Steamy Screams: Anthology of Erotic Horror

QUEEN OF THE NIGHT JD Stone

At the end of August the wind pushes across the rivers in motions that don’t make sense, bringing with it noxious smells and sights: the sulfur of low tide, the silver smear of muscles as they slide down boulders, the occasional drowned local. Chatter is heard from mouth-less people flooding into cramped tunnels like blood into Manhattan, though if one didn’t live on the cusp they couldn’t hear the dark eloquent sound of the waves as the tide nibbled the shoreline and the party boats filled with slandering drunks soon to dock and ruin any seldom saved sane part of the night.

And then there was Chinatown.

At night, it’s a carnival of alien symbols sparkling gold and red that one could admire until their head exploded, raining bone and brain around, but which the people simply upturned their noses at. Here are the narrow streets where you could step on the cracks in the cement, or the crevices in the cobblestone and never be seen again. Here are the alleyways in which cats rule, sideswiped by nameless factories colored up by hoards of graffiti artists, where the odor of severed fingers still lingered from the machinery with no safety regulations. Here is where the blood of execution style killings stained the walls and dried to a dusty orange.

Pell Street.

Beyond the crevices and the hole in wall restaurants, serving dishes that you thought were chicken but may wind up being that rat you just saw scamper over your shoe, is where the women of the night work. Hidden beneath dank silhouetted clubs, deep inside tenements so cops can’t bust them, is the pay as you go sex trade. The walls here are lined with lengthy mirrors so that there is always a girl reflecting in each corner as she dances; private velvet-curtained booths line the back walls so the men of the neighborhood can jerk-off to relieve themselves before getting rowdy.

This is where Coco worked.

Tonight, Coco watched evil little Asian men pour in from the squalid streets, waving around crumpled singles, pipes in their mouths filled with whatever was the cheapest to smoke, calling girls over to them. She tried to decipher the onslaught of their bickering language through the fine folds of their eyes, between the cracks in their tobacco stained teeth, but failed.

There was mold in this place, too, the rotten kind that formed dark sticky lines between the opaque tiles. Coco thought maybe it was from the cigarette smoke because no one listened to the law in this dark angular Chinatown club. Black lace entwined into the frame of the stage lights on the ceiling, almost to the point of a fire hazard, but once the night got going and the lights filtered through, it gave the place a drunken purple sheen and made the DJ spin very wild music as the girls entered to dance for sloppy mouthed men.

Coco danced here almost every night, fine-boned face and feral female gyrations so swift that no one would ever suspect any deviance in her gender. Dark straight hair, that was faintly, brittle came down as far as her breasts; she had high cheekbones, making her honey colored eyes seem permanently scrunched, and thick rouge lips.

The club came to her after moving out of the feigned perfection of nowhere suburbia, when she tired herself out of sucking the ordinary dicks of the town. She swore then to never be Christopher again. Coco was the exotica that she had hid for too many years.

Dancing was the only way Coco could dream of a velvet pink delta between her thighs, sweet petals that could blossom and make every man admire her as she spread herself around the pole. Being here helped Coco compensate for the evil white snake between her legs, and the sac that held two useless scraps of meat. It was a feeling not even the pills that kept her tits perky could offer.

To Coco, New York City was wide and narrow at the same time—as if all its angles never quite added up to that famed one hundred and eighty degrees—and had the potential to send one into a bleak madness if they tried to calculate it. She licked her finger and put it to her nose, making sure the stink of jizz had faded thanks to the gin. Nothing ever said a quick buck like liquor. She just got done blowing a small, cheese smelling cock attached to a chubby Chinese man that had tailed her all week, slipping obscure amounts of money into her black jeweled g-string when she danced the first half of her nightshift. There were times when he offered her lines of coke spread liberally on the shellacked table; other times he let her eat some of his funny mushrooms as she bent down for more tips. Tonight he got his money’s worth.

The men here treated her like a goddess when she danced for them. Moving her lithe body on that stage took away the annoyance of being born a boy. Here she was the queen of the night. And the rest of the girls felt the same too; though street crawlers to everyone else, they were family to Coco: natural women. They took her on their gaudy adventures throughout the city, initiating her into the night culture. They taught Coco about tricking on the corners, who paid well and who didn’t. They showed her how to flex her body, as if rubber, around the silver pole in the center stage and the benefits of fishnet stockings, the power of baby oil and how it made skin glint like diamonds. They taught her how to reveal just enough of her body so a client’s rum stained lips could kiss her ankles from where she danced, and how to lower her cleavage down the edge of their noses for more money.

The girls also told her how night made their jobs easier: they couldn’t work during the day because they’d surely be arrested. So Coco avoided daylight like some kind of plague, slowly realizing that when people gave her the eye, as if she were some kind of famed painting, it wasn’t from her striking natural beauty, or her angular bones. Though New York was liberal, she was sick of feeling as if she was being watched all the time. Behind the makeup, dark eyeliner and sweet colored scarf around her neck to hide the adam’s apple, people were always able to tell: boy. Day was when the truly mean people of the city flooded the streets and pushed you out of the way just to get to work. Day was when the traffic could crush you like rotten fruit under a boot and no one would give a shit.

After that, her girls began referring to her as Vamp the Tramp because Coco paled quite quickly from her up all night and sleep all day schedule. And there was also her Black Irish heritage. If the ladies weren’t trading tricks or sharing flasks and the occasional hallucinogenic, they gossiped like straight-laced people; the same women who were beaten in public by their pimps, their teeth a thing of the past, smashed out of bleeding gums, and the police turning the other cheek because it saved them paperwork. Coco’s nickname once sparked a thought about the taste of blood, mostly because it was the memories of when she used to cut her wrists, suicide ghosts still fresh, hoping the testosterone would drain from the wounds. She considered a possibility that she liked it, if not just for fun.

Tonight, Coco asked the DJ to play Coal Chamber’s version of Shock the Monkey for her entrance music. And as the metal band finished packing their gear, the clean up crew began to wipe the stage down. When bands played in the club it always made the filthy patrons drink more, which meant better tips.

Coco looked out from the back room. The club was hazy and not too crowded for a Thursday. She could see every little Asian man clasping their hands and clinking their glasses as if waiting for her.

“You gunna kill ‘em tonight, ain’t you?”

“I always do, don’t I?” Coco said.

“Girl, if I had half your body, I’d run this joint.”

Lenithia was the name behind the voice. She was graciously tall, brown, and wore extravagant wigs and frilly dresses each night she danced. Her nose was wide, eyes large and black; it made Coco almost fearful for her androgyny. On the occasion that she and Coco went to the intestinal corners of Fourteenth Street, Lenithia would usually go out bald because her hair had broken off months ago from a freak dying accident. But her topless attire always got her a client first.

“I’m up in a few,” Coco said as she applied the last of her white face makeup and eyeliner.

“Yea, sugar, and guess who’s here?”

“Oh, God… ”

“Yep, your biggest fan!”

He always came to the club on Thursdays. Never did he talk; never did he wear anything other a moth eaten black trench coat, a ratty hat and oddly enough, sunglasses. It was so dark and filmy in the club that Coco never understood why. But he tipped her generously, though never touched her. Sometimes she saw him reaching for his crotch and running quickly to one of the private booths.

Then the music cued; googly synthesizers and crunching industrial rock beats filled the club. The combination of Dez Fafara’s galvanizing tone and Ozzy Osbourne’s razor vocals sent static into its patrons. But the men were as still as dead air, patiently waiting for the Queen of the Night, as the DJ called her, to take the stage.

Coco pushed passed the black silk curtain and entered with one long leg first. Then the men began to whistle. She walked onto the stage in a velvet frock coat clutched tight to her boyishly skinny frame. As the music went into a crescendo, so did she. Her body undulated and it made her strip to her lingerie. Her limbs melted into flaccid twigs, making the pole wrap around them with tight precision. Then she crawled around the stage, whipping her hair back and forth recklessly as the music took her away from the planet and turned her into the queen. She was fed her cash as she spread her legs, feeling up and down her crotch to make the guys gave more. Some of them put money right in her g-string line, others just cupped her ass cheek, but were ghosts by the time she turned around.

Then she moved over to her biggest fan. He was rigid while smoking his joint as Coco stood above him and gyrated. He caressed the straps of her heels with his skinny gloved fingers, and then rubbed her sweat over his lips. He was careful not to let his collar reveal anymore than a sliver of pallid cheek as he placed the crisp twenty on the table. Coco bent down and revealed her tiny cleavage, glistening from the baby oil, just as the girls had taught her, and scooped up the cash.

Then a small acid-tongued Chinese man got rowdy, but Coco ignored him and kept to the industrial rhythm. Hormones, or maybe the drugs and liquor had turned the guy reckless; he reached over and put his tiny finger up Coco’s asshole as he pulled her face to his and forced her lips open with his slug tasting tongue. Before Coco could react she felt his hands release and a spray of warmth bathe her face. The music cut off; her admirer was gone and Coco was left with dead weight on top of her. The bar crew pulled the headless man away. When Coco lifted her hands she was expecting to see a shimmering ribbon of blood, maybe a bone-white tendon from the man’s gashed neck, but all she noticed was the note. It told her exactly where to go.

Twilight came, absorbing daylight and spitting it back out dark purple, reminding Coco of the club. There were no stars to be seen thanks to the tawdry lights and spiraling buildings, but the moon was orange from her view on the corner where Twelfth Street ended and the dredges of foul people from Union Square skittered her way. Coco’s eyes were bright as a lynx, skin oiled and hair free flowing, pin straight. She wore a shiny green jacket, black pleather mini skirt, thighs and calves hugged by lace leggings. She let her hair cover her tits since the jacket was zipped opened with no bra beneath; a method taken from Lenithia.

The guy from the club wrote to wait here, and she wanted to look good doing it. She heard the dissonant wail of police sirens, probably some punk causing mayhem, or maybe a drug bust in some archaic crack den. The cars and people seemed to be almost moving in on her as if a premonition. They were shadowed and large like black holes in the earth.

In her mind she wasn’t interested to know what this person wanted because he was like the rest of the men at the club, but he had killed for her and that was intriguing enough to find out about him. Then a small black car pulled aside her and as the windows rolled down she smelled the fresh green spice of pot smoke, and needed no invitation to enter.

“You’re from these parts?” the voice asked behind shadow, sucking on the joint.

“A transplant, but yes.”

“I’m not. The name’s Eel.”

“Eel? Like the thing in the ocean?”

“Yes.”

They shook hands and not only did he still wear gloves, but his voice was suave, almost feminine.

“I wear these because some of you girls love to attack with needles and teeth,” he said as he raised his hands. “I’ve seen it done before. But there’s something about you, Coco. You’re too sweet.”

“I am?”

“Yes you are, Vamp the Tramp.”

Coco’s ears folded into her skull like a sad dog. “How did you know that?”

“I go to the club every week to watch you dance. People talk loud.”

Eel moved his eyes into lamplight and although they were hidden behind ridiculously dark sunglasses, Coco saw that they were carnivorous and gem green. They meant something to her, but she didn’t know what.

“What the hell happened last night?” She asked.

“I don’t want any man touching you, Coco.”

She hadn’t heard words like that since she thought she had found love in autumn of 2005. He was a French painter in the city, and as any Frenchman would do, just to be a living fuck you to conservative America, he was dating a woman with a cock. But that only lasted two months because he found out that real pussy was much sweeter.

“My apartment’s in Chinatown,” Coco said, admiring Eel’s dark buzz cut as he took his hat off for her, the way his chin jutted further than his forehead as he removed the high collar of the trench coat, his near to perfect thin face.

“Can I come over?”

Eel turned fully towards Coco and grinned. His teeth were glamorous and flat, the cuspids shaved down into interesting cones, all behind lips as thin as razor wire. He was the most exotic thing she ever saw.

They wasted no more time on one another. Before Eel was able to kick off his shoes he had Coco in his arms and was pushing her records and sickly looking paraphernalia off the bed. Coco felt enthralled, wild, it had been so long that she almost forgot how to give her body away for free, let alone allow a man to even think about touching her down there; but this felt right. She would have asked Eel to stop—his thin fingers like strands of silk brushing across her thighs and through the holes in her fishnets—but he enchanted her too much.

The way he touched her body was confidant. He knew how to treat a woman, how to connect the pieces of the puzzle that was female flesh. His lips met hers as he undid the zipper on her jacket, sliding them down her exposed cleavage. He licked the V of her collar bone, cleaning all of the wet worry of the night away, sucking at his teeth as if she tasted great, and then nicked her neck with one of his pointed fangs.

“You taste like a goddess,” he said.

For the first time Coco could really see his eyes, how green they were, how fragile. Glittery lights from outside glossed everything in a yellow sheen. It made Eel’s face translucent, teeth gleam. Then there were her nerves at the oncoming spectacle of getting naked, though Eel gave her no premonition of danger. He had been a gentleman from the beginning, his vibe was neither vehement nor prideful, not like the pig men who spit at her if she didn’t sweat enough when she danced, or sucked hard enough when she blew them in the back room.

He unbuttoned his tight black shirt, staring into Coco like an ocean beating against mountains. Coco knew that she could love him, and not like the French painter, or the way she did with the men who paid her. When Eel was down to his wife beater, she saw an unusual bulge beneath as if he worked out a lot. Then he had her head cupped in his hand, licking the smooth curve of her eyes lids, her thin brow and her flushed cheeks. His hand crawled down her legs, spreading her thighs, allowing air to kiss the damp dark between. She felt her crotch swell and snag her pubic hair.

His tongue moved down her stomach, edging closer and closer to where men were forbidden. Eel stroked the nervous tremble away from her legs with his small fingers. Then Coco’s mouth gawked opened from pleasure, and from the command of his tongue licking her like a stamp, a torrid worm trekking her body. Then Eel came up and slid his tongue across her teeth, her gums, and when he finally found hers they melted into epiphany. She couldn’t help but to fall prisoner to him. They had made an unexpected connection.

Without thinking Coco began to pull the wife beater over his head, her needs primal, but he stopped her. NO! She thought. No one had ever made Coco feel so feminine. New urges circulated through her blood vessels and shot them with a quick dose of adrenaline. She raked her nails down his back until she felt his blood well in the furious tracks, until the wife beater ripped in two. He pushed his face into her neck, biting her chin reactively, incisors drawing blood, his tongue invading the wound, lips suctioned to it like a small vacuum. And then she remembered that her nickname obliged her into the curse of those stupid creatures that had wild sex, but were aristocrats and beasts in the books and movies. So she bit him back, just a little bit, and an effusion of liquid red velvet spilled into her mouth. Shock surged from the very corner of Eel’s eyes, until it brought his entire sharp boned face into a frown.

Then Coco saw why as the binding came loose from his body and a very small set of breasts exposed where the ace bandages bound them down. They weren’t big enough to make Coco think of him as feminine, but she couldn’t help not to stare. Eel turned his head away from her, embarrassed. She didn’t want the gender dystopia to spread into confusion and ruin the night, so she found his face and stroked Eel’s tears away. When Coco licked her fingertips she thought it was better than the blood, better than the sweat. It was rich with Eel’s true essence.

“I’m so embarrassed,” he said.

“Don’t be. I still… love you.”

“But… I’m a man.”

“I know, Eel.”

“You’re the one Coco… so special.”

Eel’s face scrunched into shame, but it was as if the turmoil of the predicament inspired him. He grabbed a handful of Coco’s lush hair, twisted in dark ropes from the sweat, and entangled it in his hands. Coco knew that no matter his shell of skin and bone, Eel was no female. Then they were kissing again. She spread her legs as if fairy wings, allowing Eel into her domain and wrapped them around his waist. He lifted her up and she was sitting upon his crotch as Eel thrust his pelvis into her. Coco felt something hard, man meat, she thought, but when her nails ripped away the top of the pant line and fished the inside all she felt was rubber. Still, she stroked it like a real cock, like she had done to countless others. Listening to Eel moan pleased her the most.

Flames escaped from between her thighs, heating up the room. The air innervated with moisture and weighed it down on them like morning dew. Then the tape’s stickiness gave into the wetness of lust, to the labyrinth of trans-love, and her rock solid shaft broke free, bolting upward. Coco’s heart lurched; her body ached with the memory of the anger her clients held for her whenever they saw the bulge. But Eel gave her a dazzling smile, his face flushed with happiness, teeth all white and glamorous and sharp. Everything was just too perfect now. Then he scrambled off the top her body.

“What is it?” Coco asked.

Eel was sitting at the foot of the bed, a long crystal drizzle of sweat mingling in the furrows of blood on his back.

“Eel, talk to me.”

“Did I ever tell you that I’ve never been with a boy before?”

“I’m not a boy.”

“I know. You’re special.”

Coco enveloped him in her arms from behind and licked the back of his neck.

“And did I tell you that I’ve also never been with someone with your abilities?”

“Abilities?”

“Yes, abilities.”

“I don’t have any abilities.”

“Yes you do, you’re a night prowler, aren’t you?”

“A what?”

“You only go out at night, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“I’ve been looking all my life for someone like you.”

When he turned Coco saw the faint fragility of a woman, something that reminded her of the many girls she’d seen beaten by their pimps, like when they could no longer hide that abashed look as they were forced back to work whether with a swollen lip or eye socket, to dance with bruised legs that no makeup could cover. The vamp the tramp reputation had truly gotten around, and now even Eel was confused about it.

“Ever since I was a kid, all I read was the stuff about them.”

“Eel, I’m—”

“My teeth, you know, have been shaved like this for years. It’s safe to be transsexual and like them. It’s not safe to be like me and human.”

“Eel, listen—”

“No, Coco, you listen,” he grabbed her arm and pulled her to him, so close his lips were at her ear. “I love you too.”

No one had ever whispered those words before. The recoil spread into her innards like a wildfire. Realizing that her cock was still hard, ready to offer Eel her cum, she wanted to finish the night. Eel then undressed and the dildo lolled around as if playtime. It was bright blue and thick, much longer than she imagined. There was a sole vein running from the end of the shaft to the engorged head, glazed like candy. Coco wanted to choke on it, to trace her tongue around it and make Eel feel like the man he really was.

But Eel had other plans. He pinned her down and began to lick her concave stomach, swishing his tongue into her belly button until he moved passed her groin and reached her penis. He rubbed his face around the shaft, pulled it back and when he let it go Coco heard a slap. Then he sniffed it loudly and let the single pearl bead of pre-cum rest at the tip of his top lip. Now she wanted him to suck her off.

It was time to take risks.

His mouth went over the head of her cock like a tumescent flesh light and there was a fathomless heat index inside. As he jerked her Eel’s fingers were five little ghosts of pleasure. He ignored Coco when she pulled at his hands and arms, trying to save him from the splurge of orgasm.

“Eel, please, don’t make me… ”

He didn’t listen. Tightening his lips over her dick like a vice, relaxing his throat, he took a deep breath and dived. Coco felt his tonsils, epiglottis, and ultimately the twitter of orgasm. It rushed from her balls and on its way out her entire body went rickety. Then great gooey globs flushed over Eel’s lips and Coco couldn’t stop. There wasn’t a trace of it left after he got done wiping his mouth with his tongue.

“Oh, my God,” Coco said.

“We aren’t done.”

He turned her over on the bed and she inhaled the stink of her own sweat. But before Coco could move, Eel had her legs spread and he drove his face into her ass. She felt the hot verve in his tongue as he tried to get it as far inside her puckered hole as possible. Then his rubber shaft entered—fast—but it didn’t hurt. Eel knew just how to enter her without tearing the delicate sphincter.

Coco found herself aroused again and it made her hand grip her dick. The slap of Eel’s hips on her ass ricocheted in the room, and Coco let out wails that woke all of Canal Street. Then Eel yelled that he loved her over and over, and that he was cumming! Coco raced her hand with his words, beating her dick for another orgasm. Then as the dildo finally tickled her prostate, she spit out more sticky-creamy cum in her hand.

Eel relaxed and she relaxed. They lit cigarettes and made trails of smoke from their mouths meet in mid air. He kissed her forehead and they curled into one another, both semi-conscious with sweet pleasure. Coco looked up at him, and he down at her, and then rested her head on his chest, listening to the chambers of his heart swish and cluck.

Coco woke up to light filtering through her black curtains. Her makeup burned her eyes, her ass was sore but it felt right. She rolled over to put her arm around Eel, but all she felt was a dent in the mattress and a stack of cash. Then she heard angry sounds from the bathroom, curses and mutters. When she went in Eel was still naked, the dildo stuck to his leg, staring into the mirror. His fingers moved across the wound in his neck a couple of times, poking at it like it wasn’t there.

“Why the fuck am I not dead?” He looked at Coco.

“Eel… ”

“I came here to be like you and I’m functioning in broad daylight!”

“I tried to tell you last night that—”

“Tell me what? That you don’t live up to the vamp part of your name?”

Eel punched the mirror and it burst into silver diamonds. His face looked wrong, angry, made his femininity show.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Coco asked.

“What the fuck are you?”

No answer.

“I asked you what you are, freak!”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I always mean what I say.”

“So then you love me, like you told me last night.”

Eel snapped his head backward and his throat bulged, letting out a guttural laugh. He didn’t stop even when Coco asked nicely.

“You think I love you? I just wanted to be what I thought you were. Now I’m leaving. I left your money on the bed.”

Bulleting words, machine gun speed, left small holes weeping black tears until she was nothing inside but wasteful thinking. She replayed the Eel from last night in her head to calm down, but today he was not the same man. He wasn’t the guy who held her as she slept or the man who had killed for her. His image burned into her skull like a hot wire; she couldn’t hold it anymore.

Then Eel was walking out of the bathroom, snorting his arrogance, and Coco jumped onto his back. He tried to fight, pushed himself into the walls to evade her, but the jagged sliver of mirror was already in his throat, running from side to side. If he wanted a bite, he was going to get it.

Her teeth sank into the skin covering his flayed neck. Eel soon grew vapid as the blood kept running, a fountain of red. She cut and sucked, anger fueled by his mockery. Coco may not have been what Eel wanted, but she knew about revenge, how to protect herself from anyone, and the taste wasn’t that bad. It reminded her of the salt of his tears, tinged with a bit of metal. In turn Coco hoped he got his wish, that the bite was the one he had always dreamed of.