Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

SURPRISE Rex Miller

Warren Childress had everything. It came to him magnified, amplified, multiplied times a thousand — the awareness that he was the king of the hill — as he reached the 8th hole of the front nine at Brook Hollow. His kind of hole, he thought with a smile.

You reached it by traversing a quaint wooden bridge that spanned a picturesque winding stream dividing the 7th green and the 8th tee. Some viewed it as a water hazard. Not Warren. To him it was just one more chance to grandstand. He never overshot the 7th and never flubbed one into the drink off the 8th. Invariably there were one or two foursomes stacked up waiting to go off the 9th and into the clubhouse. It gave people on the 8th hole a little captive gallery, so that a perfectly hit ball could be watched and admired by the golfers waiting to tee off up by the 8th green.

"You're up, Warren," one of the guys said to him.

"Right," he said, getting a tee and sliding a gleaming Ultra-flite Gold out of his expensive leather bag.

He had a pro swing. Fluid. Grooved. Beautifully smooth. The contact was solid and full, that great feeling when you know it's dead bang on. He didn't even lift his head for a second, just stayed down over the tee, arms in the top of his backswing arc, wrists cocked, not having to look, knowing he was there even before he heard the oohs and aahs of the other envious players.

Unconsciously, as he took a tee out of his left trouser pocket, he'd let his fingers slide across his groin, feeling for the small growth he'd noticed that morning. When you're pushing the big five-oh and you have everything to live for, the way he did, you become very aware of your mortality.

That's not quite true. He'd noticed it the night before. Late for a dinner party neither of them really wanted to go to, Warren Childress had said to his wife, who was carefully applying makeup in the next room, "Do you know what really hurts?"

When there was no answer, he pulled his long silk socks on, and then she said, after a few beats, "What hurts, darling?" She held her mouth in that funny way women do when they talk while applying lipstick.

"I'll tell you later," he said, knowing that he wouldn't. His wife was even less interested in him than he was in her. He didn't give two hoots in hell about Lois and hadn't for years. His mistress never wore lipstick. She never smeared herself with that coating of orange-looking crap that seemed to end right at the neck on so many women of Lois's age. God, how he loathed that look. The hair so meticulously coiffed, every strand sprayed in place just so by the idiot at the beautician's, and then that orange mask of thick makeup and the bright lipstick and the green eyes. Jeezus.

"Tell Mother," she said patronizingly as she waltzed into the room, "what hurts Daddy?" Her voice carried through the master bedroom with a theatrical echo.

"Nothing." He smiled with fake whimsy. "I was grumbling and bitching. The Levitt account."

"What else is new?" She smiled back. "Now what?"

He'd have to make up something. "It's the same old song and dance. They want the impossible — " And he began improvising.

Warren didn't feel like sharing his irritations with her any more than he felt like sharing anything else with her, so he ad-libbed something about one of his proverbial nightmare accounts, his brain on autopilot and hers disengaged entirely.

He missed Jacqueline desperately. She was twenty-two. Beyond fabulous-looking. So gorgeous his heart hurt to think about her. She loved him and she could suck the brass off a table lamp and her greatest joy in life came from playing slave for him.

A twenty-two-year-old pony. Six hundred thousand dollars' worth of split-level in Blue Springs. Olympic pool. His and hers saunas. A Corniche. The neo-Impressionist hedges. The CDs. The little special fund that neither the IRS nor Lois knew a damned thing about. The biggest agency in North Kansas City. He had the world by the tail.

Warren Childress had been pulling on the silk briefs when he'd spotted a dime-size mole on his groin. Something he'd never seen before. Sort of an ugly little purple-brown cauliflowerlike growth. Nothing to concern himself about, but it paid to watch these things.

A few years ago he would have said something about it to Lois.

"Hon, are you too busy to come in here and help me with this tie?"

"Ek-shually I yam." He could hear her coming in. She made a grand entrance in a swirl of French perfume. They were both forty-nine. "But I'll take time."

"You look very nice," he told her.

"Thank you," she replied indifferently, working on his tie. True romance for the nineties, all right, each partner loathing the other. No, that wasn't true.

Just cold ashes, gray hairs, too many resentments and harsh recriminations. A man and woman weren't made to stay together for a quarter century. It was too long even for a good relationship, and theirs had withered long ago.

Jackie, on the other hand, was something else. Tall. Legs up to her neck. Showgirl busty. God, he never tired of touching those beautiful breasts. Kissing them. And she was so much more than just a great-looking young woman with nice boobs — she was exciting. She was inventive. Wild. And the lady was crazy about him.

His mind returning to the present, he decided he would finish the front nine and then he would drive on to the subdivision where his mistress kept an apartment. The idea of lovemaking was already beginning to turn him on.

He putted out and picked up his ball, moving to the 9th tee. He was still up.

He wiggled his two-hundred-dollar brogues into a comfortable stance, compensating with the grip just so, pulling it over so he wouldn't slice, and smacked his tee shot toward the clubhouse.

It arched into the blue sky, the perfect, cloudless Brook Hollow landscape a classic background as the small white ball fell into the green fairway some two hundred and fifty yards away.

"Not too shabby," one of the guys in his foursome said, as he stepped up to tee his ball.

"It'll play," Warren Childress said, thinking of Jackie and what they would do together, as he walked toward the clubhouse. The stirrings of an erection felt delicious, and he fantasized about the way the afternoon would go and he was hard, thinking about their last session together.

She had coaxed him out of his controlled facade, turned him, made him so hot he forgot to stifle his inhibitions, reached down into his darkest corner and pulled the wild and nasty and twisted Warren out of there. Made him sit up and beg for it and roll over and be her puppy — Jeezus, who's kidding here, she was his slave? He was hers. He'd do anything for this beautiful, kinky bitch lover.

"I'm Daddy's girl," she said, putting on, playing little nympho Lolita, doing what some beautiful women do so well, so achingly well, so organically, naturally, enticingly, heartbreakingly well, and she smiled coquettishly; she pouted, preened, posed, played like she was a fast, fuckable fourteenybopper, and she touched him like a man touches a woman, controlling, manipulating him, her incredible cover-girl face, movie-queen bananorama face, seductive stiffener of a tanned, young, Ipanema-beach-bossa-nova face that said let me eat your lips and suck on your delicious ice cream cone of a mouth — a mouth opening and a tongue coming out and touching him just so.

"Mmmmmmmm," he moaned.

"Daddy?"

"What. Jeezus! What?"

"Daddy, will you do anything your little girl wants?" she asked, pouting with her mouth still there.

"Yes."

"Tell Daddy's girl."

"Anything."

"Make-believe things for his little girl?" He wasn't sure what she said, but he answered again — his breath coming in ragged gasps.

"Yeah. Anything, baby."

"Here's what I want Daddy to do," she whispered, and she told him awful, weirded-out, mondo bizarro things, and he did them for her, letting her enslave him, and when it was all enough for her — finally — she kissed him softly, and he held her and cherished her face and tried to tell her so, but a long and hot and delicious tongue was inside his mouth and spearing his soul, the pink and wet tongue of this movie star piercing into him and inflaming his desire, and within the next couple of minutes of Fucking Standard Savings Time, which is when time compresses in on itself and ceases to tick within those unaccountable sweeps of the second hand, there was an eruption, and he felt her hand on him and the volcanic surging lava from his loins was spurting uncontrollably all over them, splashing on the pretty flowered sheets and getting them all gooey and sticky, and the heat of her hand on him was causing his exploding fluid to shoot out prematurely, and she moved the hand up and down quickly and each move threatened to tear his guts out of his body, and each move killed him a little, and each movement of her small, fragile-boned hand pumped out another couple of c.c.s of the hot, cloudy, milky jism, and each movement got him off again and he'd never come like this and, ohmygod, he was afraid she'd opened some physiological door with her beautiful body and face and tongue, and now this and what if he could never stop coming and he'd die like this, the first man to break through the come barrier, the test pilot for the Mach 4 Jack Off, the pioneer of a brave new world of spermshooting where, like a worker drone in the hands of the queen bee, you bop till you drop and, yes, he could go this way any moment, in fact he was on death's door and, yes, don't stop, it's to die for, you're killing me, and seismic was the word that came to mind, and he felt the earth move, and his heart shuddered as the tremor split the world in half and the last drops of his life force shot into the room and covered them in yech nasty hot sticky stuff and, spent, he gave up the ghost.

"You're sweet, you know that?" she said after a minute or so of snuggling. She had the wisdom of silences. He made no noise or movement. She smiled and he could feel his dead body starting to warm again, just at the shape of that luscious, edible mouth of hers. What a face.

She got up and went back into the bathroom. He could hear her running water. She came back out wearing his silk bathrobe, even managing to look sexy and cute in that, and the sleeves were rolled back, and she was carrying a damp cloth, and she began cleaning up the mess he'd made in the bed, and he made his first noise as the wet cloth touched him:

"Nnnnn." Just a soft whimper escaped from his lifeless, inert body. Dead on the bed.

"Don't worry, honey," she purred to him as she leaned over, "Jackie's gonna kiss it and make it well."

"NNNNNNN," he moaned in agony/ecstasy, and she laughed.

"But next time we're going to take our time, aren't we?" she chided, as she laughed into his mouth.

"Mmm."

"Three, four minutes, anyway. No more of the old thirty-second Vesuvius," she teased him. "Deal?"

"Three or four minutes?"

"Yeah," she said.

And somewhere in all of that he decided that she'd given him the secret of life. This was what it was all about.

He thought about her, hard and hot now, and had to fight to yank his mind back to the present and calm down enough so that he could hit his approach shot to the green.

In a few minutes they'd reached the clubhouse, he'd bid a hasty goodbye to the guys, changed into some mocs, and was on his way to the burbs.

Warren Childress parked and tipped the parking attendant, Pedro, who always gave him special attention.

"I might be a while," Childress said.

"Hokay," the small man said in a downbeat, meek voice. He was usually a bubbling little bantam kind of guy and Childress looked at him as he moved toward the elevator.

"You doing all right, Pedro?" Conversational. Just asking.

"I don't think Missy up there now."

"You don't think Missy —? Oh. Did Miss Jordan go out?"

"Missy gone," he said.

"How long has she been gone — do you know?" Misunderstanding him.

"Leave yesterday. Missy gone."

"What the hell are you talking about, Pedro, my man? Talk to me."

"I don't know nothing," Pedro said, shrugging and moving to the expensive car. "Luis say Missy go. She move out." His eyes were downcast as if he was ashamed for the way Childress had treated this lovely lady to make her leave. What the hell was this shit?

"You're mistaken, I'm sure," Childress said, but his thumb was on the elevator button.

He rode to three and got off, striding briskly down the hall, the thick carpet muffling his footsteps.

Room 305. Right side of the hall. He slipped his key into the lock, felt the familiar turn of the mechanism, the give of the metal, the door opening. The furniture he'd picked out for the apartment looked just the same as always.

"Jackie? You here, doll?" His voice loud and metallic in the apartment, the silence of no response even louder. He walked through the room and opened the bedroom door. The bed was stripped of linens, a bare mattress, his first stab of shock. He flung open the clothes closet. Empty. Drawers. Nothing. Into the bathroom. Bare. Only a few used containers scattered about and in the medicine cabinet. The apartment screamed at him and he was suddenly very afraid.

He went over to the phone to call the apartment house management whom he paid directly, but the telephone was dead. She'd had it disconnected. He looked in the kitchen. Some food in the fridge, a few things in the cabinets. She'd left in a hurry. He was getting frantic. He went through the whole place looking for a note — something. Not a word. What in the hell was going on? Jackie would never leave like this.

Warren got the car and drove over to the management complex. Yes, Miss Jordan left yesterday. She had turned in her apartment key. Said we could go ahead and rent it out for the first of the month — she was leaving. She didn't leave a forwarding address — said she'd be in touch when she was relocated. No — there was no message of any kind for you.

He phoned the doorman and the garage attendant who'd been on duty when she left. Had she left in a taxi? No — took her car. Some luggage. That was it. She had been vague about her destination. She hadn't responded when they'd told her how sorry they were to see her go — she just smiled, Luis the garage man told him. Smiled? He had to get out of there. He couldn't breathe.

He sat in the car debating whether or not to go to the police. There would be questions. Problems. He couldn't chance it. Maybe it would be better to call them anonymously later. Where had she gone?

No, there hadn't been any messages for him at the office. He started the car and drove home, blindly, mind buzzing with the possibilities. Another man? Illness in the family? She'd been so happy when they'd been together last time. Jackie loved him. She couldn't just pick up and leave. Something had happened to her. Should he call the hospitals? The word abortion nudged him for a second.

He knew that his worst fears were right — that something had happened — when he pulled into his driveway and saw two official-looking guys standing there waiting. They walked over and were standing beside the door when he got out of the car. They had the smell of cops, or private heat.

"Mr. Childress?" the first one said, a rough-looking man who seemed out of character in a three-piece business suit. Warren's heart started hammering; he feared something awful had happened to Jackie.

"Yeah?"

"We represent Mrs. Childress. May we see your keys, please." The hand outstretched — no question mark in the statement.

"My keys?" he started.

"Hand your keys over," the other man said. In a thickening fog, he handed his key ring to the first guy.

"Do you have duplicate house keys and car keys, Mr. Childress?"

"No."

"The house keys have been changed," the first man told him. "Step this way, sir." They escorted him to an unmarked Pontiac, and Childress sat in the back seat. The second man sat in the front. "You guys going to tell me what this is all about?" "We're employed by Mrs. Childress's attorneys, sir. They'll be in touch with you as to the details of the divorce." The words stabbed into him like sharp knives.

Lois got the house. The Corniche. The neo-Impressionists. The CDs, of course. He was getting to keep whatever he could pull out of the agency, but he was to immediately «relinquish» the monies that Jackie had told them about. Jacqueline Jordan, whose fucking deposition was one of the sharp knife wounds that left him bleeding as the man spoke. When he was through, the man tapped a small envelope that lay in the seat between them. Something rectangular, about an inch thick. "You can keep this. Mrs. Childress said it was a little souvenir for you." He said it without any irony.

Warren picked it up and looked down into the envelope, knew what it was the moment he saw the TDK T-120HS on the top of the box. A copy of a videocassette. Shot from the clothes closet, he supposed.

They let him out at a cab stand, opened the trunk of the Pontiac and unceremoniously plunked his luggage beside the first cab. They didn't ask him if he had cab fare, even — they just pulled out. Hell, he'd never tumbled a hooker he didn't slip fifty bucks to for a taxi.

He got into the cab and the driver loaded his luggage, getting in with a grunt of effort, turning and saying, "Where to, bud?"

"Just drive," he said.

"It's your money," the driver sneered, dropping the meter. It's your money, chump.

Warren Childress, head of the biggest agency in North Kansas City, sighed and leaned back into the seat of the cab as it pulled out into traffic. All he could do was see his wife say to him, "Tell Mother," over and over, "what hurts Daddy — "and know now that she was cutting his nuts off even then. She'd probably already watched the videotape. Seen and heard him getting off. Heard «Daddy» and "Daddy's girl." God — she must have been enjoying herself.

The car. The CDs. The house. The paintings. And that bitch cunt even told her about the money he had squirreled away. It couldn't get much worse than this, he thought. But he was wrong.

Because Warren Childress had everything. And that night, in a lonely hotel room, watching the cancerous mole begin to bleed, he would start to comprehend just how much worse it could get.