Submitted by Parasol on Sat, 01/04/2003 - 01:56
Posted in
I want to submit the following short story to Nerve but before I do, I'd like a bit of honest (but kind) criticism to make it the best it can be before I submit it.
Not that any of you would but if you think it sucks, please PM me because amazingly, I can degenerate into daunting insecurity at the drop of a harsh misunderstood word -- given or taken. And since I'm in such a Year's Sprung Anew mood, don't want to ruin it.
OK. Enough begging...
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Fiction Submission
Fucking was just about all and everything the creature thought about. Fucking and ruin. They were its raisons d’etre. It managed this in a myriad of ways, each corrupting the standards and practices of its target. It was incubus. It was succubus. It was desire without fences. Need without check. Science without religion. Grunting fucking. Sighing fucking. Stranger fucking. Sweet fucking. Leather fucking. Love fucking. Finger fucking. Fucking fucking.
It snatched the dreams from usually upstanding, uptight, upright, up with people people and deposited them shivering and clutching -- spent, satisfied, sticky and sickened at the feet of their Fantasies, who curled their lip and snarled “See, you fuh-reak, I told you you’d like it.”
*****
Maybell Mayweather Morris’ kidnapping was not even considered as possible by her neighbors. She was only gone for a blip of a fraction of a nanosecond, unnoticed by the rest of the neighborhood’s slaves of the picket fences and hissing of summer lawns.
So when she careened on wobbly legs around the cul-de-sac screaming about kidnapping, blood and guts and gore, her neighbors peeked through the living room sheers laughing that the old gal had finally gone off crow-catching.
The women threatened a snotty tongue-lashing or some such other cruelty under their breath if Maybell even thought about carrying her lunacy onto their Kentucky Bluegrass. The men, kinder in their ridicule, merely stood at the ready to carry out their women’s vitriol. They silently thought to themselves that kidnapping is a federal offense in this here U.S. of A. Who would risk the probability of penitentiary buggering for the sake of a dotty broad like Maybell.
It was Hardy Hardesty, occupant of the ghastly Pepto-Bismol pink bungalow that thankfully called the cops.
By the time Officer Josephine Johnson and her ex-jarhead partner, Mike Mullen pulled the Five-Oh-mobile into the pavement bay of Cirulan Circle, Maybell had long since retreated to her home. The lights were out. The doors were locked. The curtains were shut. Silence hung around Maybell’s abode starkly noticeable in light of the mayhem Maybell had earlier caused.
After taking the statements of the residents of the Circle about the extent of Maybell’s craziness, all of which conflicted on the main points, Josephine Johnson and Mike Mullen, a-feared of nothing, knocked politely on the golden front door of Maybell’s bungalow and called out “Miss Morris?”
No answer.
The officers looked at each other and then at the phalanx of Cirulan Circle occupants nosily regarding the tableau, awaiting the who-shot-john sure to occur in just moments.
They knocked louder and called out again “Miss Morris?”
Still no answer.
The crowd took a step closer to the law happening on Maybell’s front porch.
Impatient and annoyed that paperwork would have to now be filed, Officers Johnson and Mullen did the banging on the door made famous by Dragnet, Mannix, Hills Street Blues – wrist first, all Thin Blue Line attitude.
“MISS MORRIS?”
The crowd was delighted and secretly wished Maybell wouldn’t answer. Maybe they’d bring in the SWAT team.
As if it were a lazy afterthought to it all, the door swung casually open. The crowd emitted a low gasp, disappointed that more force would not have to be used to get that belfry lady out of the house.
The children of the Circle out and out cried at the letdown.
Officers Johnson and Mullen turned to the open doorway and eyed each other, silently deciding between themselves who would be the first to enter God knows what fresh hell the house held.
Ranking officer Johnson, was always careful of her safety first. She had a husband, kids, and an ass her husband made a point of literally kissing every single day, so she made it clear that Mullen would be point man. Mike Mullen, childless, womanless but by no stretch of the imagination cajone-less, nodded in assent, pulled his service revolver and inched into the darkness ready to shoot the loopy broad if she so much as twitched at him.
As soon as ex-Marine Mike Mullen was fully inside the home and past the crescent of the front door’s closing arc, the door slammed shut tight.
Outside Officer Joseph Johnson and the crowd watched astounded as the door jamb melted into the stucco fabric of the rest of the building. Jaws dropped and children muttered “keeeewwwlll.” That was except of course for Bobby Barrett. He plain out shouted “Fuuuck meee” and promptly got a mouth full of his mother’s knuckles and a urgent “Shut your fuckin’ filthy goddamn mouth” for his observation.
Mr. And Mrs. Larry Letourneaux now knew where that guttersnipe’s language came from.
Officer Josephine Johnson cursed her luck. This was her third partner in five years. If she wasn’t careful, she’d get a reputation as a Flying Dutchman and then how safe would her pension be?
****
Mike Mullen spent practically all of his stint at Camp Pendleton chasing Oceanside tail, preferably that just barely haired over. He adored teaching virgins how to perform a proper blow job. They never really did it right, of course – those long-lashed gay swabbies were the only ones who actually did – but their practice time was well worth the instruction. Plus, virgins didn’t yet have the complete Women’s Lib indoctrination. He felt free to push their heads down hard in his lap without a snotty “Hey Pal, don’t tug on my ears – I know what I’m doing” spat at him with slicing eyes. He still liked newbies.
He cautiously turned the corner of the dark foyer into the darker living room and saw the shadow of a woman lounging on the couch with her legs wide open fanning her snatch. He expected she was old. He expected she was dry. He almost upchucked his cookies. He bent over to breathe just so he wouldn’t.
Then all these sparkly lights came on, like it was disco night at the local juke joint. He breathed through his nausea and stood up to confront the perverse old bag. He bet his gun’d stop whatever the hell kind of sick nonsense she was gonna TRY to do.
His eyes looked up to find his service revolver throat deep in an angel. She was no spring chicken, but she was full and lush and her eyes looked conspiratorially over the hammer of the gun into his. He thought of Anita Morris.
Mike Mullen stood there, not quite knowing what to make of it all. Strangely, he could feel the point of her top lip tickling his pubic hair and the flat of her tongue along the underside ridge of him with the tip of her tongue against his scrotum. He blinked his eyes hard, confused as hell. Dammit, she was standing in front of him sucking on his revolver, rocking her body from side to side to tousle the gun’s angle in her mouth. He saw that in front of him, plain as day, but still felt the same mirrored on his cock. Her “MMMMmmm” reverberated in time with his pulse. Very curious.
Mike Mullen almost lost his sea legs watching and feeling his gun/cock far back in her throat, first cutting off her air and then pulling past her esophagus to the rush of breath down her nasal passage into her lungs with a luscious snort. Mike Mullen’s gonads and finger tightened at their respective ready.
Her mouth was nearly sucking on the safety of his revolver, tongue around the trigger. She just kept the hardware going in and out of her mouth, lips, and the ring of her throat, tongue clicking suction on his glans.
He breathed out hard, shook his head and blinked. Every act he watched this, this, this whatever, perform on his service revolver, coursed from his heels, up his inner calves to his inner thighs, sparkling his anus, and finally pooled into his testes like hot candy. Mike Mullen vowed to never try and teach a virgin blow jobs again.
He breathed out hard again.
He was gonna find himself a 50 year old and nail the back of her head to the headboard.
He breathed out hard again.
As he felt the up around down and through path of seminal fluid nature designed to make sure that the sex goo got to the very, very, very bottom (yeah back there by the cervix for procreation’s sake), Mike Mullen closed his eyes unable and really unwilling to stop nature’s game of sling shot.
He breathed out hard again.
Her cheeks sunk in.
“Aaaaaaah.”
His revolver was shiny with spit.
“Aaaaauugggh.”
He popped past her esophagus.
“Jesus Wept.”
She winked at him.
He shot, feeling the release of both his finger and the staccato percussion his cock played against the suddenly cold wet air. He leaned his head back and sighed, prepared to promise this woman anything to have her suck on his gun again.
He finally opened his eyes only to regard his ejaculate mixed with the bits of the woman’s blood and gray matter, both arching to the other side of the living room, splattering on the robin’s egg blue wall.
Officer Mike Mullen, ex-jarhead and gleeful virgin face fucker, eyed the carnage fanning out from his feet to the rest of the room, fell to his knees satisfied sexually down to his toes and horrified up to God’s heaven at the sick frigging murder he had just committed.
He sat down on the floor with his erection waning with each beat of his heart and started to weep.
*****
Officer Josephine Johnson stood for a mere second trying to decide what the thing to do was; or more specifically, the thing with the least amount of paperwork to do was. Mullen had only been gone a blip of a fraction of a nanosecond when the door suddenly reappeared and Officer Mike Mullen knocked past Johnson screaming bloody murder. He took a bellowing route around the cul-de-sac and the gobsmacked neighbors before he circled back to Ms. Morris’ stucco house and pushed right past Johnson back into the house, slamming the door shut behind him.
Officer Johnson threw her eyes heavenward, gave a disgusted sigh, pulled her service revolver and banged loudly on the door with a throaty “Mullen – what the fuck is going on in there?”
The door lazily creaked open.
*****
The creature kicked its heels up marveling at the rich fucking pickin’s in the cul-de-sac. Shooting fish in a barrel; fish in a fucking barrel.
Fiction Submission
The wind is howling again here in Southern Cal tonight. I'm skeered and up in the middle of the night again. So --
No comments or suggestions on how to make the story better from anyone? Or am I just pariah now that you see what creepiness can come out of my brain? (Believe me, you're no more surprised than I.)
Well -- as I reread, the description of the "creature" could be punched up more. And what was the heinous incident that freaked Maybell out in the first place? In the second paragraph, why not change "It snached the dreams..." to "It kidnapped the dreams..." The gun connection to the rest of Mullen's body seems a bit nebulous -- perhaps I can be more definitive on the how/why. The "breathing out hard" repetition, though realistic, is kinda tiring. This is a bit too graphic for Nerve.com. Maybe it can be toned down.
Or are you guys just way involved in wrapping the season up -- and thinking why aren't I involved in the same?
Fiction Submission
I plead too busy to get caught up with this when it was posted, and now I finally have a free moment I have read it with minimal distraction.
Observations: I like the premise, and I like the monster, I am not sure I like the presentation. The intro killed it I think. I wasn't sure what had happened becasue I was expecting something else I think...whereas if I had nothing to expect it might have made more sense.
THe characters were good as was the neighbor. Not sure why the police were called but it kind of worked out in the end.
Personally, I think that a more twilight zone twist at the end would be more chilling...(back to the intro killing it) it would carry more impact.
Just my observations. I am being more critical than I would normally becasue you invited criticism, and it is for publication. Your imagry and use of language is as always very evocotive. Love your style, hon.
Fiction Submission
I think Dave's comments are right on. This was creepy and delightful in it's wickedness. The characters and language are great. I think you could tighten up the beginning a bit. The reason for the cops being called, what happened to the woman, those things might make it more powerful. All in all, though, I am in awe of the talent displayed here.
Fiction Submission
I have to say that the begining was fantastic. I loved the intro - loved it. I think the intro was my favorite part. Before I realised that the intro was refering to a monster-type-creature, I was struck by the complete primal and human sexual undertones to it. It's all about the instinct which is the basis for desire.
The whole story is full of increadible imagery and provacative adjectives. I like it and I commend you on your educated and creative style.