Darkness, darkness...
««—»»
Aw, Jesus, Arianne thought. But she wasn't thinking long before she was fellating. Kermit Crole's penis was indeed the largest she'd seen in her life, and after so many years on the street, that was a lot of penises. Instantly, she was gagging as his callused hands guided her head, by grasps of hair, up and down in his lap in the front seat of his candy-apple red Ranchero.
She wasn't blowing him, he was fucking her throat. Deep.
Air raced through her nostrils. He grabbed her tremoring hand and placed it on his balls, things the size of Silly-Putty eggs. He humped her stretched mouth harder, then, just as Arianne thought she'd suffocate, he came copiously down her throat. When some of the semen slid into her epiglottis, she wheezed, jerked her mouth off, and involuntarily coughed a spatter of fresh sperm onto the inside of the broad windshield.
"Ain't ya got no manners, whore?" He cracked his fist into her chin so hard her teeth rattled. "This ride cost me thirty grand, ya dirty spunk-bucket, and here you are spitting my cum on the glass." He punched her just as hard in the belly, and all her wind slipped out. Arianne couldn't breathe. "Shit, whore, I kin smell yer dirty pussy through yer shorts, damn! Smells worse than the bottom of the gut can at the slaughter house." Then his big paw hands grabbed her breasts and pinched like two pair of vice-grips. "Ya stupid whore. Spitting cum in my truck? I oughta twist these little tits rights off, and what're you gonna do about it? Tell the cops?" Kermit Crole's throat jacked laughter. He pinched her nipples so hard blood came out, then he popped the passenger door, and—
WHACK!
—literally punched her out of the truck.
Arianne's head collided with the gravel-lined parking lot. Her scalp sliced. Then she rolled over to stare at the stars.
Like bird-shot, more gravel sprayed against the side of her face as the Ranchero peeled off.
There's got to be a better way to earn ten bucks than this, she thought.
Then, for the briefest moment, as her gaze remained stuck on the cosmos, she thought she saw, somewhere in Orion's Belt, a glittering facsimile of the face of the only man she'd ever loved.
Dean Lohan.
Why did you leave me, Dean? she wondered as tears formed. Why?
She dragged herself up, sharp stones cutting her knees, and remnant seed falling from her lips. Not much else she could do except shuffle back into Gortyn's Woodland Tavern and try to tag another trick.
She was dizzy, she was sick. Nevertheless, her feet shuffled back toward the door, and that's when she heard the high braying sound of police sirens off toward Main Street.
««—»»
The night watchman's body wasn't even cold before DeSmet Police Sergeant A.T. Lass was called out yet again. This one was worse. This was a kid.
"Christ, A.T.," his blanched partner, Hoiter, quailed. "It's Scotty Nash from down the Route. Shit, we must'a busted his mother a hundred times."
Fuck, Lass thought. He didn't give a shit about the kid, just the fact that it was a kid. Can't have kids gettin' killed in DeSmet! Makes me look bad!
Where young Scotty's abdominal wall should have been was now simply a gnawed evacuation of flesh. The boy's innards had been removed, and with not much finesse; his belly looked roto-tilled. What could do something like that? But an even more logical question struck Lass as he stood in the flashlight-painted darkness behind the old Stoddard Mill.
"What happened to the punk's insides?" he mouthed aloud.
"Must'a been some kind of animal attack," Hoiter suggested. "A wolf or a coyote."
"Yeah, must'a been."
The kid's baggy pants hung around his ankles, his NIGGUZS ROOL 4 U T-shirt bunched up. One of those dumbass Walkman things hung around his neck by a wire connected to a set of earphones. Hoiter picked it up, switched it on.
"I gots the motherfuckin' herpes, I don't give a shit! Need a bottle'a fuckin' Mickey's, yo white bitch!"
"Turn that crap off," Lass griped.
"Oh, wow, it's Badd Blacque," his partner remarked. "It's good stuff."
"It's a bunch of ghetto home-boy horse-shit, sounds worse than a busted chainsaw. Christ, the idiots just pick any word that rhymes."
"To the contrary, A.T. Rap and Hip-Hop is the Shakespeare of the modern African-American culture. It's the poetry of their times, their language of art. Listen."
Hoiter switched it back on. "Zippadee motherfuckin' doo-dah, zippadee motherfuckin' yay. My oh my what a motherfuckin' wonderful day—yo white bitch!"
Lass snatched the Walkman away, shut it off. "Quit fuckin' around! What's that on the punk's chest? Gunshot wounds?"
Hoiter leaned over with the flashlight and pulled up the decedent's T-shirt past his nipples. Indeed, two marks were present, two holes spaced a foot apart.
"See? What the fuck is that?" Lass questioned. "Somebody shoot the punk with a couple of deer-slugs?"
"I know what it is," Hoiter replied in a darkened tone. "Ain't no deer-slugs, A.T. This boy's been gored."
"Gored?"
"That's right, boss. Gored. As in by a bull."
CHAPTER FIVE
The scream shrilled through the house, but not a scream of horror or pain. A scream of outrage. Then the voice cracked and boomed like cannon-fire. "DEAN! GET YOUR ASS IN HERE NOW!"
Dean climbed off the couch, where'd he'd slept instead of the bed, and headed for the bedroom, scratching his balls through his shorts. "What?" he said.
Daphne, having just placed her Samsonites on the bed, twirled. Her face was beet-red. "That's TOBACCO JUICE on the floor, isn't it?"
Dean glanced at the long shit-colored stain in the beige carpet. "Yeah," he said. "That's tobacco juice, all right."
"You reckless inconsiderate REDNECK!" Daphne wailed in her smart Givenchy off-shoulder organdy dress. "You SPIT on the floor!"
"Yup."
"That's it! The more I try, the worse you get! I want a divorce!"
"You got it," Dean agreed, still scratching his balls. "How about a quick blow-job before we sign the papers?"
Enraged, she picked up her carry-on bag and threw it at him. Dean ducked, and it sailed overhead.
"That was a mistake," he calmly informed her.
He broke the bedside lamp over her head, wrapped its cord around her neck and, by the cord, dragged her out of the room. Her ass thunked down the stairs. She gagged, kicking as he dragged her further into the dining room. The dining room was perfect—the big bay window. Then he grabbed her not by the hair but by the face, and propped her up in front of the multiple panes.
"Have your lawyer give me a call," he suggested and punched her in the face so hard she flew back as if jerked by a towline. The bay window exploded and out Daphne went, landing on her back in the front yard amongst flecks of broken glass.
Dean scratched his balls again, and loped for the kitchen—
—and shifted and jigged and jagged and—
"Oh no," Dean croaked.
There he stood, in the bedroom, as Daphne, in the same Givenchy off-shoulder organdy, railed at the all-too-obvious evidence of tobacco juice on the carpet.