D.O.A. Extreme Horror Anthology (25 page)

Maybe not even between consenting adults.

The next photo showed a naked young boy on his knees in front of Mr. Baxter. The older man in the photo was wearing nothing but a wicked smile, frozen in a moment of twisted pleasure. The next picture was much the same, as was the next. Only two things changed as the pages progressed, the quality of the photographs, and the age the leading man. With every new picture, Clemet’s stomach pitched against his esophagus, as if it were desperately trying to flee his body.

Unable to tear himself away from the photographic horror, he asked, “What is this?”

“I don’t know,” the widow said from the couch. She had long given up trying to wrestle the thick book away from Clemet.

“How could he do that?”

“I didn’t know,” she repeated before she buried her head in her hands. Her weeping finally broke the spell of the cursed photos, grabbing Clemet’s attention long enough to let him shut the album. “Please, just throw it away.”

Clemet cowered in the corner of the room, staring at the weeping widow for what felt like an eternity, not knowing what to do. He prayed in silence, asking the heavens for the strength to deal with this mess.

As if sensing his hesitation, the widow glanced up to him, looking him dead in the eye.

Clemet’s skin crawled.

 “Please,” she begged as she stood, taking a few tentative steps forward. “Paul was a good man and a good citizen to this town. He just made a few mistakes.

“A few mistakes?” Clemet asked. Nausea washed over him, but this time it was a pure and simple sickness, not the same gut wrenching from before. “They were just kids. How could he do stuff like that to them?”

“Please don’t let him die like this. Be remembered like this. Please, just burn it.”

“How could he?”

The widow clenched her fists on either side of her head and screamed, “He didn’t know what he was doing!”

Clemet found that hard to believe. “How could he not know? With that satisfied smile and his...his...” Clemet choked, unable to speak the words. The idea of what Mr. Baxter had done, had been doing to those kids right up to the very last photo, gripped Clemet in a righteous anger. Full of fury and fire and a rage that he had never felt before, he shook the album in one clutched fist at the widow. “Good God woman, he’s posing in every picture! How could he have not known?”

The widow collapsed at Clemet’s feet in a howling heap. “I’m so sorry. God help me I am so sorry.”

Clemet’s anger stalled in its tracks. All of the fight went out of him when he looked down on her shuddering form. He rested a hand on her shaking shoulder. “Mrs. Baxter, it’s not your fault.”

The widow didn’t seem to listen to him. Instead she mumbled, “Merciful God in heaven please forgive me. I’m so sorry. I’m so very, very sorry.”

“Peggy,” Clemet said, risking all propriety by speaking her first name. “Peggy please, it’s not your fault. Don’t take this into you. Just because you were man and wife don’t mean you share this sin.”

At the sound of his own words, Clemet finally understood what had been happening all along. He had supped on the horrible lifelong secret of a sick and twisted man. He had eaten it, absorbed it, and his body rebelled against it in the only way it knew how.Clemet looked down at the album he held, the proof of Paul Baxter’s sin, knowing what had to be done. He had to right this wrong. It was the only way to set his troubled body at ease. The nausea was already passing just with the idea of it.

“What’s done is done,” Clemet said. “We’ll turn this album over to the police, and I’m sure they’ll handle it as quietly as they can. After all and I do hate to put it like this, they can’t arrest a dead man.” He almost smiled, but thought better of it.

The widow, quiet now, raised her face to him. In her eyes lay an anguish Clemet hoped to never see again. “You don’t understand.”

“Mrs. Baxter?”

“I can’t let you turn that album over.”

“I have to. I need to do the right thing by those kids.”

“I need you to destroy it.” Quick as lightening, Mrs. Baxter was on her feet again, clawing for the book. Clemet tried to pull away, but it was too late. The woman had it in her hands one moment, the next it was ablaze. She stood guard in front of the fireplace, as if Clemet would reach into the flames to retrieve the burning album.

Clemet had other things to worry about. As soon as the picture book hit the flames his nausea returned. While the proof of Paul Baxter’s sin burned merrily away, Clemet Jones’s stomach roiled.

Grasping his stomach, he stared down at the widow, and asked, “Why?”

In the shadows of the flickering firelight, her pale lips curved into an evil grin. “Who do you think took all those photographs?”

A swell of nausea struck Clemet again, driving him to his knees.

“I can’t go to jail, Clem,” she said as she stood over him. “I’m too old and too tired.”

“You don’t have to,” Clemet gasped between groans. “No one has to know you took ‘em.” Even as he said it, his stomach disagreed by trying to leap up his throat.

“Not good enough. Paul gave everything to this town. He deserves to be remembered with respect. I won’t let you just come in here and soil his good name. Not some sin eating, low life like you.” After she made her grand speech, she snorted up a good sized loogie and spat it right in Clemet’s face.

Clemet was doing his best not to vomit, but once that warm spittle oozed down his cheek, it was all over. His guts contracted, sending up a monster of a belch, at which the widow wrinkled her nose in distaste. Before she could verbally protest, the belch was followed by a flood of the blackest, thickest, slimiest blood Clemet had seen all night. It shot out of him with fire-hose force, knocking the widow off of her feet as it pummeled her. She fell to the wayside with a surprised shout, accompanied by the distinct crack of bone, probably a hip.

All Clemet could do was brace himself on his knees, keep his mouth open, and pray that when he was done some poor soul would have enough pity on him to eat his sins before they put him in the ground.

Clemet woke a few hours later, back in the hospital and the paper-thin gown. Only this time he was tied to the bed by his wrists and ankles. He tugged at the leather manacles, wondering what in the heck was going on.

“Welcome to the land of the living,” Doc Pearson said.

Clemet looked over to find the doctor sitting at the bedside. “What’s going on?”

“How do you feel?”

“Why you got me chained up like some animal?”

Pearson leaned in close to Clemet. Between clenched teeth he said, “Because you only get to make a jackass out of me once, son. Now answer the damned question.”

Clemet stared at the doctor with wide eyes. “Yes sir. I feel fine, sir.” It was the truth too. In fact, he felt better than he had in years. He said as much.

Doc Pearson nodded before he stepped to the doorway. He shouted into the hallway, “Who do I have to sue to get my patient out of these restraints?”

“Doc? I don’t understand what’s going on.”

The doctor turned back to Clemet with a shrug. “Neither do I.”

“How did I end up here? What happened to the widow—”

“She called the cops on you.”

“Me?”

“She claims you broke into her house. The police found you passed out in her parlor.”

“The police?” Clemet swallowed hard. “But I didn’t break in. Honest!”

“Don’t worry about it, Clem. She’s got bigger worries now.”

“Like what?”

“Aside from a pair of broken hips?”

Clemet grimaced. He felt sort of guilty for that.

The doctor leaned in close again, whispering, “They found the photographs.”

Clemet stared hard at the doctor.

“The album, with the kids...” The doctor’s voice trailed off, as if he couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. Which he probably couldn’t.

“That thing was on fire last I saw it,” Clemet said.

“From what I understand, they found it in the fireplace while collecting your bloody vomit as evidence. The book was a little charred around the edges. It was also a lot bloody. Which made it wet. As in put-out-a-fire kind of wet.” The doctor raised his eyebrows and cocked his head at Clemet.

Clemet, for the second time that evening, made a grand leap of intelligence. He smiled at the warm feeling of it. “Wow. Sort of a blessing that I was so sick, huh?”

“A blessing? If that’s a blessing I’d like to see your idea of what dammed is.”

“No you wouldn’t.” Clemet closed his eyes for a moment, shuddering at the images forever burned into his mind. “I’ve done seen what dammed is like, Doc. You really don’t want to see.”

Doc Pearson grinned at Clemet. “I do believe I’ll take your word for it.”

A beautiful blonde nurse joined them, setting Clemet free from the awkward cuffs. Clemet got an eyeful of her tight behind before she slipped away from the room. He reeled back on the rising lust, tamping it down before it could flower into another sin, or worse, another bout of vomiting.

He had just about enough with outward shows of inward mistakes for one lifetime.

Glutton for Punishment

Robert Essig

Lights, like so many stars, lit the city against the dark night. It was a view from his fifty-first story penthouse that William Buckingham, president of Buckingham Enterprises, would never live to loath. At least that’s what he thought.

He stood there in front of the floor to ceiling picture window—a wall of glass that looked out upon the bright lights and constant mayhem of New York City—contemplating his wealth, family and future.

Contemplating these things, all because of a nasty case of the clap he received from a twenty thousand dollar whore.

William sipped a single malt scotch as he thought about his life.
How the hell can I get the clap from a twenty grand hooker
?

Those kinds of prostitutes were suppose to be at the top of the heap, the cream of the crop. For twenty G’s they sure should be, but this one...she was dirty on the inside. He could have paid a skanky tramp in Queens a twenty spot for the same thing.

But she was beautiful
, thought Buckingham, a
nd that body
...

What the hell did that matter? A night with Venus and a lifetime with Mercury, as the saying goes.

But how could it happen
?

William’s mind came back to that thought, again and again. For twenty thousand dollars she should have been double checked for disease, but when he really thought about it, she was only one of many things he paid dearly for that weren’t up to his standards.Take the meal Mr. Buckingham had two weeks ago at Pravda, an exclusive new restaurant. He ordered a Kobe beef steak—a New York cut, which, in some circles is considered the absolute choicest steak in the world—and you know what? It was no better than filet mignon at a casual dining steakhouse; but the Kobe steak cost several hundred dollars.

And what about his new suit? 

William crooked his head to look at the seam on the shoulder that had already split. This was the first time he wore the suit, it hadn’t even been to the cleaners yet, and there was a split in the hem! He had it tailored at the best shop in town and this is what he got.

Should have gone to the Men’s Warehouse
.

What was the point of all this money if it was being wasted on superior products that were nothing more than inferior garbage?

It was eating Mr. Buckingham alive.

He looked out from his million-dollar view wondering what was wrong with
it
. Surely there was something amiss. Perhaps there was someone in another high-rise spying on him with a telescope. Something.

He sipped his single malt scotch suddenly aware of the taste it left in his mouth. He was very used to that sweet burning taste, but for all he knew it was nothing better than neutral grain spirits.

Nothing better than two-buck-chuck swill.

William Buckingham smiled as he looked across his penthouse suite to the mini bar. There stood two decanters, the one with the good stuff and the other one for guests filled with cheap store-brand liquor. He wasn’t even sure it was scotch at all, probably bourbon.

William looked at his glass and thought of his family—his wife and youngest son, Charlie. He also thought of his other son, Daniel, the child from his first marriage, the heir to his enterprise. 

He poured his drink out and replaced it with the cheap guest liquor—no rocks. After all, what was the best worth if it wasn’t the best? What was a Gucci suit worth if the seams split before the first dry cleaning; what good is a Kobe steak that tastes like a steakhouse special?

He sipped the liquor feeling the burn as it coated his larynx on its way down—resting like a fire in his stomach.

To him, the single malt scotch was just as useless as a twenty thousand dollar whore.

William had a family out there somewhere. He knew where. He would leave his suite eventually, after he was half in the bag, to slip into bed beside his wife.  In the morning he would see Charlie, smile a fake smile, and watch his boy leave for school.

That was about all he ever saw of Charlie lately.

He spent a lot of time in his fifty-first story suite these days.

Diana loathed him. He could swear she shuddered every time he slipped into bed next to her. But there was a prenuptial agreement; she had to stay or she wouldn’t get any of his fortune. Diana lamented over signing the prenup. She even hired a lawyer once to see if anything could be done to release her from the agreement and was told nothing could be done. If she divorced or left William, she wouldn’t get a cent.

She married money and William knew it. Their wedding day kiss was reserved and frigid, no passion at all. He practically had to pay her to have sex with him that night and showered her with gifts all throughout their honeymoon just so she would put out.

He realized then that he had made a mistake in marrying her, but what could he do? He sure as hell didn’t want to give her a chunk of his fortune, so he decided to buy the suite and let her fester on the side like a painful canker sore; he played the irritating tongue that never let it heal.