(or, the Worst Love Story Ever)
by Tim.
He couldn't fucking stand it. Not the constant itching he couldn't scratch, not the uncomfortable position he couldn't move out of, not the limits of his field of vision. Television got boring, and it got boring quick, especially due to the fact that it was never porn, though he realized that certainly wouldn't be the best for him right now.
He could tell you everything about that television, though. Everything about the arm that held it to the wall. Every nook and cranny of the goddamn wall itself.
Oh, how long would he be like this?
The nurse never answered; she always dodged the question, the gargantuan bitch. Just changed his bag and bedpan and fed him food, that terrible hospital food, and glared at him with her round, bloated face as if he were the bane of her existence and as if he were to so much as flinch the wrong way she would tear open the neck of his full-body cast just to strangle him with her short, plump, slimy little fingers. He had asked her once the prior day if she would tell him who the flowers that had been delivered to him earlier in the day were from, if she might read him the card, but she just stuck a spoon full of pudding in his mouth and he was terrified of pressing the issue. Still, he couldn't imagine who would care enough about him to send them.
And there was no way, no way at all, no way in hell that he was going to ask for the favor dancing on the tip of his tongue, bloating in desperation, itching more wildly than anything beneath his cast. Not because it was beneath him, either, but because he feared she would kill him just for asking.
And then one day big Bertha with the Jabba-the-Hut gut didn't arrive to spoon-feed him pudding.
"Jack, is it?"
The voice was foreign to him, but soothing, melodic, beautiful; the best way to wake up. When he opened his eyes, he could only see her as a blurry silhouette in his peripheral.
"Yeah," he said feebly. "Who are you?"
"Nurse Mimi."
Nurse Mimi, the Angel of Life and Death, would have been a more appropriate introduction, but he could not have known that then. He would not have believed it, either, for when she moved her head into his field of vision his mouth and eyes -- the only thing, save for his ears and nose, that were not covered by the cast -- widened to their limits, for she was simply, hands-down the sexiest thing he had ever been lucky enough to lay his twisted eyes upon.
"Why hello, Nurse Mimi," he said.
"Hi," she said in return, and oh-so sweetly. "As I was saying, I'm the new nurse. I'll be filling in for Bertha."
"Did that fat bitch die? Tell me she died."
Her face dropped. "Actually yes, she did," she said. "She died of a massive coronary yesterday evening."
"Fuck," he said. "I'm an asshole."
"That's all right," she said. "I gather from the other patients that she wasn't the most comforting woman. Now Jack, is there anything I can do for you?"
Don't ask, he told himself. Don't. You. Dare.
"Yeah, actually," he said. "That guy to my right, just beyond the curtain -- what's his name?"
"Lincoln Smith," she said.
"You're kidding," he said. "That's fucking hilarious."
"Why did you want to know his name?"
"Because in the five nights I've been conscious in this joint I can't sleep more than an hour until I'm woken up by that ass-head and his fucking pounding."
"Pounding?"
"Yeah, he's always pounding his head on the pillow."
"That's odd," she said, sincerely curious.
"It's irritating, is what it is," he said. "And now I can refer to him by name at night when I start screaming for him to shut up."
"You should understand Mr. Smith is in a lot of pain," she said solemnly, and vaguely defensively. "The man's been through a lot. He fought in Iraq, he lost his first wife and only child in a car wreck five years ago and now, well, now... this."
"I don't understand."
"You don't understand what?"
"How you could call the man Mister Smith and pass up the opportunity to say Lincoln," he said. "I mean, come on, how many guys have you met named Lincoln?"
She just shook her head and stared at him. "Any other complaints, Jack?"
"Yeah," he said, "that damned fly. It buzzes in the room in the dead of the night, lands on my nose and crawls around. I just wish I could slap the fucker. I try to wiggle my nose, but I never developed the talent. And all I can think about is how I learned in school that a fly shits every few times a second. So my nose is probably crusted with microscopic fly poop. There's probably maggots in my nostrils right now."
"Okay then. I suppose I'll put up some fly tape."
"Marry me." She laughed under her breath. Jack didn't like that laugh. It was like she knew something she shouldn't know, she he studied her for a moment before saying in a sad voice, "You don't seem to like me."
"I like you just fine," she said. "After all, you'll be my first."
"I'll be gentile."
"I mean the first patient I've ever had that's had a full body cast," she said with a roll of her eyes. "And it really is something to see. Doctor Bozzolo says he's been at this for sixty-five years and your his first patient that ever required it. That it's the first body cast he's ever seen."
"That seems odd."
"Not really," she said, tilting her head. "Your television would coerce you into believing this is a pretty routine thing and all, but you should understand, casts of this size are extremely rare."
"Lucky me," Jack said. "Lucky. Fucking. Me."
"Well, I should get on my way," she said, standing up, holding her clipboard close to her breasts. "I have other patients to attend to."
"Sure you couldn't crack me out of this shell and give me a sponge bath?"
She looked at him, expressionless, and then smiled sarcastically. "Bye," she said to him in a teasing voice as she walked out of the door, nearly walking into a girl walking in. The girl was a petite blond, stick thin, and she wore a tight black T-shirt and a pair of ripped jeans. Nurse Mimi paused at the doorway, though it didn't really seem as if she wanted to. "You Mrs. Smith?"
"Tracy," she said, "I'm his girlfriend."
"Oh," she said, extending her hand. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Tracy."
Jack watched as they shook. Tracy liked her, he could tell, and Mimi hated, hated Tracy, and Tracy didn't have a clue. He laughed quietly. As soon as Mimi stepped out the doorway and turned the corner, Tracy began to walk passed Jack towards the bed on the other side of the curtain, but Jack decided to strike up conversation.
"So, you're Lincoln's girlfriend?" He asked, and she stopped, looked at him and nodded. "So, if you don't mind me asking, what happened to old Abe, anyway?"
"Just a little accident," she said. "He has some emotional issues and he, well, he kind of lost his head."
"I assume you don't mean literally."
And then she just laughed. A little too much, Jacked noted.
"So," she said, leaning on the sink, smiling at him. "Have a girlfriend?"
"Not for six years or so, no," he said.
"What was she like?"
"Intelligent, bitter," he said, looking for more words. "Hot. She was a goth girl, but not those faker vampire-wannabe goth girls, you know? I'm talking bondage, fetish, kinky kind of goth girl. Authentic, you know?"
She smiled. He absolutely hated her. She was an airhead, he could tell already, and he was thinking of cruel things to say to her but was quickly distracted by her shirt. He found himself smiling broadly.
"Hey," he said. "You like that band?"
She looked down at her black T-shirt as if she'd forgotten what shirt she was wearing, and then looked at Jack with surprise. "The Nocturnal Emissionaries?" She said. "Hell yes."
"I was their lead guitarist."
"Your Jack Jacobs?" She said, pointing at him. "You! You were at Dani's wedding!"
He closed his eyes, thinking to himself, Shit.
"You were there?"
She shrugged. "Everyone was there. And that was, like, so fucked up, what you did." She said it with a smile and a laugh, as if she were proud, even envious of him. "I couldn't friggin' believe it."
"Yeah," he said, almost in a mumble, "that, well, that was an accident."
"Then why'd you take off on your motorcycle like a bat out of hell?"
"It was an accident that made the bride's father very, very unhappy," Jack said, and very slowly, so the words were sure to sink in. "And he is a very big man."
"Yeah, I saw him yelling at you. With his bald head and his face beat red like that, he looked like a goddamn tomato."
He just stared at her. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he spotted Nurse Mimi standing just outside the door, and he wondered how long she had been there. She noticed that he noticed her, however, and quickly walked into the room, carrying her tray of food. Tracy turned to her.
"Do you know this is Jack Jacobs, ex-lead guitarist for the Nocturnal Emissionaries?"
Mimi shook her head. "Yeah, I know." She sounded totally disinterested.
"So Jack, why'd you quit the band?" Tracy said, turning back to him. "You quit just as the band got famous. They're making millions now. Billions, I bet."
That did it.
"Go fist fuck a garbage disposal," he said.
"Oh, pooh," she said, sticking her tongue out at him. "Mister grumpy."
"And Mimi," Jack said, turning to her with a smile, "I thought you had other patients to attend to?"
"I also have a head nurse," she said. "And evidently I'm on Jack duty."
"Can I feed him?" Tracy said, and Mimi just looked up at her, saying nothing.
"You are an excellent guitar player, I should say," Mimi threw out at Jack as she sat down on the chair beside him with the tray. "Better now, maybe, than you've ever been."
"Wait, you were there?"
She shrugged. "Come on, Jack, everybody was there. The Haggards are rich bastards. But I am curious why you decided to play the dirge song at a wedding."
"It was a mistake," he said, frustrated. "I didn't fucking mean to do it."
"Is that how you got in the accident?" Tracy asked, the light bulb in her head flickering on. "Riding back from the wedding?"
"Go suck off a loaded shotgun," he said to Tracy, but she just laughed. He was so confused by that girl.
"Come on, Jack," Mimi said. "Just give a little."
"Okay, okay, yes, so there were two accidents not separated from each other by more than twenty-five minutes. Two big, catastrophic accidents that rival the idiocy involved in me leaving the band six fucking years ago, okay? I'm a twisted, stupid fuck without even trying and it's all led me here, where I'm a human pinata being fed mashed potatoes in a piss-yellow hospital room I share with a nocturnal phantom fly and a man behind the curtain, who just happens to be closet-drummer named after a dead fucking president."
Mimi studied him for a second. "You want to talk about it?"
"Talk about what?"
"The wedding," she said. "You don't want to hear it, but I think this speaks volumes regarding what's going on inside of you, Jack."
"You know, for some reason I always messed up the theme song from Mission Impossible with the opening tune to Judge Wapner's People's Court when I was a kid. The same thing happened here. It was a stupid, embarrassing fuck up that will be catastrophic to my little career."
"I think this is different."
"Are you a nurse or a fucking shrink?"
"Do you know why I think you associate marriage with death?"
"Maybe I don't, Mimi. Maybe I just fucked up. Is it possible that's it's that goddamn simple? Maybe it's a premonition; maybe it's a sign that if I get married, I'll die. Maybe remaining a bachelor will extend my life. Or maybe some wires got crossed in my brain that day. Who fucking knows?"
"You're terrified to commit to anything beyond your deep-seated psychological need to keep your options open, but you don't seem to realize that not making a choice is still making a choice."
"That's a lot coming from someone who doesn't even fucking know me," he barked. "And I'm fine being alone, thank you very much. I need to be alone. That isn't an issue."
"Oh, the hell it isn't. You think marriage would obliterate your freedom and make your independence evaporate; that you'd become just another sheep amidst the flock. You're afraid that if you get too close to anyone that everything you consider your own, everything your consider yourself will die."
"Married, buried?"
"Exactly," she said, "and it keys in with your music, too."
"Cute pun."
"Really, Jack," she said in a tone she hoped would exorcise Jack's relentless sarcasm. "The band was at it's height and you quit it. Walked away. Now you get a great opportunity playing for a rich family at a huge wedding, a great opportunity that could launch you on a good career and..."
"And what? I fuck it up?"
"On some level, it's self-sabotage."
Jack sighed. "Look, this is just psychobabble bullshit. Just feed me my mashed potatoes."
"Geez," Tracy said, hands on her non-existent hips, "are you always so grouchy?"
He still hated her, but he felt a little bad. "No," he said, taking a breath. "I don't know. Sometimes. I'm just getting a little cabin fever, you know?"
"So what do you miss the most, being all locked up in there?"
"Movement," he said.
"Really."
"Okay, fucking."
"I'll suck your cock," Tracy said.
Mimi stopped dead in her tracks, as if held in suspended animation, her hand holding the towering spoonful of mashed potatoes in Jack's closed moth. Jack had also stopped dead in his tracks, staring at Tracy. And with a mouth full of mashed potatoes, he said, "Yewl whop?"
Jack couldn't believe it. This girl, this dumb girl, she had answered the question on the tip of his tongue that he had been trying, trying, trying ever so much not to ask.
Maybe he had misheard her, though. He had to have misheard her.
"I'll suck your cock. I'll be back around tonight."
She hopped to the door.
Mimi yelled, "Visiting hours end at -- "
And the door slammed. She took the spoon out. He chewed, swallowed. She put the spoon back in the empty bowl, placed the tray on the cart, and flipped through the papers on her clipboard. Then she grabbed a pen. "So, I have to ask you some questions, okay Jack?"
"Why so formal all of a sudden?" He asked, smiling.
She paused again, but this time resumed with a laugh. "No way," she said, flipping through the papers on her clipboard. "Tell me your middle name really isn't Johnson."
"Fuck you," he said. "And you smell like formaldehyde. What's up with that?"
She looked away from the clipboard and at him. She seemed a little frustrated. "Tell me, how is it that a man as charming as you hasn't had a single visitor?"
"No family," he says, "no friends, not really. You know the story."
"Well, someone sent you flowers and a card."
"Oh yeah," he said. "I forgot about that. Beats the hell out of me who it could be from."
"You haven't read it?" she said, picking up the card. "Well, let's see who it's from." And she read it. "It's a simple, 'Get Well Soon'," she said. "The card is signed SAA. Someone's initials, perhaps? Or your place of employment?"
"No," he said, sighing, "I'm self-employed. Or was self-employed. That's my support group."
"Do you mind if I ask for what?"
"You just did. And yes you can."
"Okay," she said, "what does it stand for? Sarcastic Assholes Anonymous?"
"You're funny. I like you. Think you might hop in the sack with me?"
"You're not my type."
"I could ride you like a pony, slap your ass and say, `Who's your mummy?' Get it? Fucking laugh already."
"Sex Addicts Anonymous!" She said.
He didn't say anything for a moment. "So is that a no, then?"
Her eyebrow lifted. "So you fuck compulsively, huh?"
He paused, then thought, Oh, what the hell. "Masturbate," he said, frustrated, "I chronically masturbate, all right?"
"Jack," she said, laughing. "That's an ironic name for a chronic masturbator. Especially with a middle name like Johnson."
"As you can probably imagine, I've heard that one before."
"It's got to be a bitch being in that body cast, unable to touch your pecker," she said. "Is that why you've been so grumpy?"
He didn't answer.
She sat down on the chair beside his bed and scooted it towards him, getting close to his face. "Look," she said. "There's no reason to be embarrassed, all right? There's nothing wrong with a healthy, sexual appetite."
Aw, he thought. We're finally bonding.
"I haven't had a relationship in six years," he said. "My sexual appetite is limited to manual labor. That, my dear, is indeed embarrassing."
"So you had a problem with relationships," she said, "and you found a way around that while still taking care of your instinctual drives. There's nothing wrong with that. We've all got our ways of dealing."
"Sounds like you speak from experience."
"I do."
"So what's your way of dealing?"
"Cadavers."
"Fuck. I feel better all ready. Downright normal. We shouldn't have taken this long to break the ice."
"I'm serious. Don't judge me."
He was quiet for a moment, trying to interpret her facial expressions and body language. Disturbingly, she seemed to be telling the truth. She banged dead fellows.
"Don't you ever wonder if they're still, you know, hanging around?"
"What, you mean like they're watching me as I ride their vacated bodies? I've thought of it quite extensively. I mean, consider the whole thing. Can they still feel it, even if they might be standing as an apparition a few feet away, watching? Would watching someone fuck your dead body be considered voyeurism? At the point I'm fucking the corpse does it constitute rape, really, or is it essentially no different than ramming my cunt down on a dildo strapped into a blow-up doll?"
"Wow. Fucking deep. You're like the Socrates of Necrophilia."
She didn't even blink. She had apparently already adapted to his sarcastic potty-mouth, he thought. And he was falling for her. It scared him how intense it was. He'd die to get inside her. Then again, he thought, he'd, like, literally have to die to get inside her.
"And there are stories here and there. They're interesting. I've heard it through looking into Tantra, heard it elsewhere. Like this one monk was fucking a young deceased girl and she came back to life. Her parents were so grateful they forgave him for his actions."
"The dick," Jack said sarcastically, "it's the original magic wand. And I'm no stranger to magic tricks, either, let me tell you. Hell, if it didn't have a hard outer coating and a bed pan beneath it, I'd show you how I can pull a rabbit out of my ass."
Again, she didn't blink. Damn, he thought, am I losing my touch?
"If you ever get out of this shell of yours, fucking the dead is actually quite liberating. You should try it sometime."
"I'm not that sick. And I've never preferred a dead fuck."
"You're really not that far removed, Jack. You said you have a predilection for goth girls, after all. From the pale white flesh, association with darkness, all of it points to an association with death. And the theme of dominance, of control, runs through it all. Necrophilia is just a purer manifestation of it. I simply have the courage to accept and run free with my desires. And if it wasn't for my predilection for the deceased, we would have never met. I only work in this shit-hole because of the lax security."
"So what, at night you creep downstairs and the morgue becomes your smorgasbord?" He tried to shake his head but, of course, he failed. "And you're such a nice, intelligent, beautiful girl. What a waste. No wonder guys like me are stuck in the land of perpetually pud-whacking. I mean, honestly, you really have to kill yourself for a high-quality piece of ass nowadays."
"If only your dick was ice cold, I might saddle up."
"Can't you just give it a try? It's no dick-cicle, but presently I'm bound, so you'll have that whole control thing. It's not like I can move. Isn't that close enough?"
"Now you're sounding desperate. Tell you what," she said, "if you make it out of that cast alive, I'll give you a sponge bath in ice water and if you promise to lie still I swear I'll fuck the living hell out of you. Deal?"
"Sounds wonderful, but you're overlooking the shrinkage that occurs in the cold when it comes to us fellows with a pulse. How about something less extreme and more immediate? You suck my dick and I'll do something for you."
"You're not my type."
"C'mon, what do you really look for in a man?"
"A flat line. What do you like in a girl?"
"My penis, preferably. But how about you just put some ice packs on my face and a few cubes in my mouth? You can straddle my face and I'll slither my tongue in your pussy and show you the benefits of riding a live one. I'll get a blow job and you'll get the best of the lands of the living and the dead. It'll be like fucking a zombie, sort of, only I look like a mummy. That's in the ballpark of your style, isn't it?"
"Actually, it sounds enticing. So long as you can manage to put a hole in your cast so I can suck you off, I'm down. What are you doing tonight?"
He laughed. "I'm actually kind of busy tonight. Tracy, you know."
"I hate to burst your bubble, but I doubt that fucking ditz was serious."
"Oh, what, because she said it with her boyfriend on the other end of the curtain?" Jack laughed. "What's he gonna do, yell at her? He didn't have much to say when she offered."
"He doesn't talk much, Jack. He has no tongue. And to be honest," she said, lowering her voice, "he wouldn't be the best lay right now."
"Oh, that's just crude," Jack said. "Have a heart."
"Look who's talking," she said. "Regardless, I wouldn't get your hopes up regarding that little slut sucking you off."
"Maybe she will, maybe she won't," he said. "But I'm counting on her. So you'll have to wait in line."
"I'm very impatient. That's a shame."
"Oh, you twisted my arm. How's four-o'clock sound?"
"You'd better be ready."
"Wait, are you serious? You're not serious."
She grinned a devilish grin. "I guess you'll just have to wait and see. But I've got to be running along now."
"Running to the basement to crack open a cold one, are we?"
"Jealous?"
"That necrophilia exists? That this obviously means that there are dead men that are getting laid more often than I do? Quite frankly, yes, it does make me a bit jealous."
"Well, I'll see you at four, Jack."
"I'll be waiting. Maybe you can kill that nasty nose-fly, too."
But she was already out the door.
For some strange reason, that night he was able to sleep, but he was violently torn from the merciful shroud of slumber by what, while he was still for a few moments in his dream, appeared as an old, leather-skinned man in suspenders and a multicolored flannel shirt chopping down an old, dead, thick, scary-looking tree in the middle of the night with a thunk, thunk, thunk.
When he opened his eyes, he was confused for just another mere second before he realized the source of the sound, and the realization skipped the editing process and went straight to his mouth with a loud, bellowing, "LINCOLN! STOP IT!" His roommate failed to listen, of course, as Jack had predicted, and he gritted his teeth in futility. "I swear, you inglorious bastard, if I ever break out of this stiff fucking cocoon I'm going John Wilkes Booth on your crippled ass."
Though listening to his mouth you would never imagine it, Jack did have a guilt complex, and his brain started flagellating him over what he had said to Lincoln. It came in the voice of that luscious and vicious Nurse Mimi, who had told him earlier in the day how the poor guy had been through hell, how he had lost his first wife and only child. He had even been a military man. Suffered the agony of war.
War. The military. That's then it hit him. Of course, Jack thought, of course. It was so fucking cliche it should have hit him like a ton of goddamn bricks earlier. He was a military man. Morse code. The motherfucker wasn't pounding senselessly, he was pounding in Morse code. Back when he was in his old band, the Nocturnal Emissionaries, Jack had learned Morse code because they had wanted to enter a coded message within one of their singles. He tried to remember, he listened carefully to Lincolns pounding, and got: T-R-A-C-Y-D-I-D-I-T.
Adrenaline shot through him. "Fuck," he said aloud.
Then a head shot up from between his widely-separated legs like a gopher from straight out of hell and he heard a sweet, stupid, Valley Girl sigh of disappointment that went, "Aww. I wanted to surprise you."
The pounding stopped immediately.
"Tracey?"
"Sorry it took so long. I had to sharpen my knives. And clean them."
The adrenaline kept pumping.
"Since I'm doing you a favor, though, I've got to ask you for one. Linky has to watch."
"Huh? What? Why?"
"Bastard cheated on me. I want him to see me please another man." she got up, pulled the curtain away and there lay a man with casts on his legs, a cast on his crotch and no tongue. She rolled him on his side, put duct tape on his mouth and giggled, looking back at Jack. "Duct tape," she said, shrugging, "it's a girl's best friend."
"You know," Jack said, swallowing, trying to control his voice but failing miserably, "I hate to disappoint you -- and trust me, that's the last thing in the goddamn fucking universe I want to do right now -- but I'm having second thoughts. Getting cold feet."
"Aww," she said, leaving her husband a moment and kneeling down again right by his cast-covered crotch. "Small dick?"
"What?"
"Don't be embarrassed, his isn't the greatest," she said, motioning her head towards the mangled mess of a man to their right. "Or it wasn't the greatest. Because now, you know..."
"No Lincoln log?"
"Yeah," she said, brightening again.
He cringed. "Uh, Linky... has no dinky?"
"Linky without his dinky! Chop-chop-chop!"
The woman is insane, he thought. Fuck.
She got up and proceeded to put the scotch tape over his eyelids. "Wouldn't want you to miss a second," she said, patting the man's head. Then, turning to Jack and pointing her finger at her husband, eyes suddenly so large and wild-looking they could be straight out of a cartoon, she said, "Just like in Clockwork Orange! I fuckin' love that movie, don't you?"
"One of my favorites," he said, and it was, but he didn't think he'd ever be able to watch it after seeing this.
She smiled when she put the last bit of scotch tape over his open eyelid and then got down between Jack's legs again, lying the toolbox just to the side of her. She started placing various serrated knives and what looked like tiny-looking saws on his belly. Thinking for a moment with her index finger to her limps, going, "hum," dramatically, she finally picked up the largest, a long silver blade with sharp teeth and smiled his way in a mad, innocent fashion. "Okey-dokey," she said. "Time to release the hostages!"
"Wait!" He said, almost screamed.
"Relax!" She said dismissively, jabbing the blade violently into the cast. "It's just like carving a pumpkin, but with a mushroom inside with two hangy-balls."
She jabbed again.
"Ha! Jack-o-lantern!"
Again.
"Man," she said, "this is tough."
Jack said, "Maybe we should go for another night."
"No," she said, pointing her finger at him like a disobedient child. "You have a healthy sexual appetite and you're very nice. Well, not always nice, exactly, but you've got a good sense of humor, and I like you, and you've been trapped up inside here like a... "
"Grumpy mummy in suspended animation."
"Yeah," she said, smiling wider, "and you need something to relax you, something to quell this tension inside you. Really, Jack, you're very tense. You need a good blow job in the very least. And that thing's not gonna suck itself, ya know?"
She slammed the blade down again.
"And has that thing even gotten any air or seen the light of day? It's locked up in there like a turtle in a super-glued shell. It's inhumane. Little snake's gotta get some sunshine, you know?"
She slammed down the blade again, and Jack jumped, as most as he could within his full-body shell, anyway. She finally put the bald down on his belly -- blade sideways -- with a frustrated sigh. "You know, Jack this just isn't working."
He breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, as I was saying, maybe we should just postpone..."
"That's why I brought this," she said, smiling, and he could see it in the darkness of the room, but what really got his blood pumping was the noise; a noise that was unmistakably that of a drill. "I come prepared. And if this doesn't work," she said, holding up the tiny saw and then shrugging, "well, I've got a little baby axe with your crotch's name on it, bubba! By the way, what is your crotches name?" She began sawing into the cast just then and nodded her head in pleasure like she was sawing into a turkey. "Oh yeah," she said, nodding and then looking up at him, "this is working just perfectly."
"Please stop, oh gosh oh fuck please please please stop."
"Oh, stop being such a pansy," she said as she went on sawing, "you're not thinking clearly, all the cum's backed up into your brain and it's driving you mad. Once I get this sucker open I'll suck you off and then use some rubber cement and than put this little part of the cast right back over your crotch and nobody will know and maybe when you get out of here you can come home with me and I'll show you how rockin' my pussy is, how `bout that?"
Eyes tightly closed, teeth clenched tight as possible, when all went silent he thought, for a moment, he was dead, but then he felt something, something like an exhale from his extremities. He opened his eyes slowly to find her mouth wide open in exaggerated style, playfully looking up at him above his visible mushroom tip. "It's Jack's beanstalk! Look, Linky," she said, turning to him, pointing to Jack's penis (erect, which confused him, given the circumstances), and saying, "goddamn python to your Gardner snake!" She giggled, looking back at Jack, with the knife in her hand, to say, "which is MIA, by the way. But this little soldier," she said, spreading her hands at it as if she was the Frugal Gourmet and this was a finished dish, or as if Jesus about to usher in the second coming, "This is no cocktail weenie. This is bulging Kielbasi. This will be simply delish..."
Why, he thought. Why was that knife in her hand.
But it wasn't a question.
"Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Tracy's gonna..." And she dove out of sight, down between his legs. And he felt her fiddling down there, but this? This was no blow job.
"Oh fuck. Fuckity fuck. What are you doing?"
"Removing the catheter," she said in a matter-of-fact manner.
"You know how to do that?"
She looked up at him, her eyes like two sparkling suns rising up out of hell at the horizon of his crotch. "Relax," she said, and then, a few seconds later, all upbeat, "All done!"
Oh, please put down the knife, he thought. She didn't. Knife still in her left hand, she grabbed his penis with her right -- a nice, firm grip, and slowly lowered her mouth onto it, puckered lips, tight lips slowly expanding and, as she did so, she lowered her hands down to the base at the very same pace, letting one finger leave at a time until, at the very base, there was just her index finger pressed against her thumb, her halo hanging at the base of his manhood.
"Oh my god," he said, "you're good. You made an atheist say god. You're good." And he meant it, and it was difficult, at this point, to balance the beauty of her blow job technique with the looming threat of that shimmering blade and her to some degree apparent, and to some degree strongly implied madness. Perhaps she did do that to Lincoln, but perhaps he really deserved it, he told himself. Perhaps she didn't do that to Lincoln but thought he deserved it. Perhaps she wouldn't bite or slice off his cock.
Thunk. When he heard the noise, he snapped out of it a second -- though the pleasure of her continued licking, puckering, stroking wasn't too far in the background -- and saw that, in the passion of the moment, she'd slammed the knife blade down into his side. It was just the cast, though. Still. And when she did it again -- lifted up the knife and then, with violence, swung it down -- horrible thoughts returned in full. What made it worse is that it just made him harder.
Then it hit him: she had come in late. There was still the possibility that Nurse Mimi wasn't pulling him chain and would come at four to saddle up his face with ice and ride him off into the sun set. She might arrive and save the day. His corpse-mounted heroine. If he could just hold off, he might keep this psychotic woman here long enough.
He had to hold off. He couldn't come. This meant life or death. And it would certainly be easier if this was not the best goddamn blow job he had ever gotten in his life, true, he thought to himself, but he had to manage it, he could manage it, he would manage it. Yoga stuff wouldn't be enough, he had to go for the old trick. Think of something horrible.
Think, think, think of something horrible.
Then he remembered. He stretched his eyes to look over at Lincoln. He looked as catastrophically bad as he did the first time Jack had lain his eyes upon him only ten minutes before, only now only one eyelid was taped open, and the other twitched, hanging halfway-closed, the little piece of scotch tape stuck to his lashes flapping erratically in the air, as if saying hello. Jack mouthed to him, "You're a lifesaver." Lincoln looked at him as if he were a moron.
Then, as if in answer to his hopes, he heard a noise. The click of a door. She took her mouth off his cock with a popping sound, like the kids used to do in high school when they stuck a finger in their cheek and flipped it out quickly. He could never manage that. Just the hand-to-the-sweaty-arm-pit-fart noises. Anyway, someone seemed to be coming. And it wasn't him.
She knelt there a few inches from his crotch for a few seconds, staring at the door. The footsteps had stopped. There was only silence now, but then there was another noise. Something. Squirting. "I'm puttin' the rubber cement on," she said, and he could see her rubber cementing the edges of the cast, fumbling a little here and there, shaking, and the hope of her being caught and him being saved made him all the harder, and then she stopped. Still no footsteps. "Maybe they went away," she whispered.
And then they heard something else, and she almost slammed down the manhole of cast down on the hole in his crotch, but stopped, because it was only a fly. The land-on-the-nose fly. It came every night, he thought, did the damned thing have a schedule? But the fly stopped buzzing, and he felt it touch his skin again, but it had evidently listened to him last time, for it did not land on his nose.
No, it landed on the tip of his penis.
And then they heard footsteps. And then she slammed the manhole of cast down, right on top of the fly, right on top of his boner, and he screamed, "OOOOW!" And then Tracy ran off into the darkness behind the curtain.
The door opened. "Jack?"
"Mimi," he said in an exasperated voice, the ache still killing him. He could feel the cum dripping from his dick -- he hoped it was cum; cum and not blood -- and he felt the fly crawling, buzzing, flying, landing on his dick again and crawling all the more. He knew he must be insane, but he thought he could even feel the little bastard pooping a few times a second.
"Why were you screaming?"
"I had a nightmare."
She approached him and smiled, saying, "I don't suppose you managed to liberate the long-fellow, so I'm just going to --"
And at that moment, the circular portion of cast that crazy lady had cut out popped upward, lifted by his erection, only it wobbled back and fourth like a bobble-head, wearing the piece of cast like a graduation cap.
"I'll be damned," she said, looking at it, sincerely surprised, "it's a fucking Jack-in-the-Box. How did you manage to do it, you crafty sonuvabitch?"
"A magician, you know. He never reveals his secrets."
It was lame, but it was all he could come up with.
She shrugged and threw two packed of ice on his chest. "Okay," she said, sighing, getting down on her knees, "a promise is a promise."
But then she stopped, looking down, down below his crotch, and the look on her face when she looked up on his was one of worry, confusion, even outright fear.
"Fuck, Jack, what's with the box of knives?" She looked around with her eyes, then mouthed to him, "Is somebody in here?" He pointed to the left with his eyes. she looked at him, astounded, saying, "Lincoln?" and he looked at her as if she was a moron. "The ditz?" She mouthed.
And he tried to say yes with his eyes the best he could. It worked. She stood up and walked back to the doorway, and Jack was worried, for he thought, for a moment, that she was going to leave him with the psycho. Instead, she flipped on the light switch.
"Somebody there?"
No one answered, and then she crouched down slowly, her knees cracking, and came back up with a blade bigger than any one Jack had seen the crazy bitch use earlier. He tried to breath as she approached the curtain. Pushing it aside, she jumped when she saw the mangled man dict taped, with scotch tape vibrating from his flickering eyelids.
"Mr. Smith?"
Jack suddenly found himself fearing for her life, though he thought this might only be because the end of her life might damn well mean the end of his own life as well.
"Hetay razycay itchbay otgay a ifeknay," he said to her, "Onnagay ut-offcay ymay ickday. Osay ebay arefulkay."
She spun around and looked at him with an eyebrow crawling up her forehead, the knife still in her hand, blade downwards. "What the fuck did you just say?"
And just then, from behind her, he saw Tracy with that small sledgehammer held up high above her head with both hands, pulling it back and then swinging it down.
"DUCK!"
As the hammer came racing down with Tracy stepping forward, Mimi turned around, gasping, and leaned out of the way as she instinctively backed up, falling into and up Jack's crotch area, and began to lift the fist she had formed around the handle of the knife. The sledgehammer hit her thumb, forcing her fist and the handle down with a great forced, like a hammer to a nail, and it took Jack a second to realize that the blade was now deep, deep, deep within his chest.
"Uckfay," he said with a weak grunt.
He began to feel a warm, tingling, distancing sensation rising above the noise of the pain.
Tracy looked at him. "No. Snookie," she said with sad, wide eyes.
Mimi kicked her in the crotch and Tracy went flying against the wall, the sledgehammer falling from her hands, and Mimi went sliding back down Jack's crotch as he tried to grasp for air. Finding another knife on the floor, Mimi quickly rose to her feet and slammed the blade right above the space between the girl's eyes, forcing it in deeper by pounding on the handle with her other hand.
Throwing herself onto Jack, calling his name, she got no response. Jack tried to speak, but he was drifting away quickly. His eyes open, unblinking, soon to be empty. She rested her head on his shoulder. And his world faded.
The next thing he knew, it was cold, but there was a warmth around the center of his body. The cast was off, so he knew he must be dead. But he suddenly felt his body, a cold metal surface on his back, and he lifted his shoulders and head upward, his eyes bursting open, his mouth agape and drawing in a deep gasp of air, and all he saw was Mimi, naked Mimi, naked and shocked Mimi straddling him in this dark, cold room.
She placed her hands on his chest. "Jack?"
Turning his head coughing, he turned back to her and managed to say, "It's true. It's fucking true. A guy really does have to die for a quality piece of ass nowadays."
"Your an asshole," she said, "but I love you."
by Tim.
He couldn't fucking stand it. Not the constant itching he couldn't scratch, not the uncomfortable position he couldn't move out of, not the limits of his field of vision. Television got boring, and it got boring quick, especially due to the fact that it was never porn, though he realized that certainly wouldn't be the best for him right now.
He could tell you everything about that television, though. Everything about the arm that held it to the wall. Every nook and cranny of the goddamn wall itself.
Oh, how long would he be like this?
The nurse never answered; she always dodged the question, the gargantuan bitch. Just changed his bag and bedpan and fed him food, that terrible hospital food, and glared at him with her round, bloated face as if he were the bane of her existence and as if he were to so much as flinch the wrong way she would tear open the neck of his full-body cast just to strangle him with her short, plump, slimy little fingers. He had asked her once the prior day if she would tell him who the flowers that had been delivered to him earlier in the day were from, if she might read him the card, but she just stuck a spoon full of pudding in his mouth and he was terrified of pressing the issue. Still, he couldn't imagine who would care enough about him to send them.
And there was no way, no way at all, no way in hell that he was going to ask for the favor dancing on the tip of his tongue, bloating in desperation, itching more wildly than anything beneath his cast. Not because it was beneath him, either, but because he feared she would kill him just for asking.
And then one day big Bertha with the Jabba-the-Hut gut didn't arrive to spoon-feed him pudding.
"Jack, is it?"
The voice was foreign to him, but soothing, melodic, beautiful; the best way to wake up. When he opened his eyes, he could only see her as a blurry silhouette in his peripheral.
"Yeah," he said feebly. "Who are you?"
"Nurse Mimi."
Nurse Mimi, the Angel of Life and Death, would have been a more appropriate introduction, but he could not have known that then. He would not have believed it, either, for when she moved her head into his field of vision his mouth and eyes -- the only thing, save for his ears and nose, that were not covered by the cast -- widened to their limits, for she was simply, hands-down the sexiest thing he had ever been lucky enough to lay his twisted eyes upon.
"Why hello, Nurse Mimi," he said.
"Hi," she said in return, and oh-so sweetly. "As I was saying, I'm the new nurse. I'll be filling in for Bertha."
"Did that fat bitch die? Tell me she died."
Her face dropped. "Actually yes, she did," she said. "She died of a massive coronary yesterday evening."
"Fuck," he said. "I'm an asshole."
"That's all right," she said. "I gather from the other patients that she wasn't the most comforting woman. Now Jack, is there anything I can do for you?"
Don't ask, he told himself. Don't. You. Dare.
"Yeah, actually," he said. "That guy to my right, just beyond the curtain -- what's his name?"
"Lincoln Smith," she said.
"You're kidding," he said. "That's fucking hilarious."
"Why did you want to know his name?"
"Because in the five nights I've been conscious in this joint I can't sleep more than an hour until I'm woken up by that ass-head and his fucking pounding."
"Pounding?"
"Yeah, he's always pounding his head on the pillow."
"That's odd," she said, sincerely curious.
"It's irritating, is what it is," he said. "And now I can refer to him by name at night when I start screaming for him to shut up."
"You should understand Mr. Smith is in a lot of pain," she said solemnly, and vaguely defensively. "The man's been through a lot. He fought in Iraq, he lost his first wife and only child in a car wreck five years ago and now, well, now... this."
"I don't understand."
"You don't understand what?"
"How you could call the man Mister Smith and pass up the opportunity to say Lincoln," he said. "I mean, come on, how many guys have you met named Lincoln?"
She just shook her head and stared at him. "Any other complaints, Jack?"
"Yeah," he said, "that damned fly. It buzzes in the room in the dead of the night, lands on my nose and crawls around. I just wish I could slap the fucker. I try to wiggle my nose, but I never developed the talent. And all I can think about is how I learned in school that a fly shits every few times a second. So my nose is probably crusted with microscopic fly poop. There's probably maggots in my nostrils right now."
"Okay then. I suppose I'll put up some fly tape."
"Marry me." She laughed under her breath. Jack didn't like that laugh. It was like she knew something she shouldn't know, she he studied her for a moment before saying in a sad voice, "You don't seem to like me."
"I like you just fine," she said. "After all, you'll be my first."
"I'll be gentile."
"I mean the first patient I've ever had that's had a full body cast," she said with a roll of her eyes. "And it really is something to see. Doctor Bozzolo says he's been at this for sixty-five years and your his first patient that ever required it. That it's the first body cast he's ever seen."
"That seems odd."
"Not really," she said, tilting her head. "Your television would coerce you into believing this is a pretty routine thing and all, but you should understand, casts of this size are extremely rare."
"Lucky me," Jack said. "Lucky. Fucking. Me."
"Well, I should get on my way," she said, standing up, holding her clipboard close to her breasts. "I have other patients to attend to."
"Sure you couldn't crack me out of this shell and give me a sponge bath?"
She looked at him, expressionless, and then smiled sarcastically. "Bye," she said to him in a teasing voice as she walked out of the door, nearly walking into a girl walking in. The girl was a petite blond, stick thin, and she wore a tight black T-shirt and a pair of ripped jeans. Nurse Mimi paused at the doorway, though it didn't really seem as if she wanted to. "You Mrs. Smith?"
"Tracy," she said, "I'm his girlfriend."
"Oh," she said, extending her hand. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Tracy."
Jack watched as they shook. Tracy liked her, he could tell, and Mimi hated, hated Tracy, and Tracy didn't have a clue. He laughed quietly. As soon as Mimi stepped out the doorway and turned the corner, Tracy began to walk passed Jack towards the bed on the other side of the curtain, but Jack decided to strike up conversation.
"So, you're Lincoln's girlfriend?" He asked, and she stopped, looked at him and nodded. "So, if you don't mind me asking, what happened to old Abe, anyway?"
"Just a little accident," she said. "He has some emotional issues and he, well, he kind of lost his head."
"I assume you don't mean literally."
And then she just laughed. A little too much, Jacked noted.
"So," she said, leaning on the sink, smiling at him. "Have a girlfriend?"
"Not for six years or so, no," he said.
"What was she like?"
"Intelligent, bitter," he said, looking for more words. "Hot. She was a goth girl, but not those faker vampire-wannabe goth girls, you know? I'm talking bondage, fetish, kinky kind of goth girl. Authentic, you know?"
She smiled. He absolutely hated her. She was an airhead, he could tell already, and he was thinking of cruel things to say to her but was quickly distracted by her shirt. He found himself smiling broadly.
"Hey," he said. "You like that band?"
She looked down at her black T-shirt as if she'd forgotten what shirt she was wearing, and then looked at Jack with surprise. "The Nocturnal Emissionaries?" She said. "Hell yes."
"I was their lead guitarist."
"Your Jack Jacobs?" She said, pointing at him. "You! You were at Dani's wedding!"
He closed his eyes, thinking to himself, Shit.
"You were there?"
She shrugged. "Everyone was there. And that was, like, so fucked up, what you did." She said it with a smile and a laugh, as if she were proud, even envious of him. "I couldn't friggin' believe it."
"Yeah," he said, almost in a mumble, "that, well, that was an accident."
"Then why'd you take off on your motorcycle like a bat out of hell?"
"It was an accident that made the bride's father very, very unhappy," Jack said, and very slowly, so the words were sure to sink in. "And he is a very big man."
"Yeah, I saw him yelling at you. With his bald head and his face beat red like that, he looked like a goddamn tomato."
He just stared at her. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he spotted Nurse Mimi standing just outside the door, and he wondered how long she had been there. She noticed that he noticed her, however, and quickly walked into the room, carrying her tray of food. Tracy turned to her.
"Do you know this is Jack Jacobs, ex-lead guitarist for the Nocturnal Emissionaries?"
Mimi shook her head. "Yeah, I know." She sounded totally disinterested.
"So Jack, why'd you quit the band?" Tracy said, turning back to him. "You quit just as the band got famous. They're making millions now. Billions, I bet."
That did it.
"Go fist fuck a garbage disposal," he said.
"Oh, pooh," she said, sticking her tongue out at him. "Mister grumpy."
"And Mimi," Jack said, turning to her with a smile, "I thought you had other patients to attend to?"
"I also have a head nurse," she said. "And evidently I'm on Jack duty."
"Can I feed him?" Tracy said, and Mimi just looked up at her, saying nothing.
"You are an excellent guitar player, I should say," Mimi threw out at Jack as she sat down on the chair beside him with the tray. "Better now, maybe, than you've ever been."
"Wait, you were there?"
She shrugged. "Come on, Jack, everybody was there. The Haggards are rich bastards. But I am curious why you decided to play the dirge song at a wedding."
"It was a mistake," he said, frustrated. "I didn't fucking mean to do it."
"Is that how you got in the accident?" Tracy asked, the light bulb in her head flickering on. "Riding back from the wedding?"
"Go suck off a loaded shotgun," he said to Tracy, but she just laughed. He was so confused by that girl.
"Come on, Jack," Mimi said. "Just give a little."
"Okay, okay, yes, so there were two accidents not separated from each other by more than twenty-five minutes. Two big, catastrophic accidents that rival the idiocy involved in me leaving the band six fucking years ago, okay? I'm a twisted, stupid fuck without even trying and it's all led me here, where I'm a human pinata being fed mashed potatoes in a piss-yellow hospital room I share with a nocturnal phantom fly and a man behind the curtain, who just happens to be closet-drummer named after a dead fucking president."
Mimi studied him for a second. "You want to talk about it?"
"Talk about what?"
"The wedding," she said. "You don't want to hear it, but I think this speaks volumes regarding what's going on inside of you, Jack."
"You know, for some reason I always messed up the theme song from Mission Impossible with the opening tune to Judge Wapner's People's Court when I was a kid. The same thing happened here. It was a stupid, embarrassing fuck up that will be catastrophic to my little career."
"I think this is different."
"Are you a nurse or a fucking shrink?"
"Do you know why I think you associate marriage with death?"
"Maybe I don't, Mimi. Maybe I just fucked up. Is it possible that's it's that goddamn simple? Maybe it's a premonition; maybe it's a sign that if I get married, I'll die. Maybe remaining a bachelor will extend my life. Or maybe some wires got crossed in my brain that day. Who fucking knows?"
"You're terrified to commit to anything beyond your deep-seated psychological need to keep your options open, but you don't seem to realize that not making a choice is still making a choice."
"That's a lot coming from someone who doesn't even fucking know me," he barked. "And I'm fine being alone, thank you very much. I need to be alone. That isn't an issue."
"Oh, the hell it isn't. You think marriage would obliterate your freedom and make your independence evaporate; that you'd become just another sheep amidst the flock. You're afraid that if you get too close to anyone that everything you consider your own, everything your consider yourself will die."
"Married, buried?"
"Exactly," she said, "and it keys in with your music, too."
"Cute pun."
"Really, Jack," she said in a tone she hoped would exorcise Jack's relentless sarcasm. "The band was at it's height and you quit it. Walked away. Now you get a great opportunity playing for a rich family at a huge wedding, a great opportunity that could launch you on a good career and..."
"And what? I fuck it up?"
"On some level, it's self-sabotage."
Jack sighed. "Look, this is just psychobabble bullshit. Just feed me my mashed potatoes."
"Geez," Tracy said, hands on her non-existent hips, "are you always so grouchy?"
He still hated her, but he felt a little bad. "No," he said, taking a breath. "I don't know. Sometimes. I'm just getting a little cabin fever, you know?"
"So what do you miss the most, being all locked up in there?"
"Movement," he said.
"Really."
"Okay, fucking."
"I'll suck your cock," Tracy said.
Mimi stopped dead in her tracks, as if held in suspended animation, her hand holding the towering spoonful of mashed potatoes in Jack's closed moth. Jack had also stopped dead in his tracks, staring at Tracy. And with a mouth full of mashed potatoes, he said, "Yewl whop?"
Jack couldn't believe it. This girl, this dumb girl, she had answered the question on the tip of his tongue that he had been trying, trying, trying ever so much not to ask.
Maybe he had misheard her, though. He had to have misheard her.
"I'll suck your cock. I'll be back around tonight."
She hopped to the door.
Mimi yelled, "Visiting hours end at -- "
And the door slammed. She took the spoon out. He chewed, swallowed. She put the spoon back in the empty bowl, placed the tray on the cart, and flipped through the papers on her clipboard. Then she grabbed a pen. "So, I have to ask you some questions, okay Jack?"
"Why so formal all of a sudden?" He asked, smiling.
She paused again, but this time resumed with a laugh. "No way," she said, flipping through the papers on her clipboard. "Tell me your middle name really isn't Johnson."
"Fuck you," he said. "And you smell like formaldehyde. What's up with that?"
She looked away from the clipboard and at him. She seemed a little frustrated. "Tell me, how is it that a man as charming as you hasn't had a single visitor?"
"No family," he says, "no friends, not really. You know the story."
"Well, someone sent you flowers and a card."
"Oh yeah," he said. "I forgot about that. Beats the hell out of me who it could be from."
"You haven't read it?" she said, picking up the card. "Well, let's see who it's from." And she read it. "It's a simple, 'Get Well Soon'," she said. "The card is signed SAA. Someone's initials, perhaps? Or your place of employment?"
"No," he said, sighing, "I'm self-employed. Or was self-employed. That's my support group."
"Do you mind if I ask for what?"
"You just did. And yes you can."
"Okay," she said, "what does it stand for? Sarcastic Assholes Anonymous?"
"You're funny. I like you. Think you might hop in the sack with me?"
"You're not my type."
"I could ride you like a pony, slap your ass and say, `Who's your mummy?' Get it? Fucking laugh already."
"Sex Addicts Anonymous!" She said.
He didn't say anything for a moment. "So is that a no, then?"
Her eyebrow lifted. "So you fuck compulsively, huh?"
He paused, then thought, Oh, what the hell. "Masturbate," he said, frustrated, "I chronically masturbate, all right?"
"Jack," she said, laughing. "That's an ironic name for a chronic masturbator. Especially with a middle name like Johnson."
"As you can probably imagine, I've heard that one before."
"It's got to be a bitch being in that body cast, unable to touch your pecker," she said. "Is that why you've been so grumpy?"
He didn't answer.
She sat down on the chair beside his bed and scooted it towards him, getting close to his face. "Look," she said. "There's no reason to be embarrassed, all right? There's nothing wrong with a healthy, sexual appetite."
Aw, he thought. We're finally bonding.
"I haven't had a relationship in six years," he said. "My sexual appetite is limited to manual labor. That, my dear, is indeed embarrassing."
"So you had a problem with relationships," she said, "and you found a way around that while still taking care of your instinctual drives. There's nothing wrong with that. We've all got our ways of dealing."
"Sounds like you speak from experience."
"I do."
"So what's your way of dealing?"
"Cadavers."
"Fuck. I feel better all ready. Downright normal. We shouldn't have taken this long to break the ice."
"I'm serious. Don't judge me."
He was quiet for a moment, trying to interpret her facial expressions and body language. Disturbingly, she seemed to be telling the truth. She banged dead fellows.
"Don't you ever wonder if they're still, you know, hanging around?"
"What, you mean like they're watching me as I ride their vacated bodies? I've thought of it quite extensively. I mean, consider the whole thing. Can they still feel it, even if they might be standing as an apparition a few feet away, watching? Would watching someone fuck your dead body be considered voyeurism? At the point I'm fucking the corpse does it constitute rape, really, or is it essentially no different than ramming my cunt down on a dildo strapped into a blow-up doll?"
"Wow. Fucking deep. You're like the Socrates of Necrophilia."
She didn't even blink. She had apparently already adapted to his sarcastic potty-mouth, he thought. And he was falling for her. It scared him how intense it was. He'd die to get inside her. Then again, he thought, he'd, like, literally have to die to get inside her.
"And there are stories here and there. They're interesting. I've heard it through looking into Tantra, heard it elsewhere. Like this one monk was fucking a young deceased girl and she came back to life. Her parents were so grateful they forgave him for his actions."
"The dick," Jack said sarcastically, "it's the original magic wand. And I'm no stranger to magic tricks, either, let me tell you. Hell, if it didn't have a hard outer coating and a bed pan beneath it, I'd show you how I can pull a rabbit out of my ass."
Again, she didn't blink. Damn, he thought, am I losing my touch?
"If you ever get out of this shell of yours, fucking the dead is actually quite liberating. You should try it sometime."
"I'm not that sick. And I've never preferred a dead fuck."
"You're really not that far removed, Jack. You said you have a predilection for goth girls, after all. From the pale white flesh, association with darkness, all of it points to an association with death. And the theme of dominance, of control, runs through it all. Necrophilia is just a purer manifestation of it. I simply have the courage to accept and run free with my desires. And if it wasn't for my predilection for the deceased, we would have never met. I only work in this shit-hole because of the lax security."
"So what, at night you creep downstairs and the morgue becomes your smorgasbord?" He tried to shake his head but, of course, he failed. "And you're such a nice, intelligent, beautiful girl. What a waste. No wonder guys like me are stuck in the land of perpetually pud-whacking. I mean, honestly, you really have to kill yourself for a high-quality piece of ass nowadays."
"If only your dick was ice cold, I might saddle up."
"Can't you just give it a try? It's no dick-cicle, but presently I'm bound, so you'll have that whole control thing. It's not like I can move. Isn't that close enough?"
"Now you're sounding desperate. Tell you what," she said, "if you make it out of that cast alive, I'll give you a sponge bath in ice water and if you promise to lie still I swear I'll fuck the living hell out of you. Deal?"
"Sounds wonderful, but you're overlooking the shrinkage that occurs in the cold when it comes to us fellows with a pulse. How about something less extreme and more immediate? You suck my dick and I'll do something for you."
"You're not my type."
"C'mon, what do you really look for in a man?"
"A flat line. What do you like in a girl?"
"My penis, preferably. But how about you just put some ice packs on my face and a few cubes in my mouth? You can straddle my face and I'll slither my tongue in your pussy and show you the benefits of riding a live one. I'll get a blow job and you'll get the best of the lands of the living and the dead. It'll be like fucking a zombie, sort of, only I look like a mummy. That's in the ballpark of your style, isn't it?"
"Actually, it sounds enticing. So long as you can manage to put a hole in your cast so I can suck you off, I'm down. What are you doing tonight?"
He laughed. "I'm actually kind of busy tonight. Tracy, you know."
"I hate to burst your bubble, but I doubt that fucking ditz was serious."
"Oh, what, because she said it with her boyfriend on the other end of the curtain?" Jack laughed. "What's he gonna do, yell at her? He didn't have much to say when she offered."
"He doesn't talk much, Jack. He has no tongue. And to be honest," she said, lowering her voice, "he wouldn't be the best lay right now."
"Oh, that's just crude," Jack said. "Have a heart."
"Look who's talking," she said. "Regardless, I wouldn't get your hopes up regarding that little slut sucking you off."
"Maybe she will, maybe she won't," he said. "But I'm counting on her. So you'll have to wait in line."
"I'm very impatient. That's a shame."
"Oh, you twisted my arm. How's four-o'clock sound?"
"You'd better be ready."
"Wait, are you serious? You're not serious."
She grinned a devilish grin. "I guess you'll just have to wait and see. But I've got to be running along now."
"Running to the basement to crack open a cold one, are we?"
"Jealous?"
"That necrophilia exists? That this obviously means that there are dead men that are getting laid more often than I do? Quite frankly, yes, it does make me a bit jealous."
"Well, I'll see you at four, Jack."
"I'll be waiting. Maybe you can kill that nasty nose-fly, too."
But she was already out the door.
For some strange reason, that night he was able to sleep, but he was violently torn from the merciful shroud of slumber by what, while he was still for a few moments in his dream, appeared as an old, leather-skinned man in suspenders and a multicolored flannel shirt chopping down an old, dead, thick, scary-looking tree in the middle of the night with a thunk, thunk, thunk.
When he opened his eyes, he was confused for just another mere second before he realized the source of the sound, and the realization skipped the editing process and went straight to his mouth with a loud, bellowing, "LINCOLN! STOP IT!" His roommate failed to listen, of course, as Jack had predicted, and he gritted his teeth in futility. "I swear, you inglorious bastard, if I ever break out of this stiff fucking cocoon I'm going John Wilkes Booth on your crippled ass."
Though listening to his mouth you would never imagine it, Jack did have a guilt complex, and his brain started flagellating him over what he had said to Lincoln. It came in the voice of that luscious and vicious Nurse Mimi, who had told him earlier in the day how the poor guy had been through hell, how he had lost his first wife and only child. He had even been a military man. Suffered the agony of war.
War. The military. That's then it hit him. Of course, Jack thought, of course. It was so fucking cliche it should have hit him like a ton of goddamn bricks earlier. He was a military man. Morse code. The motherfucker wasn't pounding senselessly, he was pounding in Morse code. Back when he was in his old band, the Nocturnal Emissionaries, Jack had learned Morse code because they had wanted to enter a coded message within one of their singles. He tried to remember, he listened carefully to Lincolns pounding, and got: T-R-A-C-Y-D-I-D-I-T.
Adrenaline shot through him. "Fuck," he said aloud.
Then a head shot up from between his widely-separated legs like a gopher from straight out of hell and he heard a sweet, stupid, Valley Girl sigh of disappointment that went, "Aww. I wanted to surprise you."
The pounding stopped immediately.
"Tracey?"
"Sorry it took so long. I had to sharpen my knives. And clean them."
The adrenaline kept pumping.
"Since I'm doing you a favor, though, I've got to ask you for one. Linky has to watch."
"Huh? What? Why?"
"Bastard cheated on me. I want him to see me please another man." she got up, pulled the curtain away and there lay a man with casts on his legs, a cast on his crotch and no tongue. She rolled him on his side, put duct tape on his mouth and giggled, looking back at Jack. "Duct tape," she said, shrugging, "it's a girl's best friend."
"You know," Jack said, swallowing, trying to control his voice but failing miserably, "I hate to disappoint you -- and trust me, that's the last thing in the goddamn fucking universe I want to do right now -- but I'm having second thoughts. Getting cold feet."
"Aww," she said, leaving her husband a moment and kneeling down again right by his cast-covered crotch. "Small dick?"
"What?"
"Don't be embarrassed, his isn't the greatest," she said, motioning her head towards the mangled mess of a man to their right. "Or it wasn't the greatest. Because now, you know..."
"No Lincoln log?"
"Yeah," she said, brightening again.
He cringed. "Uh, Linky... has no dinky?"
"Linky without his dinky! Chop-chop-chop!"
The woman is insane, he thought. Fuck.
She got up and proceeded to put the scotch tape over his eyelids. "Wouldn't want you to miss a second," she said, patting the man's head. Then, turning to Jack and pointing her finger at her husband, eyes suddenly so large and wild-looking they could be straight out of a cartoon, she said, "Just like in Clockwork Orange! I fuckin' love that movie, don't you?"
"One of my favorites," he said, and it was, but he didn't think he'd ever be able to watch it after seeing this.
She smiled when she put the last bit of scotch tape over his open eyelid and then got down between Jack's legs again, lying the toolbox just to the side of her. She started placing various serrated knives and what looked like tiny-looking saws on his belly. Thinking for a moment with her index finger to her limps, going, "hum," dramatically, she finally picked up the largest, a long silver blade with sharp teeth and smiled his way in a mad, innocent fashion. "Okey-dokey," she said. "Time to release the hostages!"
"Wait!" He said, almost screamed.
"Relax!" She said dismissively, jabbing the blade violently into the cast. "It's just like carving a pumpkin, but with a mushroom inside with two hangy-balls."
She jabbed again.
"Ha! Jack-o-lantern!"
Again.
"Man," she said, "this is tough."
Jack said, "Maybe we should go for another night."
"No," she said, pointing her finger at him like a disobedient child. "You have a healthy sexual appetite and you're very nice. Well, not always nice, exactly, but you've got a good sense of humor, and I like you, and you've been trapped up inside here like a... "
"Grumpy mummy in suspended animation."
"Yeah," she said, smiling wider, "and you need something to relax you, something to quell this tension inside you. Really, Jack, you're very tense. You need a good blow job in the very least. And that thing's not gonna suck itself, ya know?"
She slammed the blade down again.
"And has that thing even gotten any air or seen the light of day? It's locked up in there like a turtle in a super-glued shell. It's inhumane. Little snake's gotta get some sunshine, you know?"
She slammed down the blade again, and Jack jumped, as most as he could within his full-body shell, anyway. She finally put the bald down on his belly -- blade sideways -- with a frustrated sigh. "You know, Jack this just isn't working."
He breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, as I was saying, maybe we should just postpone..."
"That's why I brought this," she said, smiling, and he could see it in the darkness of the room, but what really got his blood pumping was the noise; a noise that was unmistakably that of a drill. "I come prepared. And if this doesn't work," she said, holding up the tiny saw and then shrugging, "well, I've got a little baby axe with your crotch's name on it, bubba! By the way, what is your crotches name?" She began sawing into the cast just then and nodded her head in pleasure like she was sawing into a turkey. "Oh yeah," she said, nodding and then looking up at him, "this is working just perfectly."
"Please stop, oh gosh oh fuck please please please stop."
"Oh, stop being such a pansy," she said as she went on sawing, "you're not thinking clearly, all the cum's backed up into your brain and it's driving you mad. Once I get this sucker open I'll suck you off and then use some rubber cement and than put this little part of the cast right back over your crotch and nobody will know and maybe when you get out of here you can come home with me and I'll show you how rockin' my pussy is, how `bout that?"
Eyes tightly closed, teeth clenched tight as possible, when all went silent he thought, for a moment, he was dead, but then he felt something, something like an exhale from his extremities. He opened his eyes slowly to find her mouth wide open in exaggerated style, playfully looking up at him above his visible mushroom tip. "It's Jack's beanstalk! Look, Linky," she said, turning to him, pointing to Jack's penis (erect, which confused him, given the circumstances), and saying, "goddamn python to your Gardner snake!" She giggled, looking back at Jack, with the knife in her hand, to say, "which is MIA, by the way. But this little soldier," she said, spreading her hands at it as if she was the Frugal Gourmet and this was a finished dish, or as if Jesus about to usher in the second coming, "This is no cocktail weenie. This is bulging Kielbasi. This will be simply delish..."
Why, he thought. Why was that knife in her hand.
But it wasn't a question.
"Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Tracy's gonna..." And she dove out of sight, down between his legs. And he felt her fiddling down there, but this? This was no blow job.
"Oh fuck. Fuckity fuck. What are you doing?"
"Removing the catheter," she said in a matter-of-fact manner.
"You know how to do that?"
She looked up at him, her eyes like two sparkling suns rising up out of hell at the horizon of his crotch. "Relax," she said, and then, a few seconds later, all upbeat, "All done!"
Oh, please put down the knife, he thought. She didn't. Knife still in her left hand, she grabbed his penis with her right -- a nice, firm grip, and slowly lowered her mouth onto it, puckered lips, tight lips slowly expanding and, as she did so, she lowered her hands down to the base at the very same pace, letting one finger leave at a time until, at the very base, there was just her index finger pressed against her thumb, her halo hanging at the base of his manhood.
"Oh my god," he said, "you're good. You made an atheist say god. You're good." And he meant it, and it was difficult, at this point, to balance the beauty of her blow job technique with the looming threat of that shimmering blade and her to some degree apparent, and to some degree strongly implied madness. Perhaps she did do that to Lincoln, but perhaps he really deserved it, he told himself. Perhaps she didn't do that to Lincoln but thought he deserved it. Perhaps she wouldn't bite or slice off his cock.
Thunk. When he heard the noise, he snapped out of it a second -- though the pleasure of her continued licking, puckering, stroking wasn't too far in the background -- and saw that, in the passion of the moment, she'd slammed the knife blade down into his side. It was just the cast, though. Still. And when she did it again -- lifted up the knife and then, with violence, swung it down -- horrible thoughts returned in full. What made it worse is that it just made him harder.
Then it hit him: she had come in late. There was still the possibility that Nurse Mimi wasn't pulling him chain and would come at four to saddle up his face with ice and ride him off into the sun set. She might arrive and save the day. His corpse-mounted heroine. If he could just hold off, he might keep this psychotic woman here long enough.
He had to hold off. He couldn't come. This meant life or death. And it would certainly be easier if this was not the best goddamn blow job he had ever gotten in his life, true, he thought to himself, but he had to manage it, he could manage it, he would manage it. Yoga stuff wouldn't be enough, he had to go for the old trick. Think of something horrible.
Think, think, think of something horrible.
Then he remembered. He stretched his eyes to look over at Lincoln. He looked as catastrophically bad as he did the first time Jack had lain his eyes upon him only ten minutes before, only now only one eyelid was taped open, and the other twitched, hanging halfway-closed, the little piece of scotch tape stuck to his lashes flapping erratically in the air, as if saying hello. Jack mouthed to him, "You're a lifesaver." Lincoln looked at him as if he were a moron.
Then, as if in answer to his hopes, he heard a noise. The click of a door. She took her mouth off his cock with a popping sound, like the kids used to do in high school when they stuck a finger in their cheek and flipped it out quickly. He could never manage that. Just the hand-to-the-sweaty-arm-pit-fart noises. Anyway, someone seemed to be coming. And it wasn't him.
She knelt there a few inches from his crotch for a few seconds, staring at the door. The footsteps had stopped. There was only silence now, but then there was another noise. Something. Squirting. "I'm puttin' the rubber cement on," she said, and he could see her rubber cementing the edges of the cast, fumbling a little here and there, shaking, and the hope of her being caught and him being saved made him all the harder, and then she stopped. Still no footsteps. "Maybe they went away," she whispered.
And then they heard something else, and she almost slammed down the manhole of cast down on the hole in his crotch, but stopped, because it was only a fly. The land-on-the-nose fly. It came every night, he thought, did the damned thing have a schedule? But the fly stopped buzzing, and he felt it touch his skin again, but it had evidently listened to him last time, for it did not land on his nose.
No, it landed on the tip of his penis.
And then they heard footsteps. And then she slammed the manhole of cast down, right on top of the fly, right on top of his boner, and he screamed, "OOOOW!" And then Tracy ran off into the darkness behind the curtain.
The door opened. "Jack?"
"Mimi," he said in an exasperated voice, the ache still killing him. He could feel the cum dripping from his dick -- he hoped it was cum; cum and not blood -- and he felt the fly crawling, buzzing, flying, landing on his dick again and crawling all the more. He knew he must be insane, but he thought he could even feel the little bastard pooping a few times a second.
"Why were you screaming?"
"I had a nightmare."
She approached him and smiled, saying, "I don't suppose you managed to liberate the long-fellow, so I'm just going to --"
And at that moment, the circular portion of cast that crazy lady had cut out popped upward, lifted by his erection, only it wobbled back and fourth like a bobble-head, wearing the piece of cast like a graduation cap.
"I'll be damned," she said, looking at it, sincerely surprised, "it's a fucking Jack-in-the-Box. How did you manage to do it, you crafty sonuvabitch?"
"A magician, you know. He never reveals his secrets."
It was lame, but it was all he could come up with.
She shrugged and threw two packed of ice on his chest. "Okay," she said, sighing, getting down on her knees, "a promise is a promise."
But then she stopped, looking down, down below his crotch, and the look on her face when she looked up on his was one of worry, confusion, even outright fear.
"Fuck, Jack, what's with the box of knives?" She looked around with her eyes, then mouthed to him, "Is somebody in here?" He pointed to the left with his eyes. she looked at him, astounded, saying, "Lincoln?" and he looked at her as if she was a moron. "The ditz?" She mouthed.
And he tried to say yes with his eyes the best he could. It worked. She stood up and walked back to the doorway, and Jack was worried, for he thought, for a moment, that she was going to leave him with the psycho. Instead, she flipped on the light switch.
"Somebody there?"
No one answered, and then she crouched down slowly, her knees cracking, and came back up with a blade bigger than any one Jack had seen the crazy bitch use earlier. He tried to breath as she approached the curtain. Pushing it aside, she jumped when she saw the mangled man dict taped, with scotch tape vibrating from his flickering eyelids.
"Mr. Smith?"
Jack suddenly found himself fearing for her life, though he thought this might only be because the end of her life might damn well mean the end of his own life as well.
"Hetay razycay itchbay otgay a ifeknay," he said to her, "Onnagay ut-offcay ymay ickday. Osay ebay arefulkay."
She spun around and looked at him with an eyebrow crawling up her forehead, the knife still in her hand, blade downwards. "What the fuck did you just say?"
And just then, from behind her, he saw Tracy with that small sledgehammer held up high above her head with both hands, pulling it back and then swinging it down.
"DUCK!"
As the hammer came racing down with Tracy stepping forward, Mimi turned around, gasping, and leaned out of the way as she instinctively backed up, falling into and up Jack's crotch area, and began to lift the fist she had formed around the handle of the knife. The sledgehammer hit her thumb, forcing her fist and the handle down with a great forced, like a hammer to a nail, and it took Jack a second to realize that the blade was now deep, deep, deep within his chest.
"Uckfay," he said with a weak grunt.
He began to feel a warm, tingling, distancing sensation rising above the noise of the pain.
Tracy looked at him. "No. Snookie," she said with sad, wide eyes.
Mimi kicked her in the crotch and Tracy went flying against the wall, the sledgehammer falling from her hands, and Mimi went sliding back down Jack's crotch as he tried to grasp for air. Finding another knife on the floor, Mimi quickly rose to her feet and slammed the blade right above the space between the girl's eyes, forcing it in deeper by pounding on the handle with her other hand.
Throwing herself onto Jack, calling his name, she got no response. Jack tried to speak, but he was drifting away quickly. His eyes open, unblinking, soon to be empty. She rested her head on his shoulder. And his world faded.
The next thing he knew, it was cold, but there was a warmth around the center of his body. The cast was off, so he knew he must be dead. But he suddenly felt his body, a cold metal surface on his back, and he lifted his shoulders and head upward, his eyes bursting open, his mouth agape and drawing in a deep gasp of air, and all he saw was Mimi, naked Mimi, naked and shocked Mimi straddling him in this dark, cold room.
She placed her hands on his chest. "Jack?"
Turning his head coughing, he turned back to her and managed to say, "It's true. It's fucking true. A guy really does have to die for a quality piece of ass nowadays."
"Your an asshole," she said, "but I love you."
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