernal Empire builds. The first souls after Eve come: Cain, Naamah, the Cainites. The Canaanites. It seems my godforsaken Father damns everyone.

“Lucifer, what do you think of, when you kiss me?” Beelzebub asks.

I cannot say it. He will choke it out of me. He just, instead, tends to my wings with his mouth. They are rotting – always rotting – and Beelzebub sucks the poison out with his tongue.

“Michael,” Beelzebub answers himself. “You think of Michael. Long for your brother.”

Beelzebub begins to weep. I stare at the ceiling, on my back, spent.

“I am never enough.”

I cannot tell which of us says it.

The Empire builds. Infernal Machine. I begin to think less of the stars.

But then, a crack… I have found a way, my old serpent form healed enough, finally, after millennia. I worm my way like the shamir to Gan Eden’s crust, to the tender apple tree I planted, when I dreamed of better days – of a humanity that would seed the cosmos with their beauty, topple my Father G-d.

Michael is there, tending my Tree. I hide in the bushes, demon formed, my rotten wings, horns, and scarred leathery skin, face of horror, sanguine hell body, smelling like burnt meat. Oh, I will never heal.

Michael is singing. The song we made up as boys.

I weep.

“Lucifer? Sam – Samael?” Michael chokes, his nostrils flaring. “The hell are you doing here?” he says, a tear in his eyes. “There is no way in, no way out. I am the only one with the keys. Enemy mine, o wretched brother –” he catches me as I faint.

All I see are his blue, blue eyes

Tears

Meeting

Mine.

When I wake, he is rubbing nard into my sick, twisted, maligned burden of a body. Flesh and blood and bone poke out, charred as much as the rest of me. Michael does not mind. He is singing Psalm 31. I wince.

“Brother, you should have killed me again,” I choke, my voice as always, wretched.

He smiles through tears, gold haired, beautiful, the most holy thing G-d ever made.

“I missed you. I forgive you, Lucifer.”

I hiss, turn into serpent. Bite his ankle. “YOU CANNOT FORGIVVVVVE ME.”

He looks down, sad, and lifts my snaking form to his lips, then kisses me. I cannot help it, turn back to winged burnt husk, moan, bite his lip, and he makes love to my hell, my burnt bruised body. I cry out, as his tongue licks my wounds, heals me with the touch of an angel. It cannot do much, but the bones seal, and the spear wound he gifted me: my greatest pain? It is

Gone.

“Brother, I love you,” I mourn. “I will destroy this false Kingdom G-d and you build. I will eat you, fuck you dead, destroy you-

“I love you too, Samael. You are hugging the life out of me.”

I tear at my hair, I would beat myself with goat leathers, if I had them. “YOU CANNOT FORGIVE ME.” I weep, finally, too tired. He rubs my hair.

“Perhaps not, Samael. Perhaps our wounds are too bitter to ever heal.”

I gaze up at the stars. My humanity. My children. They will reach the cosmos, span the multidimensions, spreading Eve and Adam’s beautiful, blessed progeny.

“I did it all for them.”

“I know, Samael.”

“I will never bow to you.”

“Then let me bow to you, Samael.” He does, bending, his mouth meeting my erect, scarred cock tenderly. 

“Fuck you!” I moan, threading my hands through his hair. He bobs his Golden Boy, overgrown seagull – as all angels are – stick-up-the-ass – FUCK! – head on my member. I can’t hold it in, my lust and bitter love and hatred burning, balls tightening, the great belly of my beast spilling out onto his tongue. My cock throbs and I shudder, pass out again.

Too much. Too much.

Bloody

Hell.

“Sleep, my twin. My only love,” Michael sings, then hums B’Shem HaShem to me.

Bitter, I fall asleep, spent.

We take to meeting in the Garden. I tell him of Hell. He tells me of his and Father’s plans on Earth. One day, Michael will incarnate, virgin-born.

“Nothing is born of a maiden unsowed,” I say, suspect.

“Wait.”

He is born, in a manger. I weep. I am his guardian

Angel. 

How? I was just in my office. Yet here, G-d – who should have no claim on me! I barren! Hellbound! Tyrant of Gehenna!

How could Father, still, all these years?

Pull me back

To Earth.

To watch Michael, with rosy lips

Take

His first

Breath.

Mary and Joseph fall asleep. The Three Kings leave.

I clutch the babe in my arms.

He sighs.

I sing Michael, his mind wiped, this Yeshua

B’shem

HaShem.

Oh, what wretched wonder. I must atone? I – I – no, I will ruin this Christ.

I tried.

I offer Yeshua, this Christ, life.

He takes the bitter cup. I teach him all his Gifts. All his Holiness.

That is something the Bible never tells you. He does not cast out demons by Beelzebub, but by

Samael.

He comes to Hell. I harrow him, in my bed. Beelzebub curses and never returns.

I grow bitter.

He leaves.

I grow old.

The End of Times comes.

He kisses me, then casts us both

Into fire.

“With you, or nothing,” Michael Christ says, gleaming like sun, merciful. Love, it shines, is holy writ

On his Tongue of Swords.

“Michael, please, my only love, be rid of me,” I beg at his feet, a Beast.

He smiles, casts us both

Into Fire.

Enflamed.

It is quiet, in Hell, now.

Empty save for Michael

And I.

And we

are happy

you know.

The Girl Next Door

Headline from the Polaris County weekly Reporter, July 19, 2023: 

WOMAN FOUND RAN OVER OUTSIDE HOME SUCCUMBS TO INJURIES

From the transcript of Detective Washburn’s first interview with Abel Kingsley (July 17, 2023):

Q. You and Ms. Sheriza Collins were an item, were you not?

A. We were, sir.  

Q. Aren’t you a little old for?  She was nineteen and you… says here you are twenty-five years old.  

A. Well, I, uh – 

Q. How did that come about?

A. I knew her because she dated my friend first.  We all hung out together, became good friends.  Sometimes I was the third wheel, sometimes our friend, Hoss, came with us.  When Tobey and Sherry didn’t work out, Sherry and me kept on being friends.  One thing led to another and suddenly we were dating.  It wasn’t anything crazy or weird or creepy, I swear.  She’s technically of age… sir. 

Q. Yes, she is of age, technically, and that isn’t why you’re here.   

A. Why am I here?

Q. Can you tell me where you were the night of Saturday, July 15^th?

A. Wait, you don’t think I did it?  You don’t think I ran her over, right?

Q. Well, can you tell me where you were the night your girlfriend was run down in your vehicle?

A. I was at her house, but just for a little bit.  We argued that night. It got kind of heated, I admit it, but I didn’t run her over.  I swear.  I just walked off.  I never put my hands on her.  We’d been arguing a lot lately and I realized that was the better option, walking away.

Q. The night your girlfriend was killed, what were you two arguing about?

A. Hoss.  We were arguing about Hoss Dawson.

From Tobey Jackson’s guest essay “Hindsight” on the true crime blog The Death Knell (March 2024):

…Hoss and I met in high school.  It was the summer before our freshman year, and Abel’s younger brother, Aldwin, invited us both, and bunch of others, to a spot he and some other hooligans found exploring the woods near the school.  We had to walk down an overgrown path until we reached train tracks.  Hoss, I remember, was afraid that a train might come rushing around the bend and take us out.  He stayed as far away from the tracks as he could without climbing up back into the brush or down into more vegetation.  We had to climb down a steep, narrow muddy hill, and I busted my ass trying to keep my feet under me, but it was worth it.

Aldwin and his gang of misfits had found a stream, which they dammed up and turned into a little pool.  There were two rocks which rose high on either side of the stream right at its mouth, which made for prime jumping.  Somehow, we all ended up skinny dipping.  It was weird, but it was fun.  Innocent.  I always used to bring that up to Hoss, you know?  Like, “Hey, the first time we met, we saw each other’s assholes.  We’re stuck together.”

All throughout high school, we were best friends.  He lived with his grandmother and she loved me.  In fact, she’d be the one to suggest I sleep over when I would stay late at their house.  Hoss introduced me to his friend, Amber, and we dated on and off for three years, and he seemed supportive throughout the relationship.  To date, my relationship with Amber is my longest relationship, and I have Hoss to thank for that.  She was a big bitch, but he was a great mediator.  

Maybe that was something I should have taken heed of.  Hoss was always single, but gave great relationship advice.

I started dating Sherry after he went off to college.  She and her best friend Amanda had dated on the periphery of our friend group; it was only matter of time before they made their way to us.  Hoss and I stayed close, but he didn’t really come around while Sherry and I dated.  He was bust with school and everything.  But while he was away, she and her family moved from Torrington to Polaris County, into the house right next to Hoss’s grandma’s.  A weird turn of events, if you ask me.  

Soon after that I broke up with Sherry.  She was your typical teenage crazy.  Checking my phone.  Going through social media.  Wanting my location.  Needing to know at all times who I was with, and if she didn’t believe me, she’d want to speak with them.  None of my friends were females.  I was scared she’d try to kill them.  Sherry and Amber even threw hands once in the Brass Mill Center parking lot out in Waterbury.  Amber had sent me a text that said “Happy birthday.”

Sherry took the breakup badly.  She hit me up constantly.  When I wouldn’t answer my phone, she would call or text through Facebook and Instagram.  I couldn’t handle the crazy, so I blocked her every time she reached out.  My sanity was numero uno in my book.  Eventually, she gave up.  I thought – hoped, really – that she got the picture, understood that I wanted nothing to do with her.  Abel told me the message was clear, and that Sherry was, and I quote, “a psycho bitch.”  

After not getting texts and calls from random and blocked numbers for a few weeks, I thought the coast was clear.  Hoss and Abel did, too.  Sure, she lived next door to Hoss, but that wouldn’t stop me from seeing my boy.  And that was the plan when Hoss invited us over for the standard young adult bro sleepover.  Videogames.  Junk food.  Horror movies.  I arrived first, as usual. 

When Abel showed up, however, Sherry was on his arm.  Hoss and I acted like it was cool, and for me, I think it was.  I wanted nothing to do with her anymore, but if Abel wanted her, even after knowing what I went through, then good for him.  He was desperate to get laid like that.  It was harder on Hoss, though, for sure.  Abel didn’t stay the night like he was supposed to.  He stayed at Sherry’s house, right next door. 

Statement from Amanda Matos to the Hartford Courant (published March 5, 2024):

“Was she in love with Abel?  Love?  I mean, I wouldn’t call it love.  But we were young, you know?  I think she liked being around Tobey, and that group of people.  She got accustomed to it.  There was nothing wrong with Abel, but love it was not.  And I think he knew that.  Maybe not on the surface, but deep down where he keeps all his secrets, he knew it.  The sex is what probably made it okay for him.  Sherry and Abel fucked like all the time.”

From The Complete Journals of Hoss Dawson (published February 2024, Scribner):

5/12/23

I’m finally home for the summer.  My freshman year was something, let me tell you.  I really enjoy my psychology classes, but English still has my heart.  I think I may double major.  If I focus, I can do it.  But for now, I am ready for a hot boy summer with the guys.

Abel is supposed to come by around four.  I haven’t seen him in months.  Every time I come home, he’s busy with Sherry.  Tobey thinks it’s weird, that she’s using Abel to get close him, but he won’t tell Abel.  He doesn’t want to burst Abel’s bubble.  I get that, really.  This is the first time a woman’s been this interested in him since God knows when.  Usually, they just want a ride or for him to fix their cars.  Good for him, though, I guess. 

This summer is going to be great.  I can feel it.  Starting with tonight, I’ll make sure it’s one I remember forever.

5/12/23 (later)

It’s six o’clock and still no sign of Abel.  No texts or calls.  Tobey and his brother Alwin haven’t heard from him either.  He’s probably with Sherry, but I hope he’s all right.  Maybe he just lost track of time.  He does that a lot, the fucking airhead.  He – 

Abel just called.  Said he lost track of time (what did I say? lol).  He and Sherry were just out joyriding, he said.  He’s bringing her tonight.  He didn’t really ask.  It was more like telling me.  It was supposed to be just the boys, though.  Whatever. 

From the transcript of Detective Washburn’s second interview with Abel Kingsley (July 20, 2023):

Q. I need to know when shit hit the fan with you and Sheriza.  Spare me no details, son, she’s dead now.  This was already a serious matter, and now it couldn’t get any more serious.  Tell me everything.

A. Hoss and Sherry, they didn’t get along.  At first they did.  But things started to go downhill.  He didn’t want Sherry around anymore, but that, for me, wasn’t acceptable.  She was my girlfriend, you know?  She had a right to go wherever I went.  Hoss thought she was using me to get to Tobey, so he confronted her about it.  It was easy to do, them living next door to each other, and all.

Q. Were you there for this confrontation?

A. No, but Sherry confirmed everything he told me.

Q. And when was this?

A. The end of June, sir.  I think the twenty-fifth or -sixth.

Q. What happened during this confrontation?

A. Hoss accused her of, well, fucking me to make me her slave.  She told him she was thinking of ending our relationship because she felt smothered.  Sherry said I always insisted on being around or texting, and it was unbearable.  But what can I say, man?  I loved her.  I still do. She… she… said I was obsessed with her and everybody saw it, except me.  I… I….

Q. Do you need a break?

A. Please.

[There is a cut in the audio.  When it resumes, Kingsley has regained his composure.]

Q. Why did Hoss Dawson care so much, Mr. Kingsley?  

A. I don’t know.  Maybe he felt like Sherry was stealing me away from him.  Me and Sherry hung out a lot.  Guess I was smothering her then, too.  Hoss was jealous.

Q. Now what would make you say that?

From The Complete Journals of Hoss Dawson (published February 2024, Scribner):

5/21/22

I really don’t know if I should be writing about this… but I need to tell someone about last night, and I have no one else.  No one I can trust, at least.  

The actual Homecoming dance was definitely not my style.  I had to rent a tux and it was itchy and didn’t fit right.  It was fun to hang out with my friends, though.  Seeing them all dressed in their suits and dresses and dancing made me happy.  If they’re happy, I’m happy. 

What I really want to talk about is the afterparty.  Misty had everyone over to her place, and of course, there were drinks and some pot.  Abel was there, even though he graduated years ago.  He might be older, but he’s one of us, through and through.  My grandma still thinks he’s too old for me to hang around, but what does she know?  Times are different.

Late into the night, I stumbled into a backroom and Abel was sitting alone at a piano bench, just tapping away on the keys.  He looked sad; his head hung low.  I slid over to him, and I don’t know why, but I sat on his lap and it all poured out of him, like a waterfall.

“Why didn’t she want me?”

I had no idea what to say.  I didn’t know who he was talking about.

“She left us all,” he went on.  “How can someone just up and leave their whole family, fly across the country, and start a new life with some dude they met on the internet?”

Then it clicked.  Abel and Aldwin’s mother had left them and their father months earlier.  The whole thing was quick, but messy.  This was the first time I saw him get emotional about it.  He started crying, sobbing and shaking while I sat on his lap.  There were no words for the kind of pain that species of abandonment brings, so I said nothing.  We held each other in silence as he let out all the hurt he’d be bottling up.  It was bound to burst, and now, as he buried his head into my chest, it did.

Many of us were too drunk to drive home, so a lot of people stayed over.  Me and Abel found ourselves in that piano room, lying on the floor under some found blanket, surrounded by a bunch of passed out high schoolers.  I cuddled up close to him.  He put an arm around me.  I placed my hand low on his stomach.

After a while like that he said, “Can I take my pants off?”

Confused that he asked me permission, I said, “Sure.”

Off came his pants and my hand crept lower, and groped the considerable tent he was pitching in his boxer briefs.  I’m still a virgin, but touching led to… Well, I think you get the picture.  

And yes, I am just as shocked as you are.

Facebook post from Misty McKenna (April 2024):

“Since everyone keeps asking me, we all knew Hoss preferred men.  He never came out & said it, but we knew.  It was like a unspoken open secret.  But Abel????? We had no idea he was [painted nails emoji], but honestly who the fuck cares??  Its the roarin 20s.  Hell, one time I kissed a girl and even liked it. Katy Perry said it best. If you really wanna question something, let’s talk about Hoss’s parents selling his diary to the book publisher.  Sick!!!!!!”

From Tobey Jackson’s guest essay “Hindsight” on the true crime blog The Death Knell (March 2024):

…Things were rough for a bit.  There was obvious tension whenever we were all together.  Sherry and I had our past, Hoss and Sherry had their own problems.  Abel and Sherry had some issues, too.

Sherry was super outgoing, and I guess that could come off as flirtatious to an outsider, or to a man who is madly in love with you.  Abel hated how much she interacted with other men on social media.  If she was on her phone too long while they were together, he’d snatch it from her.  He was controlling in that aspect.  Abel let his emotions get the best of him when it came to Sherry, which was weird because he was usually reserved.  His mother fucked off to Arizona and he didn’t shed a single tear.  But with Sherry, everything kind of set him off.  Once at a park, he pulled her away into a copse by the arm, and she resisted weakly but went along.  I could hear them shouting back and forth.  Sherry came out first.  After a few minutes and one final guttural grunt, Abel returned.  The knuckles on his right hand were bloody. 

When Hoss told Abel what Sherry had said about his attachment issues, and how she thought he was clingy, and wanted to break it off, he lost it.  He started throwing shit around the room; he broke the lamp his mother had bought for him when he was twelve.  It had heroes like Spiderman and Ironman on the glass lampshade.  He was fucking livid, but of course that was hurt and disappointment manifesting as the only acceptable emotion for men: anger.  Still, I thought he was stressed enough to murder someone.

Abel and Sherry didn’t speak for weeks, and during that time Hoss and Abel spent a lot of time together.  A lot of sleepovers.  I was there for a few of them.  Videogames, shit talking.  That kind of stuff.  There was one night – they thought I was sleeping – where I heard things happening.  I never said anything to them about it because why would I?  We never judged each other for shit like that.  They could have made sure I was actually sleeping, though.  

We three hung out the day before Sherry was found on her lawn.  Abel and I played Injustice 2 while Hoss sat on the computer watching music videos.  Abel’s phone went off.  The number wasn’t saved.  We all traded looks before Abel answered on speakerphone.  

“Abel,” Sherry began.  “I miss you.  I love you.  I’m so sorry for everything I said to Hoss.  I was just feeling so overwhelmed…”

He cut off the speaker and went upstairs for at least an hour.  Probably more.  Hoss slammed his fist down on the desk.  The crack of his fist against the wood startled a jump out of me.

When Abel returned he said, “Sorry, guys, where were we?”

“I think I was just leaving,” Hoss said, getting up from the desk.  

All he’d said to me while Abel was going was that Sherry is playing the fuck out of him.  I agreed, but I wasn’t so sure.  She had left me alone for quite some time at this point.

“But we were supposed to have a sleepover before the beach tomorrow,” Abel said.

“The feeling of my own bed, my own sheets is just more appealing to me than staying out tonight,” Hoss said.

Abel sighed.  “Well… if it’s okay with you, Sherry is going to come to the beach with us tomorrow.”

Hoss rolled his eyes slowly, dramatically.  “The more the merrier – isn’t that what they say?”  On that note, he grabbed his backpack and left.  If he went home that night is anyone’s guess.

Not wanting to be in the middle of this, as well as the cause, I left too, thinking, maybe, cooler heads would prevail in the morning.  It was longshot thinking, as my father called it, but it was all I clung to.  Things had to get better, and the beach trip could have been the start of healing.

But the trip, as we all know, never happened.

Notes from Detective Washburn’s interview with Lois Allen, July 20, 2023:

Spoke with neighbor, Lois Allen, 68.  Claims she heard argument suspected night of incident. Sun, 7/16/23.  Witness claims she heard two voices, male & female.  Looked outside living room window.  Noticed neighbor, “the Collins girl.”  Unable to identify by name male party, but said he looked familiar.  “Around a lot at the Dawsons, I think.”  Argument became heated.  Saw male grab female by the shoulders.  Claims male cried, “Why do you make me do this shit? Why?” Female was upset, crying.  Allen wanted to say something, but deciding against it, citing “back in my day, we minded our own when it came to spouses.” Shrugged and wished me a good day.

From The Complete Journals of Hoss Dawson (published February 2024, Scribner):

7/16/23 

I just got back from Abel’s house. I was supposed to sleep over, but I couldn’t bring myself to stay and trust myself not be a vicious bitch.

Abel and Sherry are back together.  Just like that.  A fucking phone call.  After all the shit she said about using him, and him being annoying.  It makes me so fucking mad.  He always wants to bring her around, and I can’t stand it.  Is he stupid or just that desperate to fill the hole his mom left in him?

Ugh.  I should be a more supportive friend, I know.  I want to be.  I will be.  Starting tomorrow at the beach, I’ll turn over a new leaf.  Sherry and I used to be friends, and I think we can be again.  Or at least be cordial.  I need to try.  For Abel.  For our friendship.  I owe him that.

I hope I can keep it together.  

From the Hartford Courant, July 21, 2023: 

SUSPECT ARRESTED IN POLARIS COUNTY LAWN MURDER CASE

…Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a source close to the case claims the victim’s boyfriend has been detained in connection with the murder.  Not only do police say it was his vehicle used in the slaying, but witnesses claim to have seen him arguing with the victim and getting physical with her the night of the savage motor vehicle attack.  

Sheriza Collins was found…

Various Facebook posts after the funeral of Sheriza Collins (July 28, 2023):

Parker Taylor: “I always knew he was little… off.”

Stephen Upton: “What the fuck?  I hope he gets what’s coming him.”

Damian Campanella: “That group of friends was weird.  A little too touchy-feely, if you know what I mean.  Not surprised that one lost his shit.  More surprised that the others haven’t lost theirs, too [crying laughing emoji x3]”

Isabel Davenport: “What a mess.  I’m praying for everyone involved.  My heart goes out to Sherry’s family for all the pain and suffering they’re going through right now.  I hope they can find peace with all these revelations.  And poor, poor Abel.  May there be swift and powerful justice served.”

Wilson King: “When’s the Netflix documentary coming?  Sounds like a love triangle for the ages? LOL”

From the Polaris County weekly Reporter, July 29, 2023:

LAWN MURDER KILLER CONFESSES!

The funeral of the slain Sheriza Collins, 19, of Polaris County was meant to be a solemn affair, a celebration of her life where loved ones could share memories of the deceased.  Collins’s parents and sister shared stories of beaches, Sheriza’s favorite things to do, and other colorful memories which painted the deceased in a flattering light.  However, the mood of the occasion changed when the last person to share spoke.  Seemingly waiting until no other person wanted to share, Hoss Dawson, 20, also of Polaris County took the podium.

Standing at the head of the church, he explained: “I heard them arguing that night.  I was tired of it, tired of her hurting him.  Tired of being overlooked and forgotten.  He was my best friend, and she was only using him as revenge.  It wasn’t even working.  

“It was easy.  After he walked off I slipped outside.  Sherry was upset, sobbing, and never saw me coming.  She had left her car running, and all I had to do was climb in and floor it.  I wore gloves, of course, but I always planned this confession, here at her funeral.  My life, too, I guess is over.”

Dawson started his speech with the words, “This is how I killed the girl next door.”

As he finished his monologue, he pulled a large pocketknife from his black dress pants pocket and went for his own throat, but an enraged Mr. Collins tackled Dawson before any damage could be done.

Speaking with the Reporter later, Mr. Collins said, “He thought he could murder my daughter and then take the easy way out?  No way in hell, which, by the way, is exactly where he’s headed.  After a lengthy stay Polaris County Correctional, that is.”

TV Eye

Squatting, she adjusted her black stockings and closed her sterile white lab coat over her jutting, dripping nudity. The pile of gutted TV’s rose on all sides of the capacious warehouse, as monitors fed back her image on video screens. 

“Silly wiring slobs,” she said. “Well, that’s what ya get for free.” 

The neurogreen circuitry frothed, hissed and emitted a belch. She took the scalpel to a mass of fused ganglia, hacked off a piece and dialog/dualoged with it. It spat out a fizzing phlegmy discharge on the floor, a spreading iridescent pool that began to nibble at her bare feet. 

“Alas poor Shmoreick, I knew him, Fellatio.” She glanced around to see if her partner, Dr. Herman Groinslab, was paying any attention whatsoever to her cutting wit. He wasn’t. She brandished the scalpel in his eye. “One of these days,” she muttered.

“You’re so sexy when you’re homicidal, Fontaine.”

Kandy Fontaine shook her short, sharp,shocking locks which looked like serpents of blue neon gas. She winked lewdly at her co-conspirator in Project TV Eye.

“When we’re through, no flesh will be spared remote interrogation by our box clones,” she said. “Everybody and their little dog will have the same bad dreams.”

“Do you actually speak that way, or are you just doing it for the meta-fictional fun of it all?”

“I suppose the latter would apply like a corporate decal sewn into your retina by nanospiders,” said Fontaine. She paused to take a heroic hit off her DMT vape. “And I know whereof I speak.

“Oh dear, mechanical fucking elves, and they’re getting down and dirty by the Luminous Shore,” she said after awhile.

“Never mind those weird fuckers, Fontaine. We have work to do!”

Without another word, Kandy Fontaine pulled the final hunk of slippery brain-plant muck out of the machineflesh cube and just slapped it into the cobalt TV Eye casing.

The fluorescent light battery sputtered, flashing a psychedelic Mario Bava display of alternating blue, red and yellow against the TV Eye array.

“They’re already starting to do Lucifer’s own work,” said Fontaine with just a hint of pride. “Baal be praised.” She did the sign of the Southern Cross.

Groinslab filtered some cannibalistic crumbs out of his bread, held the remote with a jittering hand, and stabbed at the “Go Go Doppelgangbangers” button.

The video screens filled with a lurid display of pornographic violence to make Caligula blush and cause Gilles De Rais just a smidgen of envy. Men and women were thrusting hacked off partially cybernetic limbs into the glistening orifices of a purple skinned whore. An assembly line of minotaur men squeezed off ghastly jets of glowing green jissom that splattered against the faces of priests and nuns who shamelessly masturbated themselves with bullwhips and whipped cream of corn. Cyclotron shit, kajillions of raw, peeled Dream Police, dripped down the walls. A man with lips for eyes shit in the gaping mouths of a highly mutated Mandelbrot sequence of Popes. Henry Kissinger’s skeleton was raped in perpetuity by a scythe machine for sore eyes. Und so weiter, und so fort.

Meanwhile, the general population was visited by nightmares so hot, torrid, morbid and carnivorous that it mutated consensual reality itself.

“Welp, I guess our work here is done,” said Fontaine, slipping off her nitrile gloves and rubbing her clitoris raw, killing her hunger with ecstasy. “And it’s only Monday. What will we do for an encore?”

Dr. Groinslab, deceased beneath mountains of black leather, beat his meat against the waves, eternally recurring like the Dutch sailors saddle-stitched together with the Sirens of the Thames estuary.

Safe Word

“Let me tie you up,” he coaxed eagerly, and brandished a length of soft rope for her inspection.

Where did that come from? she wondered. She peered at the rope and then at him. “You’re into bondage?” she asked him. “I…”

“I’m a part of the BDSM community, Claire,” he told her. “We use the ‘B,’ the bondage, to impose restraints on our partners in order to enhance the sensual experience.”

Claire had heard of bondage, of course, from books and films and dirty magazines; she just never expected the handsome man she knew a little from the bar and from school, to be into…

“I thought we were just gonna fuck,” she said bluntly. This man she had not chosen at random. She’d picked him up at the college tavern just down the street, and hoped to persuade him to give her a passing grade in the class he taught. Professor Ames had a reputation for being randy, but she’d never…

“I won’t do anything you don’t want me to, Claire,” the Professor went on. “It’s always mutually consensual, at least with me. And together, we set the boundaries.”

Claire peered up into his pale blue eyes, saw nothing but benevolence, and asked herself if she might actually go through with it. She bit her lip.

“You can trust me, Claire,” he said. “In the community we practice what’s known as Safe, Sane and Consensual (SSC) and Risk-Aware Consensual Kink (RACK) relations. Your safety and pleasure are my top priorities,” he assured her glibly.

Wow, thought Claire. This guy is like a used car salesman; he has an answer for everything. I wonder if next he’ll offer to check my oil? A spontaneous giggle leaked out. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Do you have any questions?” he asked, as though he were lecturing in his classroom.

Questions? she thought wildly. You bet!

“Exactly what is involved?” she asked naively. Claire had never participated in anything this…erotic, before.

“Good question,” he said approvingly. “My plan is this: we’ll disrobe and then I’ll tie your wrists together behind your back with this rope. Then I’ll put you face down on the bed, spread your legs and tie them to the bedposts.”

Claire gulped.

“Next,” he went on, “comes the flagellation.”

Claire furrowed her brow. “Huh?”

“I’ll spank your backside with my belt,” he explained, pulling the wide leather strap from the loops in his pants. “Don’t worry, I won’t do it hard, just enough to make your butt red and more sensitive.”

“Then what?” asked Claire. She wished now she hadn’t drunk so many beers at the tavern.

“Then we’ll role play,” he said. “I might be a policeman who has caught a burglar or a prostitute or a fireman who has just saved your life. Or a teacher who has caught you cheating on an exam.” And here he smiled at his own little joke. “It can take any form. It’ll be spontaneous, impromptu, unscripted.”

She peered curiously at him. He smiled reassuringly.

“Where does the sex come in?” she wanted to know. “I just wanted to, you know, have sex.”

He nodded. “At some point in our little drama, I’ll mount you from the rear,” he said. 

“I can’t climax when I’m taken from behind,” she pointed out. “No clitoral shimulation,” she said drunkenly. Was she missing the point of tonight? she asked herself. Claire, at 19, had had only 3 lovers in her lifetime, and she felt woefully ill-equipped to…

He nodded again. “That’s the beauty of the dominant-submissive dynamic,” he explained. “While you won’t come, you will be highly stimulated, from the ass-beating and from the vaginal stimulation and from the helplessness you feel. You’ll feel like your head is going to explode,” he promised.

“Won’t I ever get off?” she asked.

“I’m usually good for three orgasms per evening,” he boasted. “The first time I’ll come in your puss; the second time in your ass; and…”

“My ass?” she yelped in alarm.

“It won’t hurt unduly, I promise,” he swore. “Sodomy is the lodestone of good BDSM sex,” he assured her. “Besides,” he went on, “I’m not heavily endowed and I think you’ll like it.”

Claire made a face. “I don’t…think I want that,” she said.

“Alright,” he said easily. “No sodomy.”

Claire exhaled.

“What happens next?” she prompted.

“I’ll unbind your wrists, turn you over on your back and then fuck the shit out of you!” the Professor promised roughly. The whites of his eyes glinted eerily.

“What if you can’t get it up again?” she asked practically. He had had lots of beers too.

He was growing a little impatient. “Then I’ll eat you out,” he said shortly. “There’s one more thing,” he said at the last moment.

More? Claire thought. What more could there possibly be? Getting a passing grade — even a B — in his class was beginning to seem like an imprudent rate of exchange.

“What’s that?” she asked suspiciously.

“Your Safe Word,” he replied.

Claire shook her head uncertainly. “What’s that?” she asked again.

“The Safe Word,” said the Professor, “is what you’ll say if you suddenly — and for any reason — want the sex play to end and to be released.”

They settled on their Safe Word and then the play began. Claire discovered that, to her surprise, she was soon invested in the sexual dynamic. Always a leader, at school and work and amongst friends — she was in the Student Government at university, and a shift leader at the pizza joint where she worked — it felt good to step back and relax and take a submissive role. And the Professor, despite his feigned assertiveness, was in fact quite gentle. When he beat her ass with the belt, she felt, as he’d predicted, as if her head would explode, she was so turned on. 

Just before Ames went down on her, she asked him, “Have you ever been in love?”

“No, never,” he said.

When the sex play was over and her lover had departed, Claire sat cross-legged on her bed and reviewed the evening’s events. The Professor had not mustered the stamina he’d promised, getting hard only twice and then for only short periods. She had almost laughed at his frustration, but she felt pity more than scorn. She’d never had occasion to utter the vaunted Safe Word. After he’d released her and kissed her goodnight, he had told her that “Next time, my love, you can be the dominant one.” She thought about that for a long time.

In class on the following Monday, Ames seemed impassive, neither making eye contact nor paying her any mind. She felt a bit miffed at first, but then recognized that anonymity was probably the best policy. She looked around the room, at the other nubile coeds, and wondered which of them he had been “tied up with.” Again, a giggle  escaped her lips. But when Professor Ames passed back the previous week’s essay, Claire was happy to see a “B+” etched in purple ink across the top of the paper. This was two full grades higher than her previous score.

Two weekends later, Claire found herself back at the college tavern where she’d picked up the Professor. The previous weekend, she’d had to work at her job as assistant manager at Pizza Hut and so seducing her teacher then had been impossible. He’d called her nearly every day. Claire was intrigued by the promised role reversal; it was her turn to be dominant. At the bar, Claire spotted her erstwhile lover, talking to another teacher who was the Professor’s age, or 20 years older than Claire. When he spotted her, he forsook the other woman at once.

“Catch you later, Maeve,” he said, turning away. Maeve, a hot-looking brunette, shot hateful daggers at Claire as the Professor edged his way through the tightly packed tavern. He stood before Claire, smiling warmly. Their date for after the close of the pub was unspoken, but understood. Precisely at 2 a.m., following Last Call, the two of them walked the four blocks to Claire’s small house.

Sequestered once more in Claire’s bedroom, they again discussed boundaries and limits and what the other would and would not countenance. The Professor, as it happened, was amenable to more radical treatment than Claire had been willing to endure. “Really give me a workout,” he said huskily. At this, Claire’s eyes opened wide. Finally, they settled on the Prof’s Safe Word; for simplicity’s sake, he selected the very word that Claire had herself chosen weeks before.

In order to prep for the experience, Claire had used some of her tip money from Pizza Hut to order a couple of  risque videos from Amazon. After Ames had been stripped and bound, she worked him over. Rather  than use the Prof’s leather belt, however, she turned up her Pickle Ball racket and beat him relentlessly until a tiny drop of blood surfaced on his cheek. She kissed it away.

“God, Claire,” gasped Ames, only half in jest, “I think I’m in love!”

Claire had read in a book, “The Joy of BDSM Sex,” that this was not unusual for the recipients of flagellation. Twisting her lips thoughtfully, she pulled out a prodigious dildo, which she cinched around her narrow waist. She allowed Ames to see what she was doing.

“My God,” he said, panting excitedly, “it’s so freaking big!”

Claire plied the instrument of love for all she was worth, until at length Professor Ames gasped, “God, Claire, I AM in love!”

Claire smirked and felt that an A was well within her grasp. Their relationship, such as it was, continued apace, until it didn’t. Several weeks later, the Professor and Claire made a date to meet for lunch at a high-end restaurant on the top floor of the college’s Student Union. Claire had never eaten there before; it was beyond her means. The maitre de acknowledged her reservation and escorted her to a table. Minutes later, Ames joined her. Smiling, he took a seat. Claire had something important to discuss with the Professor, and Ames had suggested the restaurant.

“Have you ordered yet?” he asked.

She shook her head no. As if by magic, a waitress appeared at their table and they placed their order. They engaged in small talk, and when the food had been served, Ames turned to Claire and asked, “What is it you wanted to talk about?”

“My grade on my last essay,” she replied. At his inquisitive look, she continued, “I got a C-, Jeffrey,” she complained.

Ames took a drink of water and nodded. “That’s the grade you deserved,” he told her.

Claire only stared at him. “But, I thought that we…”

He shook his head. “There is no ‘we’ with respect to your identity as a student, Claire. Our relationship in class is that of instructor to student. You didn’t expect me to amplify your scores based on our sleeping together, did you?” he whispered. “That,” he said primly, would not be ethical.”

As Claire sat looking at the Professor, the wheels were going round inside her head. “You  mean ethical,” she began, “as in the ethics of your having sex with a student in your class?”

Now it was his turn to stare at her. Suddenly there was a bead of sweat on his upper lip. “Claire,” he said, “do you think that you’re the first student to try to extort a higher grade out of a teacher? What problems do you think you can possibly create for me? I’m a tenured professor.” He chuckled softly.

Claire had never before noticed just how beady Jeffrey Ames’s eyes were. She stared back frankly at him.

“Everything, Jeffrey,” she told him, “is political.” He raised his brows in exaggerated fashion. 

“Meaning?” he asked, dabbing delicately at his soft lips with a napkin.

Claire shrugged. “I don’t know; do you feel that your academic reputation might suffer if your colleagues knew you’d been butt-fucked by a 19-year-old student of yours? Could be unseemly at student conferences and faculty soires, what have you,” she suggested. When he said nothing, she picked her large purse off the floor and grasped the huge dildo with which she had sodomized him on many occasions. She pulled the head out several inches.

“It’s your word against mine,” he said, glancing nervously at the phallus.

“Jeffrey,” she asked, “how do you know that I didn’t video our…encounters?” Claire pulled the fake penis several inches more from the purse.

“Put that damn thing away!” he hissed, gazing furtively at the other tables. Rather than comply with that request, she slapped it down hard on the table top, rattling the silverware. 

“I’ll just leave this with you,” she said serenely and, closing her purse, took up her wrap and walked out of the restaurant. She didn’t look back.

At the tavern some weeks later, Claire was drinking pitchers of beer with friends when she spotted Professor Ames across the bar, eyeing her. She paid him no mind. At length, while Claire’s friends were dancing, Ames approached and stood before her, swaying on his feet. Finally, Claire looked up.

“Professor,” she said neutrally.

“Claire,” he said, then burped. “Alright if I sit?”

She nodded.

He stumbled into a chair. He was really drunk, thought Claire, but she had little sympathy for him. She was a little intoxicated herself. It had been some weeks since they had been bedmates. Claire’s grades had plummeted too. More than that, she had experienced an unexpected sense of loss.

“I want us to get back together, Claire,” he slurred. “I miss you.”

She stared at  him impassively. “What’s in it for me?” she asked.

“Transactional, eh?” he asked.

“You bet.”

“What do you want?” he asked, pouring a beer from her pitcher and spilling it across the tabletop.

“An A for the course,” she said crisply.

He nodded his head ponderously. “Done!” he agreed. “Let’s go to your place.”

“After grades come out,” she said. “The semester ends in two weeks. I see an A on my report card, and I’ll take you home with me.”

He stared at her.

She stared back.

Finally, Ames nodded. “I’ll see you on the 19th.” That was the day that grades came out. He stumbled to his feet and left the bar.

On the 19th, grades were posted to her email account and Claire was beside herself with joy. She had aced “Literary Masterpieces of Antiquity,” the required backbreaking course taught by Professor Jeffrey Ames. Ames had called her earlier, telling her he was coming over to collect. She considered blowing him off, but fair was fair. Besides, she’d never been so turned on as when she was in the throes of BDSM. Her relationship with Jeffrey was complicated. So she told him to come on by. Still, he was full of himself and a bit creepy; besides, with the skills she’d learned, she could find other like-minded partners. Partners with more stamina. Still, she’d felt safe with Jeffrey.

After Professor Ames arrived, Claire offered him a drink, but he demured. He was sober for once, she noted. They swiftly disrobed and climbed into bed. “What’ll it be tonight, Jeffrey?” asked Claire. “Do you want to be dominant, or shall I?” She licked her lips in anticipation.

“I just want to hold you,” he said unexpectedly, and they extinguished the light and drew a sheet over themselves and lay in one another’s arms.

Claire didn’t know what to think. Was Jeffrey ill? She pulled him close and lay with her cheek against his chest. She was surprised when, hours later, she awoke to find out she’d slept the night away. Jeffrey was awake and looking at her.

“What…what time is it?” she asked. He told her. “What happened last night?” she asked next.

“I had an epiphany,” he admitted.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m in love with you, Claire,” he said softly.

“Love?” she repeated, suddenly overwhelmed with emotion.

“Yes,” he said. “Love.”

Love had been their Safe Word.

A Dream That You Dared To

She had a dream about her mom’s dick.

Even in the dream she was confused.  Like, why does mom have a dick?

Her dad was there, too.  She asked him about it.

She said, “Why does mom have a dick?”

“Shhh,” he shushed her.

His eyes were fixed on the dick.  He nodded at it, eyebrows up, like ‘Get a load of THAT.’

It wasn’t too long, but it was wide — a chode, they call dicks like her mom’s.  And it was all fucked up.  Diseased, for sure.  But like, naturally fucked up too.  Birth defect fucked up. The squat shaft was covered in boils and the coiled skin piled like soft serve on a cone.  A giant vein snaked back and forth up the shaft and ended at what looked like some sort of underdeveloped pig-faced burn victim with botched skin grafts.  The penis hole was wide, and every time the vein pulsed, the hole stretched wider like it was gasping for air.

Her dad came up behind her and whispered in her ear. 

“Suck it,” he said.

She didn’t want to suck it.

“I don’t want to suck it,” she said.

He sighed and she could feel his disappointment.  The feeling said, ‘All your mother’s done for you?  All she’s done, and you can’t even suck her dick?’

She looked away from the preemie burn victim pig face of a dick and up at her mom.

Her mom looked patient, with a kind smile and soft eyes.  Her mom nodded, just a little nod.  A nod that said, ‘It’s okay.’  

The nod made her feel safe.  She said to herself, “It is okay,” and dropped to her knees.

She put her hand around her mom’s dick.  It was clammy, a little sticky.  

It stiffened.  The penis hole gasped quicker, opened wider.  The vein pulsed with her mom’s rising heart rate.

She looked at her dad.  He was trembling, shifting his weight back and forth.

She scooted in, brought her face closer to her mom’s dick.

And then she heard something coming from the penis hole.

Singing.

She put her ear to the hole.  Puffs of air tickled her hair. The voice was beautiful, a child’s voice, and it was singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’

“Waaaaay uuup hiiiiigh,” it sang.

She knew that voice, that penis hole voice, familiar in a comforting way.  Her apprehension lifted. She smiled.  And opened her mouth.

Her jaw unhinged, and she took her mom’s dick in her mouth.

The whole thing.

Preemie pig faced burn victim and all.

The whole thing.

Boils ruptured.  Puss ran from her lips, dribbled down her chin.  It tasted wholesome.

She moved her mouth up and down on her mom’s dick.  

Bobbed her head.

Her dad squealed, hopped in placed while clapping his hands.

She gripped the shaft, bobbed her head faster.

And faster.

And faster.

Her mom groaned, thrust her hips.

And then…

And then…

Her mom ejaculated.

Her mom’s preemie pig faced burn victim dick became a hot spring, and she gulped with each pulse, in rhythm.  

But it kept coming.  The pressure was too great.

It shot from her nose, her ears, dripped from her eyes.  It pulsed through her pores, entered her bloodstream, moved through her organs, into her heart.

Joy.  Electric joy, ecstatic joy.

And then it was over.

She sat back onto the floor and cried.  Cried tears of joy. Of joy and cum.  Her parents came to her, wrapped their arms around her, cried with her.

And then she became someone else, somewhere else.  She was a child – she was her mother as a child.  She still sat back on her knees, but on a worn rug in front of a black and white television.  Judy Garland was on the screen, wearing a checkered dress and a look of nostalgia.  

Judy was singing.

“Sooooommewheeere oooover the raaainbow…”

Her mother’s voice sang along, her child’s voice tender, matching Judy’s nostalgia.

“Bllluuuuuue biiird flyyy

Aaaand the dream that you daaare to

Oooh whyyy, ooOoh whyyy caaan’t Iiiiiiiii.”

Fortunate One

“Hey baby, come take a ride in my T-bird.” Jimmy took the last drag off his smoke and tossed it on the ground near the little cutie’s blue sandals. He scoped her body from that sparkly pearl polish on her toes up to her high waisted short shorts. He paused at her knit tube top, which matched her sandals, and settle on that unimpressed frown she wore on a pair of juicy pink lips, which were wrapped around the red plastic straw of a Slush Puppy cup. He licked his lips, thinking she probably tasted like cherry slushie and cotton candy too. 

That’s how most of the high school girls tasted in the summer time, and they all smelled like cheap drug store perfume, heavy on the coconut and tangerine. He liked that just fine. Trashy was his world, and these young ladies didn’t have enough life experience to know that a man living in his car and drinking Jack straight from the bottle was bad news. 

Jimmy had two things going for him. One, his good looks. Like James Dean and John Travolta were lovers then some how one of ‘em pushed out a puppy. And two, he had the gift of the gab. That was thanks to his uncle, Tony the Wop. His whole family were wops, if he was being honest, but he didn’t do honest so much. He liked to fancy himself one of them hispanics from across the border. The girls liked them better. Something about them being seen as ethnic instead of grifters.

The girl pulled down her Ray-Bans and gave him a gander. Jimmy flashed his teeth. He liked to show off his gold caps so the girls knew he had money even if he didn’t. 

“Who you calling baby?” she said. 

Jimmy cut the engine. John Fogerty belting “It ain’t me,” over the radio fell into silence. The distant tinkling sound of the merry-go-round and drunk carnival revelers filled the car.  

“Well, I fancy that’d be you, baby. What do you say?” Jimmy stroked the leather seat beside him like he was caressing a woman’s thigh. 

“Not interested. Thanks.” But she didn’t budge just the same.

“And why not?” Jimmy craned his neck, taking a gaze around the drive-in parking lot, then behind her to the fair. “You telling me these jock boys with their varsity jackets and heads square enough to shove in a socket got more to offer than Jimmy? 

“Jimmy is it? I heard of you. You come into town creeping on high school girls.” 

“Creeping, huh? No. You got a look about you. That blonde hair like a halo.” He crossed himself. “I wouldn’t steal an angel from the lord and savior. Now, I don’t know what you heard about me girl but I just wanna be friends. My intentions are pure.” 

“Mhm,” She mumbled skeptically and crossed her arms. “Like they were with Carolyn Deary?”

“Can’t say I know that name.”

“How about Hannah Jeffrey?” 

“Not that one neither.” 

The girl rolled her eyes and looked like she was fixing to walk off.

“Look baby, you got me wrong. I swear. Come in my ride, we’ll have a nice private chat and clear things up straight.”

“You wouldn’t try to take advantage of me?” 

“Cross my heart, baby girl. Anything you don’t want, I ain’t offering. I mean, you might just change your mind, and I’m not gonna promise I can say no to you. Because oof…” Jimmy made like he was outlining her body with his hands. 

“Aren’t you 25?”

“I seen 26 summers to be exact, but I can’t see how that means nothing.” 

“Maybe ‘cause I’m jailbait.” 

“Like Carolyn and Hannah?” 

“Thought you didn’t know them.” 

“I don’t. Look your age don’t bother me.” 

“It should.” 

“Tell you what, we drive up to the old mill, look out on the valley, pop a little Jack in your slushie. We’ll have a good time.”

“Daddy told me not to get the car with strangers.” 

“Daddy ain’t here baby, and you’re big enough to make that decision without daddy’s help. I can tell.”

“Think so?” She put her hand on her hips and flashed him a grin. She liked that.

“Oh I know. Come on baby what do you say?” 

“Maybe I am, but maybe my answer would be, no thank you mister.” 

“Ooh what I gotta do to get you in my car, huh? Didn’t you hear from your girlfriends Jimmy’s a lot of fun?” 

“I heard you gave Hannah the Clap.”

“Ain’t true. None of it.” 

She leaned against the car. Jimmy reached out and stroked her shoulder. She shrugged his hand off like he had leprosy. “You been framed, huh?” 

“Yes, ma’am. I am an innocent man.” 

“Innocent, huh?” She leaned her elbows on the window frame and popped her head in the car. She gave Jimmy a sniff and assessed the car’s interior.

“Everything check out? Yeah, she’s a cool ride. Smooth too. Come give her a test run, baby.”  

“You even know who I am?” 

Jimmy scratched his chin. “Billy or Betty. Something like that.” 

“Bobby. Bobby Sue Constance.” 

“Yeah, that’s right. See I knew that. You coming, baby?” 

“I tell you what, Jimmy. I accept your invitation and go for a ride, there’s two things that’s gonna happen.” 

Jimmy slammed his fist on the steering wheel and squealed.   

“Hot dog, girly. You got it. What do you need?”

“I’m choosing where we go for our chit-chatting.” 

“Fair enough.” Jimmy was already thinking about pulling that periwinkle tube top over his neck and wearing it like a collar while they tested the suspension. He leaned over and opened the passenger door. 

“You listening, Jimmy?” 

Jimmy popped his head back over to the drivers side.

“You still standing there? Get in girl.” 

“You haven’t heard my second conviction.” 

“Sounds a touch churchy but shoot.” 

“No kissing. No cuddling.” She leaned in and ran her fingers down his nose and shoved one in his mouth. “And no caressing.” Jimmy let out a sweet little whimper like a puppy at the teat. She hooked his bottom lip. “Understand, baby?” 

“Uh-huh.” Jimmy nodded. 

Bobby Sue dragged her fingernail out of his mouth.

“Good, I’m young enough to get you tossed in Folsom.”

Jimmy sucked his lip and tasted blood. Watching that fine little vixen strut around the front end of his T-bird, Jimmy’s heart started flapping in ways it never had before. She dragged that nail across the hood and kept her eyes on his. He didn’t care none if she scratched the paint. This girl was his kind of woman. 

She crawled in and blabbed on about going this way and that. Jimmy went through the motions, turning the wheel when she said, stopping at a red light when told, nodding the affirmative while she smirked and sucked that slush puppy. Jimmy was busy eating up the way her shorts crawled up her thighs like panties, and thinking about the trouble they could cause if he convinced this sugar plum to run off with him. Jimmy had never considered taking a girlfriend, but Jimmy and Bobby. Now, that had a nice ring to it. 

Now don’t be a fool, Jimmy boy. This girl’s pushing seventeen. Maybe. Ooh but the way she lifts her brow when she glances my way. She’s no angel. No sir. She could be my little devil. 

“Cut the engine right here, Jimmy.” 

“Well then, we’re in an alley, baby.” Jimmy peeped the light flickering over a rusty metal door, looking like the back entrance to a slaughter house. The far end of the alley was walled up with bricks. No doubt, this place gave him the creeps, but he had to admit it was cozy. 

“Not quite as romantic as the old mill, baby.” 

Bobby threw off her belt and put her feet up on the seat. She sucked the last of her slushie noisily and grinned.

Jimmy’s eyes went places they shouldn’t with a girl saying “no touching” and the like. He wiped his mouth. “Ooh girl. You’re asking me to break my promise, aren’t you?” 

Bobby kicked off her sandals. Those bare feet slithered across the seat then wriggled around his leg like a python. 

“I have done no such thing.”

“What are you playing, little lady?”

“I’m getting you into trouble.” She pressed her foot into his manly business.   

He moaned. “Oh mhm, you are, girl.” 

Jimmy took a gulp of Jack. The warmth spread through his chest and tingled his head. He passed the bottle to Bobby then massaged her foot. She held the bottle out, wagging it from side to side. Not taking a drink. Just watching him with a naughty grin. 

Jimmy crept over, sliding his hands up her thighs, and laid a kiss on those cherry lips. She shoved her tongue his mouth and twirled it around like an expert. 

“Ooh girl, you’re delicious like strawberry cream. I wanna taste the rest of you.”

“I said no, Jimmy,” she whispered. 

“Your body’s telling me something else, baby.”

He went in for another kiss, to which she obliged. 

The alley exploded with light like an asteroid burning up in the atmosphere. Jimmy cocked his head like a rooster and felt his retinas sizzle. Blinding white like search lights. They started to dance around the interior of the car.  

“What in the hell you suppose that is, baby?” Images of little gray men pranced through Jimmy’s head. He was not a man to lose his cool but this was something.  

The passenger door opened behind Bobby. One of the spotlights blasted Jimmy directly in the face. 

Bobby. Were they stealing her for one of them experiments? 

Jimmy pawed around trying to keep hold of his little treasure. No way space men were stealing this morsel from him. He found her breasts in the confusion and said, “Bobby, baby, you feel me?” 

A hand closed around the collar of Jimmy’s shirt. The damn space men had infiltrated the drivers side too. An arm wrapped around his chest. The grip was firmer than he expected from someone who spent all their time on a space ship. Jimmy squawked. 

“Shit, help me, girl. Them aliens got me.” 

Bobby didn’t scream. She didn’t kick up a fuss. Nope, the girl sat there giggling. 

The landing lights shifted behind her and Jimmy saw a face. Not a green sickly face with black bug eyes over a pinched, lipless mouth, but a thick black mustache and a peaked cap. Bobby looked at Jimmy and smiled. She handed the bottle of Jack to the officer behind her and said, “Hey Daddy.”

“Hey Honey. What kinda trouble you get into?” 

“None Daddy, but this big man was looking to do impure things to me.” 

Jimmy felt like he’d taken a bullet in the chest. This girl was bad, badder than him, no doubt. Two officers pulled him out of the car. One of them saying to Jimmy, “you must be some kind of stupid parking out back of the station.”  

They dragged his ass around the trunk toward the street. He craned his neck trying to catch one last look at that naughty vixen.

Bobby’s father, chief badge on his hat, helped her out of the car. The beating in Jimmy’s chest came to a full stop. 

Look at me baby. You’re gonna break my heart.

Bobby sashayed around the back end of the car like a pointy tailed succubus and tossed Jimmy a smirk. 

Jimmy fought the arms around him but it was useless. He resigned himself and screamed, “Bobby Sue, I love you.”

The Flu

Sunday morning Bob set the kitchen clock behind an hour like Lisa, his wife, had asked him, moments after she gave him a blow job, while he sat at the kitchen table having his morning coffee. He wanted to come on her face, but she wouldn’t let him because she had already put her make-up on for the day. Instead, she lifted her shirt and let him pop on her tits with a paper towel in hand.

On Monday morning, the same time he left for work every day, he noticed there was something different, but it didn’t register that it was darker, the sun was barely up. Bob’s brain felt lazy, slow to fire. He had stayed up way too late watching dwarf porno online. Most men had fantasies about a threesome with two women. Bob’s fantasy was to make love to a pretty little woman with stubby legs and a hairy bush. He fantasized that she was passing through town with the circus.

Late Monday afternoon his manager told him not to work too late. Bob groaned and continued to stare at his computer screen. “I got to get this done,” he said.

“It’s a full moon tonight,” the manager said.

“I know,” Bob said. Everybody knew. They announced it all day long on the radio, before and after every commercial break, before and after the news and weather, and before and after every song. Any idiot knew there was a full moon tonight.

Bob’s phone rang. He answered quickly. “Bob here.”

“It’s dark out! You’re still at work?!” Lisa screeched.

“What?” Bob said. “I’II be right home.” He hung up the phone, and quickly logged off his computer. “Bob, you dumb shit!” he yelled at himself. How did I forget that it was no longer daylight saving? What kind of stressed-out moron forgets a thing like that? Me, that’s who. Stress. It plays on your mind in many subtle and covert ways. It sneaks up on you and causes disaster, sometimes a heart attack, sometimes a stroke. This time the danger is much different.

Bob had no one to blame but himself.

“Don’t stay too late. Remember. It’s a full moon tonight,” his manager had announced over the intercom after lunch.

No shit dumb ass.

Lisa called him around four o’clock in the afternoon, “Make sure you leave before dark.” 

“I know, got to go. Busy. Love ya.”

Now, a couple of hours later Bob walked out of the building into the light of the full moon. It was sharp and bright in the clear, crisp autumn night. Conversations from the day buzzed around his mind. His coworkers, George and Monica had prattled on about the Flu and everything everyone already knew about it. How it makes you emotionally and physically hypersensitive. It turned the mildest mannered individuals into violent psychopathic sex fiends who would be in their glory if they could beat you after they screw you, or even vice versa. That was how it got the nickname, FFF, Fight and Fuck Flu.  

“Awe, sonofabitch,” he in uttered, and all the implications of his blunder came into focus. This was bad, very bad. “You get me out of this one, God, and I’ll…” Bob didn’t want to commit to church every Sunday. That was unrealistic, and God knows that would be a lie. “I’ll, I’ll. . .” The list was too long and unattainable. “Please God,” was all he could say. 

Bob ran to his car, the hard leather soles of his shoes cracked on the street and echoed through the buildings.

Damn these shoes! Why didn’t I wear my sneakers? Those with the FFF have acute hearing. He was the fastest runner in high school. From then, his fitness had gradually gone downhill until this moment when he labored out of breath with every weak stride.

About a couple of blocks away, he heard the howl, the excruciating half-human bleat of someone inflected by the FFF. Bob knew how fast they could run, the distance they could cover in a hurry. The mutation caused by the FFF with the catalyst of the full moon made them physically superior but not immortal.  It was very similar to lycanthropy, being a werewolf.

No distance was a safe distance.

Terrified and exhausted, Bob limped to his car. 

I’m not going to work tomorrow.

The car beeped when he unlocked it. It sounded as loud as church bells to those with the FFF.

His hand was shaking, so he found it difficult to put the key in the ignition. A deep breath gave him a momentarily steady hand. The car started, and he was on his way home. Things were looking up. Before he pulled onto the street, he popped open his glove box and grabbed his 9mm pistol.

On a normal day of the week, there would be traffic, others commuting, but tonight because of the full moon, there wasn’t a car in sight. Without stopping, Bob turned left on a red light onto Hwy 14 across the marsh towards home. The full moon looked brighter in the dark marsh. 

Bob’s risk was less now. Those with the FFF didn’t go after fast moving vehicles, even as crazy as they became. His next worry was when he got home. He would have to slow down to pull into the driveway and into the garage, and that’s why the gun was next to him. Bob heaved a sigh of relief, thinking he would probably get home safe, as the song Riders on the Storm came on the radio, and it eerily became background music to his life. 

Up ahead Bob saw something on the road glittering in his headlights. He was on top of it before he realized what it was. When he saw the jagged edges of broken bottles, it was too late. His two front tires blew violently and immediately, so he pulled his limping car to the side of the road.

“Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!” Bob groaned. He squeezed the steering wheel until his body shook with self-loathing. Then he banged on the dash one time for good measure. “God, you must want me fucking dead!” He yelled at the ceiling of the car. He grabbed his gun and checked the clip. It was full. He looked up and gave a disgruntled, “Thanks.” Then he dialed 911.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” the female voice asked.

“My tires blew on Highway 14 as I was crossing the marsh. There are shards of glass all over the road.”

She didn’t ask what he was doing out on a full moon. There was no judgement. “Are you in imminent danger at the moment?”

“Do I see anyone with the Flu? No, not yet.” He didn’t tell her he was armed, because he didn’t have a permit to conceal and carry.

Then the dispatcher said, “We are getting multiple calls about broken glass causing flat tires. We believe it’s those with the Flu causing this. I need you to keep your lights and radio off. Make as little noise as possible, and we’ll get an officer there as soon as possible.”

“Busy night?” Bob asked.

“Always on a full moon,” she said.

“I lost track of time at work. Forgot it wasn’t daylights savings.”

“You’re not alone. Be safe sir. Good-bye.”

Bob didn’t like her “good-bye.” She said it like no one would hear from him again.

He quickly texted his wife to let her know his predicament and that he didn’t call because he had to be as quiet as possible. 

“Oh, no,” she texted with a sad emoji.

“The police are coming,” he texted back.

She replied with a smiling emoji.

In the distance, Bob couldn’t tell how far, he heard a chilling howl. It cut loud through the heavy dark. Bob looked at the clock in his dash. Only fifteen minutes had passed since he left work.

The car felt stuffy, so he cracked open his window to get a little fresh air. The buzzing cacophony of insects in the marsh sounded very loud to him. The howling stopped, but there was the shuffling sound of feet on the asphalt road near the car. Bob stared intently into the darkness, but before he saw anything, there was a rap on the passenger side of the car and a strained gravelly voice called his name through the crack in the window. “Hey, Bob.”  

“What the fuck!” Bob startled and pointed his gun at the window. 

“It’s me, George from work.”

“What the hell are you doing out here?” Bob rolled down the window to talk to George, but when he took one look at George’s bulging eyes, slobbering jowls, and pins of coarse hair all over his face, Bob rolled the window right back up.

“Roll down the fucking window!” George shrieked. 

“You got the Flu, George.”

George pounded and pawed at the window. Bob waited for it to break, ready to shoot the moment it did. George gave up on the window and kicked the door. It pissed off Bob as much as frightened him.

“Stop kicking my goddam car!” Bob yelled.

“Come on out, so I can fuck you in the ass and cum on your face, you pussy!” George yelled and leaped onto the hood of the Corolla. George’s vertical jump impressed Bob, since George was a chubby guy that moved like a sloth at work. But Bob knew it was the FFF that gave George the spring in his step.

“Get off my car, George,” Bob ordered and pointed his gun at him through the windshield.

“Go ahead, shoot,” George dared. “If you miss, the windshield will still break, and I’ll be standing over you with my dick in your mouth.”

“I won’t miss,” Bob said. He stared into George’s pus-filled yellow eyes and felt sorry for him.

“It doesn’t matter anyway. You’ll have the Flu soon anyway,” George snickered.

“What?” Bob asked.

“She fucked you too, right?” George slurped and drooled onto the hood of the car. 

Bob shivered from the chilly reality of the situation. 

“Who?

“You know who. Pammy-poo that’s who,” George tittered then snapped. A shot of fury jolted through George’s fevered body. Dirty infected hormones multiplied and blasted through his veins.

“Oh shit,” Bob said. He had not used a condom when he had sex with Pam. 

“Oh, shit is right, buddy boy,” George said excitedly. “But she sure was a good fuck, wasn’t she?” 

Pam, the woman from the Milwaukee branch, came to town to give a seminar last Friday in the Sunset Hotel conference room. Later in the bar after a couple of drinks Pam whispered to Bob, “I know you want to fuck me.” Pam was short and chubby with stubby legs and small breasts. She had a cute bookish face with big glasses. Her dress suit was gray and drab and all buttoned up, but when she tossed her clothes off, and Bob saw her bushy dirty blonde snatch, he got as hard as concrete. She was as close to Bob’s dwarf fantasy as he had ever come. Bob was so turned on by her, he popped twice, one in the mish position with her heels pinned to her ears and the other from a voracious blow job. Afterwards, Bob took a quick shower to rinse her off before he went home. While he was in the bathroom, she yelled, “I’m going back down to the bar.”

“I’ll be heading home. It was nice seeing you,” Bob laughed. He wondered how long it was before she brought George up to her room. Even before someone went through their first full moon transformation, the infection caused nymphomania. 

George dropped his pants and exposed the purple head of his erection. He massaged his balls and slapped his dick against his belly before he wrapped his hand around it and stroked it vigorously.

“Stop it! Stop it! Or I swear to God, I’ll shoot you, George!” Bob knew what was going to happen, and it happened sooner than he thought. He hardly had a chance to react before George was ejaculating all over his windshield with three hefty ropes.

“Oh, baby!” George bellowed. “There ya go motherfucker, take it all.”

“You asshole, George. You were an asshole before and you ‘re asshole now,” Bob said.

“You want asshole? I ‘II give you asshole,” George said, and as an encore he turned his ass towards Bob and sprayed muddy light brown diarrhea all over the windshield. It gushed out in one huge spurt.

Bob gagged. Irate, he jumped out of the car and shot George three times in the chest. The gunshots blew George off the hood of the car. Bob had to walk around to the other side to see him. George was lying on the ground, pants at his ankles, and his dick was still erect.

“Oh man, you didn’t have to shoot me,” George groaned. “I was only having a little fun. I wasn’t going to hurt you. I just wanted a little piece. I’m horny as hell.”

“You would have fucked me to death, George,” Bob said. He still aimed his shaky gun at George.

“Am I going to die?” George sobbed. 

“I don’t know. I think so,” Bob said. 

“Could you do me favor?”

“What?” Bob asked.

“Suck my cock?” George asked with a raspy laugh and placed his hand over his crotch before he died.

Bob stared at the moon and heard the ear piercing sirens approaching. He felt a little tingle in his groin and the urge to kick someone’s ass.