A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre: Halloween Is Going to Be Jealous

CONSENSUAL

by Jack Ketchum

writing as Jerzy Livingston

We rolled away from one another. We were exhausted, both of us, but for different reasons. Her reason was that her coming had been a hell of a long time coming. So long in fact that I was practically ready to go again. They say the tongue is the strongest muscle in the body per square inch and I didn’t know about that but mine felt like it had been bench-pressing hundred-pound weights.

A hundred repetitions.

“You want a beer, Stroup?” she said.

Her fingernails were drawing tight little circles around my navel. I was old enough to be her father. It didn’t matter. If she kept that up I’d be ready again any minute but my tongue still needed a rest.

“A beer would be nice, Carol.”

She reached across my chest for the royal blue kimono I only knew was royal blue because now and then I’d seen it in the light. She kept the bedroom as dark as the inside of a cave and at the moment it smelled about as rank. Summertime sex in the city. I heard the rustle of silk and her perfume wafted toward me like a sudden field of clover.

“Be right back,” she said.

The bedroom door opened and she stepped out into the dimly lit hallway and I could see a little. The kimono fluttered across her thighs like a big grateful butterfly riding along for the nectar.

It had been three weeks now I’d been fucking Carol and I’d yet to see her wholly naked. Her habit was to turn off the lights before we started and close the bedroom door behind her like this was a quickie and she was expecting company any minute, even though it wasn’t a quickie and she lived alone. The blinds were always drawn. She never seemed to want to fuck in daytime so the most I could tell from what little ambient light the city streets provided was that she wasn’t deformed, had a nice little mole on her left front hip and was of a generally uniform color.

I asked her once what was with the Stygian Darkness bit.

We couldn’t light a candle maybe?

We’d both quit smoking. So glowing embers were out.

She laughed. “I dunno, Stroup. I think it’s sort of sexy. A little spooky. Like I can’t tell what you’re going to do next, where you’re going to touch me. A little dangerous. It’s like I’m doing it with…well, a kind of succubus, you know?”

“Incubus. Succubus would be you.”

“Right. You don’t mind, do you?”

“To quote our president, ‘Security is the essential roadblock to achieving a road map to peace.’”

“Huh?”

“Look it up. Washington, D.C., July 25th, 2003.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Whatever makes you feel secure or insecure, Carol, whichever you want it’s fine with me. Even if they’re as confused as that dickless fuck. The exceptions being golden showers, vomiting on purpose and coprolagnia.”

“Coprolagnia?”

“Playing with shit.”

“Eeeeew.”

“I thought you’d feel that way.”

I’d never questioned her about it since. Though sometimes I wanted to. Taste, touch and scent are perfectly good senses but sometimes you want a little presentation as well. The parsley sprig on the dinnerplate.

She slid into the room through the crack in the doorway with two cold Becks sweating in the bottle and we savored them. We’d met over Becks at the All State Cafe.

She asked me if I had to work tomorrow. I told her I didn’t—the goddamn copy was in. Drill bits. I was writing about drill bits. The book was a flop everywhere but at the remainder tables so I was back to copy again. My next assignment? Crest Whitestrips. Don’t be annoyed if you can’t quite see the connection.

“You?”

“No. I switched shifts with Janet.”

That was a relief. I didn’t need the guilt. It was two in the morning already. Carol was a nurse’s aide on the geriatric ward over at St. Luke’s and even though she was twenty-five years younger than me, still a just kid as far as I was concerned, even on a good day with plenty of sleep she was dead on her feet half the time when it was over.

“That mean we can go again?”

She smiled and finished her beer. “Mmmmm,” she said. “Sure does.”

She set the beer down and got up and closed the door.

Closing the door. That was how I knew she was serious.

The dark descended and she descended spread-legged across my thighs a few seconds later. She was naked. No kimono. Her body was cool to the touch and then it wasn’t.

We made the usual noises.

“You know what we never do, Stroup?” she said.

She was riding me high, posting like a rider in an equestrian event and I was below her, pumping away. I wasn’t really used to questions at this juncture.

“Uh, what?”

“We don’t talk about what we like. About what really gets us off.”

“I thought we were getting off pretty good, Carol.”

“We are.”

For emphasis she hit the saddle, twice. Hit it hard. Think a pair of body blows from Sonny Liston.

The saddle said “OH!” and “OH!” The saddle was way too old for this shit.

She posted again. Much better.

“What I mean is, everybody has some special thing or things they like during sex, right? Sometimes you find out what they are by accident, trial and error. You trip over them. But it’s better to just tell it, get it out there, don’t you think? Because sometimes the person never finds out.”

“Kind of like a g-spot?” I said. “A sort of little-to-the-left kind of thing?”

“Kind of. What do you like, Stroup?”

“I like this, Carol.”

“I know you do. You’re not going to come yet are you?”

“Not if we keep talking. I don’t think so.”

“Good.”

I wasn’t exactly sure I was telling the truth. It was a pretty safe bet that Carol wouldn’t come even with me working her clit with thumb and forefinger which I’d been doing continually since she climbed aboard with only that one minor pause during her switch from equestrian to bronc buster. The noises she made told me she liked that fine but it was the tongue that really got to her in general. The weightlifter.

“So what do you really like? Tell me and I’ll do it.”

“I’m embarrassed, Carol…”

“No you’re not. Nothing embarrasses you.”

“Our president does.”

“Bush aside, Stroup.”

“That didn’t sound right. Not under these circumstances. Was that meant to be instructional? You want to rephrase that?”

“Goddamn President Bush aside, Stroup.”

“My nipples are sensitive.”

“What? Right now? Is that a bad thing?”

“No. The left one slightly more so than the right. If you sort of nibble at it, that’d be good. But either one will do. Left or right. Your pick.”

“I thought it was only women who were really sensitive there. That’s rare in guys, isn’t it, Stroup?”

“I don’t know. It’s not the sort of thing that normally comes up in conversation during the Yankee game. ‘You see that line drive? Yeah! Man! my nipples are sensitive!’”

Then I shut up because she bent over and went to work on the left one and she was so obviously a natural at it that I had to wonder if there wasn’t a woman in her past somewhere, thinking it was maybe something to ask her about later not that I minded one way or another and I could feel it travel all the way down my spine into my cock in little electric bursts. She must have sensed something because she pulled away.

“You going to come, Stroup?”

“Mmmmmuhhhhh,” I said.

“Oh no you’re not.”

And I didn’t even see it coming. There was no way to roll with the thing. It was a good one too. All of a sudden my cheek was burning and the crown on my molar, upper right quadrant, felt loose.

“Jesus, Carol! You slapped me! You goddamn slapped me!”

I had to admit it had done the trick though. I was down. Though not out.

“Sorry. Reach over and turn on the light, Stroup.”

“Huh?”

“I want to show you something. The table lamp. Turn it on.”

This was interesting.

I was going to see whatever it was she hadn’t wanted me to see so far.

At first I couldn’t figure it. She looked like a woman with all parts intact. Very much intact—and I wondered for the umteenth time what she saw in an old bum like me. Her areolae were darker than I’d expected. The navel dove deeper than my tongue had bothered to notice. That was about it.

She turned a little to the right and I saw the white smooth scar tissue over two of her left ribs, crawling toward her back a few inches below her breast. The one on top was maybe an inch long. The one below it more like three.

“Whew,” I said. “And I never felt those?”

“I hold my elbow this way, it’s hard to reach them. See? Do they disgust you?”

“Hell no, Carol. Guys like scars. We’re kinda odd that way. But what the hell happened?”

I pumped a few times and she posted just to keep things rolling.

“I was driving my boyfriend’s car one night back in high school. Some drunk kissed my bumper passing me on Route 10 and I went off an embankment. My boyfriend was so goddamn proud of that car—vintage black ‘71 Volvo, in fabulous condition. But there were no airbags back then and I wasn’t wearing a belt so I went into the steering wheel. Compound fracture of the ribs. I reached around and I could feel them sticking out of me. It was pretty…intense.”

“Intense? I would think so. God, yes.”

“I came like a sonovabitch, Stroup.”

“What?”

“I swear to God. I didn’t think it was ever going to stop. It was pouring out of me.”

“This is a joke now, right?”

“No. It was pretty embarrassing too. I was wearing these Garfield THRILL ME panties and they were just soaked through completely. And you know, the medics, they had to undress me, so…”

She let it just trail off that way. That was fine by me. I was starting to wilt again.

She pumped. I pumped. That was better.

But I was starting to get this feeling. This weird, bad association. I had the sense that what she was going to say to me next would not be about nipple nibbling or blowing in her ear.

“I get off on broken bones, Stroup. That’s my thing.”

“You do. You get off on broken bones.”

“I do. For me there’s nothing like it.”

“That’s pretty new and different, Carol.”

“I know. But I’m not the only one, Stroup. There are chat groups on the net. There’s websites.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You should check it out.”

“Sure. Why not? I’ve already been through most of the quadruple-amputee sites.”

“I’m serious, Stroup.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any offense, Carol. Honest.”

“So will you?”

“What? Break your ribs?”

She laughed. “No, silly. That would be getting pretty extreme, don’t you think? You could do a finger, though. I’d really like that. In fact I’m getting all hot just thinking about you breaking my finger, Stroup. Will you do that for me?”

“I wouldn’t know how, for godsakes. What if I tried to break it and just disjointed it or something? Would that be disappointing to you?”

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you.”

“No. I think you’re getting wetter all the time, though. Jeez.”

“I told you. I work with osteoporosis patients, Stroup, you know? They break bones every day. Sometimes I get so hot I have to go to the ladies’ room and…am I telling you too much about this?”

“It’s possible.”

“You think I’m crazy.”

“I do not. If you wanted to get pregnant that would be crazy.”

“Fuck me, Stroup. Break my finger, okay?”

“I…”

“How isn’t a problem. I’ll show you how.”

“You’ve done this before.”

“Not to myself. It doesn’t work if I try to do it. I chicken out. Somebody else has to. But yeah, there have been guys willing. Look at this.”

She swung her left foot up beside me on the bed. I thought that was pretty damn athletic of her. I pumped a few times. New position. Not bad.

“See that?”

Her big toe was a mess. All bent to hell out of shape. I hadn’t noticed that. Who looks at feet?

“That was Ron. He went overboard one night with a pair of pliers. I told the doctors a manhole cover fell on it. I don’t think they believed me, though. I dumped him the following day.”

She swung the leg around. We were in post position again. She pulled up high so that I was almost out of her. Almost but not quite. My shaft was suddenly very cool and wet. The glans nestled.

“Here’s what you do,” she said.

She took the pinkie of her left hand between the thumb and forefinger of her right so that the thumb pressed flat against the bottom of the second joint and the forefinger pressed down over the knuckle.

“This is called a phalanx. It’s a very small bone but you’d be surprised how hard it is to break. See, the joint ligaments and capsule tend to rupture before the bone snaps. Which is pretty intense too but it’s not what we’re after here. You have to do it fast and you only get one try.”

She drew up and down, up and down. A smile in her eyes and on her lips.

“C’mon, Stroup,” she said. “Astound me.”

I TOOK HER HAND. I placed my fingers just so.

I guess I got it right.

“YOU KNOW, NOT MANY guys will do this, Stroup.”

“I’m not surprised.”

She moved aside the heavy butcher-block cutting board and snuggled close. It was the following night. I had just taken out her terminal phalanx—the tip of her pinkie—with a ball peen hammer. Smashed it against the board.

Same hand.

The board was wet with blood. The bed was wet with us.

She’d decided to wait on dealing with the first break—just splinted it herself. She was going in to work tomorrow and she’d have both of them taken care of then. She hadn’t decided on the right explanation yet.

I couldn’t help her on that one. My imagination failed me.

Meantime she’d thought ahead this time and had gauze and tape and peroxide and codeine waiting on the nightstand. At least I didn’t have to look at the thing. Unless you counted seepage.

“How bad is it?”

She smiled. “Bad. I took the codeine, though. I really want you to know, Stroup. That was one of the best. God, that was good!”

“Thanks. You weren’t so bad yourself. What next?”

She considered. “I dunno. I work with my hands. So I have to give these time to heal. A toe, maybe?”

“You’ll limp.”

“I bought these shoes that are a little too big, you know? just in case.”

“In case?

“In case I met somebody like you, Stroup.”

I couldn’t fathom what in the hell it was she was feeling. Imagination failed me there too. She seemed happy though.

“Yeah. Toes, I think,” she said.

“Plural?”

“One to start with, silly. I’ve got this vise under the bed in the toolbox. You can do it slowly. Little by little. Oh my god, Stroup, there I go, I’m getting wet again!”

“Wait a minute. You’re not saying…?”

“No, jesus, I couldn’t take that now. Not after this.”

“Okay. I get it. You got it. I’m there.”

I slid down the long delicious length of her and proceeded.

I MASHED HER MIDDLE toe, right foot, the following week.

It occurred to me that Carol might have done very well during the Inquisition. Thumbscrews, The Boot, The Rack. I doubt they’d have known what to make of her though, except to be terrified out of their freaking minds that they’d actually finally met a witch and would’ve burned her first chance they got. That would have been the downside I guess. Carol wasn’t into burning.

I’d asked her.

If they noticed the limp at work, nobody said anything.

SHE HAD SOME VACATION days coming so I took some time off from the ad copy and we flew to Sarasota. The agency was pissed. They wanted me to do a TV-only ad for a Best of Barry Manilow collection. You know the type. Your CD starts skipping before you hit the PLAY button. I told them I was wrong for the job anyway. I liked heavy metal. They said there was evidence heavy metal was turning kids into murderers. I told them if that was true then Barry Manilow was probably turning them into florists.

It was the beginning of May, so the Florida humidity hadn’t descended yet and the hotel was cheap enough so we rented a car and spent the days basking in the sun on the fine white sand at Siesta Key and window shopping at St. Armand’s Circle, eating streetside there and then going back to our hotel to do what we did best together and it was only when she showed me the Louisville Slugger that I got worried.

We were lying in bed. Mr. Muscle was very sore.

“Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t that assault and battery? No pun intended.”

“Not if it’s consensual. I figure if you choke up high on it you can bring it down right over my forearm.

“Both hands?”

“I think you’d have to use both hands, yeah. Otherwise it’s not gonna break. I’ll just wind up with a hell of a bruise.”

“And we don’t want that.”

“No.”

“Can I think about it?”

“Sure. I’m too pooped tonight anyway. I just thought, how appropriate, you know? We’re here in Sarasota. The Cincinnati Reds do their spring training down here. Whenever I see them on TV I’ll think of you.”

I was dead tired too, but I kept thinking, lying there in bed that I was maybe getting in a little over my head on this and that the pinkie or toe were one thing but that the radius or ulna were probably another. Not to mention all the sensitive nerves and tender blood vessels in attendance. That I could possibly cripple the nutty bitch and then where would I be? My sleep was troubled. I remember morphing into Yogi Berra at some point and that Berra was striking out again—he could never hit worth a damn—and I remember thinking the way you do when you’re half asleep and half awake that I wasn’t even playing for the right team.

At another point I was arrested by the Sarasota police.

The charge was breaking and entering.

The wake-up call was good though. The wake up call was Carol’s lips sliding up and down my dick and before you could say Boy Howdy I was tickling her tonsils with the thing.

She looked up and smiled around it and I think she said, “morning.”

I know I said morning back.

She lifted herself up onto her knees and slid me inside her and started moving back and forth and side to side and soon I was starting to come, I could tell it was on its way, not only from the feeling down below but because I have this sort of involuntary grunting moaning thing I do way back in my throat—and because I had my eyes closed I didn’t see it coming a second time.

She’d reached down behind her on the bed I guess and next thing I knew my right collarbone felt like it had just exploded. I screamed and bucked her off me back hard onto my thighs and the bat flew out of her hands to the floor and my come whipped off into her hair like strands of gooey tinsel on a Christmas tree. She was smiling. I was shouting, groaning.

“You fucking…!”

“I thought you’d like to see what it was like,” she said. “So, what do you think?”

“You fucking…you crazy….fucking…!”

And I don’t know how I managed it through the pain or even saw her clearly enough through the dots of yellow bursting in front of my eyes, but I leaned up into her and planted my left fist into the side of her jaw like it was born to be there once, just once in a goddamn lifetime and then leave its mark forever.

She didn’t fall off the bed—she dove off the bed. Sideways, almost gracefully. She looked like a girl sliding dreamlike off her ski in some Esther Williams movie. Well, we were in Florida.

My collarbone was killing me. My fist was killing me. I felt like one big sack of pain.

So much for the thrill of broken bones.

Thanks so much for sharing.

I could hear her sobbing down beside the bed.

Somehow I got to my feet and walked over. She was lying on her back, her right shoulder off at a strange unnatural angle. She was trying to hold her jaw in place with her left hand.

“I think you broke my jaw,” she sobbed.

At least I think that’s what she said.

I could see she’d dislocated her shoulder.

I hated to watch a woman cry so I went into the bathroom and got her a hand towel and bent down and gave it to her. That jaw looked broken all right.

“I got one question for you, Carol,” I said.

I could see our near future then clear as the Sarasota night. The hospital, the explanations, probably the cops. The flight back to New York with the passengers and flight attendants all looking at us like gee, what a terrible awful shame, it must have been an awful wreck, I wonder if anybody else survived? Then the breakup, the tears, the inevitable parting of ways.

“Whussat?” she said. I had to ask.

“Didja come?”