A Womb Exhumed

Editor's note: this submission contains scenes of non-consensual or reluctant sexual situations.

Hi folks. File this cheery Halloween tale under Erotic Horror, with a capital "H" for Horror. Might want to have a look at the tags before diving in. Or, plow ahead and just see what happens! It's about 6,000 words. Got feedback? Love to hear it. Comments and direct messages always welcome. Good luck to all 2020 contest entrants and a happy Halloween to everyone. -- CPHX

Her text:

Come over!

His:

Um. No.

Hers:

Come! It'll be fun!

His:

Why? You come here!

Pause. Pause. Pause.

Her selfie: Legs crossed in sheer, glittering black pantyhose, witch's skirt riding up high on her thigh, spiked black heel dangling.

Come! Don't you want to?

Those legs looked good.

So

good.

His wife was hot as hell in her flouncy witch costume. Something about the exaggerated cliché-ness of it made Henry appreciate it that much more. He recalled the little witchy dance and Betty Boop-style bum thrust she did on her way out the door, bent at the waist, legs locked, back arched, sideways to him, her fingers raised to her black-painted lips in a dick-stiffening "Oh my!" sort of way. How scandalous!

Meghan hardly ever wore a skirt anymore, even for work. She rarely wore pantyhose, and at 41, would never have worn something so short. Though in Henry's opinion she could pull it off just as well as a woman half her age—better even.

He wondered why it couldn't be Halloween more often. Maybe he'd suggest they keep the costume closer to hand instead of stuffed in a box for the next 364 days, just for fun.

Henry went to the window and looked at the shabby bungalow across the darkened street. Most of the trick-or-treaters had retired for the evening. He watched a big-titted, gender-bent Captain America arm-in-arm with a lousy excuse for a zombie pirate disappear around the corner, pillowcases stuffed with candy banging against their legs. Even the teens were calling it a night.

It was 10:15, and a long time dark. Meghan was over at Dahlia Corrigan's house. Dahlia was the elderly—the

very

elderly woman who lived across the street and two doors down. Meghan had agreed—in fact, she'd probably volunteered—to give out candy on Dahlia's behalf and keep her company, something she'd been doing a lot of in the four months since they'd moved here.

Apparently, Dahlia Corrigan had no one to look in on her, which Henry thought strange given the number of neighborly-neighbors that surrounded them. Or maybe they just seemed neighborly?

Henry had been in her house only the one time to introduce himself and offer his services if she ever needed a hand with anything. So far however, she'd only ever called on Meghan. That was fine by Henry—after five minutes in the place he couldn't wait to get shot of it. It was a ramshackle, overgrown, undercared-for hovel. And smelly. He couldn't help musing on what they'd do with the property once she moved out of it, or, more likely, died ignominiously, crumpled on the grimy bathroom floor or tangled amid piss-soaked sheets. Not pleasant.

Meghan, meanwhile, was always happy to oblige Dahlia's fussy and frequent requests and invitations. Maybe "dreamy" was a better way to describe her attitude. Henry sometimes caught her staring into space at the kitchen counter, and when he offered her the proverbial penny for her thoughts, she always swung back to him with a light in her eyes, her response something along the lines of, "Oh, I was just wondering how Dahlia is getting along these days," or, "I hope Dahlia likes the flowers I brought her."

It was a little odd, but they were in a new place and Meghan was in desperate need of a friend. This was their third move in five years, all for Henry's work. It was absolute hell on Meghan. She blamed Henry's willingness to up stakes on the company's slightest whim for her childless existence. They still had plenty of time, he'd always said to her, even as she'd passed the 40-year mark. He worried Meghan was in danger of retreating into herself in a way that would be unhealthy for both of them.

So what if her best bud was 102 years old and never set foot outside her house? They enjoyed each others' company, and that was that. Henry considered the ramifications if Dahlia

did

die inside that house. Meghan was the person most likely to discover the body. He'd have to chat with her about that possibility. Delicately.

Henry frowned into the night, staring at the heavy grey blinds pulled tight across Dahlia's front window. Meghan was supposed to have been back by 10. Henry was looking forward in a big way to getting his hands on his witchy little wife upstairs in their bedroom; instead, she was trying to get him to come to her. But after that flirty leg pic, who was he to complain?

His text:

Ok I'll come but only to scoop you up and carry you back here!

Hers:

Ha! What if I cast a spell on you?

His:

Can't wait. Be right there.

Henry tossed his phone and switched off the lights before stepping outside. He sucked the cold autumn air all the way down into his guts and jog-waddled over to Dahlia's, hands rammed into his pockets, the breeze pimpling his arms.

He thought about how in just two minutes -- less! -- his fingers would be roaming his wife's legs from top to bottom, crawling up and down like hungry little hand-spiders, tickling and caressing and stroking. Or like a feverish, flesh-starved zombie, desperate for the silken feel of pantyhose before the inevitable and inevitably fatal munching of guts and brains.

His motor was really revving now. He was getting in the spirit. He wanted to play.

He wanted to drag himself by his arms across the carpet toward his witchy wife as she cowered on the floor in fear, backed up to the kitchen cabinets, legs hugged up tight to her chest, panties in full view, a look of repulsion on her thickly made up, oh-so-edible face. "Please. No. Please..." she begged zombie-Henry in a husky, trembling whisper as his clawed hands reached her toes. Her magic wand would be forgotten on the floor. (Spells were useless against zombie-Henry.) "No... not my feet! Not my calves! Oh, not my thighs! Not my... not my... aaaaahhhh!"

It was quiet when he stepped onto Dahlia's porch and adjusted his jeans. The breeze had died. He reached up to knock. He hesitated, glanced to his left and right, and even, inexplicably, behind him. He had the sudden notion he was trespassing, or sneaking, or otherwise up to no good. Instead of knocking, he texted:

Open up!

He felt strangely anxious as he waited, chilled, hopping from foot to foot. He looked forward to ushering his wife back to their own cozy nest, arms around each other for warmth, legs mixed up and bumping, laughing, up to their bedroom, the sheets still tousled from last night's snuggly but sex-less slumber. By God, they

would

make a baby! Tonight!

The door opened a crack and Henry saw a single glittering eye shining in the dark. Meghan smiled seductively and put her finger to her lips to say "Shhhh..." She opened the door wider and Henry stepped in.

The room was dark but for a single candle on a small end table on the far side of the overstuffed chesterfield. It cast a surprising amount of light in the cramped, musty space. The hall leading to the back of the house was pitch black.

Henry smiled and waggled his eyebrows at Meghan as she eased the door closed behind him, their shoulders brushing. The candle flickered and shadows danced.

"Hey," he whispered.

"Hi," she whispered back. Her head was tilted slightly down, but her eyes were rolled up to him, looking into his face through her witchy bangs. Her eyes were wrapped in kohl with a cat eye flare, her lashes long and thick, lips burgundy-black. She was toeing the floor with her stockinged feet, shoes kicked beside the couch, witchy hat discarded beside them.

"Ready to go?" asked Henry.

Meghan didn't say anything. She took his pinky finger in her hand and gently led him to the couch. She sat up high on the edge and crossed her legs, fiddling with the hem of her flared skirt, making sure to show Henry lots of meaty thigh. She patted the seat beside her. "Sit, lover."

He sat down and she snuggled into him, wrapping her hands around his upper arm and pulling it into her chest. He felt her breasts firm and heavy through the cheap polyester bodice, cinched in tight with a black string that crisscrossed her cleavage. He looked at her tits, loving that she was smashing herself against him. He was glad he'd come in bare arms. She pushed her crossed legs into his legs, and he rested his hand on her knee. Oh.

Yeah.

Meghan tee-hee'd. "Tickles."

"You feel nice," said Henry. "Really nice..." he inched his hand up her leg. "God I love you in pantyhose. Where's Dahlia? Sleeping?" He nodded toward the back of the house.

"Yes. Sleeping." Meghan glanced toward the hallway herself, and when she turned to look at Henry, he saw something cross her face. The candle sputtered and fizzed and all manner of shadowy contortions stretched up the walls.

"What? Is she ok? Is that why you wanted me to come over? To help you with her?"

She shook her head dreamily and said, "No..." Then more firmly, and with a smile spreading across her face, she said, "No. I wanted you to come over so we could, y'know, play a little. In this house." She put her hand on Henry's thigh and walked her fingers up and down it. He was twitching in his pants.

"What? Here?" Henry dropped his voice even lower. "With Dahlia in the back?"

"Sure," said Meghan, looking down at her hand as it wandered over Henry's leg and creeped toward his crotch. "She's out cold babe. And I'm feeling a little... naw-tee."

Henry chuckled. He gripped her leg a little harder and she lifted her thigh up into his palm. "Mmmmm," she purred. "Touch me," she whispered, closing her eyes.

Henry gulped and slid his hand up high on her thigh, under her skirt, massaging along the way, then back down again. "Mmmmmm," she said, "Mmm-hmmmm, that's nice baby..."

The skirt tickled the back of his hand as he stroked and massaged her thigh. She leaned in and brushed her lips to Henry's ear and he gave a ragged sigh. She kissed lightly, no tongue. Henry hated a tongue in his ear. It was a kiss so light he could feel the rich texture of her lipstick, the measurable depth of it on her lips. He wanted to kiss those lips.

Henry turned his body into hers. He removed his right hand from her thigh—somewhat reluctantly, to be sure—and cupped her face in both hands. He kissed her, slow and gentle, tasting chocolate and... red wine? He spread his fingers up her cheek and over her ears and his pinkies down around her jaw. It was remarkable how much of her head he could hold in his hands like this. Remarkable how much trust was between them.

He tilted her head back and slowly kissed down her chin, down into the hollow of her neck, kissing, kissing, kissing. Her approval took the form of a guttural purring. He flicked his tongue into her clavicle and she shuddered.

"Come," she whispered.

Meghan slinked away from the couch and placed her hands flat on the wall across from them. She stood back two feet from the wall, legs shoulder-length apart, pushed her ass out toward Henry, rose up on her toes and looked at him over her shoulder.

"Yeah," breathed Henry, as he approached his wife from behind and took her waist in his hands. They were conservative in their sex life, without much variety, and that seemed to suit them both well enough. They'd certainly never fucked in a neighbor's house before, or right down the hall from a sleeping stranger, or standing, him from behind, in costume. But perhaps, over time, their appetites had evolved.

Henry stepped right up to Meghan's generous ass and pressed himself into it. She ground it back at him. "Fuck yeah..." he said. He pulled up her skirt. He put his hands on her ass, wrapped snugly in the dark control top of her pantyhose. The seam was off center, but her cherry red thong bisected her taut cheeks with perfection. A red thong!

Henry groaned and curled himself around her back. Meghan swirled her ass against him, pushing hard. He felt his cock hot against his thigh. He looked at Meghan's face. It was turned sideways, her eyes closed, lower jaw hanging slack. Her arms were trembling with exertion from holding herself off the wall.

He squatted low, his jeans straining against his thighs, cock straining even more, and put his hands on either side of Meghan's ankles. He stood up slowly and ran his fingers up every inch of her legs. His nose rose higher and higher between her thighs and when he got to the right place, he pushed his face into her. "Ah-

unh!

" she yipped, her voice rising to a squeak as he nuzzled her pussy with the hard bridge of his nose, rooting around a bit before continuing up, up, up, and once again pressing his crotch into her.

Henry put his hand on Meghan's shoulder and pried her back from the wall and drew her upper back tight into his chest, wrapping his forearm over her shoulder and down across her tits, cupping the left one through the bodice. He gripped the thick flesh above her hip with his left hand, guiding her to grind her ass into him.

"Oooh," she cooed, all breathy, "feels like you're ready. Are you ready lover?"

"Yeah babe I'm ready. I'm so ready."

"She's ready too lover."

Henry smiled into his wife's glorious, witchy hair. "Is she now? Let's see how ready she is..."

Henry dipped to kiss the back of Meghan's neck where it sloped into her shoulder. As he nibbled, he slipped his left hand up high between her legs, stroking her with his forefinger through her nylons and that red, red thong. Right there. There. There. She said, "Anh—anh—anh—"

Kreeeek.

Henry whipped his head right. He froze all motion, his wife held fast in his arms. He stared into the black hallway.

"Henry?"

"Shht!" He hissed. Meghan froze too. They were stock still. Five long seconds of staring, motionless, not even breathing. Looking. Listening.

He exhaled in fits and starts. "Sorry. I could have sworn I heard... did you hear anything?"

"No, what?" They were quiet as could be.

"A... door? I think."

"I didn't hear anything."

It was time to go.

"Come on," whispered Henry, breaking away. "Let's go home." He was already at the sofa, gathering her shoes. He wanted to feel the cold air on his arms again under a wide, starry sky and not be creeped out in this mouldering shoebox.

"Aww," she said with a witchy pout, glancing back again to the hallway. "Ok lover. I'm just going to peek in on Dahlia one last time. Back in two secs." She blew him a witchy kiss.

"Meghan—"

But she was already fading into the blackness of the hallway.

Henry stood, cast-off heels in hand. The seconds ticked. The candle burned.

The longer he stood staring at the hallway where his wife had gone, the more he felt rooted to the spot. The less he moved, the less he [I]could[/I] move. The flesh in his jeans which moments earlier had been raging with red hot blood was already a shriveled nub. His eyes were watering from the strain of trying to penetrate the darkness. He was afraid to blink.

"Meghan?"

The sound of his own voice, strangled as it was, unlocked his muscles. He tried a different approach: "Meghan!" He shouted, and the sound was immediately sucked into the flickering gloom, gone.

Nothing kept happening.

He crossed the room slowly until he was about six feet back from the hallway entrance. It didn't seem to matter how close he got, he could not see even an inch down that hallway.

Two feet ahead, there was a light switch on the right-hand wall. At this distance from the candle, it was the last bit of house he could reliably identify by sight. He side-stepped to the wall and extended his arm toward the switch, creeping forward.

His fingers were on it. He braced himself, held his breath, flipped the switch. Nothing. He flipped it again. Up, down. He thought maybe he should go back to the front of the house and look for a switch there, but somehow he knew it wouldn't—

Krik-k-k-k.

It came from up the hall. From out of the dark.

"Meghan? Hello?"

Kree-eek.

"Meghan?"

What could possibly explain his wife's lack of response? He had no idea of the layout of the house, other than that the rooms could only be on his right.

He pressed forward, trembling, into the dark.

After a few short steps, the fingers of his right hand, palm flat against the wall, hit a door jamb. He probed its width, feeling for the door. It was closed. He gripped the jamb and rotated his body out into the hall, reaching around with his left hand to find the jamb on the left side, so that he faced the door directly.

"Meghan? Hello?"

His voice quavered: "Dahlia?"

He rested his hand against the smooth wood of the door, then put his ear to it.

What froze Henry to the spot and chilled him through and through had nothing to do with the door, and everything to do with what he saw—or rather, what he

didn't

see: light.

With his head laying sideways against the door and his face pointed back the way he'd come, he should have been able to see

something

by the light of the candle in the front room. (Motherfucker, why hadn't he just brought the candle with him?!)

It was not gloomy; it was not shadowy; it was not indistinct. It was

black

. It was blacker than any black Henry had ever experienced in his life.

It was void.

Henry's heart pounded with great ferocity. If he went back to get the candle, how would he light it again? How would he even find something to light it

with

?

"Meghan, goddammit, open this fucking door!" He screamed and spit his anger and panic into the blackness of the door that he could not see less than one inch from his face. He pounded once and it swung away from him, void opening onto void.

"Hi lover," said Meghan from within this new blackness, and she cracked his skull with a mallet.

***

Henry opened his eyes.

Light! He thought. Glorious light! And in that light, feeble and flickering though it was, he saw blood.

He was lying on his back, looking up at the smoke-blackened ceiling of a small room. Candles at various heights adorned the dingy walls, their flames licking up. Crude designs were painted on the walls, lines and whorls and simple geometric shapes, glistening and dripping. He knew it was blood.

His arms were spread wide, bound to the floor with what felt like leather cuffs. His legs too were splayed, bound. He was naked.

Henry tried to lift his head. He clamped his jaw as pain ripped behind his eyes and his skull throbbed against the floor. His hair was a bloody mushy mess and he could smell its rusty tang. He could also smell his cock, clammy from the fear-sweat he'd accumulated quivering out in the hallway, layered over the sex-sweat he'd produced dry humping his wife's ass.

"Muh... Muh... Meghan..." he called, but no sound came out. He said her name again. His mouth was moving (wasn't it?), but he couldn't hear his words coming in through his ears. He scratched his fingernails on the floor as a test, and he could hear that easily enough. Skritch-skritch-skritch.

He drew a ragged breath and shouted. He could feel the vibration and stress on his vocal cords, but his ears were telling him his voice did not exist.

A door opened and Henry reflexively tried to sit up. Pain rocked his head again and he eased back. He waited, staring up at the ceiling.

He heard the clicking of heels on hardwood. His wife came into view and loomed over him, her sleek witchy stilettos back on her feet. Her arms were folded across her chest.

"Lover," she said.

"Meghan!" he thought he screamed. "What—" he thought he started to ask.