Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

PEARLDOLL John Shirley

It was one of those nights that releases trapped odors. The August heat steamed the reek of rotten fast-food grease and urine from the alley behind the Fatburger place on Santa Monica Boulevard. It made the smog seem to coagulate in the air, so a breeze that should have been a relief reeked of benzene and monoxides and ozone. The heat brought out the deepest layers of human sourness from the tramps slouching in the doorways. When you passed the discos, it summoned the hidden tincture of animal glands in the perfume of the fantastically coiffed ladies who stepped out of white limos, the underscent of lab-animal suffering and caustic chemicals in the cologne worn by their golden-chained escorts. It seemed to emphasize the cyanide and carcinogenic tars in cigarette smoke; it cooked the sewage under the streets…

And the semen left over in your pussy, or so Candy thought.

She'd douched after that creep Guido had come in her, but she couldn't quite get it all out, imagined she could smell it cooking and curdling in her…

It's too fucking hot.

She was walking down Santa Monica Boulevard, wishing she hadn't worn pumps, wondering if maybe there were some flats in the trunk of her car she could put on.

Sometimes you can't remember a dream — until later on. When something calls it up. Prompts it from the back of your head somewhere. She was passing a boutique, tight stripped-back leather skirts and tops for women in the window. Standing in front of it were these two skinny blond hustlers. One was wearing a Levi's jacket with some sort of rock-band emblem on the back. And she heard that one talk about the Face Eater. "It's no shit, Face Eater got Butterbuns and Darla, got both of 'em, put 'em on a pentagram thing and tied 'em down and ate their fuckin' faces, man —»

"Bullshit," the other guy squeaked.

"No, for real, dude!"

For real? She'd always thought the Face Eater was something in a movie or… but now that she thought about it, she remembered seeing some headlines… Some sick "Night Stalker" type in Hollywood who… She didn't even want to think about it. She glanced at the hustler as she passed to see if the guy was, like, serious or what. He looked serious… And then she saw the window reflection, and it made her stomach jump like a scared cat. Because it was something she'd seen in a dream. A dream about Frank. The snarling, toothy, bloody mouth superimposed over a girl's face. Took her a full two seconds to realize it was a reflection of the rock-band logo — a wide-open shark's mouth — superimposed by reflection against the face of a mannequin in the store window. She'd seen that in a dream, hadn't she? A dream about Frank? Frank… She tried to remember… and couldn't quite.

Hurrying past the store, she glanced up at a different mannequin in another store window — and thought she saw another reflected face, this time superimposed over the mannequin's crotch…

Frank's face. She turned and looked for the source of the reflection. He wasn't there.

Big surprise. He couldn't be there. Frank was dead.

She took a long, ragged breath, and walked on. Think about something else.

She passed the black dude with the badly conked hair who was selling his phony sensimilla, which was just California pot dusted with PCP, and her feet hurt, and she still couldn't make up her mind what bar to go to… when she saw Frank. For real this time.

God damn it, Frank, you're dead.

She stopped in front of Bleeding Heart Records, under the big animated bleeding-heart logo, neon blood dripping on her head, and stared down the street at Frank Cormanstadt, and said, "Oh I'm sure. I mean is this too weird or what?" to herself. Bleeding Heart Records was open, it's open late, and Metallica was smacking the air from the record-store speakers. She guessed it was one of those Arthur Koestler synchronicity things her spacey brother Buster talked about because they're talking about the dead on the song — and here comes Frank.

Okay, so he's not dead. After all, she never saw his body, never heard it from anyone but people on the street. But it just felt so right she never questioned it. I mean, everyone was expecting Frank to die, from one thing or another, right? Drunks or drinking and driving or something. AIDS, maybe, from some whore.

But Frank was coming down the street wearing a kind of David Byrne oversize suit, forties-type thing, blocky with padding, his long curly black hair dancing over those cubistic shoulders, his black eyes glittering with neon, the hollows of his cheekbones pooling shadows. He smiled as he saw her, a smile like a squiggle from a can of white Day-Glo spray paint.

She was going to ignore him. Just cross the street. If he wasn't dead, then he'd ditched her. He hadn't tried to contact her, he'd swept her under the rug, or under some girl's skirt…

Under some girl's skirt

Like a pile of dirt

If she got that band started with Sachet and Ellen she'd use those lyrics. If they let her sing.

Ignore him. Cross the street.

But she lingered, mad at herself for it, checking herself out in the glass of the record-store window. The little ponytail on top of her head like a water-fountain splash up there, kind of Valley Girlish, she thought now, but the neoprene shortpants and the skin-tight neoprene imitation snakeskin bikini top and the heels, they were killer, they ought to make Frank suffer.

As she'd suffered. How long had it been? (He was about twenty yards from her. There was still time to cross the street.) Six weeks? No, more like ten weeks. After three weeks of it, she'd heard he was dead. After five weeks — including two weeks getting drunk every day as a kind of endless wake for her dead Frank — meeting that mulatto dude in the Dead Monkey and getting it off with him, the whole thing another kind of drinking, really; and then the Skateboard Nazi, a skinhead jerk with a lot of tattoos. But his intensity had done something for her. Until he'd pushed his skateboard down on her face while he…

And then Lonny, three days with Lonny, surprised he didn't just split the next morning.

But he'd had to go back East to see his parents. Called once.

Last night with Greaser Guido hardly counted. But Lonny…

Come on, get real, that wasn't going to happen. Lonny was, like, a real prep type. And she was a bit relieved (Frank was about ten feet away — just time to dash across the street if she went now) that it hadn't happened with Lonny; it was too soon after Frank…

Frank and that bitch Pearldoll.

I mean, what kind of name is Pearldoll?

"Hi," Frank said, and it was too late to cross the street.

"Hi," she said. Saying it so it'd sting him, she hoped. Hi.

The sounds of the street, all those Saturday night cruisers, those lowriders in their chopped convertibles and Beverly Hills kids in their Mustang convertibles and those bored celebs in their limos, all of it a thousand miles away, somehow, when Frank stood there looking at her, talking softly…

Telling her he was sorry. A lot of weird shit had come down. He had been out of touch with everyone, even his agent. So you know it's serious.

"What kind of weird shit?" she asked.

"I was really sick," he said. "From… an OD. And Pearldoll — she died."

Her heart jumped. She was a little ashamed when she recognized the provenance of the sensation. "She died? You were doing up shit together and she OD'd?"

"No. No, I was alone, afterwards, when I OD'd."

"So you OD'd because she died?" She said it accusingly. Though she knew she should be nice about it, because his old girlfriend had died; I mean, oh wow, death was pretty heavy shit.

But she couldn't help it. That tone.

"No. I… No, she died and… Well, I don't know, maybe. But, you know, I wasn't even thinking about Pearl, I was going with you then, and, you know, I guess I, like, hadn't seen Pearldoll in like —»

"Come on, you were always thinking about her." Comparing me to her, Candy thought.

And thinking: I could always feel Pearldoll there, in the background, feeling like if she came around he'd leave me in a second. Well, he lived with her for three years, when he had that TV series on HBO, but when that fell apart and there was no more money, Pearldoll just cruised on, just left him, which should have told him what kind of cunt she was, but no…

"No," Frank was saying, "I wasn't thinking about her when I OD'd. I wasn't thinking about girls. I was thinking about acting. I guess Joey thought I was dead, I mean I guess I was dead, but they revived me, you know, got my heart started again, and I guess they didn't tell anyone…" He shrugged, with elegant dismissal. Life and death, a shrug.

He was so cool, the asshole.

"You mad at me?" he asked.

"What do you think? What's it been? Ten weeks? You haven't been in the hospital all this time."

"Yes I have. But not the… not that kind."

She stared at him. "Oh Jesus. They put you in the —? A fifty-seven-fifty?" The mental hospital.

He nodded. Milking it, though she didn't realize it at the time.

"Oh shit, honey," she said, taking his hands in hers.

Then she broke away. "You still could've called me from the ward."

"I was on all these meds… I could barely remember my name. And then when they let me use the phone I was, like, making crazy calls to the FBI and shit, didn't know what I was fucking doing, so they wouldn't let me use the phone after that… I'm lucky they let me out."

"Oh."

Feeling like the one in the wrong, now. How did he do it? Always leave her feeling like it was her that had screwed up.

"You wanna get a drink with me?" he asked.

Wham bam, thank you ma'am.

An old, old David Bowie tune playing on the sound system of Booty's. A mostly gay club, where Hollywood Kidz hung out, a lot of fag-hags and a few guys hoping to cop some X or some blow or something.

Candy and Frank stood at the bar, Candy drinking a Seabreeze, Frank with his eternal margarita. He was talking, and she was nodding, but only half listening at first. It was hard to make out with the disco banging away — now it was Jody Watley — and, anyway, her mind had taken a step back from him. Was looking him over. What was it that looked different? The suit? All bulky like that. Just heavier and… clumsy when he moved.

She thought she knew what it was. Meds. He was still on meds. Some antidepressant or maybe even stelazine.

Don't embarrass him by saying anything about it.

She was thinking pityingly about him, which invariably led to thinking tenderly about him, when he said, "It was really weird, how Pearldoll died."

God damn him. He was going to talk about her.

She remembered when she first realized how Pearldoll was always going to be there. She was at the Anticlub with Frank, their second date, they were, like, making out in the corner, walking everywhere holding on to each other, it was really close and sweet — and then Pearldoll walked up. And he changed. Just like that. Kind of froze up. Pulled away a little. "Hi, Frankie," Pearldoll said, like some torch singer in some old gangster movie. Hiya, Frankieboy. But real smug, too. Pearldoll was a cruelly pretty, painfully petite girl, half Japanese and half Swedish, her parents some kind of MDA-dealing hippies. Pearldoll smiling like the Mona Lisa at Candy. Condescendingly. Obviously an ex of Frank's. The look said, You might have him, but he's always mine. Just check him out if you don't believe me!

And it was true. Frank looked slack-mouthed after Pearldoll, gawked at her as she walked away.

"Okay, Frank," Candy had asked him, that night. "How long did you go with her?"

"Uh — kind of obvious, huh? About — couple years."

"Pretty serious."

"Yeah. Pretty serious."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. She's kind of schizy. I got freaked out one night when she said we should do a death pact."

"A what?"

"That we should commit suicide together to declare, I don't know, ultimate love or something."

"I think, guy, you're kind of better off without her. I mean, death pacts? Or what?"

"Yeah. I'm better off without her. For sure."

But every time he saw Pearldoll in the clubs, he had that gawky longing in his face. And she had that smug knowledge about her. And now she was dead and he was still thinking about her.

"Okay," Candy said, now. Tonight, in this hot, sweaty, loud club. They had to yell their conversation in each other's ear over the music. "So how did she die?"

"Sacrificed."

"What?"

"She was into Espiritu."

"What the fuck is that?"

"Espiritu Bebida. It's some Spanish cult from… Cuba or someplace. Like Santaria. Kind of an offshoot of it."

"I thought you said she was Japanese and… and Danish or something."

"Her roommate was Hispanic, got her into it. Pearldoll hated Japanese stuff, 'cause she hated her mom. She was into Latin stuff."

"Half Japanese, half whatever, Norwegian or something —»

"Swedish."

"Half Swedish — but into Spanish stuff. I never noticed her maracas."

He grinned. "She had some."

"So her roommate sacrificed her?"

"No, her roommate killed herself about two weeks before that. The police talk like Pearldoll was murdered by someone. They even hassled me about it. But she wasn't murdered. She did it to herself. Killed herself. Which is weird, how Japanese that is, like hara-kiri — kind of funny."

"Oh hilarious."

"She killed herself in an Espiritu suicide ritual."

"I told you she was fucked up. And it wasn't just jealousy." Candy looked around at the club, suddenly conscious that it was crowded and noisy and choked with cigarette smoke. A fat girl wearing too much makeup was trying to shove past her to get at the bar. Candy said, "This party sucks."

"It's not a party, just the usual crowd on —»

"That was from a song, 'This Party Sucks.' You have been put away."

"You wanna get out of here? Go to my place?"

"Your place?"

"Not mine. Where I'm staying."

"I better not." But hoping he'd talk her into it.

"Come on. I won't make moves on you. I just want to listen to records and talk. Let's fortify first." And he ordered two double Cuervo Golds. And then two more. She was wobbling on her heels when they finally got out, giggling and gasping, onto the sidewalk, and he guided them back to her car, seemed to know where it was without asking. Probably spotted it earlier.

Frank seemed hardly even drunk. He drove her up into the Hollywood Hills, one of those old bungalows built split-level into the hillside. The little porch kind of overgrown with shrubs and bird-of-paradise and morning glory, their blossoms closed and wrinkly for the night, like girls with their legs crossed, labia folded away…

Inside, air-conditioned shadows. Santa Fe-style furniture.

"Awesome view," Candy said. She stood in the dark living room, at the picture window, looking over the tapestry of light, electric blue and sulphur yellow, that was Los Angeles. The night sky was dark violet, somehow, and an eternal stream of cars swept in rivers of headlight glow along the boulevards.

She stood in a deep rug, enjoying its feel on her toes, holding her pumps in one hand; one of Frank's cigarettes, a Sherman, dangled in the other.

Suddenly music, The Cult's "Sonic Temple," was playing from somewhere. He'd put on a CD. "I thought you didn't like this band," she said.

"I like 'em, now," he said, coming up behind her.

She could feel the heat from her cigarette on her knuckles; she could feel heat from Frank as he stepped up behind her. Put his arms around her waist. She could feel a rod of warmth at his crotch, pressing against the crack of her ass.

"Forget it," she said.

"It was you," he said. "I realized that when I was in the hospital. You were the one. The only one."

"Frank, don't — " But she wanted to hear more. To cover the doubts. His story about the hospital had come out too rehearsed. But playing it back in her head again, it sounded reasonable. Sort of. She turned around, knowing she shouldn't. "I still don't think —»

But then he was kissing her, hard, had his arms around her. It felt like he was around her and up under her. That was how it felt to her, with men, when it felt really good. Around you and coming up under you. Protecting and coming into you at the same time. He wasn't actually in her yet, but she could feel it pushing, straining at his pants, and there was an answering rush of oozing melt in her pussy…

"You… goddamned…" she tried to say. And then his tongue was in her mouth and it was like plugging into an electrical socket, the current was flowing. He felt different now, to her; he felt bigger and sometimes his tongue felt like it was —

Wait. He was carrying her in his arms.

She couldn't believe it. He wasn't that strong. She looked around and saw he was carrying her up a flight of stairs, which was even harder to do, and then he had toted her effortlessly into a bedroom. There were candles lit here. Blue and red candles. Nice. Romantic.

He put her gracefully on the bed, which was bare but for a sheet, and knelt beside her, kissing and groping. Only now, mixed in with the excitement, there was an anxiety, a feeling that someone was watching them…

Whose house was this? Not his. Some sicko voyeur, maybe, some flake he'd met in the nut house, watching them from a two-way mirror?

He was peeling her clothes off her, she was nude almost before she knew it, and he had taken off his coat and shoes but still had his pants on, how rude, but there was a certain excitement to that, too, a feeling that he was out of control with lust for her, wanted her that badly…

And then he was on top of her, wriggling into her. She was looking dreamily over his shoulder at the candlelight. Her eyes adjusting, the dark room coming gradually into focus. Little dolls, figures made of cornhusks and straw and rags, and a ceramic Mother of Mary but a Mary with the muzzle of a dog, and on a wall someone had painted a slogan or something, ornate in red letters. She could only make out a couple of words.

Hermano demonio… consagrar…

Spanish.

Panic surging, she looked around, seemed to see Pearldoll everywhere now. Saw her face in the folds of the curtain, in the curl of candlesmoke, in the shadows gathered on the ceiling.

Candy yelled hoarsely, tried to push Frank away. His cock in her no longer felt like a connection — it felt like an intrusion. "This is her place isn't it! Pearldoll's house! You pig! I don't want to be here —»

"Chill out. She left it to me."

God. Maybe he did kill her. Maybe he was a murderer. Maybe he was into this Espiritu stuff. Maybe he had sacrificed her.

She managed to pull her hips away from him, turning under him to crawl away. Saw the sheet for the first time clearly. There was a pentagram painted on it, in red, and some Spanish words. And a brown stain.

"I'm glad you turned over," came the voice from his mouth. "I want you from behind like a dog."

It was not his voice.

He was holding her down with arms that were just too strong; they were like metal bars; she felt like a rabbit in a cage that was too small for it, and then he was entering her from behind — god damn him, this was rape — and it hurt, and now he was shifting his cock, putting it up her ass — "Oh you bastard you shit!"

"What's the matter, sweet Candy?"

Not his voice?

She heard his clothes ripping. He had both his hands clamped down on her wrists, his knees on the bed, so how could he be ripping his clothes? There must be someone else in the room helping him. Maybe she wasn't dead. Candy hadn't heard anything about it on the news. Maybe Pearldoll wasn't dead, maybe she was here and they were going to sacrifice her on this pentagram —

And then she saw the woman's hands closing on her forearms. Those little white fingers with their oxblood nails. Pearldoll's. Digging into her forearms from behind. Then moving up to her breasts, digging into them with her nails, hurting, piercing, blood running over her nipples. A scream caught in Candy's throat.

They were taking her together. Pearldoll had hidden herself up here — must be lying close beside him.

Candy squirmed, trying to turn around to spit in the bitch's face. Frank held her down, and Candy only managed a glimpse over her shoulder. Saw only Frank's face, laughing without sound, something weirdly faggy in it. Maybe he was a repressed gay and that's why he was raping her up the ass and, God, they were going to kill her —

Panic went off, burned like a Fourth of July sparkler in her, and she thrashed and screamed at them, tried to see Pearldoll so she could kick her, could only see Pearldoll's arms, fingers clawing at her eyes. Tried to wriggle free, it was hurting more and more and more…

The red candle on the little blue Santa Fe-style end table beside the bed had been burning awhile, was pooled with quivery molten candle wax. Candy shot a hand out, grabbed the candle, flung its hot wax over her shoulder into the grinning bastard's eyes…

He shrieked with a sound like a cat under a car's tire, and his grip loosened for a moment, Pearldoll's, too. Candy wrenched loose, clawed free of them.

Scrambled around to face them, looking for something to throw.

Froze.

Frank's clothes lay in tatters beside the bed. There were two of them, facing Candy — two of them there, nude. The light made it seem… No. It wasn't the light.

There was only one. Made of two. Frank's head and shoulders and arms. And her arms, growing out of his torso, down under his arms. Pearldoll's arms and hands looking too small on Frank's body, making Candy think of Buster's Revelle model of a Tyrannosaurus.

He had no dick. He had no cock. He had a…

"No way," Candy said. "No fucking way."

It was Pearldoll's face. (Where was the door?) Pearldoll's face in his crotch, instead of his genitals. (Find something to throw.) Pearldoll's giggling, rabid-animal face.

Looking out from Frank's crotch, Pearldoll opened her mouth. Frank's cock came out of her mouth instead of a tongue. She had his cock for her tongue.

Frank opened his mouth, and then she saw that he had two tongues, one smaller and pinker than his own. Her voice came out of his mouth. Her voice mixed with his. "Want you. Always wanted you. Frank said you wouldn't share." Taunting. "Frank wouldn't kill you. Wouldn't hurt you. Bitch. Bitch. Brother Devil gave Frank to me and me to Frank and you, now. Bitch, bitch, bitch —»

Candy sprinted for the door. White fingers with oxblood nails closed on her wrist, jerked her off-balance so she fell facedown, skidding. The air knocked out of her.

Pearldoll's voice chanted in Spanish. A wave of weakness washed over Candy. A sweet, warm weakness. A weakness that soothed and murmured comforting lies. She was limp, like that time she'd taken three ludes, like a jellyfish, and someone was dragging her to the white sheet with the red pentagram…

It felt nice, being dragged that way. Like the rug was a big tongue licking her whole body, warm and wet. Stoned. Stoned on something. Magic or drugs or both. Fight it.

There was no fighting it. Not even when Frank straddled her and she saw Pearldoll's face descending toward hers, filling her vision, a pretty Japanese-Swedish face surrounded by pubic hair, legs to either side, coming down at her. Mouth opening. Quivering from inside that mouth, veinily tumesced, his cock, plunging toward Candy's mouth…

Suck, something commanded, and she did, and choked, and then Pearldoll pushed closer and began to chew off Candy's lips, and it all took a long time, and it was funny how little it hurt to be eaten alive…

"Love to eat Candy," said Pearldoll and Frank.

Before she was drawn in to a puddle of warm blood and liquid flesh, like red candle wax melting, she wondered what part of Frank's body her own face would look out of.