Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror (24 page)

“Every Last Drop” was first published in
Bloodsongs
magazine, Spring 1998, and reprinted in his collection
Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions
, Delirium Books, October 2000.

‡

John Everson is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels
Covenant, Sacrifice, The 13th, Siren
and
The Pumpkin Man
, all released in paperback from Leisure Books. Limited collector’s hardcover editions have also been released from Delirium, Necro and Bad Moon Books. He has had several short fiction collections issued by independent presses, including
Creeptych, Deadly Nightlusts, Needles & Sins, Vigilantes of Love
and
Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions
. Over the past 20 years, his short stories have appeared in more than 75 magazines and anthologies. His work been translated into Polish and French, and optioned for potential film production. For more on his fiction, art and music, visit www.johneverson.com.

† † †

I wrote a lot of erotic horror stories in the ’90s for a variety of small press magazines, and “Every Last Drop” is one of my favorites. I think it really captured what can become an obsessive compulsion to follow the lure of the forbidden into the dark. I’d write about that theme again years later in my novel Siren.

His breathing grew ragged. In the shifting kaleidoscope of electric light, his grey eyes reflected obscene plays of color, did not shine out their own. The woman was tan, California style—no lines. Her lips were shiny pink, an erotic complement to the nipples of her bobbing brown breasts, currently matching—or more correctly, setting—the rhythm of his respiration. She flipped a strand of sand-blonde hair away from her face, ice-blue eyes flashing with lust, sweat collecting on her forehead, lips pursed and moaning …

The holovision abruptly went blank-blue, and Tony zipped up.

That
was not your ordinary porno-blonde, he thought in admiration. Most of the blondes they used these days were like plastic dolls—the parts were all there, but the energy, the spirit—the spark that sometimes transfigured a 3-D bimbo into an orgasm-inducing fantasy—most just didn’t have it. They looked bored. They looked … faceless. Tits and ass a dime a dozen—sex goddesses were hard to find.

On the cyberbooth door he paused a moment to read the obscene graffiti. He didn’t know why, it was depraved and depressing and yet he always did. “Looking for black cock to suck? Call 546- …” “My wife screws you while I watch—ask for Leo (313) …” “Homos go to hell” … “The perfect blowjob: no names, no faces, no price, all privacy, unspeakable pleasure. Cum to Redroom Hotel #112 after 9 p.m.”

He read the last one again and shook his head. Nobody gave the perfect blowjob for free. He couldn’t
pay
Loni to give him one anymore at all. Tucking in his shirt he pushed open the door and walked quickly out of the back hall of the peep show. Men paced in the shadows, faces illuminated by the orange glow of silently smoking cigarettes, looking for the newcomer to proposition, waiting for the booth they wanted to free up. He grimaced in disgust and left the place, nodding at the wrinkled, bored cashier watching a “Dick Van Dyke Show” rerun.

Back when Loni had first gone out with him, she’d been eager to please, spreading everything for him just about anytime. She’d never been nuts about fellatio, but she serviced him dutifully. Their first couple years he’d nearly forgotten what the insides of these peep houses were like. Guys looking for anonymous sex with other guys, just for thrills or because they were too scared to admit they were gay and come out of the closet. Here it wasn’t gay or straight, it was diversion. Businessmen on a lark, husbands on desperation runs. He wouldn’t let these desperate men touch him, but he had no problem touching himself. If you couldn’t get it at home, you had to go somewhere …

Tony gunned the car and screeched out into traffic. He hoped Loni was in a good mood tonight—the blonde with the ice-blue eyes and pure-copper bod had left him wanting more. The new cyberbooths at the adult video store he’d frequented for years were great—but even though the women surrounded you like real life, you still couldn’t
feel
them. But thinking of that last scene made the crotch of his pants uncomfortable. He shifted in the seat and willed away an erection—which only served to increase its growth. Gripping his thighs together, he aimed the car onto the freeway and tried to relax.
That place was supposed to relieve th
e
tension, not create more
, he grinned to himself.

* * *

Loni was not in a good mood.

“You’re an hour late and I’ve got to make that train,” she fumed, shimmying out of her skirt in their bedroom. At 34, she looked good, he observed, better than when they’d met. Her chest, while not that of the goddess, was ample, if over-nippled. Her middle was potting out a bit but her hips always nailed his eye to their hidden valley, something which, at this particular moment, did not work in his favor.

“I’m changing Tony, you’ve seen it before. Go get something to eat.”

He reached out to massage her exposed behind. She slapped his hand away. “Go. There’ll be plenty of time for that next week. Right now I’m late and you’re pissing me off.”

Her dark eyes pierced the mental fog that arousal always drew around him. Loni grew easily irritated with his physical obsessions. Sometimes it was flattering; now it was in her way.

“Alright, alright,” he grumbled. “Did you leave me anything?”

“There’s Chinese in the fridge, some spaghetti from last night. You’ll have to warm it up yourself. If I miss this train, there’s not another one until 11 and Angie will be sitting at the station waiting for me all night.”

She finished pulling on jeans and drew a sweater over the bra strap Tony had been admiring from behind. She turned and caught him still staring.

“It’s only seven days. Go rent
Vampy Vixens
or something. I’ve gotta go. She slipped on a pair of black flats and grabbed her suitcase from the bed.

“I’ll call ya tomorrow. Now goodbye.”

She pecked him on the lips and was out the door.

The ache in his crotch flared again as he realized
that
was all he was going to get for quite awhile. Shrugging in defeat, he shambled into the kitchen.

He decided on the Chinese, but after aimlessly poking through pea-pods and some mutant pygmy chicken, ended up re-Saran-ing most of it. He wasn’t hungry, damnit, he was horny! He tried watching TV, but none of the canned laughs took his mind off the vision of pink lips wrapping around his erect member, a halo of beach-blown hair teasing his legs.

On a sudden impulse he pulled out the telephone directory and looked up the address of the Redroom Hotel. It turned out, as he’d expected, to be in a run-down section of the city, maybe a half hour’s drive. He watched some more TV, knowing in some way that he was killing time.

Waiting. Waiting …

… until the clock said 8:37. That would put him there around nine. Tony turned off the television and went to the garage.

* * *

Run-down is not the word for it,
he thought as he pulled into the lot. The unlit sign (which was big enough that he still picked it out from a couple blocks away) didn’t exactly promise the Hilton, and nobody seemed to be around.
Who knows how long that note had been markered onto the peep show door anyway
, he admonished himself. It was probably put there by someone in town for a night or two who was since long gone. He stopped in the hotel courtyard and shook his head. This was asinine. He could get mugged, get AIDS—maybe this was the site of ritual sacrifices. The newspaper’d just run an article about the rash of them downtown this year.

A clomping noise broke the pensive silence; made him whirl around, his heart kicking in double time. A sudden wind blew a drop of cold sweat from his forehead into his eye. There, on the brown brick wall at the end of the courtyard, a shadow grew, larger with each staccato slap. The clicking was footsteps, he realized, and they were coming his way. Go back—go forward—he didn’t know which way to turn. And then, as the shadow reached gargantuan, grotesque proportions, its Dr. Frankenstein stepped into view—a short, Asian fellow carrying a briefcase and striding quickly towards the parking lot. He bent his head as he passed Tony, seeming intent on not making eye contact. Tony relaxed and abandoning his thoughts of turning back to the car, decided to check and see if anyone was in room 112. He was here after all, and had a whole night to kill.

Night cloaked the courtyard sidewalk in shifting mystery. Bushes and weeds poked tendrils across the path, slowing his progress, their cold, tenuous gropings of his legs and belly made him shiver. The encroaching undergrowth made him wonder if this hotel was still in operation, but then, when he glanced around, he realized there were lights on in some of the rooms. The sign was out, the sidewalk beacons were unlit, but a blue glow poked through the curtains of the occasional occupied room. Upon reaching 112, his fears were confirmed. No light at all. He knocked anyway, and the door creaked open an inch at his attack.

“Hello,” he called through the black sliver of an opening. It was somehow darker in the room than it was outside. “Anybody home?” he drawled with mock levity.

There was no answer, only a heavy stillness that seemed to press against him like a smothering blanket. He wanted to turn and go home, but a stubborn duality drew him to stay. He wanted to
see
the room,
why
he didn’t know. It was not like there was going to be some tangible remnant of sex-gone-by to see. Still, he pushed the squealing door open some more and stepped inside, his hand trailing along the wall for the light switch. He found it, flicked it, and nothing happened. Except the door slammed shut. Tony backed against the wall, eyes straining to make out something through the inky black air.

“Who’s there,” he said, trying to keep a desperate quaver from his voice.

“Shhssssssssssssssssss,” something answered. It could have been a rattlesnake or a cat as easily as a human.

Something touched him, grabbed him at the waist. Tony froze, not knowing whether compliance was safest or if he should strike—and possibly risk getting stabbed or shot by his unseen assailant. Actually, he supposed the hands on his body couldn’t be accused of assault. He was the intruder here, after all.

The pressure on his left side abated and he felt a tickle at his crotch. His zipper protested in the dark, and then his belt loosened. Still he couldn’t move. He was so scared he wanted to scream, to run, but he could do neither, only stand flat against the wall in the groping night as his underwear dropped to his feet and something cold and smooth brushed against his cock—which completely ignored the paralyzed fear of the rest of him and responded with an instant erection.

Which was first gripped and tugged by a cold hardness,
like the surgical probing of a doctor wearing rubber gloves for a prostate exam
, he thought. And then there was a wetness, an engulfing, and the two gripping appendages began working the rest of him, pinching his buttocks, sliding down his thighs, moving with icy grace across the hair of his chest. They were warming now, as was Tony, who had surrendered the fear, surrendered his questions. He pressed his hands to the wall as the caressing hands worked their erotic way across his skin, the unseen mouth working with unbelievable expertise up and down his hardened member. Teeth trailed lazily across just the right nerves, fingers pinched his nipples at just the right moment. As the tingling in his groin grew to a waterfall of breath-stealing sensation, Tony realized that this was, indeed, the perfect blowjob and closed his eyes as the moment exploded.

When he opened them again, the hands had receded. He was sitting on the room’s short, sandpaper-rough carpet and could see now, sort of, in the darkness. There was no one else in the room.

“No names, no faces, no price,” the peep show graffiti had said. “Unspeakable pleasure.”

It delivered what it advertised, he thought, just as something small and hairy darted across his leg. Tony jumped up, ending his reverie with a shiver. Pulling up his pants, he left the room still buckling his belt.
Too weird,
he thought, hurrying back to his car. He was weak as he slid in behind the wheel. The experience had been so intense, so draining …
It was incredible
, he thought,
but too weird for me
.

* * *

“Tony? Tony?”

The vision of the blonde goddess from the peep show burying her head between his legs in a shadowy derelict hotel room vanished, replaced by the less welcome sight of his balding overweight boss, leaning over the desk and staring at him with a perplexed expression.

“Tony, you’ve been drooling into space for the past 15 minutes. Are you alright?”

Tony shook his head to clear away the stubborn ache of his daydream.

“Yeah, Bob. Sorry. I just … didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Why don’t you go lay down in the lounge for a few minutes?” Bob Mackenzie smiled. “I’d tell you to go on home, but I do need to have that Web report by the end of the week, you know.”

“I know. You’ll have it. I’m just having a little trouble concentrating today is all.”

Bob chuckled, a dry, lifeless sound, and clapped Tony on the shoulder. “Well, wake up, man.” He turned and lumbered back into his office. But Tony caught his watchful eye staring across the hall at him throughout the rest of the afternoon. And try as he might, the blonde kept nuzzling back into his consciousness. It was embarrassing. He couldn’t leave his desk without first taking several minutes to meditate on bloody images of mutilated animals and abandoned babies to deflate the tent in his pants. First the incredible movie with the goddess and then the bizarre blowjob last night—the two were merging together in his thoughts, a union so powerful his sex was reacting as if he were a male dog surrounded by females in heat. When five o’clock rolled around, he moved like a zombie towards the door, praying nobody was looking at the zipper of his pants. It was bulging, and as he fumbled in his pocket for car keys he suppressed the almost unstoppable urge to grab and go for it, right there in the middle of the office.