Seeds Of Fear (15 page)

Agatha thought of Dr. Binder. The way he had looked at her.

No, she wouldn't have trouble finding men.

Lemme guess. Head, right? Ten bucks a pop is what I charge. Cheap.

That your car there, the blue Metro?

Huh? You wanna
talk a
little first? Oh, okay, I get it. You don't know the full scoop about things. Okay, fine.

But. . . shit, look, see that fat guy in the red Escort right there by the Exxon station? He's one of my regulars. Hang here for ten, okay?

I'll be right back.

Okay, the full scoop on me? Sure. Shit, I got time. You've heard about the grubs, you must've. Probably just haven't heard that some of us are hookers. Not the kind of thing the state legislature wants getting around. Bad for tourism, you know?

Average john, all he wants is head. No mess, no fuss, just a quick suck in the car, parked in some dark cranny off West Street at three in the morning. Look, I'm just your average garden-variety alley pross, not some fancy streetwalker or stuck-up call girl. Standard price on the street is twenty for head, thirty for a straight lay, and forty for an ass-fuck, but I can charge half that and pull twice as many tricks 'cos, well... 'Cos I'm what you might call special.

They call us "grubs." Nice, huh? Well... I guess we
are
a little on the pasty side. But, look, don't get freaked out. I heard somewhere there are over ten thousand of us total. It all started with that ramjet thing, I don't know, a couple of years ago. Christ, I'm sure you heard about
that.
NASA and the air force were testing some new kinda plane, remotely piloted, they called it, flying it a hundred miles off the coast over the Atlantic. It was a nuclear ramjet or some shit, could fly indefinitely without fuel, no pilots, ran by computers. The idea was to have these things flying around all the time real high up. Cheap way to defend the nation. "The ultimate deterrent," the president said when they announced that they were gonna spend billions developing this thing. What they
didn't
announce was that plane kicked out a trail of some off-the-wall kinda radiation wherever it flew. The government wasn't worried about it 'cos it flew so high, the shit would go right out of the atmosphere. Well, something fucked up during one of the test flights, and one of these things wound up flying up and down the East Coast at treetop level on something they called an "emergency urban alert bomb mode" for something like five days before they could veer it off course over the sea and shoot it down. Thing was flying over
cities,
for shit's sake. And I was one of the ones lucky enough to get pissed on by it.

I'd just come up from the docks down there, you know, by the Market Square, and I was walking up toward Clay Street. 'Rome, my man, he usually picked me and his other two girls up at about four A.M. Best time for us alley girls to turn tricks is after two, after the bars are closed, 'cos then the cops stop buzzing the street to bust our chops. Fuckin' cops, nine times outa ten when they catch you, all they do is make you give 'em a quick blow job, then let you go. Anyway, here I am, hoofing it up to Clay after turning about five tricks, and then there's this rumble way down deep in my belly and this sound like slow thunder, and I look up and see this ugly thing flying about hundred feet over my head. Didn't know what to make of it. It looked like a big black kite in the sky, and when it passed, I could see this weird blue-green glow coming out of the back of the thing, its engines, I guess. I died a couple hours later, and the next day I woke up a grub.

There was a big whupdeedo for a little while. All of a sudden there were ten thousand dead people walking around and not knowing what the fuck hit them. President called an emergency meeting or some shit. Oh, you should've heard all the fancy talk they were spouting. At first they were gonna "euthanize" us "to safeguard the societal whole from potential contraindications," until some egghead at CDC verified that we weren't psychotic or contagious or radioactive or anything. Then some asshole Republican senator made a big pitch about how we should be "socially impounded." "Protean symtomologies," see, that's what they were worried about. These shitheads wanted to round us all up and put us on an island somewhere! It all blew over, though, after the activists started gearing up, and they let us be.

After all, grubs are people too.

* * *

It didn't hurt really. Just felt sick for a few minutes, got a headache, and died. Woke up the next day feeling pretty much the same as I always did. Woke up a grub. We call live people "pink" or "pinkies," and they call us grubs. Only fair, they got names for us, we got names for them. 'Rome didn't get it, the prick, he stayed pink, and so did his other two hookers. The shit from the plane wouldn't get you if you were in a car or under a roof. About a dozen other hookers got it, though, 'cos they were out on the street just like me when that fucked-up plane flew by, and now every pink hooker in the city hates us. See, johns want grubs more than pink girls 'cos we're cheaper and we ain't got diseases. AIDS, herpes, and all that shit, I had it all when I was pink, but not no more, and a john knows that if he buys himself a nut with a grub, he ain't gonna catch nothing.

Here's why I killed 'Rome, though. After 1 got grubbed, he got this brainstorm that he could really cop a bundle off me with the kinks. He'd work me right out of his crib, hitting johns up for a couple hundred bucks an hour! These sick fucks'd come in and do anything they wanted, and I mean
anything.
Bondage, S & M, scat, that sort of shit. 'Rome's only rule was that they weren't allowed to break any bones or cut off any parts. These kinks were a trip, let me tell you. You'd be surprised how many really sick motherfuckers there are in the world. They'd tie me up, jack me out, stick needles in my tits, shit in my mouth, you fuckin' name it. Grubs don't feel pain, so 'Rome figured it didn't matter. Anything goes, you know? Then he gets this bright idea about how he's gonna start his own video line called "Grub Paradise" and how I'm gonna be the star. The fucker wanted to film me while these kinks were working me over! Well, I started to get sick of this shit real fast. Grubs don't gotta sleep, so 'Rome figures he can turn me into a twenty-four-hour-a-day enterprise. Here's this scumbag making cash hand over fist offa my ass, and I don't get shit out of it. So I...

Well, if you wanna know the details, I busted a toilet tank cover over his head one night, cut his belly open, and ate his guts.

Hell. Sometimes a girl's gotta do what she's gotta do.

See, grubs can only eat raw stuff. You eat regular food like the pinkies and the shit don't come out, you bloat up. There was this one gal named Sue who got grubbed just like me—blond, kinda heavyset,
really
big tits—and she just goes on eating the regular shit that the pinkies eat, and one day I saw her walking past the hotel and, I swear, she's big as Jabba the Hut, and before she could make it to the bus stop, she, like,
exploded
right there in the street, made one holy hell of a mess.

And this shithead Republican senator I was telling you about, you should've heard the guy, like because we can only eat raw stuff, that means we're gonna go on some zombie rampage eating people in the streets like some horror movie, so that was his case for "socially impounding" us. Glad that asshole's shit didn't fly. Of course, it probably sounds pretty hypocritical of me, since I just got done telling you I chowed down on 'Rome's insides. I just figured it was the thing to do, that's all. I got tired of being used by this scumbag, so I did the job on him. It wasn't like his guts tasted any better than anything else—grubs don't have a sense of taste.

One good thing about being a grub hooker, though, you start to stick up for yourself. You get a case of the ass and you don't take shit anymore. The rule had always been no girl works solo. You wanna work the street, you gotta have a pimp. Ask any hooker in any city in the world. You try to work solo, you get your face beat to mush or wind up in some Dumpster with your throat cut. We'd always be too afraid to fight back, stand up for ourselves, you know? Shit, most girls are strung out anyway. I was. Back when I was pink, I was firing up scag four times a day, had to shoot up into my foot 'cos the veins on my arms all collapsed and turned black. I'd turn over my take to 'Rome every night like clockwork, and he'd keep me in junk, and that was all I cared about. When you're strung out, you really don't have a soul anymore. Yeah, turning my tricks, keeping 'Rome happy, and getting my fix—that's all there was for me. It was hell, let me tell you. But after I got grubbed, I didn't need the scag anymore, and it finally dawned on me that I didn't need 'Rome, either. All the other grubs working the street got the same gist, and all of a sudden a lot of pimps were winding up in body bags. The pink girls, sure, they're all still in their stables, but their pimps don't fuck with us grubs 'cos they know that if they do, they'll wind up just like 'Rome. Fuck 'em.

Shit, man. I can't hardly tell the difference. Sometimes I'm not sure if there is a difference. Pussy's pussy, and cock is cock. And when I'm sucking a nut outa some john in his car, it don't make no difference if my mouth is alive or dead, and it's better in a way 'cos I don't taste his jizz when he comes, and if he's a stinker, I can't smell him. And best of all, cash is green whether you're a grub or a pinkie, you know?

I go shopping, I buy clothes, I watch TV, I got myself a decent little apartment. Shit, I'm just like anyone else out there trying to make it.

All right, I can tell you're new in town, and you're probably thinking, shit, this chick's fuckin'
dead,
but those girls across the street are alive. Well, let me tell you something, man. That little blondie there with the glasses, the one by the MOST machine—she'll rip you off. And those two black chicks at the corner of Calvert, both of 'em got AIDS. And how do you know any one of 'em won't take you to some alley where they got their pimp waiting to bust your head, take your cash, jack your car, maybe even kill you?

You wanna take a chance like that?

So come on, man. Let's party. Shit, I'll give you the cock-suck of your life, and you can take all the time you want to come. And I won't fuck you over like those pinkie bitches across the street. Straight up, man—ten bucks for a blow job so good, I guarantee you'll be comin' back for more, and I'll swallow it, too, no bullshit. Whaddaya say?

All right!

Hey, nice car. Just keep going, and I'll tell you wh—okay, turn here, pull into this little alley right here. Yeah, good, now turn off your lights.

And pull your pants down, partner.

Hmm, let's see what we got here, yeah. Hard already, that's what I like. Lotta times at this hour most guys are on their way home from the bars and they're shitfaced. Takes 'em forever to get it up, you know?

All right, time for me to do my thing. Just lay back in the seat and relax . ..

Wait a minute, what the f—

Hey, look, buddy, I'm sorry, but. ..

I didn't do anything wrong, shit! It ain't my fault the skin came off your dick! I was just—

What gives here, man? What the hell's wrong with you?

You—you're a . . .
what?

Oh, man! What a trip! You're a grub too! Just like me!

Calm down, will ya? Lemme fix ya up here, the skin only came off at the base. Don't worry, I'll get it back on, no sweat.

There, see? Still works.

Okay, okay, just lay back and relax. A grub, huh? That's really cool.

I'll give you this one for free.

Sex is power.

Or is it the reverse: Power is sex?

Whichever is true, I ought to be—by that definition—a powerful woman. I've had a lot of commerce, shall we say, with the opposite sex. A lot.

And wanting too much of some thing, we're told by heads thought much wiser than ourselves, points to a little something called addiction.

There are many varieties of addictions, those guys with the string of fancy degrees inform us. And I guess they're right. I don't have much education—I finished high school with average grades and no particular distinction, took a few courses at a local community college, but I know about some things that just aren't learned from textbooks. There's addiction to nicotine and your thirty-one flavors of mind-bending chemicals and exercise and sugar and mental abuse and alcohol and power and sleep and food and danger and flattery and—

Sex, too.

No kidding.

It's a real addiction. Believe me.

Do you know what it's like to be hooked on sex?

I didn't think so.

It pierces and stings, throbs and aches.

Among other things.

You know that old-time song by Peggy Lee? "Fever?" That's pretty damned close to an accurate description of what I go through. It's a fever that has to be reduced, a hunger that has to be fed, a thirst that has to be quenched.

Sometimes I'm just sitting in my office, staring at boring grocery accounts, my mind filled with numbers that need sorting, and suddenly that one particular sensation comes over me. It's halfway between a cramp and an itch, and it's more than a little painful, and it's all inside where I can't reach. I can't scratch; I can't relieve it except one way. And I sure can't ignore it.

Usually I have to wait until my lunch hour, sitting there at my desk with my legs squeezed together, trying not to gasp aloud. I squirm, try to concentrate, fail. My face is flushed, my breath rapid, and ripples of pain and pleasure roll through me as the gnawing inside increases. I watch the sweep hand on the huge white face of the clock, watch it going around and around all too slowly, the minute and hour hands inching upward. Finally, when the hands get straight up, I grab my purse and leave the office. I half run, half walk down the street to a bar I pass every morning on my way to work.

It's not a great lounge; that is, you probably won't find many yuppies hanging out there with their white wine-drinking pals, but it suits me fine. You can get a tolerable sandwich or two, some draft, and something more than that. A lot of guys hang out there. A lot of guys who are just as hot as I am.

I've been here before. They know me, I suppose, but I don't care.

I stroll into the cool darkness; my heart still seems to be fluttering inside my rib cage, and I wonder if any of the men seated along the bar can hear that or see my flushed skin. Apparently not. I lick my dry lips and nod casually to the bartender, a fellow some years older than myself and fairly stocky; he has a nose that looks like it was broken a long time ago, over and over. I find a booth toward the back of the room. I look down at the scarred wooden surface of the plank table, at the wet rings left by someone's glass. I'm wet, too.

I have an old-fashioned figure—large breasts, nipped-in waist, and curving hips—and blond hair halfway down my back and a face that, while not glamorous, is attractive. They've served me well.

I wait.

Not long, though.

Someone slides into the booth across from me.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey."

I look up.

He's got hairy forearms, not like an ape's, but nice; the type you could run your fingers through. The sleeves of his blue work shirt are rolled up to mid-biceps, and those are fairly large. So he must work with his arms, his hands; I like that. His shirt is open a little, and I can see the chest hair, dark with one or two strands of silver. Not a kid. That's okay too. They're usually too anxious; they tend to pop before I get filled. Then I've gotta have two or three of them to make it worth my while.

His face is slightly scarred, maybe from acne when he was a teenager. It's a pleasant face, though it won't win any awards. His hairline is receding slightly. I put him in his mid to late thirties.

He smiles. His teeth are white, fairly even. At least it's not all fake enamel, I realize.

I put my leg out under the table and massage his calf with my bare foot.

I see him jerk slightly. He wasn't prepared for that. It amuses me that they never are, no matter how strong they come on to me.

"Want another beer?"

"Sure." I have barely touched the one in front of me, have barely nibbled the sandwich on the paper plate. It's not what I want to eat.

He waves to the bartender, who nods and within a few minutes comes by with our new drinks. He takes away my half-filled glass and uneaten sandwich.

"What's your name?" I ask after a moment.

"Barry. You?"

"Eleanor."

"Nice name."

A prim name, I think, for someone who definitely isn't. "Thanks."

Now, I didn't claim that I was some kind of brilliant conversationalist. Oscar Wilde I'm not, I know that. On the other hand, that's not the reason I came to the bar, remember.

I find out within minutes that Barry works on a road crew and is hoping to get promoted to the office. He is close to having a bachelor's degree and wants to go someplace other than the outside with unbearable heat in the summer and unbearable cold in the winter. I always like ambition in my bed partner.

I tell him I work in Accounts Payable at a grocery wholesale warehouse.

"Not precisely exciting, but it pays some of the bills," I remark.

He laughs, just as if I'd said something witty. Barry's not here for my conversation, either.

We polish off another beer. Talk about the weather, which is hotter than usual and more than a little humid. The long hot summers of the Northeast. Sweltering. Simmering. Moist.

I'm very humid as I sit across from him. My other shoe is off now and both feet are rubbing his legs. I breathe faster. His hand has crept up under cover of the table, and he's brushed his fingertips against the inside of my lower thigh. I almost wet myself.

"Kind of warm in here," he says.

I nod, hardly trusting myself to speak.

"Want to go someplace?"

Never thought he'd ask. "Sure." I smile and lean forward, and he looks down my front at the shadow between my breasts.

I get up, pay for the drinks—I always make it a point of doing that, even though it's generally the guy who makes the first move—and he follows me outside.

We find a somewhat seedy-looking motel on the outskirts of town. I've been there before. The desk clerk, a pale, nervous-looking boy of nineteen or twenty, knows me; we've done it a few times as well; he hasn't been quite the same since. I rent a room— my usual, a small corner facing the back—and Barry and I go in. I kick the door closed. As many times as I've been here, I still don't think I could say what color the walls are.

Barry's arms snake around me almost instantly. I am pressed solidly against him and I can feel his hardness. I want his hardness. I want to eat him alive. Figuratively speaking, of course.

While I kiss him, forcing my tongue into his mouth, I start to unbutton his shirt, unzip his pants. He tumbles out of his jeans, and boy, is he ever ready. I pull my clothes off quickly; lots of practice— maximum effect with minimum effort; I don't wear underwear any longer. His lips are burning, delicious, sucking at mine, and he fondles and pinches my full breasts. The nipples are erect.

When I cup him in my hand, he throbs. I squeeze, and he moans.

We fall back on the queen-sized bed, and fuck like frenzied ferrets.

It's very good with Barry. Very, very good. Not the best, perhaps, but closer than the last few times. I savor every last mouthful of him.

When I leave the motel room, Barry is asleep.

He'll sleep for a long time now.

A long time.

And I bet he'll want that transfer to the office even sooner than before.

I wave to the clerk, give him a thumbs-up signal. He appears a little paler than before, and I know his palms are sweating. As I drive, I whistle; and I return to the thrilling world of lost cases of Vienna sausages, shipping and handling, and freight charges.

Even as I'm sitting down behind my desk and sorting through the papers in the wire basket, I can feel that hunger consuming me all over. And I know I've got to do it again. Soon.

I wasn't always like this.

Like everyone else, I started out a virgin. Only, from an early age I realized something was wrong . .. that I was a little different from my girlfriends. Certainly they were interested in boys just about the same time I was, but I realized my fascination was a bit more serious than theirs.

They just wanted to date and hold hands; I wanted to fuck.

I managed to hang on until I was fourteen; then I just had to do it.

I had to have it.

It was either that or explode. Better to relieve the pressure first, I thought. I didn't know what would happen if I didn't, and I suspected it wouldn't be good for me. No sir.

Now, we run into a problem with the language here. A guy would boast that he had his first pussy. I can't say that; I mean I'm not a guy, and that's not what I got. I guess, then, I had my first cock.

I liked cock a lot.

I did it with another kid—my next-door neighbor's son; he was fifteen—on a Monday, then the next day, and the day after that. I devoured him. It was incredibly fun—after all, it was uncharted territory for us. The ultimate adventure, I thought. Finally on the fourth day he burst into tears and begged me to leave him alone or he'd tell his parents.

I was surprised. I thought he enjoyed the sex just as much as I did. He'd made just as much noise as I had, thrashed around like he was having a good time. I guessed I was wrong. I guessed he'd just chewed off more than he could swallow.

After that, he took the long way around to school so that he wouldn't have to pass our house, and whenever he was outside and I came out of the house, he'd go back inside. I laughed. What a wimp. But I shrugged. Didn't bother me. There were more cocks out there.

I waited, biding my time.

The next occasion, only two weeks later, was with the guy delivering my parents' dry cleaning. He came in with these suits and dresses all in their plastic wraps. My parents weren't home, so I said I would take them. I took him by the hand—he was about ten years older than me, with a ragged haircut and green eyes—closed the door, and pushed him down onto the pink and beige plaid couch. My mother never suspected. This time made me think of that old well-thumbed paperback I found in my mother's lingerie drawer.
Candy,
it was called. Pretty weird. This girl makes it with a hunchback one time. I don't know about that sort of thing; I mean she humps his hump, if you can believe that. I read the book in snatches, while my folks were at work or at the store. Pretty tame by today's standards. Trust me.

The third occasion was with another boy from school, a guy I'd known all my life. We were good friends, had never dated, but we also had a healthy interest. So we met every day after school at his house; his parents worked and weren't due home until well after six. We would sit down in the living room for an hour or so and dutifully do our homework, and then after a while the tension would get so great that I would put my hand on his crotch, and he'd slip his hand into my sweater, up under my bra—I still wore underwear then—and I would squeeze, and then he would squeeze, and next thing you know, we'd fall right onto the floor, on his bed, on the kitchen table—I saw it once in this film called
The Postman Always Rings Twice
—or on his parents' bed. We even tried it standing up in the shower. We were too slick and giggled, and he kept slipping out, until finally we gave up and I just went down on him. That was nice, although not as nice as when he went down on me. It was like he swallowed every bit of me.

Our arrangement worked well until his mom arrived home early a few months later and found us fucking our brains out on her fine and fancy Oriental carpet with its knotted-by-hand threads. Sometimes I think where we were upset her far more than what we were actually doing. Anyway, that was the last I saw of him. My parents screamed at me, lectured me about being irresponsible—I wasn't; I'd taken the proper precautions; I wasn't about to get pregnant at my tender age—shouted that I was incorrigible, that I was a hellion and a tramp and a number of other adjectives, that I was headed for the D-home. Mostly my father yelled, while my mother cried and wrung her hands, and kept wondering aloud what they had done wrong. This from a woman who was pregnant at her wedding. I was what you would call an eight-pound preemie. Right.

I worked very diligently for the rest of the school year to be a pleasing, docile, oh-so-obedient daughter, someone my parents could trust.

Of course, I didn't stop screwing around. I just took more care, that's all.

The doctors lecture about guys having wet dreams. Women have them, too, only they're slightly different. My wet dreams started right after my first encounter. I would wake up just drenched in sweat, my breath rapid, my heart fluttering, my body tingling, and the sheets very moist under me. I knew what was happening. Inside would be that gnawing hunger, that appetite that I had to satisfy. I would get up, no matter the time of night, dress, and go run two or three miles out on the high school track. Then I'd let myself back into the house—all without waking my folks, who would probably have slept through the Resurrection—take a cold shower, and still none of that would relieve that fiery craving.