Circumstance occasionally lead an author to venture into subjects he or she would not usually visit in order to create a certain quality or mood he seeks to express, and such is the case here. This story deals in intentionally brutal and abject forms of sex, and readers who are offended by violence and the grosser excrescences of the human body are cautioned to engage this piece at their peril. The author himself, who usually deals with the more positive and pleasant sides of human sexuality, has come to feel that perhaps he has accrued a certain debt of omission to the darker and less wholesome sides of the sexual urge, however, and with this piece he feels that debt is paid, and paid for some time to come.
My special thanks to the incomparable
Cloudy
for her help with my hapless Spanish. She had no knowledge of the context in which her translations would be used.
--dr.M.
It was while passing each other on the stairs on a Saturday afternoon that Barry McWheeler glanced up absently at his wife Olivia and saw with stunning but unmistakable clarity that she was having an affair. It should have been a normal glance, a simple, friendly greeting meaning nothing, but instead of that sweet caress of eyes, he found himself unexpectedly looking into the hot, dilated pupils of a woman in a full-body sexual fantasy, either being double fucked by a couple a well-muscled young himbo's or perhaps fisting one swollen pud into her mouth while a thick bridge of semen arced from a recently withdrawn choad and splashed against the base of her throat. Only women came up with such disgustingly juicy, degrading fantasies
He was stunned. It was as if he had opened the bathroom door and caught her crouched there like a beast in full masturbation just seconds from orgasm, and his shock brought him painfully back to the present, making him realize that he was no better. He'd just been so engrossed in his own sexual daydream of driving his mouth against the quivering clit of his mistress's pussy that his eyes were glazed and his tongue was actually curled and protruding slightly from his lips, a noxious little spit bubble at the tip. He quickly pulled it in, blinked, and fixed on his face the best smile he could find under the circumstances,
The smile wasn't necessary because Olivia never noticed him at all and continued floating down the stairs past him with her novel and iced tea, totally oblivious. He'd been so shocked by what he'd seen that he hadn't noticed whether she'd really seen him or not, but it didn't look like it. Nothing in her actions suggested it. Maybe he'd gotten away with it.
As she passed him she suddenly came out of her reverie. The privacy screen went up behind her eyes and the show ended, her cheeks lifted into her normal camouflaging smile and she made a sort of unconscious move with her shoulders—like testing the space to see if she liked the fit.
It all happened that fast and that unexpectedly—a meeting of eyes with shields down and their secrets were out, or at least hers was. Barry already knew about his, of course, but Olivia? His Olivia? The Self-Defroster? The shock was deafening.
Holy fucking god damned shit almighty!
he continued as calmly up up the stairs as possible, ice water bathing his balls, blood pounding in his face.
What did I just do? What did I just see? Olivia's having a fucking affair! I saw it in her eyes! I saw it clear as day! And she saw me! She knows about me and Dana! She must have seen me too! What was I thinking? What was I fucking
thinking?!?
His legs propelled him on to his antique dresser. He still held the package that had seems so importanat just minutes ago: paper, a box, more paper, bubble wrap—the very 1932 Pearl-handle Luger pistol that George Reeves, TV's Superman, had used to blow his brains out with on June 16, 1959. It had just come in the mail, just come from e-bay, and that's why he'd been coming upstairs, to admire it, clean it, and put it in its spot in the collection, but now he just pulled it from the bubble wrap and held it in its chamois bag, listening to the sounds in the house, unable to erase the image of Olivia's face from his mind. He stared himself, his eyes looking at nothing, past the muzzle of the gun, watching the sun motes wander on the patterned carpet.
Is this how a marriage ends?
he thought,
with a moment of silence like this? And then what? Feet charging angrily up the stairs? Olivia's angry growl, demanding to know what he'd been thinking?
But there were no footsteps, no angry growl, no footsteps on the stairs. Just dust motes in the sunlight and the muzzle of the gun that killed George Reeves.
So maybe she hadn't seen the look on his face. She still didn't know about Dana? Too bad. The thought of discovery while holding the gun gave him a slight thrill in his balls.
This is the gun that killed Superman! Cunt!
No, no. He was a collector, not a murderer, and he actually loved his wife. In fact, he had no intention of leaving Olivia. It had just been so stupid, walking around with his emotions on his face...
What had I been thinking!? Where had my mind been?!
Between Dana's thighs, that's where.
More precisely, he'd been standing on the floor as he held her over the bed in her black stockings, arching her back, laughing and protesting, one of her hands trying ineffectively to push his head away from her crotch, the other trying just as uselessly to pull her dress down over her naked pussy. SHe'd been wearing the black garter belt with the little pink bows he'd bought her. The Eirlands' barbecue had been going on in the backyard right outside the curtained window, Anyone might have walked in anytime...
But the hell with all that now. The consequences, the enormity of what had just happened seeped into him slowly, like melting ice, like the hyphae of some saprophytic organism burrowing into the limbs and joints of his life.
He sat on the bed, had to think. His whole marriage—Olivia—fucking someone else—inconceivable. She was so undersexed, so bland. And what did that say about him? No—couldn't be him. He had Dana, before Dana, Ruth, anyone he wanted. No. It was her Olivia—attractive enough, neat and rich-chic, old-money-slim but uninspired and uninspiring; a woman to be seen with, not to
be
with.
But who could it be? Who would even have her and why? Let alone inspire that kind of look in her eye, that look of deep, sensual depravity, that come-on-my-tits-look? That gang-bang look? What would make her look like that?
Hell, for Olivia, maybe someone did her from behind...
He stood up, slid the gun from the envelope once more and held it. It was a beautiful piece. He'd always loved Lugers, always wanted one. Beautiful and reptilian. He already had the shells for it in the car. He'd bought them three weeks ago as a kind of charm to make himself buy the gun.
He put the gun back into the box, picked it up and went to the stairs. He knew who would know who his wife was fucking. She'd know for sure.
He went downstairs
It was quiet down here, but it always was, quiet and sunny. Olivia had some music playing in the living room where she'd curled up to read, and Barry stepped buoyantly across the carpet, master of his home..
"That Luger's a beauty! The guy took excellent care of it. Barrel's like new. Mechanism like butter" he announced. He took the absence of a response from his wife as a good sign.
It was a fine home. The McWheelers were set and everyone who lived around them was set too. The fact that all the houses in the development were laid out differently couldn't disguise the fact that they were all the same and that the landscape and the very earth hated them and would always hate them.
Olivia had excellent taste, so the first floor comprised an eclectic blend of antiques and quality modern, on the whole favoring the French country tradition, masculine in weight and line but feminine in detail, and Barry approved of the result. It felt butch and smart.
