Steamy Screams: Anthology of Erotic Horror

AMONG US Jenny Corvette

The dead man’s eyes were closed, as dead eyes always were. I found myself wondering what color they were, beneath those glued shut eyelids. Such a morbid curiosity, yet I could not help it. His name was Jerry, at least, that’s what the funeral program said right beneath his picture. He looked much different dead, but then again, who wouldn’t?

I watched enough cable to know what happens to bodies when they die. Aside from the physical reaction of the body’s cells dying, there were all those procedures done by those calling themselves funeral directors, but who were really nothing more than human butchers. Ghastly procedures, if you ask me, hardly believable in the face of the modern funeral. But horror hides. Usually in the basement. And I know that somewhere beneath my feet, terrible things had been done to Jerry’s body.

Not that I cared. I didn’t even know Jerry. I was attending his funeral only because I’m a thrill seeker, living on the edge of life, at least as much on the edge as a 38-year-old divorced woman can get. Granted, I wasn’t exactly jumping out of airplanes, but crashing other people’s funerals produced its own sense of euphoria. Euphoria that Jerry could no longer experience, well, experience in this realm at least. Who knew where his soul was at the moment, and what sort of experiences it might be having.

As for me, I’ve always been partial to the belief that the soul resides in the blood. And if that is so, Jerry’s soul might well be in the funeral home’s sewer at this very moment, mixing with the souls of so many that had been drained down the basin of eternity before him. The irony of death is that it seems so monumental, yet it happens to us all. Its frequency makes it hardly unique. And funerals are like penises. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.

So why do I go to them, you wonder? It has nothing to do with the dead or with the broad philosophical concept of death in general. But it has everything to do with life. Because, standing in front of a corpse, I felt most alive. At any moment I knew I might be subject to the questioning by a family member or close friend. I felt onlookers’ eyes on me all the time. I knew they were wondering who I was and why I was there, looking at their dead mothers or grandfathers. The bold ones asked me, straight out.

And this was thrilling!

I lied, of course. Sometimes I implied I was a lover of the deceased. If female, I usually had our fake relationship concern pottery class, sewing, or some other womanly hobby. The secret to getting away with anything I said depended on how much information I could gather about the deceased beforehand. If I knew they died from disease, I could claim they never told me. If they were hit by a bus, I could act just as shocked as everyone else. I was a funeral sleuth.

Now Jerry, he was a poor soul. Cancer, and he suffered. I could tell—if I looked hard enough—that his skin was relieved in death. Shocked and burned so bad from radiation, it seemed to have died long before Jerry did. It was probably time for the rest of his body to catch up with his skin. All this I was thinking when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

I jumped slightly. The man behind me was good looking, only a little younger than myself. Somehow, he looked like someone I knew, but I couldn’t place him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “are you okay?”

“Yes. Fine.” Apparently, I’d looked the part of a mourning funeral-goer. It was natural by now.

He lowered his hand and stood beside me, silent.

“Family?” I asked, and nodded to Jerry.

“Friend.” He cleared his throat. “We played tennis together. You?”

“Um,” I said, and this is what I lived for. My blood began to race with my upcoming lie. “He and I had sex on occasion.” I hoped to blush. I looked up to see his reaction and it seemed he was blushing, but I wasn’t.

Several awkward silent moments passed, until he whispered behind me, “How was he?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, in bed.” I turned around and smiled. Jerry’s tennis partner was staring at the floor, like a child who’d just asked his mother where babies came from. “A lot like he is now, actually.” We both chuckled like school kids.

“Wasn’t much good on the tennis court, either,” he said. “It’s a bit sad, don’t you think?”

“Death is always sad,” I said matter-of-factly.

“So you don’t know him, either?” he said in a loud whisper.

“Pardon me?” I turned around to face him, hoping my face wouldn’t give me away. It never had before.

“It’s okay. Neither do I. We didn’t play tennis together. I’ve never seen him before today. Look among us. Half these people are here just for the free food.” I scanned the room as he spoke. In the room full of faces, I saw distinctive people, many whom I’d seen before. But I didn’t know them. Nor did they know me, but that didn’t stop them from gazing at me, all at once. Looking back down at Jerry, I thought how depressing it’d be to be upstaged at your own funeral by meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Hopefully, my family won’t have to bribe people into coming to my funeral with potato salad and chicken. Roasted chicken. Not the cheap stuff.

“It’s not about the food,” I told him, feeling embarrassed, caught with my hand in the cookie jar, or in the casket, so to speak. “What gave me away?”

“Overcompensation. A woman like you would never sleep with an old fuck like that. Not unless he was good in bed. I’m guessing the only thing that could make him stiff is good old rigor mortis.” I turned to face him, to actually see the words coming out of his mouth. Simply astounding! I couldn’t believe I was caught so red handed, but in catching me, he’d given himself away, too. His familiar face smiled again and looked right at me.

“If you’re thinking I’d rather sleep with a young fuck like you, you’re dead wrong.” I was never one to mince words.

“Nice to meet you, too. I’m Ben, by the way.” He extended his hand, and it was a bit cold to touch. His name, unlike his face, didn’t ring a bell.

“Elaine. Maybe that’s why I recognize you. Were you here last week for Mrs. Hoyt?”

“Actually, no. This is my first time.” Again, he was the embarrassed one, looking to the floor in an almost guilty way. “The others, they told me about you. Said you don’t mingle much.”

“How do they know me?”

“Just by looking. It isn’t that hard to figure out, really.” I thought about it. Crashing funerals had never been about the people to me. It was all about myself, and how I might handle myself if ever the incriminating question should land my way. Now that I thought about it, I did remember these people from other funerals. They were like a traveling book club, waiting for people to kick the bucket so they could have a meeting. But for all of these people I remembered, I couldn’t put my finger on exactly how it was I knew Ben. There was a number of places I might have met him. In a bar. At the hospital where I worked. In my own bed, maybe. I seemed to remember him in a horizontal position. But perhaps that was just wishful thinking. “You look so familiar. Excuse me for being so forward, but have we ever slept together?” I asked him.

“I’d like to think you’d remember, if we had.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just that… ”

“If it’s a pressing desire, we can slip away into the coat closet.”

I laughed until I realized he wasn’t joking. I wanted to wipe that mischievous grin off his face, until I felt that feeling again. That sense of life, of being, of real aliveness that I longed for. Oh, what the hell, I thought. He‘d already caught me thrill seeking, so I needed another outlet for excitement. “Okay,” I said, hoping he wasn’t bluffing. “Follow me.” And I headed away, towards the closet full of the grievers’ coats.

Now this… this was living on the edge! I felt alive like I never have before.

We began kissing and undressing frantically. Several times our eyes met and I knew, each time I looked at him, that I’d seen him before. But somehow I didn’t know his eyes. Those orbs of deep brown I swear I had never seen before. He pushed his cold hands up and beneath my dress, and his body pushed me up and against the dark wall of the closet. I undid his belt, his pants, his zipper. When he entered me, my arms went around his back. My fingertips grazed the cotton of his fabric suit, and it seemed for a moment that they slipped inside and under his jacket.

We rocked against the wall, sweating against each other. The coatroom was dark, but I could see orange lines running lengthwise down his face from his temples. He struck me as the vain sort, but until then I never would’ve guessed he wore makeup. “Elaine,” he said when I began to tighten up around him.

“Ben?”

But he had nothing to say. His orange dripping face kissed mine, and I grabbed onto him tightly. My hands slipped further into his back, almost into his body, as it were.

We reached orgasm together and held each other tight as we did. The moment was beautiful. We felt as one. Together. Passionate. Alive.

“That was great,” I told him when we let go. “But I think I ripped the back of your suit.”

He laughed, grabbed my hand and walked back into the viewing room.

Jerry was still there, hadn’t moved. In our tryst, Ben and I hadn’t missed a thing. The others were there too, watching us as we walked beyond them. I caught a glimpse of Ben as he walked a half step ahead of me. The tear in the back of his suit was no ordinary rip. It extended all the way down his back and once I saw it, I realized I couldn’t have made it.

An older gentleman brushed past me, greeting me softly. I somehow knew he was one of us, so I smiled. But as he stood beside me, I saw that the back of his suit was torn as well. I wouldn’t have noticed it had I not been looking, and it overlapped so as not to expose any skin.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost say both tears, and the tears I now saw on the backs of many of the familiar faces, looked like tailor made hems. Like suit coats and dresses had been let out for some reason.

“Ben?”

He turned to face me and when he did, I looked deep into his face. I remembered now. Yes, I knew how I knew him after all. Only I didn’t know him, really. I remembered him lying down, and his eyes closed, lying in this room, in a golden box like our friend Jerry. Ben looked down at me with his brown eyes now open. The others, among us, looked my way and smiled, as if welcoming me to their group. Ben put his hands around my waist, then slid one upwards, and fully inside the slit in the back of my dress. His hand met my skin in coldness.

I no longer felt alive.