Brides Of The Impaler (18 page)

Her body went slack in the chair; that
rawness
of post-climax would not allow her to leave the vibrator in place. It fell from her hand, buzzing inertly on the floor as she simply lay there in the chair as if floating.

When her breath returned she felt assailed by guilt. Sneaking upstairs to masturbate along with fantasies that didn’t include the man she loved seemed like psychic cheating. Nevertheless, she couldn’t deny the potency of the vibrator’s prowess. She reached down, turned it off, and stuck it in a drawer.

What am I going to do with myself?
She sputtered and pushed her tousled hair off her brow.

Then her eyes shot wide.

In a split second, Cristina went rigid as if from a bolt of fear. She spun in her chair without volition but found herself staring in dread at the back windows. She knew the source of the sudden dread; it was the impression that she was being watched.

She rushed to the windows. But it would be impossible for anyone in the alley to see her all the way over at her
desk.
Why do I feel like someone was watching me?
She gazed between the slats of the newly installed blinds.
And who
COULD?
Across the alley only a few balconied condos could be seen a street back, and Cristina knew likewise that the sheer angle from those lofts wouldn’t allow for a voyeur’s prying eye. But when she inspected the windows more closely she found that when she looked to the right there was a vantage point she’d been previously unaware off: half of the alley’s opening could be viewed, and through it a wedge of the main road and some hotels and other buildings.

She frowned and shook her head, sputtering again. The notion was folly; even if someone that far away
could
see in here, what would compel them to?
They’d need binoculars
or a telescope, for God’s sake
.

Enough of this.
Back to bed
. Downstairs, however, she paused at the door to the basement.
Why am I
…She looked at the door, touched the knob. Then she laughed to herself. Between passing out down there last night, and then her insistence of hearing strange voices several hours ago, she knew she had something to prove to herself.
A
test…to prove there’s nothing down there
.

Unafraid, she opened the door, switched on the lone bulb, and went down. Masses of dust-skinned clutter seemed congealed in the dark. Boxes, mostly.
None of it’s our stuff
, she knew.
The church must’ve abandoned it all once Paul
bought the house
. She peered into several of the boxes and found everything from old toasters and electric can openers to books decades old. One box was filled entirely with
The Book of Common Prayer
and another,
Catholic Prayers
for the Dead
, but years of humidity left them bulged with rot.
We’ll have to clean this place up eventually
, she thought but found her eyes skimming along the floor. Would she find the magic marker she was sure she’d touched last night? Or perhaps she wasn’t even looking. The boxes formed wide aisles and now she meandered through them,
toward the sodium light pouring in through the streetlevel windows. She looked out and saw only the alley street and the bricks of the buildings beyond. Without thinking, she tried the windows to make sure they remained intact and locked. She found herself trying to focus but didn’t know on what. No foreign “voices” were in evidence down here, nothing amiss.
See
?
she challenged herself. But she never noticed the erratic footprints on the dusty floor toward the rear.

She had to squint in the weak light, half-feeling her way back toward the steps. Then she peered down…

That oblong patchwork of cement.

“The same exact spot I passed out on,” she told herself aloud.

The coolness of the cement reached up through her feet but strangely transformed into heat. She felt every square inch of skin beneath the robe glaze with a light sweat, while that maddening oversensitivity returned twofold. The silk robe was again charging her skin; at once she was anxious nearly to the point of audibly whining. Her nipples erected, and her sex began to prickle through some heady frisson.
I’m insatiable
, she realized. Even after the powerful sexual release just minutes ago, she cringed again in the same wantonness.

She kept staring down.
Not again
…She cupped her breasts outside the robe, then within, as she encircled the patch’s small emblem with her toe, the crude design that looked like a strangled dragon…

Her eyes widened, then squeezed shut, and in that black interim, images from the nightmare splashed into her mind like paint thrown against a wall: the fanged nun, the three-gemmed blood-filled bowl, the weird voices and the man on the slab and the bizarre decanter and the many sets of feminine hands cosseting her body…

And, indeed, when Cristina winked out of the mental jag, she caught herself openly caressing herself, right where
she stood.
This is crazy
! she thought. She didn’t like this place. What had caused her to even come down here? She sashed her robe—frowning at not only herself but this new and seemingly limitless sexual angst—and started back toward the stairs.

A figure, obscure as soot, blocked the way.

Cristina’s heart gave a jolt.

“Cristina!” Paul exclaimed. “What are you doing down here?”

“Jesus, Paul, you scared me half to death!” Cristina wilted in the aftershock. But…how would she answer his question? “I—I’m not sure why…”

When Paul took several steps, the basement’s single bulb surfaced him from the blots of darkness. “When I woke up, you weren’t in bed,” he said, looking around with disapproval at all the excess clutter. “Then I thought I heard voices. Were you…talking to yourself down here?”

Had she been? She knew she did that sometimes. “I guess I could have been,” she admitted. Suddenly she became overly aware of her erected nipples pushing bumps in the sheer robe. Would he notice? And, worse, had he seen her caressing herself.
My God, I hope not
.

“Well, I talk to myself sometimes, too,” he said. The stacks of stained boxes seemed to annoy him. “Christ, I didn’t realize how much
junk
the diocese left. I’ll have to hire some refuse people to take it to the dump.”

Cristina’s head filled with a mild drone. She felt woozy by the sight of him meandering closer; her desires were hijacking her.
I can’t help it
, she thought hopelessly.
I
…“Paul?” she whispered and let her robe come undone. “I need you again.”

Had the light dimmed by some fluke in the current? Suddenly he was just an obscure shadow again.

“
Oise plac’ute
,” flowed the weird accent-tinted words and that’s when Cristina felt electrocuted by the shock of discovering that this figure in the dark was
not
Paul, it was
a curvaceous woman, nude save for a nun’s wimple and hood, her flesh seeming half-composed by the darkness itself but flesh nonetheless for when her hands reached out to touch Cristina’s breasts they were warm and very, very real, and then the woman grinned, showing two long thin fangs ringed by wet lips. Cristina couldn’t budge as the lips moved closer, sealed over her own, and then the hot, phantom tongue slid between the fangs and plunged brassily right into Cristina’s mouth, all the while the nun’s hands kneading her breasts and twisting her inflamed nipples. Cristina had the impression of other figures scurrying around her from behind and sneaking up the stairs, but her horror quashed the observation. Meanwhile, the nun’s hot mouth sucked all the air from her lungs, and then Cristina quailed, rose up on her tiptoes, and fainted dead away.

Paul shuddered out of sleep just as the clock in the hall struck two. His arms raked the bed’s left side where he expected to feel Cristina but she wasn’t there. As his grogginess wore off, he discerned the hiss of the shower, could see the thin thread of light under the door.

Paul rubbed his eyes. He felt some odd sensation that he couldn’t name but then forgot about it when he thought back to his and Cristina’s frizzly lovemaking earlier.
What
more could I ask?
he thought, chuckling. Just as he was drifting off again, he heard the shower hiss stop. A pause for a minute or two; he could hear her now, drying off. Then a wedge of light hit his eyes as the door partly opened. Just as Cristina would step out, the light snapped off, leaving Paul blind. He could hear but not see her approach the bed, felt the mild jostle when she sat on the mattress-edge near his knees.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

Her hand ran down his stomach. “Uh-uh.”

I’ll bet I could go again
, he realized, but when he touched her bare shoulder and attempted to slide his hand to her breast, she straddled him, gently grabbed his wrists, and placed them above his head. Then her own hands came back to his groin.

Oh, yeah
…Paul still couldn’t see a thing. Cristina’s fingers wasted no time exciting him, but they also distracted him. “Aw, baby,” he said. He’d hardened already, and then his teeth clicked together at the meticulous way she was handling him, unlike anything she’d done before. He reached down, then, and touched her leg—

“Honey, that feels so—”

“Shhh!” she demanded and quickly returned his hands back up over his head, feigning bondage, he supposed.

“Oh, kinky, huh?”

Again, “Shhh…” And then her mouth immediately lowered to his genitals. Paul tensed up at once. Her mouth worked frenetically, fingers working in unison. She was performing the intimate act with a fast, slick intricacy that astonished him. It was noisy and wild. Paul’s head reeled at the feeling.
She’s never done it this good before
, he realized in a lusty stupor.
She must be watching pornos or something
…

Her mouth continued to
work
him. She was simply doing it and demanding nothing in return. In spite of being so thoroughly drained on the living room floor, Paul’s climax was breaking before he knew it, her mouth never abating. He tensed for many moments as his lust emptied, then went slack on the bed. Her lips remained tight as they eventually slipped off. He heard her swallow.

I guess it wouldn’t exactly be romantic to tell her that that
was the best blow job of my life
, he wondered. “Oh, damn, baby, that was just so—”

She errantly gave his spent genitals a caress, then the bed creaked as she got up. Was she walking around the bed? He still had no night vision thanks to the momentary
shock of light when she’d come out of the bathroom. “Where are you…”

The bedroom door clicked open, but there was so little light in the hall that he could barely detect her form stepping out of the room and heading for the kitchen.

“Honey? Would you get me a can of Sprite?” he asked.

“Um-hmm.” And then her shadow disappeared.

Wow. That was something. I’ll bet Jess doesn’t get action like
that
…

Paul remained lying back, sated. He kept drifting in and out, but when he focused his thoughts and looked at the LED clock, he saw that ten minutes had passed and Cristina hadn’t come back to bed. It didn’t matter, he had to go to the bathroom anyway. He turned on the lamp by the bedside, glanced over, then did a double take at Cristina’s airy, walk-in closet. The door hung open and he noticed several dresses on the floor. They must’ve fallen from their hangers but it was odd. Cristina was a neat freak.
Not like her to overlook something like that
. Then he went into the bathroom, still steamy from her shower, but noticed water on the floor, the towel lying there, and the shampoo sitting on its side.
What a mess
. And again, it was odd to observe. Cristina always picked up after herself.

He finished, put on his robe, and went out to the kitchen. Another raised brow, then, when he noted more minor disarray: the refrigerator door an inch ajar, several cabinets hanging open, a bag of plantain chips busted open and sitting on the counter, along with crumbs. He chuckled at her sudden slovenliness.

But where was she?

Several chips crunched underfoot when he walked to the stairs. A glance up showed him her studio lights on.
I
guess tooting my horn gave her some creative inspiration
, he joked. But she often would work spontaneously, sometimes jumping up from bed just to jot down some notes or pen a quick sketch. Artistic people were like that.

He thought of going up to talk but decided not to.
Don’t
interrupt her. Besides, my jones is taken care of for a while
. But when he turned he noticed yet another oddity.

A pair of shoddy old blue jeans and an orange tube-top lay in the hall. Had she just dropped them there?
Why not
put them in the laundry room ten fucking feet away?
he wondered, now a bit testy at her carelessness.
I paid a lot of
money for this joint and all of a sudden she’s treating it like a
trailer
. After a few seconds, though, he thought back to the outstanding sex and reconsidered.
On second thought…
she can mess the place up all she wants. I’ll hire a damn maid
.

Next, he squinted at the clothes.
Must be old stuff she
wears when she works
, he reasoned. He couldn’t even recall ever seeing her in the tube-top.
I’ll just go back to bed
, he decided, but after a glance into the cove at the foyer’s end, he amended,
Or maybe I’ll have a drink first
. One couldn’t hurt, right?
I work damn hard
. Quietly as he could, he went to the glass-and-mirror bar, poured two fingers of Dewar’s eighteen-year-old, and snuck back to the darkened kitchen for some ice. It only bothered him a little to sneak around like this; he knew more often than not her objections to his drinking were overreactive. Nevertheless, he went back to the bathroom to sip his drink, in case Cristina came back down unexpectedly.

The expensive scotch filled him with that inexplicable warm buzz, which blossomed in the belly, then crept to the brain.
That’s even better than a cigarette after sex
. He’d quit several years ago; these days, smoking only tarnished the upscale image he needed to accommodate his success. A Cuban Monte Cristo on the other hand was another story, but Paul only lit one up on special occasions. He kept an ear tuned for the bedroom door in case he had to dump the drink in haste, but all remained nice and very quiet.