(Liz Claiborne, as were the high heels twenty yards further down Sherman) and turned. It didn’t take him long to see what had spooked Von. Genital warts stared back at him, an algae of shame which had burst open in a few places due to one or another of the night’s mishaps. If for some reason he hadn’t seen them, his nose would have notified him quickly enough. The reek of the mucus-like fluid raped his olfactory senses right up the ass.
“Damn, Von . . . that’s almost enough to make a man reconsider.”
“You speak the gospel, Greg; it really is almost enough. But given we’re a couple of resourceful bad-asses, help me flip over Orca here and we’ll try plan B.”
Plan B wasn’t much better. Von felt like pointing out the obvious, so he said, “She’s got a bunch of black beetles crawling out of her asshole.”
“You see!” Greg shouted. “I told you it was Sarah Pensie!”
Von decided he didn’t want to know exactly why this observation legitimized Greg’s theory, and didn’t ask. He grabbed a can of Raid off a nearby workbench and sprayed about half of it into the infested orifice. Insecticide and vaginal befoulment battled for olfactory prevalence in the confines of the basement.
This couldn’t be very sanitary, but you only live once.
Von didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, and he was still ever most thankful for this apparently sexually adventurous bounty bestowed upon them, but this particular gem had admittedly lost a little luster beneath the jeweler’s magnifying glass. He decided he could afford to savor a bit longer, maybe give his senses a bit longer to acclimate to the godforsaken reek.
Von clapped Greg on the shoulder. “Suit up and go to war, soldier.”
Greg gave him a thumb-up, obviously trying not to breathe in. “Lock and load.”
He started unbuckling his pants. Von didn’t necessarily want to be around to witness what was going to happen, but he didn’t trust her alone with Greg.
He was going to at least busy himself with other pursuits when something caught his eye: Greg’s asshole looked incredibly chafed and swollen. Von tried not to let his gaze linger, but the image haunted. It solved many a mystery—why Greg had been squirming in his seat all night and the probable truth behind why he’d curiously asked to borrow Von’s toilet brush a couple days ago.
I keep pretty sick company, Von thought, opening the woman’s purse. Look at him. Sodomizing himself with household utensils was just the tip of the iceberg. The crazy bastard wasn’t even wearing a condom.
Von opened her wallet, trying to ignore the grunts and Greg’s awkward breathing, apparently searching for the air of least resistance. Triumph soared in Von’s breast. “Hey, Greg, I told you it wasn’t Sarah Pensie! It’s just some whore named Claire Perkins.”
Greg finished his tenure in Claire’s ass, then pulled out so quickly that he lost equilibrium and slid backwards on the floor. “Claire Perkins!” he yelled. “Man, it’s a good thing I chose the backdoor—this bitch is my cousin! I wouldn’t have felt right about sticking her box.”
Von snorted. “Well. Let a real man show you what it’s all about. Help me get her face-up again.”
They rolled her again. Von took a grease rag off a work bench and tried to clear the runway. Her chancres gave way and burst beneath the cloth, soaking through to his fingers. It felt like popping the bubblewrap cushioning a package. A mantra ran through his mind each time another sore exploded: “It’s okay, I have a condom . . . It’s okay, I have a condom . . . It’s okay, I have a condom …”
The prize he uncovered admittedly wasn’t worth the effort. He’d seen raw hamburger at McDonald’s more fetching than this. Beggars can’t be choosers, he thought. He slipped on the condom and eased into her—carefully putting his weight down, lest he incite more chancres to revolt. It occurred to him that wading into a kiddie pool full of cottage cheese wouldn’t be very different from this.
No, damn it, NO!
It was too much, as he feared it would be. He flashed on a hundred grotesque images to try to hold off the combustion, but they only seemed to rally the dam-bursting sensation in his scrotum. His condom was instantly filled to the brim.
Von took a razor and carved out Claire’s asshole five minutes later, amidst many wet sounds like a kid goose-stepping on slushy snow. With a little effort he slid the excised anus around his member. “You weren’t kidding, Greg,” he proclaimed. “Fits like a glove!”
It cheered him up instantly. Now it was just a matter of waiting to get hard again.
“I’m gonna fix me a sandwich,” he said. “You want one?”
“Is a pig’s ass pork?” Greg replied.
“Be right back.” Von scaled the basement steps, growing accustomed to the feel of Claire’s ass bound around him. He extracted some sandwich meat from the fridge with the appropriate condiments, as well as some French bread. Halfway through completing his task, he figured he should wash his hands.
As he dried them off, a siren went off in his head—he’d left Greg alone with the body. He crept down the stairs far enough to where he could get a quick look-see at how Greg had chosen to occupy himself. Von silently cursed his carelessness as he watched.
Greg had further slit open Claire’s belly with a box cutter and yanked out her bladder. He now held it over his head as he ran it through with the knife, each gouge showering him with another yellow stream in a postmortem golden shower.
Von steamed. Bad enough the son of a bitch had crammed that toilet brush up his ass God knew how many times—no, he’d had to damage that most blessed of gifts, something that would never simply fall into Von’s lap again as long as he lived. He could practically feel part of his soul die forever in that moment. If the universe had been sizing them up to make this whole ultra convenient hit-and-run recovery thing a regular gig, Greg had singlehandedly proven them both unworthy forever. You make the most of damaged goods; you don’t corrupt them.
Von went back to the kitchen and undid his jeans. He opened Greg’s sandwich and slid his meat between the bread and fixings. He was uncircumcised, and an appreciable amount of pud butter was still congealing in his foreskin. Von solved the problem by wiping it clean on the bread, then patted it shut.
Greg tried to act like nothing had happened while Von was away, the bladder held behind his back as if his mysterious outbreak of liquid jaundice wasn’t a pulsing neon sign. Von passed him the sandwich, thinking, Can’t have a submarine without semen now, can we? That a bodily excretion inside of an edible Trojan horse might be like water off a duck’s back to his friend—the guy who had just moments ago cornholed his dead cousin and slashed open her bladder like it would yield scented bath oils—never occurred to him.
He heard a sound like a washcloth being dropped in the bathtub. It was Claire’s bladder hitting the back wall as Greg tried to ditch the evidence. A bovine look of innocence plastered on his face, Greg took a heroic bite out of his contaminated sandwich, sinewy strands of meat pulling taut and snapping as he tore away, a token Mmmmmmm! as his compliment to the chef. If Von hadn’t been looking for the wince of disgust on his pal’s face, he might have missed it. Greg never missed a beat, nodding as he chewed, eyes slightly watery.
This, along with another joy-buzz, restored Von’s good mood.
He was hard again.
JOURNAL ENTRY, JANUARY 21
Where does something like this begin? You wake up every day and ask yourself how it became what it is and you always come back to fantasy. This kind of fantasizing, though . . . it doesn’t suddenly happen. It isn’t like those dreams in the womb, images from a life you haven’t even begun. Or at least it doesn’t seem that way.