Hot Blood: Tales of Erotic Horror

THE UNKINDEST CUT J. N. Williamson

Edmunster had never before liked the feeling of other men's flesh on his, so he was perfectly miserable when Stanwall's plump hands closed round his privates. They were called that with good reason, in his view, and Edmunster suffered the older man's clammy touch only because he had decided it was finally time, and he must.

Yet for the hundredth time, perhaps, Edmunster wondered if he would really be able simply to function from day to day, once this was beyond him. It did not seem sensible or realistic to hope he would not be altered in those ways that… mattered. That was what Bruce Peterson and Roger Hinesley assured him, however, in voices much too loud for such delicate exchanges of confidences. But then, they would say that. It was typical of birds such as Peterson, and Hinesley; these were modern times and a man had to do what this kind of man had to do. All that. They'd had no appreciation of what such a choice, such a decision, meant to a proud man like Lawrence F. Edmunster.

Frequently sighing, trying not to tremble or to flinch away, he looked all the way down and saw that Stanwall was on the verge of beginning. It didn't help the way Miss Allair was in and out of the room, nor that the woman seemed amazingly disaffected or bored by the terrible thing Stanwall was about to do to him. With bare legs raised, he turned his face to the discreetly draped window in mortification and, a last time, contemplated how it'd been for him. Wonderful, that was how. Natural, and normal, and he had no intention of lying about it now. He'd enjoyed women as much as the next man — more — and simply because this was happening did not mean Larry Edmunster felt obliged to repudiate a wholly healthy, enjoyable past.

He'd blurted out — "Is it going to hurt much?" — before he could stop himself.

The serious Stanwall glanced up from between Edmunster's legs as if annoyed at being distracted. "I told you it would not. Lots of men — right this instant — are having this done. Don't forget, Larry, you came to me. Voluntarily."

I knooow, Edmunster thought, cursing his weakness.

But the truth was, the procedure was the solitary, responsible decision remaining to him after getting two of his last four lovers pregnant.

And it was true that both Bruce and Roger swore that a vasectomy would not interfere with Edmunster's free-swinging pursuit of pleasure.

"I am going to make the incision in a moment," Stanwall announced. "Don't worry. The local I gave you has dulled all sensations and you may not feel a thing."

When Edmunster squeezed his eyes shut, they popped open again at once. How ridiculous, how ludicrous he looked. It was taped back at such a definitely unnatural, sickening angle he felt utterly helpless. May not feel a thing also meant he might feel a lot. His sensations did feel dulled, though. All of them, actually. Perhaps that was only the vulnerability of being exposed, or the fettered humiliation of the way it was rendered entirely hors de combat; but now he was starting to feel torpid, enfeebled… prostrate… the whole length of his body.

"Doctor." His own voice seemed detached; distant. "How soon… after… will I dare — have relations?"

"Oh, a few days," Stanwell grunted. His silver surgical instrument suddenly flashed like a murder weapon as the window curtains ballooned with the late afternoon draft. No feeling. Miss Allair, observed Edmunster, had left the room now. "Basically, it depends upon you, Larry," Stanwall said. "Your own mental outlook." The scalpel stopped moving, and pricked. God! Edmunster's nerve ends sought to scream, but he managed merely a subdued, rather sickish whimper. "There are neurotic types who experience severe psychological trauma."

"Bruce and Rodge, they didn't mention that at all," Edmunster said hastily, "so what if —»

"Hold perfectly still!"

He was a statue, an icon; he was a mountain rooted in time, unbudgeable granite. An earthquake's rebuke.

Dr. Stanwall's head completely blocked the horrid view now. Once more, while he might have imagined it, those sensitive ganglia which had served Lawrence F. Edmunster faithfully and with passionate devotion sent shrill, psychic protestations careening through his hair-trigger brain.

"You knew my wife."

Vague, being polite, Edmunster managed a smile at the top of the physician's head. Why had Stanwall put it in the past tense? "Yes, I know Stephanie." He attempted to call up her face, but all he saw hoving into view was the shockingly naked body of another Stephanie. "Charming girl."

"Not actually charming," said the doctor. "Indescribably lovely, and sensual. Thrilling and precious, to me; she's eleven years younger. Larry, mistakes that happen during this particular phase of surgery are rare. They do tend to be irreversible, however; I thought you should know the worst. Yet the main concern is what can go on in one's own mind. Some men — a minute percentage of those who undergo vasectomies as out-patients — are never able, quite, to achieve another orgasm. A somewhat smaller figure, generally due to their immature way of mentally coping with bodily modifications — and their own, ongoing guilt feelings — never manages an erection again." Dr. Stanwall's fingers — maybe they were sutures, it was impossible to see through his goddamned head! — clenched firmly on Lawrence Edmunster's member. "You knew my beautiful wife in the Biblical sense." And the member went totally numb.

He did mean that Stephanie! I never was much good,

remembering names, the patient admitted to himself. "Listen, Doctor, I —»

"Do not move a muscle!" The command was from an infinite professional remove. Again the window curtains billowed, as if something ghastly entered. "Not if you want a chance of ever doing it again."

"Please." He whispered it, got no reply. Frozen, Edmunster heard the word irreversible pound at him, echoing. He craned his neck exactingly, as painstakingly as it was possible for a human creature without using extraneous tendons and musculature. With all his heart he tried to witness the older man's last, terminal handiwork… and couldn't make out a damned thing. "For God's sake, Doctor — what've you done to me?"

Stanwell smiled and stepped back. He held his hands high as if in a gesture of innocence, or perhaps remorseful repugnance. "What you came to me to do, Larry. A vasectomy. Only what you sought."

When he attempted to stand, Edmunster was too weak. Staring down in absolute apprehension, handsome features a blur of terror even to himself, he saw he was still taped in place. But now he wore a tidy, white dressing. Edmunster inhaled sharply. One ruby-red drop of blood was seeping through. He had experienced no pain, he had no feeling, there. Not a bit.

"Sometimes, of course," Dr. Stanwell ruminated, "we men don't know exactly what it is we seek. Patients have been known to go to their physicians for very deep-seated, intimate reasons they can't acknowledge, even to themselves. On occasion, Larry, due to the enormous and influential power of the human mind, men go because of shame — or guilt — and want their doctor somehow to expiate their sins. Odd, isn't it, that can seem the only way?"

There was more going on beneath Edmunster's waist. Miss Allair was pulling up his shorts, then his trousers, with the brisk competence of a mother dressing her little boy. That was the first time today Edmunster observed that she was beautiful, and statuesque; and when he tried to think about her sterling physical attributes in the old, motivational way that had unfailingly elicited highly stimulating re-suits, he felt only a sharp, disagreeable tugging sensation there… and a sense of ballooning, cosmic loss.

When Allair had zipped him up, Edmunster was shaken and relieved.

"The procedure wasn't too bad, was it?" Stanwall was energetically washing his hands, scrubbing the hell out of them, at his basin. He smiled more, now he was finished. In Edmunster's memory he couldn't recall ever seeing that smile on the doctor's homely face. "Once a man is no longer doing those nasty things that rest so heavily on his shoulders, Larry, he usually becomes a different person. Entirely. Remember, you did the right thing today." He bobbed his head, let his merry eyes watch Edmunster's expression in the mirror above the basin. "Just use that as your consolation, all right?"

Nodding, the space in his brain that retained visual images going on staring at that hearty, open smile, Lawrence Edmunster went out to the waiting room. The nurse, doubling as the doctor's secretary, was making out his bill. A physician who did that for a living wouldn't need a great many secretaries. Allair was bent over her desk and Edmunster might easily have stared down her capacious uniform blouse.

On stiff legs, moving cautiously, he crossed the carpeted floor to the window and stared, straight ahead, through the pane. Peering down, just then, did not seem advisable; prudent. Instead, Edmunster looked at the drab sky as if seeing it that way for the first time and wondered, dully, about psychological trauma, psychosomatic illnesses. Responsible decisions made too late in the game; safe sex; guilt; and little medical horror stories.

Finally Edmunster turned his gaze downward, toward the busy city streets on which he'd strode with manly confidence, then toward himself, below the waist. By comparison, the streets did not seem so distant, so out of reach. It usually works out all right; depends upon the individual man. Edmunster's sigh made his whole body tremor from head to toe.

And behind him, from the physician's inner office, there was the sound of chuckling and someone starting to sing. Miss Allair was smiling when Edmunster turned — smiling as if she, too, might begin to sing with satisfaction or shared amusement at any moment.

But regardless of how hard he tried, Edmunster couldn't feel a darned thing. Not anger, not even the gratification of having done the right thing. All he wanted to do was hold perfectly still, forever.