Seeds Of Fear (19 page)

The next thing he remembered was moving down the stairs as quietly as he could, and Rexer almost shrieking when he saw Stelfreeze standing in the hallway.

"Let's go," Stelfreeze said, not even bothering to nod at Mama Tomei as they moved past her to the door. Rexer thought she looked ashamed.

* * *

"What is it, partner?" Rexer said to Stelfreeze as they walked out of the alley onto Eugenie Street. "If she didn't say, I can tell you Valent was up there."

Stelfreeze told him about the stories he had heard from his brother-in-law, the ones he now knew were true. Rexer confirmed what he had seen upstairs.

The thing was: Valent wasn't getting payoffs. He was going there to do what everybody else did, only at cheaper rates. Because he was a cop and could close it up anytime he wanted.

It was like eating your cake and having it too. Have sex with Celandine and strangle the head, tear at the skin, ravage the face. All without killing anything, because Celandine Tomei's decency was long buried.

Rexer thought of the jewel case of eyeballs. The cops passed a row of two-flats that displayed either plastic palm trees, plastic crucifixes, or promo photos of Richard M. Daley in the front windows.

Thunder rolled in the distance.

"The money mostly goes for reconstructive surgery," Stelfreeze said. Both wondered what they would say to Valent. The heavens suddenly opened and the April rain came down.

Jack Stelfreeze had met Rexer in the hallway, all right. He had taken the smoking gun from his partner's shaking hands. Rexer had been disgusted by what he had seen in that room, what he had watched his own friend and sometimes partner
doing
with that deformed freak.

This was the part he tried to deny, even though Internal Affairs had all the facts:

Rexer had waited all of three heartbeats before pulling his privately owned .38 from his waistband and shooting at Valent. For what he was
doing.
For what he had been
enjoying.
The younger cop was taken by surprise, falling from the bed half-erect, his face smeared with the freak's lipstick. It made him look like a clown.

Two steps in then, before the freak could scream. Didn't matter, though, with the iron thunder of the gunshots. Rexer grabbed the deformed head, pulled it from its stalk of a neck, laying it over the freak's face like a pillow so he wouldn't have to see her pleading eyes as he blew her brains out. Because he felt
pity
for her.

The freak's body going limp, spasming once, scaring him. Stumbling down the stairs, meeting Stelfreeze, Mama Tomei already dialing 911 out of rote.

Nicholas Raymond Rexer smiling, happy, victorious.

Back on Belle Plaine, Rexer smiling from his window, a beautiful vantage point for watching a rabbit blown to bits by a Gran Torino with missing plates. Rexer smiling at the smear, waiting for the knock on the door, the gentle sound his fellow officers would make as they took him into custody, out of the crazy room and off to Stateville. The big and burly coppers making a polite taptaptap, like he was considered a damn psycho.

Keeping his trigger-grip at the ready, rolling the exercise balls in his palms. His own special kind of exercise balls, better than the ones at the Academy, the ones you had to buy at the shop on Racine where you bought your winter shirts and plastic coverings for caps when you're slated for traffic control in winter.

The exercise balls Rexer had in his hands, practicing to fire a gun he'd never hold again, were two small glassine eyeballs. They were gold-flecked and, of course, unstaring.

This story is for Lee Seymour.

Sure, I'm curled up behind stone-washed jeans and briefs so old they're barely attached to the waistband, but I have ways of finding things out. For instance, I know Joe's chin is about twelve inches closer to the bar than it was about an hour ago, thanks to three whiskey sours.

It's almost Zero Hour at The Wail-Eyed. The beautiful people have already paired off and headed out for the Jacuzzis. The remainder—Joe included—are trying to decide just how desperate they are.
Scan the options. Christ, what are we still doing here? Catch the bartender's eye. Things'll look better through another highball.
Is it worth the night's warmth to wake up with someone you'd cross the street to avoid in daylight?

No, she's never gonna grace the cover of
Cosmopolitan,
Joe thinks, but when was the last time you were out with a model, huh? I try to tell him don't bother, it won't work, but does he listen? Of course not, he never does.

Back at her place, they clink glasses, dim the lights, and pull back the bedspread. She steps out of her slacks. Revealed are thick pasty-white thighs that would look better in front of a Greek temple. I don't want any part of this. As a matter of fact, I try to crawl back up inside.

"It's okay. We've both had a few. Let me see what I can do," she offers.

She starts working me with her hand. I suppose it's good enough for the moment, because I stand up at attention. But it takes too long, and when she pulls away I begin to wilt like an hours-cut blossom on a hot afternoon. She stretches back against the stacked pillows. Joe positions himself between her knees. Both of them move with the exaggerated care of a lush trying to walk a straight line under the trooper's steely glare.

Talk about loose lips that could sink ships! I mean, let's face it. Great sex boils down to the gradual buildup of friction. Without something to work against. . . well, forget any fireworks. For all the friction these two have, they'd be better off trying to start a campfire by rubbing two bars of soap together. It's like diving into a sponge—no, worse, more like sinking into a platter of Jell-O.

Joe closes his eyes, tries to conjure up the face of the little nymphet in the skin flick he jerked off to last night. No good, his head is making him feel like the mattress is turning barrel rolls. She squeezes his ass, but I'm already in retreat. Joe slumps to the side with a groan.

"S'all right," she murmurs, rubbing his shoulder. "We'll try again in a li'l bit."

Luckily they curl up and let their eyelids shut. Within minutes they're snoring in each other's face. By the time morning arrives, I'm ignored, quickly tucked away like some embarrassing old uncle who drools uncontrollably out of the corner of his mouth. They politely blow each other off and scurry to work.

I've got to do something. I can't go through that again. It's time to take charge, for Joe's sake as well as my own.

I wait until the following evening. Fortunately he didn't try to hit the bars; too much to do the next day. I let him drift into REM sleep. I despise looking in on his dreams; they're so predictable, I can't even get a Peeping Tom thrill out of them. Oh great—his mother, in a see-through negligee, pirouetting in front of him. Gimme a fuckin' break.

I begin forcing the tissue I'm made of—the
corpus spongiosum
—back up into the rest of Joe's body. The
spongiosum
contains cavities I can engorge with blood —that's how I pop a boner when I need it. I begin superseding—supplanting—the normal muscle tissue with my own.

It's easy as far back as the scrotum, the anus, and the seminal vesicles. But all that's familiar territory. It's more difficult once I reach the lower abdomen. The deep abdominal muscles set up some resistance. I realize I can't encompass them entirely. I'm going to have to settle for a less-than-total takeover.

Deep within his Oedipal fantasy, Joe feels something moving up inside him. His stomach churns, and he draws his knees up toward his chest. I have to be careful. I don't want to make him so sick he wakes up. All I need is for some doctor to discover penile tissue running throughout Joe's body. Joe groans low in his throat and turns to the other side.

It's slow going up through the chest cavity and along the spine, but it gets easier with practice. By the time I'm spreading down through his arms and legs, I feel like an old pro.

It's a lucky thing the body works as a democratic unit.

I have the majority vote.

A week later. Joe's back at The Wail-Eyed. He tried to line up a date for the evening but hit bottom like a diver belly-flopping into an empty pool. I'm doing my best to keep him from drowning himself. He knows he came in here wanting to get blotto drunk. But now, three hours later, he's still on his second drink and doesn't even have a buzz on. He's been making eyes at this brunette, but she's hanging out with a bunch of her friends. Besides, she's not any better-looking than Miss Hand Job. As a matter of fact, I'm surprised she doesn't have a wheelbarrow beside her chair, to help her cart that ass around.

No, I didn't go to all that trouble so we could judge a dog contest. I'm more interested in the blonde in the corner booth. She's almost too beautiful to be in here. She's wearing a short floral print dress with a low scooped neckline. Her hair is piled on top of her head, with golden ringlets spilling down either side of her ears. Her legs look as if they were made just to wrap around Joe's waist.

Now, of course, Floral's playing footsie under the table with her date, the Missing Link. He's so broad, he nearly pushes her out of the booth. Joe took one look at him before and promptly filed Floral in the drawer labeled "Ones That Got Away," but I've got ideas of my own, and now I've got the means to carry them out.

The brunette is raising her glass. Joe is about to walk in her direction. But Floral and her date are getting up, heading for the door. I have to make my first overt move. It might as well be here, in front of a crowd. This way, Joe can't afford to freak out. Since I now control the
spongiosum
tissue in Joe's body, I can make him walk wherever I want. He's the new Pinocchio, a marionette without strings. I swing him in behind Floral.

For a moment, Joe continues to face the brunette. He can't understand why he's walking toward her— yet her face is getting farther away. Then he realizes he's going in the opposite direction. "What the
fuck?"
You got it, Joe. He begins to reach for the bar, a table, to stop himself, but I force his arms to his sides.

We step outside, several yards behind the first pair. We've got to walk half a block to the municipal parking deck. Joe is swinging his head left, right, down, up, trying to make sense out of what's happening.
He's
not making himself walk,
he
didn't want
to
leave the bar, so what the hell is going on?

The parking deck is old, and the city fathers, in their infinite decrepitude, have never seen fit to install adequate lighting, which is just fine with me. The pair had to park their sports car in one of the shadow-cloaked corners. Joe's heels scrape against the concrete. I can't help it; I haven't had enough practice yet. The Missing Link looks up and squints. "Help you, buddy?" That's what he says, but what he really means is, "You wanna turn around and walk the other way fast, asshole."

Joe shakes his head. He still doesn't know what he's doing here. "I'm—uhhm—I'm sorry . . ." Let him mumble, I'm already moving. First I kick the car door. Its metal edges slam on either side of Link's fingers—those little bones just above the first joint. Link bends and clutches his hand, howling (suitably enough) in primate fashion. I'm already lifting my foot again, catching the bridge of his nose with my boot's steel toe. There's the sound of a twig snapping. Stuff leaking from Link's face darkens the pavement.

Floral is screaming: "Nonono!" Joe's shouting too. "I'm sorry! I'm not doing this—I'm really
not doing this!"
I clamp down on Joe's jaw muscles. I don't want him alerting all downtown.

Floral hesitates. She isn't sure whether to check on the Missing Link or turn and run like hell. In that moment of indecision I have Joe grab her wrists. Her bones are thin enough I can grasp them easily in Joe's left hand. I pin her arms above and behind her, on top of the sports car's roof. With Joe's right hand, I reach into his coat pocket and withdraw a roll of electrical tape. Earlier that evening, while he was reading the newspaper at his desk, I made his hand reach into the side drawer and pull the tape out. He never even knew he put it in his pocket.

Floral manages to get out one or two good screams, but using Joe's right hand and his teeth, I get the tape around both her wrists and her mouth. She's wrench-ing her entire body from side to side, but I've got too good a hold for her to break free. I work her dress above her waist and yank down her panties. She tries to put a knee in Joe's face but only succeeds in grazing his temple.

All the while Joe's saying, "Please! I'm not trying to hurt you! I don't want to do this! I don't know what's happening to me!" I let him talk—but not too loud.

She doesn't listen, she can't be listening, she's tossing her head from side to side, her hair coming loose from its barrettes, whipping Joe across the cheeks.

"I can't help it!" he cries. "I can't make myself stop!"

I use Joe's hand to loosen his belt, his pants, tug down the Fruit of the Looms, and I'm driving between her legs, and I realize it was worth it, all of it was worth it, every second, she's already damp because she'd been anticipating the Missing Link's primordial prick but now she's got me, her cunt shudders with fear and revulsion, yes, all of them should be terrified of their lovers, I'm not gonna last long, but what it lacks in duration it's gonna make up in intensity, and anyway this is only the beginning because, because

Now I am not just Joe's penis.

Now I am Joe.