Mangled Meat

The Cyesolagniac

Look at me…

Heyton sat in the chair with his pants down. A glance across the squalid room revealed his pitiful reflection in the mirror: a ludicrous caricature.

The magazine shook in his hands.

If my dear dead parents could see me now…

It had been the best business day of his life. He’d just flown in from Dallas, having sold the IAP system to the Texas State Police and two dozen county departments. Blocher, his boss, had had a proverbial cow. “Heyton,” he’d said, “I’m promoting you to deputy vice-president and I’m doubling your salary.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You just sold Texas! No one’s been able to do that!”

“Tomorrow’s Florida, sir,” Heyton reminded. “Florida’s not a big interagency state, but they don’t like to be tag-alongs, either. That’s good for us.”

Blocher sounded manic as Al Pacino. “Sell the IAP to Florida and I’ll triple your salary, Heyton!”

“Not to sound conceited, sir, but if I can’t sell Florida… no one can.”

Exhilaration turned Blocher’s voice to a wavering shimmy. “You fuckin’ rock, Heyton! You’ve got confidence and balls! You’re putting my company on the map and making the competition eat my shorts. Sell Florida tomorrow, and—to hell with it! I’ll make you exec VP and quadruple your salary.”

“Mr. Blocher,” Heyton promised. “I’m going to sell Florida.”

Yes, a good business day. Once all those Florida police chiefs heard that half of Texas law enforcement had purchased their processing system, they’d probably all buy it, too. Heyton felt confident. He was a superior salesman.

But he had a problem.

He hadn’t even had to show his ID to check into the room—that’s the kind of place it was. Dirty handprints on the wallpaper tracked over into the mirror his own face now occupied, and more handprints smudged an awful dollar-store painting of a sea manatee which hung crooked over the lumpy bed. The room stank, of course, like a porn parlor. Roaches chittered in a bathroom cornered black with fungus.

It was still daylight; through the closed blinds he glimpsed the shadows passing the window, but none quite possessed the silhouette he craved…

The magazine’s glossy images made his eyes feel lidless. He stared, as someone lost in the desert would stare at a mirage. The letters of the magazine’s title stretched across breasts so swollen they looked fit to burst, and a white belly equally swollen: BUNS IN THE OVEN.

As he proceeded, Heyton couldn’t have felt more ashamed, nor more impassioned.

He was surprised by how often he got lucky. From Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine, from Baltimore to Frisco to Miami to Seattle—there was always some identically seedy thoroughfare peppered with fleabag motels and fleabag people. Crack reigned supreme, a devil’s contract for the new age; there would always be plenty of regrettable women who’d sell themselves for a twenty-dollar “rock.” This was south St. Petersburg; Heyton hadn’t had to drive far in the rental car to know he’d found the right kind of neighborhood: pawn shops, adult book stores, and rundown rowhouses. Perfect, he thought.

The sodium lights on 4^th Street seemed to ooze on as the sun fell, painting the street in a glittery glaze the color of urine. Heyton spied stars struggling to wink through the hot, smog-tinged twilight. Monolithic buildings pushed upward past ugly rooftops, a craggy black mesa against a dull sky. Heyton thought of lost worlds.

As the night deepened, they began to appear as if disgorged from the street’s tacky crannies and alleyways: the lost women. Thousand-yard stares propped up over false smiles of wantonness, they began their endless trek on either side of the street, big-eyed scarecrows in high heels and hot pants and tubetops banding fried-egg breasts. Most were emaciated, with mops of soiled hair the color of dirty dishwater—the proverbial crack whores nearing the end of the line. Any city had plenty of them. A few were obese, comically so, waddling the dirty sidewalk on swollen ankles and feet ballooned against flip-flops straps. One, whose face look inflated within a preposterous Benatar shag, beckoned Heyton with a wave of a fat hand, mouthing some carnal promise. Her buttocks in giant jeans looked like a cramed duffle bag. Not tonight, honey, Heyton thought.

He drove to the end and back again, eyeing for police but seeing none. A black woman—clearly not a prostitute—exited an ice-cream shop with a toddler on each hand. She smiled in her routine, clearly a happy mother…

I never knew my mother, Heyton thought.

But it was a self-realization that always arrived via a shrugging objectivity. He’d been raised by a single father. “She died,” he’d dismissed to young Heyton a few times, “a long time ago.” End of story.

Heyton didn’t care. He didn’t feel under-privileged, and he couldn’t discern that he’d missed anything in childhood. His father had raised him well regardless, then Heyton had excelled through life to this point: $200,000-plus per year in a company headed skyward.

Nevertheless, that was the chief reason cited: the lack of a maternal figure during formative and adolescent years.

Thinking back to the last few had him squirming on the LeBaron’s faux-leather upholstery. Kansas City a month a ago, and Phoenix the month before that—both gems. The images—so sharp, so freshly white with ghosts of blue veins beneath ever-so-tight skin—melded with further images from the magazines and dumped a narcotic heat over his groin. Good God…

Cyesolagnia was the clinical term, but he’d also seen others, even more bizarre, like Gravidophilia and maiesiomania—a pervert’s alphabet soup. The standard definition?

“Cyesolagnia: a particular paraphilic symptom of sexual fetishism which involves the urgent erotic obsession with pregnant women.”

Heyton, indeed, had it bad. Never a wife, and scarcely ever a girlfriend. For him, sexual release was impossible without these arcane and decidedly abnormal trimmings.

They had to be pregnant…

And there were never many. The typical red-light district seemed to sport only one or two pregnant prostitutes per hundred—low odds for sure, but that only made the successes more gratifying. But, yes—

They had to be pregnant.

When he introspected, he always deduced, I’m not a bad person. It’s not like I’m snatching children or picking up little boys, for God’s sake. I’m not raping women at gunpoint, I’m not robbing banks or murdering people. All I’m doing is picking up a few pregnant hookers for a mutual proposition. What’s the harm? No one gets hurt…

Hence, his rationale, which was all he had to keep from feeling wholly aberrant. Pickings were always slim, and his trek often ended in frustrating failure, but then there was always that inexplicable edge of excitement, that at any moment a suitable woman would turn a corner or step from an alley and be standing there for him, that one shining needle in this haystack of human detritus.

The sky was black now, pressing down on the sodium haze. Right after another u-turn, his heart jumped when he spotted the proper outline in the distance.

Finally!

The wan figure moved down the street, burdened by the tell-tale swollen belly.

Please…

Then his heart dropped like a stone.

She was pregnant, all right, by eight months it looked like. But… Damn!

This one was simply too far gone, a stick-figure with greasy tendrils of hair and legs smudged flinty with dirt. The stained t-shirt ballooned as she waddled onward; her pregnancy must comprise a third of her total body weight. Giant soul-dead eyes snagged his gaze as he passed, then the parched lips over crooked teeth mouthed “Blowjob?” Another inhabitant of the bottom of the barrel. She likely hadn’t washed in weeks and was probably rife with HIV, abscessed track-marks, and lice.

What a disappointment.

“Oh, well…”

It was getting late—he had his presentation tomorrow. Better get back to the motel… A night’s failure always had at least one consolation: another pathetic release of his own accord, abetted by one of his magazines: READY TO DROP, NATAL ATTRACTION, and his current favorite, BUNS IN THE OVEN. Heyton could take his pick.

He slowed at a stop light, then almost shouted when his cell phone blared. Jesus! “Hello?”

The shrill voice was Blocher’s. “Heyton, holy shit, I can’t even sleep I’m so torqued up about tomorrow!”

“Relax, sir. I think it’ll go well.”

“I tried calling the room we booked you at the con center but they said you never checked in.”

Heyton rarely ever stayed in those rooms; they existed too far away from his need. So he lied: “Oh, yeah, Mr. Blocher, but after flying over from Dallas, I was so dog-tired, I just checked into the first motel I could find.”

“Fine, fine, well—shit. Get plenty of sleep. How early you gotta get up?”

“It’ll be no rush, sir. I’ll get to the con center at two. My presentation’s at three.” Heyton could see Blocher sitting in his den with his hair sticking up, wringing his hands.

A nervous chuckle. “It’s all riding on you, Heyton. You’re going to have chiefs and teckies from three or four dozen Florida departments sitting in tomorrow—the fuckin’ U.S. Marshals might even be there.”

“Relax, sir,” Heytoned repeated, amused.

“Shit, Heyton. What I say earlier? I’ll quadruple your salary? Fuck it—if you sell the IAP system to a bunch of Florida PD’s—I’ll…what’s five times, Heyton? Quintriple?”

“Quintuple, I think, sir.”

“Yeah! That’s what I’m saying! You sell Florida, Heyton, and I’ll quintuple your salary!”

“That’s almost a million a year, sir,” Heyton reminded.

“Fuckin’-A right, and you’re worth it. Did you see what our stocks did today after you sold Texas?”

“No, sir. I didn’t think of it.”

“It went up sixty percent, Heyton. Because of you!”

Even better news. He hadn’t found the right kind of prostitute, but at least he was significantly richer.

“I’ll call you tomorrow after the show, Mr. Blocher. And stop worrying.”

“Yeah, yeah—aw, shit, Heyton! Break a leg!” and then he hung up.

Heyton chuckled to himself. At this rate, the silly bastard’ll have a stroke by morning.

TAP! TAP! TAP! TAP!

Heyton’s frown jerked right. The light was green but no cars waited in his rearview.

A woman’s face peered through the passenger window.

Heyton froze.

She was pretty…and hugely pregnant.

She’s perfect…

He pushed open the door. “Guh—get in.”

Lean, fresh white legs angled inside, glittery flipflops on feet that were surprisingly well-pedicured for a streetwalker. A shining sweep of carbon-black hair confused Heyton to a point of distraction; he couldn’t detect her face at first, just the black shine—an obverse halo. Some fragrant scent off the hair filled the car at once.

“Hey,” she greeted.

Heyton’s eyes struggled for a place to look first. The rotundity that replaced her lap told him she was well into the third-trimester—his favorite, for the closer they were to term, the most extreme the image, the same way a donut-addict would pick out the cream-filled with the most bloat.

“Oh, shit, don’t tell me you’re one of those screwballs who never says a word…”

Heyton snapped back. “I’m sorry, hi, er—” the words tripped around in his mouth. “You caught me by surprise—” and then he flinched when a horn brayed behind him.

“Light’s green,” she said.

Mallet-head! Now the rearview showed him a Yellow Cab, and an irate Pakistani shaking his fist. Heyton trounced the gas. “Sorry.”

He detected more than saw her smile. Pretty scents began to intoxicate him; usually streetwalkers didn’t smell good, but this one could’ve just stepped from a lavender bubble bath. She also dressed quite smartly for her kind: beige cargo shorts and a cranberry scoop-neck maternity t-shirt. The clothes augmented her pregnancy rather than covered it up. Nipple-tips the size of thumb-ends tented the cranberry fabric which stuck finely as tulle to the engorged orbs.

Heyton’s palms grew slick on the wheel.

“I saw you drive by couple times,” she said, adjusting her girth in the seat. “You gotta be careful doing that—it flags the cops.”

Heyton knew the scene all too well. Nothing close to solicitation had taken place yet; if the john wasn’t the first to speak up, the girls would be worried about entrapment. “The cops, yes, well, I’m not a cop, if that’s what you’re driving at. I’m a software salesman from South Dakota.”

“Cool. I knew you weren’t five-oh, could tell by the look in your eyes.”

Heyton found the comment intriguing. “Oh, yeah?”

“Sure, man. Dudes into pregnant chicks all look the same: suits, rental cars, middle-aged but in good shape, and the same something or other in the eyes.”

“Really?”

“Um-hmm. Then I was positive when I saw you giving Tracie the once-over.”

“Huh?”

“That knocked-up junkie pipe-cleaner you were eyeballing back there.” She flipped down the visor mirror to finnick with her hair. Heyton liked her nonchalant attitude. “Shit, man, don’t EVER pick that bitch up. She’s crazy from AIDS, carries a box-cutter. Beats the shit out of me how a chick that fucked up can even get pregnant. Usually smackheads miscarry mid-term. That walking piece of trash’d shit her kid into the sewer, then keep right on turning tricks she’s so low down.”

The rough talk rolled so smoothly off her lips, Heyton didn’t even flinch. And she tagged me right away, he reminded himself.

The “look in your eyes,” she’d said.

Finally she examined him, with bright blue eyes in a cheerleader’s face, a creamy white complexion bereft of blemish.

Oh, yes. This one was perfect.

“So what do you want?”

There.

“How much for all night?”

The query seemed to catch her off guard. Ninety-percent of a streetwalker’s business was quick car-tricks, usually of the oral variety. Heyton needed the image, and he needed it to be sustained.

She tried to sound casual. “Shit, man. That takes me off the stroll for the whole night. I can make a lot of money overnight.”

“I’ll pay a thousand,” Heyton said.

Dark, perfect brows popped up. “Gotta see it, you know?”

Heyton gave her the roll. Her thumb riffled through it like a Bicycle deck, then she stuffed it into a wrist purse. “All right. Let’s go.”

“Nice and cool in this dump,” she said and sighed. “Usually the a/c’s for shit in this motel.” Heyton locked the door and closed the brass slide. He was already so aroused by the sight of her he could only think in snippets. Remember. She’s a whore. She’s a criminal. Oh, God, she’s so beautiful. Just. Be. Careful… She carried all eight and a half months quite gracefully, sauntering to the bathroom.

Quick.

Yes, one always had to be careful. He took down the preposterous manatee painting, behind which he’d already hung a plastic bag. In the bag he placed his wallet, car keys, and cell phone, then had the painting back up in seconds. “You got anything hard to drink?” she called from the bathroom. He could hear a tinkle.

He was already pouring himself one. “Just scotch.”

“I’ll have one, on ice.”

Heyton poured a second. He noticed his hands shaking; he couldn’t recall anticipation so potent. Excitement dried his mouth out until the sharp liquor replenished it. Jesus… He sat down to steady the shaking; his armpits felt sodden. Christ, I hope I don’t stink. I’m sweating like a pig.

The door clicked. “You in a rush to get started? If you are, that’s cool.”

She’d exited the bathroom nude. Heyton could’ve been a wide-eyed wooden Indian at the first’s bed edge…

She crossed the room like a spotlight. “Huh?”

“Oh, no—” Heyton gulped. “There’s no rush.”

“Good. Lemme sit down a minute. We got all night.”

She sat on the edge of the opposing twin bed, and reached for her scotch. Without looking at him, her bare foot gently planted itself between his legs.

Heyton’s entire psyche seemed to inflate.

“Thing about Florida is it’s so damn hot. Sometimes we gotta stroll fourteen, sixteen hours just to get what we need.” Her small-talk ensued oblivious to the lewd attentions of her foot. Heyton hoped his teeth weren’t chattering.

“Ruh-really?”

“Oh, sure, man.” Her tongue sucked up an ice-cube, rolled it around, then let it back into the glass. “I’ve tricked all up and down the east coast.”

Heyton’s brain split, one half focused on her raving image, one half trying to stay linear. “Why work here then? It’s got to be cooler up north, just about anywhere, I’d imagine.”

She snorted, looking around the room. “Yeah, it’s cooler, but you don’t live as long. Johns are more whacked out up there. New York, Baltimore, Boston—holy shit. Some real sick pups looking for girls up there.”

Heyton scarcely heard her. He was staring…

Her nudity didn’t seem brazen at all, nor trashy, just natural—a woman’s beauty in extremity. He could’ve moaned at the spectacle of her breasts: the size of melons but white as whipping cream. It wasn’t a milk fetish with him (lactophilia was the name for that one), it was the overall fullness: breasts full of milk, belly full of baby, blood and brain full of hormones—full to bursting. The end-phase of fecundity, one human life stuffed with another, and that same fullness forging the image he’d become addicted to just as surely and hopelessly as these nocturnal urchins were to crack.

It was that indefinable stark raving image…

Rose-pink areolae were stretched by mammiferousness to the circumference a beer can top. More imagery, more of that heady contrast: the sharp delineated pink against the snow-flesh breasts. Heyton’s gaze shimmied down, over the magnificent belly stretched pinprick-tight, the inverted acorn of a navel. Lower, she’d shaved herself quite meticulously. Heyton thought of an adorable tart of flesh.

She lit a cigarette now, and sat to let the edge of scotch take away the undoubted need for drugs. “Bet you wouldn’t think I get more tricks when I’m pregnant.” She seemed to catch herself. “But, no, I don’t mean I let myself get knocked up on purpose, fuck no—that’d be sick. I just mean there are a lot of guys like you out there.”

The foot continued to work his groin. “There’s, uh, actually a name for it.”

“Huh?”

“Sexual…attraction to…pregnant women. It’s called cyesolagnia.”

She looked cockeyed. “Whatever!”

“I guess,” he almost stammered, “we all…have our weaknesses.”

“Well, yeah, I sure as shit do, but I figure if it doesn’t hurt other people what’s the big deal?” Then she looked down at her belly as though just noticing the hypocrisy. “Oh, sure, man, I know what you’re thinking. I’m hurting this kid, yeah—”

“That’s not what I’m thinking—”

“—but I don’t mean to. Cigarettes? Booze? That ain’t shit. You guys all know damn well I’m gonna buy crack with the money you give me, right?”

Heyton nodded..but couldn’t take his eyes off the raving flesh.

“And I know the shit I do is gonna hurt the kid, I ain’t lying. But I can’t help it, and—man—I didn’t ask to get pregnant. I could get an abortion, sure, I could get one for free.”

Even in his angst, and the mounting sensations, Heyton had to ask. “Why didn’t you?”

“‘Cos if I didn’t get pregnant, the kid wouldn’t have been born anyway. But I did get pregnant, either ‘cos some johns rubber busted or I was too fucked up to make him use one anyway. And, yeah, I know the shit I do’ll probably screw the kid up in a bunch of ways, but you wait twenty years, and no matter how fucked up that kid is, you tell him, you say, ‘Hey, kid, you were a trick baby and you’re all fucked up ‘cos your mother smoked crack. Would you rather she had an abortion?’ You ask him that. I’ll bet he says no.”

Then she shrugged.

It was an interesting point, however off-beat, but in truth, Heyton didn’t care. He philosophized that other people’s problems—as well as their mistakes—weren’t his.

All he really cared about right now was the lust that her presence was stoking in him.

He noticed a tear in her eye now, and was thrown for a loop. Shit! He leaned behind and extracted a box of chocolate. “We don’t need to talk about stuff like that,” he urged. “Here, have these. I bought them at the Dallas Fort-Worth airport.”

The cheerleader face beamed at the Godiva name in foil. “Wow, man, thanks. I haven’t had these in…well, ever!”

“They’re very good,” he said, then excused himself to the bathroom.

She was too beautiful, the ultimate in what he craved. He hoped he hadn’t been shaking in front of her. Calm down! He leaned over the sink and simply breathed. A cyesolagniac? My God! Whoever heard of such a thing? Why can’t I just be like everyone else?

But he wasn’t like everyone else. Just as the girl had been saying earlier.

She didn’t ASK to get pregnant, he thought to the mirror. But she did anyway, so she’s stuck with it.

And I’m stuck with this.

More long slow breaths. He splashed cool water to his face. Simply sitting across from her on the bed had been excruciating. At any moment he could’ve wept, could fallen to his knees before her: a lambent deity, his swollen goddess of the new dark age.

I’m a pervert in a dirty motel room, he thought when he looked back up into his eyes.

Verity in self-revelation…

The vision of her dragged him back out. He sat down next to her this time, his heart racing up again. He downed half his scotch in one swig, a nervous wreck.

“You’re nicer than most johns,” she commented while her fingers unbuttoned his shirt.

“That’s good to know,” he breathed. He wanted her to think of him that way. A pervert, yes, but at least a pervert who was decent to her.

“Lot of ‘em act nice at first, then they show their true colors once they get you in the room.” She’d opened his shirt and was smoothing her hands over his chest. Finally she grabbed his hand and put it on a milk-sodden breast. Heyton at once felt swoony.

Her breath became a hot whisper behind the smile. “Go ahead and touch,” so he did, and now his eyes wanted to roll back when his hand lowered to the hot, stretched belly—a bloated wonder. He could feel tiny, mysterious things beating within.

Now he was hugging her, cosseting her, indeed, almost like a child yearning to touch its mother. Notions stirred in the back of his head—behind his lust. Yes, a decent john. Surely many were not; she must have untold nightmare stories to tell. He tried to actually consider her plight: the travails of addiction, an undoubtedly catastrophic childhood laden with abuse, and the utter self-contained terror of being young and pregnant and alone on these streets.

“Thank God,” she whispered in his ear, fondling him in return now. “In my business you really never can tell about people.”

“You’ll never have to worry about me,” he promised, almost teary himself. His knees were knocking when she began to unbuckle his pants.

“That’s what they all say,” she said.

What?

The jolt of scotch was buzzing him hard. Her comment left him confused but somehow unable to calculate a response. Was she afraid of him, even now?

“I…,” was all he got out.

Her face became a stolid blur.

“People are never what they seem,” was the last thing she said before he passed out.

God in Heaven…

Heyton lay wrecked on the floor. What happened? Regaining consciousness felt like dragging his head from a bear trap.

But there could be only one answer.

Sucker. Heyton knew he’d been played. The bitch must’ve hit me in the head. Which could only mean…

He shot to his feet only to fall again. He felt utterly drunk. For minutes his vision was like looking through cheesecloth—everything was grain. But eventually it cleared enough to verify what he’d already suspected.

The manatee painting lay face down on the bed. Shit shit shit! Not my wallet! Not the car! The grim reality sobered him enough to stand, then unsteady feet propelled him to the front window. He tore back the curtains—

The LeBaron remained in his parking spot.

At least Avis’ll be happy about that… Darkness looked back at him from behind the car, those ghastly sodium lamps shining yellow lines off the hood. She didn’t steal the car but I know damn well she stole my wallet.

He turned—

His wallet lay opened on the floor. I am one lucky dumbass, he thought with a bolt of relief. She’d taken all his cash, of course, but had left his license and credit cards. He found the cell phone and car keys in the opposite corner.

She must’ve shied away from the credit cards; they were getting easier and easier to trace, and he supposed the cell phone would be of little use; she knew it would be shut off the instant the theft was reported.

So he’d lucked out three times…

But the worst headache of his life throbbed. What time is it? he wondered, glanced at his wrist, and frowned.

Count your blessings, asshole. His Rolex Submariner was gone, and that had cost him two grand used. He’d given her a thousand for the trick plus he’d lost another five hundred in his wallet.

All recoverable. She hadn’t pinched his laptop, either, which he’d stowed in its case beneath the bed. A quick peek showed him it was still inside—in her haste she obviously hadn’t bothered looking. His suitcase was another story, though; it had been upheaved onto the floor, its contents rifled. He frowned at his own shame when he saw that she’d carefully placed his magazines in strategic points about the room: NATAL ATTRACTION on the dresser, READY TO DROP in front of the bathroom, and BUNS IN THE OVEN propped neatly on the bed pillow.

I’m such a loser…

He righted the suitcase, then found something else she’d missed in her haste to get out: his backup Rolex. This one was a $75 knock-off, and little consolation for the genuine one she’d stolen. Heyton had to smile when he noticed the box of Godivas was now empty.

What a night. He trounced back down on the bed, rubbing his eyes. He put on the knock-off, noticing it was just past 3 a.m. The presentation wasn’t for another twelve hours, so he actually had plenty of time to shake this off and prepare.

Only then did he realize how truly lucky he’d been. She’d only taken cash and the watch. If she’d taken the car, some very troubling questions would be asked, and if she’d taken the laptop, his presentation would be a bust.

Maybe the Fates were trying to tell him something. Or maybe God was…

He felt the back of his head for a cut or a bruise, but found none. She must’ve hit me but…how? Something flagged his eye on the carpet. He thought oddly of a condom packet but when he picked it up…

SAMPLE DOSE - USE ONLY IF PRESCRIBED BY A PHYSICIAN. MANUFACTURED BY HOFFMAN-LAROCHE, INC. The bottom of the pack read: ROHYPNOL (FLUNITRAZEPAM) - DO NOT USE WITH ALCOHOL.

So she hadn’t hit him after all. I got roofied by a pregnant prostitute! and then he smirked at his nearly empty glass of scotch. The perfect horse’s ass… Since he hadn’t really lost much, it was almost funny. Of course he’d heard of the notorious date-rape drug, something originally made for sleep disorders.

Some date, he reflected.

He shook his head now and actually laughed.

The headache was throbbing away, replaced by embarrassment. Hookers killed johns sometimes, or sometimes their pimps followed them to the motels… Heyton knew that street thugs would make short work of him.

I hope I learned my lesson tonight, he thought and went to the bathroom. But had he really learned anything?

He faced himself again in the mirror. The Fates? Or God? Heyton didn’t know. Nevertheless, he prayed to one of them right now: I will never do this again. I SWEAR TO GOD….

Even the pitiful prayer made him feel better. He splashed more water in his face, then figured he’d shower, leave, and check in early at the convention center, and—

Get my shit together. I’m going to kick ass on this presentation, sell the IAP system to Florida, and be a decent person from now on…

Best of all, he knew he wasn’t lying to himself.

Then he turned and collapsed.

He would’ve screamed full-force but all that his throat would permit was a pathetic gasp. He’d turned to urinate but upon looking down…

It was not a plastic baby doll festooned by spaghetti sauce that sat in the toilet, yet that first horrific glance seemed surreal. It’s fake, it’s fake! Heyton’s thoughts tried to convince him. The prostitute had left it as a macabre joke.

Then the “doll” issued a death-rattle, like feeble castanets.

Heyton crawled as far into the corner as he could, paralyzed. That split-second glance froze in his mind’s eye. No, it wasn’t fake. It wasn’t a doll.

It looked smaller than his objectivity would’ve imagined—but of course, it was premature. His teeth chattered when he noticed a bloodied pen on the floor, too—one of his, with his company’s name on it, that she’d pilfered from his suitcase.

He shuddered in the corner for a half-hour, mute and insensible. Rational thought eluded him, yet through the consternation raging in his head, he knew one thing: he’d have to take action…

Call the police? And tell them what?

Get in the car and look for the girl?

That would accomplish nothing.

Heyton’s brain felt dead as clay when he eventually dragged himself up…and took action.

What in God’s name am I doing? the words groaned behind his mind. The deed ensued like a dimly remembered nightmare; he felt out of his body. With empty waste-can liners, he managed to securely seal the thing within a number of layers, bags within bags.

If someone walking by sees it, they’ll think it’s just a small bag of trash…

But it wasn’t a small bag of trash, was it?

The abstraction stalked him like the ghost of a murderer. Worse than the impression, though, was the simple hot weight of the bag.

I’m carrying a dead fetus in a garbage bag…and putting it in my car…

Most of the organic remnants were still wet, so cleaning the toilet had been easy. He triple-checked the room—in dread from the possibility of forgetting something—then checked out and drove away.

Once on the road, he jettisoned the pen out the window.

But the parcel lay beside him on the passenger seat. He thought of a fresh package from the butcher’s, and groaned. Some arcane logic told him to get rid of it miles away from the motel, miles from the decrepit neighborhood and its horrors. Deep thought continued to elude him, his brain engaged on its own sort of auto-pilot. Had he not been able to remain detached, he knew he would’ve cracked up by now.

More alter-ego thoughts mocked him: Dead baby in your car dead baby in your car dead baby in your car…

“Shut up!” he screamed at the windshield, knuckles white on the wheel.

A convenience store on the corner seemed to beckon, its front window bright with light but no other cars in the lot. Look normal, he pled with himself. He walked in, bought a paper from the amiable clerk, and went back out. The large dumpster on the side of the store sat with its lid flapped open.

Heyton moved very deftly. He didn’t get back in the car; instead he leaned in, grabbed the parcel, and lobbed it into the dumpster via gestures nearly balletic.

Then he slid back into the driver’s seat and saw the clerk through the window, none the wiser.

“God forgive me,” he muttered.

The whisper of his guilt would not relent: You just threw a baby in the garbage you just threw a baby in the garbage you just threw a baby in the garbage…

Heyton shut the voice out of his head and drove off.

Guilt weighed him down as he checked into the convention center just past dawn. The room was four-star, unlike the charnel-house he’d just fled. Why should I feel guilty? he finally challenged himself. I didn’t kill the kid, she did. The kid’s death is HER responsibility, HER crime. Shit, the only crime I committed was solicitation, and I wound up getting robbed before a sex act could even take place!

The placations took away some of the edge. An awful tragedy, yes, but it would’ve happened anyway… If not with me, with the next john. Or worse, in an alley somewhere.

The fetus would’ve died regardless, he assured himself.

He wondered where the girl had gone but the answer was simple. Right back onto the street with my money and Rolex… She’d pawn the watch and spend everything on crack, and when the money was gone she’d be plying her trade again.

But nine pounds lighter now, he reminded himself.

With each minute that ticked by in the clean hotel, the more impossible it all seemed.

During the breakfast hour, he ran into some competitors. Most offered phony smiles and begrudging nods, with lines like “Congrats on Texas” or “Good job yesterday.” One, however—from a software house in Ohio—smirked the truth at him: “None of us stand a chance after you sold Texas, Heyton. You’re top of the heap now—just remember, the air gets really thin up there.” Heyton would’ve been amused by the sour grapes had he not still been coming to terms with last night’s jolt. Yet another competitor put it bluntly: “Leave Blocher and work for me. You can name your price.”

At least I’m doing SOMETHING right, he thought.

The hotel bar opened at noon; Heyton planted himself on the corner and braced himself with multiple cups of coffee. More competitors sat about him, eyes full of either envy or disdain for his success.

Above the bar, a TV sputtered at low volume: generic news. The Yankees acquire a new pitcher for a record $500,000,000 ten-year deal. Four homeless shelters in the Bronx are closed due to budget cuts, turning hundreds into the street. Afghan insurgents level a children’s hospital with pilfered U.S. demolition material, over a hundred dead. Paroled child molester caught with the body parts of three adolescent girls under his trailer. A judge had released him after a second conviction, on good behavior.

“Great news today,” Heyton muttered a sarcasm.

A guy next to him perked up. “Oh, yeah, the new lefty for the Yanks! That is great news.”

Heyton smirked.

Next, a stoic newswoman who looked like a lobotomized Barbie reported: “Also in the news, Michigan’s self-described B-H-R Killer, Duane Packer, was sentenced today to 23 consecutive life terms after an Antrim County court heard forensic evidence detailing most of Packer’s victims. In the witness stand, Packer himself defined B-H-R as initials for ‘blind, hang, and rape,’ and claimed that his only regret was being caught, because, quote, ‘now the fun has to end,’ unquote. Expert witnesses from the county coroner’s office verified that Packer, a crystal meth dealer, would also inject his young victims with the powerful amphetamine so they wouldn’t pass out during his ministrations of torture. Further charges of post-mortal and peri-mortal sexual assault, child abduction, and felonious imprisonment will be processed later in the week. All of Packer’s victims were boys and girls between the ages of six and eleven.”

“Only in America,” the barkeep remarked, pale with disgust.

Next, the TV flashed footage of the killer being led from the courthouse. He could’ve been a stock broker with his well-groomed hair, tidy suit, and studied expression.

“Can you believe that shit?” said the tech salesman next to Heyton. “He looks like any of us. He looks totally normal.”

“Looks are deceiving,” said the keep.

Another man said, “When you get right down to it, lots of people are never what they seem.”

The words chased Heyton from the bar. The girl said the same thing, he recalled, and she wasn’t kidding. Indeed, people could look normal but could just as easily be monsters beneath their veneers of normalcy.

Like her, Heyton thought. His stomach went sour.

Soon, droves of high-ranking police filed in to the center—Heyton’s target customers. He wasn’t sure why, because he believed his previous self-assurances. She killed the kid, not me, became a cyclic fugue in his head. Of course, so many police made him paranoid, and they weren’t just police, either. Police chiefs. Indeed, the con center was full to the brim with them.

Chiefs from every Florida city and township, chiefs from myriad counties, chiefs from sheriff’s departments, along with their technical liaisons.

If they only knew, he thought, passing still more of them. If they only knew what happened to me last night…

Even hours before the meeting’s official commencement, Heyton was approached by one chief after the next, wanting to know more about his system. “I heard damn near all of Texas bought it,” one said, “so it must be better than anything on the market.”

“It is,” Heyton told him.

He was about to start setting up his presentation material in the conference hall when it occurred to him that he was the star of the day. The competitors beside him were outright cold now, knowing their own pitches would go ignored, but at Heyton’s place at the table a line was forming almost like the autograph session for a bestselling author.

Police chiefs swooped down from either side to barrage him with questions, all of which Heyton answered with an easy expertise. He handed out business cards and brochures full of his system’s technical details. “It comes down to this, sir,” he explained to a Gregory Peck-looking county sheriff, “with our Interagency program system, your department saves money by identifying offenders faster. Your arrest rates go up, your processing costs go down. Why? Because you’re fully integrated with a statewide criminal offenders database. Access is instantaneous.”

“I want one,” the sheriff said, cut and dry.

Many more followed, and Heyton hadn’t even made his presentation yet. Perhaps God or the fates had taken his promise to heart. Last night was a bad night but today’s gonna be a VERY GOOD day, he thought.

Two younger police officers stepped ahead of the line. “Sorry,” Heyton began, “but you’ll have to wait your—”

The first cop held up an ID card. “I’m Lieutenant Rollin, and this is Sergeant Franco, sir. We’re with the St. Petersburg Police SRC Unit.”

Heyton’s brain vapor-locked. “SR—what? Do you want a brochure?” But a black vibe told him, These guys aren’t here for the presentation…

“Are you Gordon Heyton?” the sergeant asked. He seemed to be reading off of something in his hand. “Of Blocher Systems International, Sioux Falls, South Dakota?”

Heyton gulped. “Uh, yes. What’s that you’re reading?”

“Come with us please.”

Heyton’s feet felt encased in chains when he followed the two officers out. The outside hall stood pin-drop silent; Heyton could hear his heart beating. “What’s the SRC Unit?” he had to ask.

“The Sexually Related Crimes Unit, sir…”

I’m caught, the thought hit him like a piton to stone.

Rollin was steely-eyed, and had a mustache thick as a gun-barrel brush, while the younger sergeant was clean-shaven and pallid-complected. They both bore expressions cold as stone busts.

Heyton couldn’t shake the drone in his head when they led him to a smaller conference room and closed the door.

“Do you recognize this, Mr. Heyton?” Franco held up the object in his hand: a flat leather slipcase.

Think! Think! What should I do? “It’s the name and address tag on my suitcase,” he admitted.

“Do you know how we got it?” Rollin queried.

Admit it, Heyton saw no recourse. Don’t lie. All they can do is arrest me for solicitation. He gulped again. “I guess the prostitute took it…and gave it to you. And now—what? She’s levying some phony charge against me, I guess.”

“May I see your ID, Mr. Heyton?” Franco asked.

Heyton gave him his wallet.

Rollin sat down at a table and began to write on a metal clipboard. “What’s this about a prostitute?”

“Come on,” Heyton griped. “The pregnant girl.”

Rollin and Franco exchanged blank glances. “You’re not under arrest at this point,” Rollin informed him. “We’d just like to ask you some questions. But please understand that you don’t have to say anything. Would you like a lawyer?”

Heyton sat down with a nervous slump. “I don’t need a lawyer. All I did was try to pick up a hooker. So go ahead and bust me for that if you want. It’s only a misdemeanor. All I’ll get is a suspended sentence or PBJ.”

“Is that so?” Rollin’s eyes remained cast down, to the board. “Just tell us about Sherry Jennings.”

“She didn’t tell me her name.” Heyton’s face felt red-hot. “Look, last night I picked up a prostitute. I admit it, I confess. But that’s all I did. I didn’t even have sex with her. She robbed me, and took my watch.”

Rollin’s brow arched. “It looks to me like your watch is on your wrist, Mr. Heyton.”

“Yes, I know. But this is just my spare. It’s not even a real Rolex, it’s a Chinese knockoff. She took my real one—”

“And she robbed you, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s that you just gave Sergeant Franco?”

Another long sigh. He’d passed the sergeant his wallet. “She took my cash, and left the wallet.”

“Took your cash and credit cards, you mean?”

“Actually, uh, no. Just the cash.”

Silence.

“Look, I know this doesn’t sound good,” Heyton broke the ice, “but I’m not lying. It’s not really that uncommon, is it? Hookers rob johns.”

“Sherry Jennings, you mean,” Rollin said. “She has no criminal record, Mr. Heyton. She said she missed the last bus home from her job, and you offered her a ride. She said you then drove her to a motel on 4^th Street, overpowered her, and—”

“That’s a lie!” Heyton almost bellowed. “I’m leveling with you!” Franco now, arms crossed, looking down. “And this girl is pregnant, you say?”

Heyton could’ve laughed in spite of the situation’s grimness. “Well, not any more, but you guys must know that.”

Two more hard glances drilled into Heyton’s eyes. “Mr. Heyton, are you sure you don’t want a lawyer?”

“I don’t need a damn lawyer! I’m being upfront, damn it! The girl’s crazy, can’t you see that? I ought to be pressing charges against her! ”

“And she robbed you?” It was Franco again. “You’re telling us that a twenty-year-old pregnant girl took your cash out of your wallet, took the watch off your wrist? What? Did she hit you in the head or something? Did she pull a gun?”

Heyton frantically waved his hands. “No, no, she drugged me. When I went to the bathroom she put some rohypnol in my drink.”

“Ah, rohypnol,” Rollin said. He wore his sarcasm well. “And how did you know it was rohypnol?”

“I found the empty packet on the floor.”

“Do you still have it?”

Heyton rubbed his eyes. “No. I threw it out. There was no reason for me to keep it.”

Rollin nodded. “All right, Mr. Heyton. Here’s her side of the story.” He sat upright. “She claims that you drugged her.”

“Total bullshit,” Heyton blurted.

“She didn’t know with what but she said it was something from a packet you kept in your wallet.”

Franco fingered around in the wallet’s slots, then—

“What’s this, Mr. Heyton?”

The cop had found it slipped behind the center slot in the wallet: a packet that read: ROHYPNOL (FLUNITRAZEPAM) —DO NOT USE WITH ALCOHOL.

Heyton’s mouth turned dry as sand. “She…planted it.”

Rollin examined the packet, blank-faced. It had been opened, and only contained one tablet, but he made no comment.

“She planted it,” Heyton repeated. Sweat drenched his collar. “She’s trying to set me up.”

“Hmm,” Rollin said, “There’s more to her story.”

I know, Heyton thought. But he couldn’t say a word.

“She claims that after you drugged her, you molested her and then beat her so severely that she had a miscarriage—”

“WHAT!”

“—and that you sexually assaulted the fetus,” Rollin finished.

Heyton gagged, his eyes rolling back. His head bowed and he ground his fists into the table. “She performed an abortion on herself in the bathroom when I was knocked out,” he choked. “She left the fetus in the toilet, then she took my money and watch and left the motel. When I came to, I found it. It was dead—I’m positive it was dead.”

The next few seconds of silence seemed hour-like.

Franco never uncrossed his arms. “What did you do then?”

Now, indeed, Heyton felt as though he were confessing to murder. “I got scared,” he droned. “I didn’t know what to do. I knew the fetus was dead, and I knew that if I reported it to the police, my reputation would be ruined. There was no turning back the clock. It was dead. The girl was gone. So…I cleaned up the mess, and…I wrapped the fetus up in plastic bags, and… I… disposed of it.”

“How, Mr. Heyton?” Rollin asked quickly.

He almost couldn’t hack out the next words. “I put it in a dumpster at a convenience store. I don’t know which one. It was still dark.”

Right now the tick of his phony Rolex sounded like crowbars clanging together.

Rollin and Franco remained silent for several moments, then Heyton nearly shrieked when the door barged open and in walked another cop, bull-shouldered, forearms stout as softball bats.

“We didn’t find anything, sir, except these.”

The cop placed a stack of magazines before Rollin’s gaze.

When it rains, it fucking pours, Heyton thought.

Glossy pages flittered; Rollin thumbed through a few of them. “Natal Attraction, Mr. Heyton? Buns In The Oven?”

Something like a psychic hydraulic press began to crush him. “It’s not against the law to have those,” was all Heyton could say. “But I’m pretty sure it is against the law to search someone’s luggage without their consent.”

The brawny cop flapped the warrant in his face. “Not with one of these.”

“Take this shit away,” Rollin said. “Put it back in Mr. Heyton’s suitcase. He’s right. Possession of this type of pornography is not unlawful, and we shouldn’t make judgments. It’s not our job.”

Heyton was vibrating with adrenalin. “Lieutenant, I swear to God, I didn’t cause that girl’s miscarriage, and for God’s sake, I didn’t—” He gulped something large as a rock—“I didn’t molest the fetus. I admit I’ve got this weird attraction to pregnant women, but I never do anything bad to them, and I’d never think of hurting them, and good God Almighty do you really think that I could do something that sick?”

Rollin began to lose some of his rigidity, to either fatigue or tedium. “Actually, Mr. Heyton, no. I don’t think for a minute that you could do something like that. In my time, I’ve busted plenty of people who are that sick in the head—and sicker. But you’re not it, not even close.”

Heyton wanted to cry…or just keel over.

The lieutenant went on, “You got some kinky thing for pregnant women? That’s pretty fucked up if you ask me, but, hey—that’s just me. And you’re right, that girl probably is off her rocker. But I have to know for sure before I walk out of here. You follow me?”

“Of course.”

“Come on.” Rollin stood up. “Let’s get Mr. Heyton back to his conference with our apologies.”

Heyton walked out rubber-kneed. Oh my dear God, thank you…

They moved down the hall. “Your story didn’t exactly wash like the cleanest laundry,” Rollin said ahead of him, “but neither did hers. Sometimes people just aren’t what they seem.”

Heyton felt an inner groan from the choice of words.

“The dead fetus in the garbage? You’re gonna have to write up a full statement on that, and we’ll have to run it by the district attorney’s office.”

“I understand,” Heyton stammered.

“But they’ll blow it off. You got no priors, you got no record, plus you’re a respected business man. And they won’t bother prosecuting you for solicitation because there’s no evidence the girl’s a hooker. Only thing the D.A.’ll make you do is fly back to St. Petersburg in a month or so for an inquest and hearing.”

Fate kept throwing him gifts now. The fear had been enough, and the guilt. I’m not bullshitting you, God, he prayed. I really have learned my lesson…

“Just let this be a lesson to you.” It was Rollin again. “Don’t pick up hookers—ever. It might seem like a victimless crime to most people but, trust me, it’s not. Guys like you get their throats cut by junkies, pimps, and whores every day of the week. It’s not your world, Mr. Heyton, so stay out of it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The main conference hall was packed now, milling with dozens of police chiefs and technical advisors. Heyton noticed with some satisfaction that all of his product brochures had been taken while his competitors still had plenty.

“We’ll be out of your hair in a minute, Mr. Heyton,” Rollin said.

But Heyton was confused. Why’d they even come back in here? he wondered. Rollin approached his place at the table.

“What’s, uh, what’s going on?”

Franco answered. “The lieutenant’s just gotta check one thing, then we’ll be out of here.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Just a precaution. The girl was right about the roofies in your wallet—”

“No, no, look, I told you, she planted it while I was knocked out—”

Franco smiled. “Relax, Mr. Heyton. We know that. But we just have to be sure.”

More unease spilled into Heyton’s gut. “About what?”

“She also said you took something.”

Heyton blinked. “Huh?”

Rollin was unzipping Heyton’s briefcase, opening it on the table. It was the wider type, one section filled by his laptop, another section for papers, and a side compartment for computer accessories.

“Just my laptop and work folders,” Heyton said, mystified. Franco’s comment pecked at him. What are they looking for? More drugs?

Rollin un-velcro’d the side compartment. That’s where Heyton kept his power cord and trackball.

He squinted.

The cord and trackball were gone, a crumpled plastic bag in their place. Heyton had no idea what it was, and was certain he hadn’t put it there…

Rollin opened the bag—

“What the HELL is that?” someone hollered.

Rollin’s face melded into a rictus. Several other chiefs leaned over and looked in, then turned away pale.

“God in Heaven!” someone else shouted.

Then someone else actually screamed.

After the first flash of shock, Franco had his gun to Heyton’s head. “You sick piece of shit…”

Pandemonium broke out, the room going deafening. Rollin’s jaw seemed unhinged when he turned to re-face Heyton.

“You’re going to pay for this, Mr. Heyton…”

One peek in the bag was all Heyton got—and all he needed—before he was slammed face-first to the wall, man-handled, and cuffed.

Heyton could not comprehend this, even though he’d seen it with his own eyes. Elbow jabs and discreet kidney-punches jolted him, and the cuffs were tightened like jaws. “Get that monster out of here,” he heard Rollin groan over the rising din, and as he was dragged out, his own thoughts finally registered: Oh my God the crazy psycho bitch had twins…