It wasn’t like he’d never seen a naked blonde. He’d lost count, not that he kept a running tally. It wasn’t even the fucking that mattered to him after a while; it was the fact that they would do anything to fuck him: Blondes, redheads, brunettes … a few who shaved their heads as well as their pussies, other guys’ wives, business partners’ daughters, cocktail waitresses who’d serve him a martini and then bend right over a table for her tip. Any woman in the world, he didn’t care who she was or who she was married to or who she was related to, she wanted to fuck him. Power groupies, that’s what he thought of them. The rush they must have felt when they slid onto his cock. Every woman was his slut; he just took it for granted. It made him want to grin, but he couldn’t.
This blonde was something else. Tall, perfect skin, legs that went on forever. His gaze was drawn to the little dimples just above her ass on either side of her spine. Her hair was pale, snowy. She practically shone in the dim room where he lay.
“Hey, sweetie, I’m ready … no need to deny yourself.”
Funny, he heard his own voice, but he swore his mouth didn’t move.
The woman turned. “Not quite yet, Mr. Kern. I’ve a bit more work to do.”
“Huh? Where the hell am I anyway?”
“Hammerman’s.”
“Ham … Hammerman’s? The funeral parlor?”
“Remember? You made a pre need contract; you were very precise, or shall we say, explicit about how you wanted to be laid out.”
“Laid out? What kind of fucking joke is this? I’m not …”
“Yes you are.”
“… dead?”
“I’m Angeliste; I’ll be your embalmer this evening.”
“But … but …”
“You said you wanted to be laid out on a dais naked, and you wanted to be erect. You bet your brother that women would line up to fuck your corpse.”
“That was just a joke … I didn’t think I’d ever really …”
“Die?”
“Jesus! I’m only …”
“Forty-two. Well, dear, you were lovely on the outside, but on the inside you were a mess: enlarged heart, diseased liver and kidneys. A couple of spots had just appeared on your lungs. Believe me, cardiac arrest is preferable. It’s quick.”
“You’re naked,” he said, as if his mind needed to shift subjects, unable to comprehend his apparent mortality.
“You noticed. Yes, I like to work in the nude.”
She approached him and spread her fingers over his neck. She stepped away trailing a rubber tube. He could tell she was doing something around his groin, but he couldn’t feel.
“What are you doing? I can’t see.”
“You can see anything.”
“But I can’t lift my head.”
“Just let yourself rise a little, like a creamy foam head on a just-poured beer.”
The aspect of his vision changed, rising ever so slightly above his body. He watched her insert a syringe into his groin.
“Oh, God, what’s that?”
“We’re going to turn on my little pump now, and all that stinky stale blood will come out and go down the drain, and we’re going to replace it with some lanolin and chemicals that’ll make you look fresh as a daisy and just as pretty.”
He heard the motor hum, but he felt nothing. He looked down his body again in time to see her take his cock in her hand and insert a thick glass rod into it.
“Oh, my God!” He couldn’t look.
“Shhh, it can’t hurt you. How else did you think we were going to give you a hard-on?”
“But, it was a joke.”
“Was it? A man like you, who equated power and sex? Fucking for you was like advertising. You fucked anyone you wanted whenever you wanted because you could. You had the power, and the money. All those needy, ambitious women thinking you could do wonders for them, hoping that if they allowed you the use of their cunts you’d make them a star or make them rich or famous. You didn’t think they fucked you because they actually liked you, did you?”
“Of course not. Every one was a shallow bitch, but why should I turn them down? It was all fun.”
“You used them.”
“They were using me.”
“Indeed they were, no innocent victims here. Unless … you actually cared for one or two.”
The humming of the pump stopped. She withdrew the syringes and covered the wounds with a fingertip of wax. Then she stepped back. His cock was a rigid shaft now pointing straight at the ceiling. In life it had curved slightly
“All finished for now,” she said. “Time to call it a night.”
“Please, don’t leave me like this … alone.”
“Oh, not to fret Mr. Kern. You’ll have plenty of company.”
“Huh? Who?”
“Some ladies from your past. They’re really looking forward to reacquainting themselves with that lovely cock of yours.”
“But, I can’t feel anything.”
“Oh, you’ll feel … something. There, not so bad, eh?”
“Angel …”
“Angeliste.”
“Yeah … look, um, I’m really kinda … scared.”
She patted his forehead. “Playtime.”
“Huh?”
“Well, no innocent victims, like I said. But, there were consequences.”
If his heart were pumping, it would have skipped a beat.
“What do you mean … consequences?”
“Some of those poor bimbos had a hard time accepting the fact they’d been fucked and tossed over. Especially that girl you brought to the party after you closed the deal on that New York skyscraper, remember her?”
“How do you expect me to remember …?”
“Cheryl was her name. You told her you wanted to watch her ‘pull a train.'”
“Oh … oh, yeah. What a pig, she took on … I dunno, about twenty-five guys. She knew what she was doing; she put on a hell of a show.”
“She was so out of it afterward she took a tumble down a flight of stairs. Broke her neck. Your lawyers cleaned it all up.”
“Why are you bringing up all this ancient history?”
“She’s going to be keeping you company tonight, she and a few other ladies. She never did get to enjoy your famous cock.”
“But … She’s dead.”
“Hon, so are you. You know, I wonder if it’s technically necrophilia, if both parties are deceased.”
“Holy shit! What the hell are you saying?”
Angeliste stepped aside. If he could breathe he would have gasped. Nevertheless, he could smell, and what he smelled was hideous.
“Mr. Kern, you remember Cheryl, don’t you?”
He remembered; he remembered a bleached blonde with jugs falling out of a skimpy black dress … not this. It wasn’t even a corpse; it was a mass of bone and leathery hide held together with some kind of waxy crudshit.
If he could have opened his mouth, he would have screamed.
“That’s not a woman! It’s some rotten, stinking thing.”
“Well, what can you expect? She’s been dead seven years. Nobody stays pretty down there, Mr. Kern. Even I can’t make you look pretty forever.”
The thing moved toward him and hovered over his body; it settled onto his cock.
“No! Please, get it off!”
“That’s your job, Mr. Kern. Seven years … Cheryl’s awfully horny.”
“Make it stop! It’s gross, it’s like cold sludge, it’s like fucking shit! You said I wouldn’t feel …”
“I said you’d feel something.”
Like a piston, the corpse accelerated, each rise and plunge announced by a squish as his cock penetrated its putrefaction. Bits of leathery flesh fell off it and onto his stomach and chest. Then the thing shuddered and liquefied, sliding off him like as a thick ooze.
“Next up is Lana; she killed herself after she realized the screen test you promised her was bullshit. She’s only been in the ground a year.”
“God! It’s crawling with something!”
“Dear, yes. A bad embalm job, or maybe they just put her right in the hole. No family claimed her.”
The thing more closely resembled a human form, but its entrails were alive with some larval infestation and sagged outside its cunt.
“Lana likes to be eaten out.”
“No!”
“Yummy, isn’t she? Hurry up and get her off, there are plenty of ladies waiting in line.”
He wanted to retch, but he couldn’t.
* * * * *
“How are you feeling, Mr. Kern?”
The voice was soft, feminine. He blinked until the film in his eyes cleared.
“Where?”
“Mercy Hospital. You’ve been here four days.”
“Four days?”
“You were brought in retching up everything in your stomach, severely dehydrated. An exotic flu, we suspect. It was touch-and-go for a long time.”
“You’re a doctor?”
“Nurse practitioner. The resident physician will be in to see you shortly.”
She turned to leave and he grabbed her hand.
“I’m sorry!”
She placed his hand on the bed, patted it, and said. “Of course you are.”
Tears spilled over his cheeks. But he filled his lungs with air. He could breathe. He was alive.
“I’m sorry,” he sighed.
© 2009 Robert Buckley. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.