“You’ve been awfully quiet tonight. Everything okay at work?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine.”
Dennis was sitting up in bed watching the evening news. His wife, Carrie, was sitting next to him doing her nails. Their son, Justin, was in his room doing God knew what on the internet and their daughter, Elizabeth, was in her room talking on the phone with her friends. Dennis had hardly paid attention to his children when he got home this afternoon. All he’d been able to think of were the images from that magazine.
Carrie lolled on the bed, her hair up in curlers. Dennis tried not to look at her; she’d grown increasingly flabby in the past five years. Her ass was a mile wide, the cellulite on her thighs quivered like Jell-O. Dennis tried to get his wife to accompany him to the gym, but she showed no interest. “I’ve got an early morning and late afternoon meeting tomorrow,” he said, flipping through the channels, “so I won’t be home till late. That okay with you?”
“Fine with me,” Carrie said, finishing her nails. “What’s on Channel Two?”
And that’s the way things went every night. It was the way things had been for fifteen years. The minute they began to have kids, their sex life took a nosedive. And to compensate, Dennis sought to relieve his outlet through other means. Pornography.
And the more he got into it, the more he needed to satiate his needs. Where before he couldn’t stomach an anal sex scene, within a few short years he began to crave it … where before he flinched at the barest suggestion of S&M, within a few years he was exploring every aspect of that subculture. Where before he’d gagged at the site of a woman sucking a Great Dane’s cock, or some redneck fucking a sheep, now bestiality films held a strange fascination for him. And while he had heard of snuff films over the years, the closest he’d ever come to seeing one was an extreme hardcore loop Carl Grossman sold him. The clip showed a woman being viscously whipped, then burned with a hot piece of metal as she dangled from the ceiling in an abandoned warehouse. The first time Dennis saw the clip it disturbed him. Later viewings turned him on. He currently kept the tape in a safe in his study and only brought it out when he knew he was going to get at least four hours to himself at home, which was rare.
Now the only thing that could get him off was the hardest of the hardcore. Currently he possessed two additional films other than the torture film, which were the only things that could bring him to orgasm, all three he kept in the safe. One was a film showing a woman being fucked by an Orangutan; it was followed by a guy screwing a female German Shepard. The other tape was a rape film showing the very real rapes of a twelve-year-old girl, a forty-year-old toothless crack addict who looked like he was seventy, and an eighteen-year-old man who already looked like he was in his mid-forties courtesy of hard-living. Carrie would never dream that both tapes resided in a locked safe in Dennis’ study.
Before they settled down to sleep Carrie said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Bob Lansing called this afternoon.”
“Really?” Dennis felt his stomach clench. “What did he want?”
“To talk to you,” Carrie turned over. “He sounded surprised, like he thought you would be home.”
“Bob gets confused sometimes,” Dennis said, the lie springing to him easy. “He must have forgotten I had that meeting at our West LA office and thought I’d gone home early.”
Carrie didn’t say anything. Dennis waited for a response, and when none came he rolled over on his right side, facing the wall. He waited until he heard the calm breathing of his wife sleeping beside him, and then he closed his eyes and tried to get some sleep himself. But it was a long time in coming.
* * *
He had a meeting on his calendar the next morning but he skipped it, stopping by Carl Grossman’s instead. He’d gone to the bank on the way and had the fifteen hundred dollars for the necrophilia magazine; he simply couldn’t get it out of his mind. He’d woken up in a good mood so why not splurge? Carl shook his head as Dennis asked for the magazine. “Sorry. Shoulda bought it yesterday. I sold it last night right after you left.”
Dennis felt his hopes deflate. “Oh. That’s too bad.” He didn’t know the magazine would sell so quickly.
“But you’re in luck,” Carl said, moving to a corner of the living room that he referred to as his “office”; it was crammed with a small desk and filing cabinet. He rummaged around on the desk for a business card and copied a name, address, and phone number on it. “You might want to talk to the guy that bought it. He’s a big collector. You and he have similar interests. Maybe he can help you find another one.” He handed the card to Dennis, who slipped it into his pocket.
“Thanks,” Dennis said.
Dennis took a look at the card in his car. The name on the card—Harvey Panozzo—was unfamiliar to him. At first he wasn’t going to place the call; after all, he had to get to work and start giving his employers the impression he gave a shit about his job. But he finally succumbed to his desires and punched Harvey’s number in his cell phone.
The phone was picked up on the other end. “Panozzo here.”
Dennis quickly introduced himself and told Harvey how he came by his number. “Carl suggested I call you since we have similar interests.”
“Are you busy later today?”
“Not at all.”
“Why don’t you stop by? We’ll chat then. You have the address?”
“Yes.” Harvey was in Monrovia, just down the freeway from Pasadena where Dennis lived. He jotted down the directions and hung up, his nerves on edge at the thought that he was going to see more of the type of material he was becoming enamoured with.
The next few hours were spent at work. He made phone calls to various business contacts, did some work on the CPM spreadsheet. Bob Lansing poked his head in his cube and asked where he was yesterday. Dennis told him he’d been stuck in traffic, which was why he was late to the CPM meeting in West LA. Bob nodded, then asked him how the meeting this morning was. Dennis made something up and Bob left, seemingly satisfied with his answer.
He spent the remainder of his day cruising the internet, always making sure to keep a spreadsheet open, and to be on alert in case anybody came by. There’d been a few close calls when Dennis had fumbled with the icon at the bottom of his screen for the spreadsheet, thus blocking out whatever porn website he was on. Thank God for quick fingers.
He visited ten porn sites that afternoon including his favorite: the rape page. He also did some searches on Google for necrophilia pages. He couldn’t find any.
He left the office at his normal time and arrived at Harvey’s house ten minutes early. Harvey Panozzo lived in a nice neighborhood with tree-lined streets and ranch homes. He met Dennis at the front door dressed in tan slacks and a white shirt; he looked like he’d just come home from work. He appeared to be around Dennis’s age—early forties—and had thinning black hair and a dark mustache. He also looked like he spent a lot of time out in the sun.
“Nice to meet you,” Harvey said, holding out his hand.
“Thanks for meeting with me,” Dennis said, shaking his hand. “I really appreciate it.”
Harvey invited him inside the house and Dennis followed the man, his nerves twitching. One time he’d met an extreme hardcore fetish enthusiast in the hopes of scoring some bloodsport videos and was tackled from behind by another character who was lying in wait. Looking back on it now, Dennis realized that they were going to rape him, probably torture him to fulfill their own desires, but Dennis was lucky. Working out at the gym every day gave him an advantage a lot of guys his age lacked, and he was able to fight off his attackers ruthlessly. He was careful in meeting like-minded freaks, and now as he followed Harvey Panozzo down the hall toward a rear bedroom, his senses were on heightened alert.