Grimoire Diabolique (41 page)

Beth’s little breasts jiggled as she belted out a bitter chortle. “You make me fuck a torso and tell
me
not to be vulgar! I’m sick of it! You hear me! I’m sick of fucking that disgusting, ridiculous, grinning…trunk!”

Rudy brought a finger to his lips. “Keep your voice down. He might hear you. You’ll hurt his feelings.”

“God,” she lapsed, paling. “He takes forever sometimes, and—” she gulped “—he’s—he’s—he’s just so…
huge.”

Then quit complaining
, Rudy felt inclined to say.
Women always want the big dick—well, baby, now you got it
. At the table, he weeded out the ones, fives, and tens, into the garbage.

“Beth, oh Bethieeeeeeeeee!” called out the familiar nasal warble from downstairs. “Wither thee, my sweet beatific vision? My lovely, lovely Beth of the light-brown hair?”

“Oh, no,” Beth croaked.

“Leave me in turmoil no longer, oh, my wondrous angel, so lovely of countenance and sweet of loins. Come! I beg thee! Come assuage my beckoning fancy.”

Rudy cocked a brow. “Assuage my beckoning fancy?”

Beth glared at him. “That means he
horny
again, Rudy.” Her eyes rolled back in despair. “I don’t believe this. All I ever wanted was a nice normal average life, and what do I get instead? A torso with a boner.”

“Dearest Beth,
please!
Partake of my desire! My loins cry out for thee!”

Beth’s disdainful glare focused. “And you, you fucker. You haven’t made love to me in months.”

Rudy shrugged. It was not an easy thing for a man to rise to the occasion when he knew his squeeze was doing the bop with a naked torso.
Hey, she’s got her gig, I’ve got mine,
he thought. His bevy of call girls at the track wore him out. Some of those girls could suck the paint off a battleship. Not much lead left in the old pencil after when
they
were done. “It’s all the stress, honey,” he lied through his teeth. “All this betting everyday—it takes a lot out of a guy. And now the IRS is all over me.”

“Wondrous Beth!” the torso whined on, “my passion throbs for thee! Oh, let thy lovely loins be wed again to mine! Let your angel’s lips give succor to my manly love, and drink of my warm and copious seed!”

“You better get down there,” Rudy advised, “unless you want me to lose everything on the next race.”

Beth stared at him, her shoulders slumping.

“I hate you,” she said.

««—»»

One thing Rudy had added to the new house, unbeknownst to Beth, of course, was the hidden video camera in the basement. Rudy, after all, was a successful man now, and successful men didn’t watch their girlfriends tuck torsos through mere cracks in basement doors. No, they watched with state-of-the-art video equipment. And Rudy had a lot to watch…

Jesus Christ in a hotdog stand
, he thought, staring at the screen in his den and adjusting the remote, low-light lens.

Despite his arousal, Rudy could no longer deny that watching Beth’s sexual feats maintained in him a necessary level of disdain for her. It didn’t matter at all that he coerced her to tend to Gormok—that was beside the point. And so was logic. He needed to hate her as much as he could in order to compel her to continue. In truth it was money, not love, that made the world go round, and Rudy liked the world very much.

Sometimes, though, the things he saw on the screen really bothered him. Like right now, for instance. Beth was performing an act of fellatio on Gormok the likes of which would make Linda Lovelace look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. “Goddamn! can she smoke a pole,” he whispered aloud. And he saw with even more distaste that her earlier claim was no bull. To describe Gormok as huge was sheer understatement. Try hung like a fucking Clydesdale stallion.
That fruitloop motherfucker’s got more dick than four or five guys,
Rudy grimly realized, and at the same time he stroked his own endowment, which in comparison, more resembled a Jimmy Dean breakfast link than a penis. And what Beth was doing to Gormok more resembled a freak-show sword-swallowing than simple fellatio. Down her assiduous lips went, all the way to the hilt, a Gormok’s legless hips squirmed in pleasure. Where did it all go?
Deep throat, my ass,
Rudy thought.
This is deep stomach.
She never sucked
my
cock like that, the dirty bitch.

And Rudy’s hatred did not abate in the least as his hand assuaged his own beckoning fancy.
I’ll bet the little whore is enjoying it,
he convinced himself.
I’ll bet she’s getting off! And, Christ, she’s making more noise than a truck-load of hogs at the slop trough!

As was his habit now, Rudy pretended it was the pillar of his own manhood that was being so fastidiously gobbled up by Beth’s suck-to-wake-the-dead yap; it was the only way he could tolerate this—to fantasize. But when he eventually relocated the wares of his prostate gland and balls onto the Scotchguarded carpet, the fantasy shattered. His own release was a mere dribble compared to Gormok’s veritable whale blasts of sperm, which Beth allowed her face to be showered with as the alomancer gibbered in glee…

VII

Rudy knew it would happen eventually, but he had a contingency plan for that too. One night he woke to find Beth staring at the big bay window in the bedroom.

“Honey?” he feigned. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t even sleep anymore. I can
hear
him down there. He jabbers all night long.”

This in fact was true. Even from the basement, Gormok could be heard mattering inanities in arcane languages, and bubbling nasal laughter.
Well, maybe if you fucked him a little better, he’d simmer down
, Rudy thought.
Ain’t my fault you’re a dull fuck
.
Suck his big dick harder—try that, bitch. Suck his ass—that’ll keep him happy.

Beth sat on the bed and began to cry.

“Sweetheart,” Rudy offered a phony consolation. “Don’t cry.”

“You said we’d get married,” she sobbed. “You said we’d have children.”

“Honey, we will.”

“When, Rudy? I need to know when.”

“Soon, I promise.” He stroked her hair, kissed her teary cheeks. “I’ve got a plan,” he whispered. “The race track, the ball games and all that? That’s smalltime.”

“What are you talking about?” she sniffled.

Rudy reached into the nightstand. “See this? It’ll set us up for life in no time, honey.” What he showed her was the NASDAQ Index of
The Wall Street Journal
. “We’ll be
millionaires,
Beth. And then, I promise you, we’ll get married and have kids just like we planned.”

“Please, Rudy, please,” she sobbed, hugging him back.

“I promise,” he reasserted. “But you’ve got to give this just a little more time. Okay?”

Beth’s sobs began to abate.

“Honey? Okay?”

“Okay,” she croaked.

“Oh, Bethieeeeeeeee!” shot the voice from below. “Come hither, please!”

VIII

Within a few months they’d moved out of the A-frame in favor of a waterfront estate. The his and hers Mustangs were replaced by his and hers Lamborghini Diablos. Rudy merely had Gormok perform a few divinations, then laid his money down at a broker’s. It didn’t take long. Blue Chip stocks. Municipal bonds. T-Bills. Not to mention the thirty-million in 6-month CD’s
.
Even in the highest federal and state tax-brackets, Rudy had enough to keep them pig-shit rich for life. And that bevy of call girls? Well, now they were
his
girls. He had thirty of them, one for each day of the month, and he put them all up in luxury condos he paid for in cash. Things weren’t bad. No, not bad at all.

And Rudy found a great solace in his calendar month of bimbos; they provided him the escape his psyche needed, the abstract catharsis which relieved the entails of his complicated, high-stress lifestyle. Plus they fucked good, which furthermore relieved the hatred he now harbored wholesale for Beth. Rudy got lost in his women, and this banished the steady and bothersome awareness that his fiancé was impaling herself on a “bigger” man than he, limblessness notwithstanding. Becky was his favorite, a slim, sultry blonde, whose specialty was tongue-baths, which made Rudy a great adherent of personal hygiene. Then there was Shanna, the full-tilt brunette with a rack of tits you could use to drydock a Los Angeles-class sub, and a welcome propensity for always asking Rudy to enter through the, uh, back door. And we mustn’t forget Chrissy—now
there
was a woman! She had looks that would make Jessica Alba seriously consider suicide, not to mention a mouth that could suck-start a Ford Tri-Motor.

Yes, Rudy’s buxom recreational brigade all proved quite adroit at helping him cope with his problems, to the extent that his only
real
problem was wondering just how much joy juice his vesicles could manufacture. A man could only put out so much, but lo and behold, his girls were always ready to prove that he was possessed of an endless reservoir of love lava. And on those dread occasions when he felt the old crane simply wouldn’t rise, his bevy of beauties were always quick, by their sheer expertise to prove a grand synonymy with Jesus—in that they could raise the dead. Rudy loved his women, he
cherished
them. And whenever he grew sick of one, he simply dumped her and found someone else. Just as there was no shortage of beer in Bavaria, there was no shortage of beautiful women who liked moolah. What a life!

In the meantime, Rudy urged Beth to research, as thoroughly as possible, every aspect of Mesopotamian mythology, ancient ritualism, pre-Christian divination, and the like. She even found one book called
The Synod of the Alomancers
, and learned everything about the Cenotes of Nergal, the Nashipus, the Ashipus, the ziggurats, and all the intricacies of the regalia and the ritual. Rudy felt this necessary in order to make Gormok feel more at home. He had contractors make a mock temple out of the basement. He purchased real censers and thuribles, standards and statues and murals etched with the holy glyphs. He even had a clothier make a special hooded black robe and sash, identical to those worn by the ancient alomancers, which he donned each time he asked Gormok The Talking Torso to perform another divination. Rudy wanted the atmosphere to be right for his dismembered bread-winner; he figured it was the least he could do.

On the other hand, though, Beth grew more and more sullen. She rarely even spoke, not that Rudy was around much to talk to—his harem kept him busy, when he wasn’t busy himself wheeling and dealing at the broker’s. Beth became stoical, morose. Now, the ludicrous head atop the diviner’s torso insisted she service him many times a day, amid an array of kinky twists which were better left undescribed.

But more months went by.

And Rudy’s fortune increased exponentially.

IX

It was funny, sometimes, how the universe worked. Rudy recalled telling Beth once that there was never enough, but actually, now, he found he was wrong. Already he was one of the richest men in the country. What more did he need? So it
was
rather appropriate, in a cosmic way, when Beth walked into his den one evening and dropped the bombshell:

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

At first Rudy felt enraged. “Pregnant! You’re shitting me! This is a joke, right?”

“It’s no joke, Rudy. I’m pregnant.”

He gnashed his teeth and jumped up. “You mean you let that goddamn horny torso
knock you up?
”

“I have to fuck him ten times a day,” she drily pointed out. “What did you expect?”

“Well—well, goddamn it, Beth! I thought you were on the pill!”

“The pill isn’t foolproof, Rudy.”

Calm down, boy,
he induced himself.
Don’t panic
. “Yeah? Well, it’s no problem. You’ll simply get an abortion.”

Her race looked carved in granite. “I’m not getting an abortion, Rudy. I’m having this baby.”

“No. You’re not.” He opened and closed his fists, to quell his rage. “You’re not going to have a kid by that
thing’s
spunk.”

“Thing?” Beth chuckled. “I thought he was
our man
. Forget it, Rudy. I’m having this baby. You won’t give me one, so I’ll settle for Gormok’s.”

You evil calculating bitch,
he thought.
You did this on purpose, didn’t you? You went off the pill on purpose just to put me on the spot
.

“But I’m willing to make a deal,” she went on. “I will get an abortion on two conditions. One, you make me pregnant, and two, you kill Gormok.” Then she passed a small box to him. “Open it,” she said.

Rudy opened the box to find it occupied by a Smith & Wesson Model 65 .357 Magnum.

“You’ll do it right now, Rudy. No more lies. No more false promises. You’ll dig a grave in the back yard. Right now. And then you’ll take that silly thing outside and you’ll kill it. And I mean right
now.”