D.O.A. Extreme Horror Anthology (12 page)

The dogs whined, wanting to eat the vomit that fell and sank in the snow. Don swallowed the mouthful and took another whilst the man wasn’t looking. 

Spiric Satisfied

John McNee

All Fiona saw as Franco led her into the master bedroom were machines.

Mr. Spiric’s bed was lost somewhere behind a wall of monitors, regulators and breathing apparatuses—and the machines created a lot of noise. The heart monitor kept a constant electronic beat, while the other devices chimed in with
whoops
and
pings
like some kind of clinical rhythm section. In addition to the noise, the room stunk of strong disinfectant. It wasn’t exactly sexy and it definitely wasn’t what Fiona expected when she took the job.

Amongst the machines were two others, a doctor and a nurse. The doctor appeared middle-aged, and wore a gray suit and overcoat. He was bent over machines checking read-outs and recording data. He looked up briefly when Fiona entered but didn’t nod or speak and returned to his work just as quickly, grim expression unchanged.

The nurse, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be doing anything. She was about twenty; slim, pretty, and blonde, dressed in a tiny white nurse’s outfit that appeared to have been bought at an adult boutique. There was no way the flimsy material was NHS regulation. When Fiona and Franco entered the ‘nurse’ was checking her nails and hopping from toe to toe, apparently cold.

Fiona had registered the chill in the room, but she was used to that. They liked to keep it cool in the club so the girls’ nipples were always pert. Now that she was here in this makeshift hospital room, the club felt so far away.

She had just finished her shift, gotten dressed and was ready to go home when Janet had called her out by saying: some guy asked to speak to you and he looks fucking loaded. Fiona was exhausted and sick of being propositioned by heavy-breathing drunks with too much disposable income, but she did her best to perk up when she saw him—a tall, dark, Latin stranger—and prayed that he wasn’t planning to offer her a role in a porn shoot.

The stranger introduced himself as Franco, gave her a card

with no surname on it and bought her a £7 whiskey at the bar, proceeding to tell her how talented and beautiful he thought she was.Overall he had been very charming. Then he asked if she ever gave private performances.

“Sure,” she replied. “All the time. It’s what the back rooms are for.”

“I don’t mean here,” he had said. “Home visits. Parties. Anything like that?”

“Not really,” she answered, hesitantly. “Some of the other girls do. But I’m not sure I’d be comfortable…some of the stories they come back with—”

“I’m not proposing anything wild,” he said. “It’s just that the man I work for can’t leave the house.”

She smiled. “Why? Probation? Does he have one of those ankle bracelets?”

“Just old,” Franco replied, humorlessly. “He misses… all this.” He waved his hand around the club. “He misses attractive women. You’d have nothing to fear. It would be strictly one on one. Private. You wouldn’t have to do anything you didn’t want to. And you’d be paid very well.”

Fiona had thought about it a moment, then asked: “How well?”

The sum had been enough to persuade her to change clothes again and follow Franco into the back of a chauffeur-driven Mercedes. Half an hour later she found herself in the cold room, surrounded by machines, the doctor and the inappropriately dressed nurse.

As she walked deeper into the bedroom, the click of her heels on the black-and white tiled floor announced her presence.

“Who’s that?” Mr. Spiric rasped from behind the machines. His voice was sickly but loud and what he said was clear enough.

“It’s just me, boss,” Franco answered, following a step behind her. “I brought a guest. Fiona.”

“Fffiiiooonaaaa…” The unseen Mr. Spiric echoed, drawing out the vowels, making the most of the consonants with his elderly tongue. “Well don’t be afraid, sweetheart. Come say hello.”

Fiona had been making her way slowly to the foot of the bed, getting her bearings, taking a good look around the room. The walls were white and glossy, almost reflective, like the walls of an art gallery. There were a lot of paintings and sculptures. Abstract things—psychedelic images she didn’t recognize or understand. There were also a lot of bizarre ornaments that looked like they came from far-off lands and peoples. And books. Shelves and shelves of books about mysticism and myth, folklore and legend. Hefty-looking text-books with words in the titles like ‘Astral,’ ‘Meditation’ and ‘Psychic.’ A lot of books on tape, too.

The bulbs in the ceiling fixtures were fluorescent and cast a fierce light over everything. She wasn’t too happy about that. In the club the girls had softer lighting to work with. Black light, dry ice and shadow were all their friends. Patrons had to squint to get even half their money’s worth. In this room there was nowhere to hide. Every inch of her body would be illuminated in cold, perfect detail. She presumed Mr. Spiric was a man who didn’t like to miss a thing.

That presumption was cast to the wind when she finally laid eyes on the old man.

She navigated the bank of life-support equipment and came face-to-face with a desiccated husk. Spiric was a mummified skeleton in white bed-sheets. His limbs were wasted twigs. His arms hardly seemed thick enough for the doctor to make injections without skewering his flesh straight through. In spite of this, they’d somehow managed to fix maybe ten or fifteen IV drips to him. His legs—if he had any—were invisible, not even making a bump underneath the bed-clothes. The skin over his bones was pale and dry, stretched so thin that it looked like yellow cellophane. He had a jagged grinning skull for a face. It looked fragile and cracked, like a shattered porcelain mask, pieced back together with bandages.  No lips, near as she could tell. No hair…

And no eyes. The gaping sockets were stuffed with cotton wool.

“Nice to meet you,” he said. The grinning skull mouth clicked open and closed with his words, like an animated ghoul. She choked back a scream at the sight of him. “My name is Mr. Rembrandt Spiric.”

Fiona looked to Franco, searching for some indication that this was a twisted joke. His smoldering South American eyes were vacant.

“Don’t be
shy
,” Spiric wheezed.

“H-hello,” she squeaked, hand clawing self-consciously at her neck.

Spiric’s grin widened and she feared for a moment that the skin across his cheeks might split. “I know,” he said. “I’m not as handsome as I was in my younger days. Alas, the ravages of time and ill health…” He coughed. “That’s why… I try to surround myself with beautiful things…” His bandaged head jerked a little. One finger twitched.

The nurse read his subtle signals, quit her hopping and fetched him a cup of water. She had to lean over the side of the bed to place the cup to his lips, her fancy dress uniform riding up as she did so, exposing her bare pale buttocks to the elements. Fiona wasn’t surprised to find that the girl wasn’t wearing underwear. Surreal as it was, in the context of this room, it made absolute sense.

The doctor turned his head to check out the nurse’s ass. Fiona caught his eye and he ducked back down again.

Spiric gasped after two swallows, water spilling out from his lipless mouth and down his chin. The nurse pulled some tissues from her cleavage and dabbed him dry. When she was done she leaned in a little closer and gave him a soft kiss on his cheek. Spiric quivered as though shot through with electricity and all around him machines began to blare. The heart-rate monitor suddenly cranked up to flamenco tempo. The doctor swore quietly, head snapping back and forth between screens.

“Thank you, dear,” Spiric breathed.

When the nurse rose and sashayed away from the bed Fiona read a smile on her scarlet lips that seemed to say:
Top that, bitch
.

The doctor swore again from between his cluster of machines and fished a stethoscope out of his pocket, hopping over cables to reach his patient.

“Franco…” Spiric whined, as the doctor put his hands upon him.

Franco nodded to the blind man and snapped his fingers for attention. “Come on guys,” he said, indicating the door. “Let’s go.”

With that command, they all departed—the doctor, the nurse and Franco, the bodyguard—leaving Fiona alone with Spiric. Franco spared her not a glance as he pulled the door closed behind him.

And suddenly Fiona felt desperately uncomfortable.

“My physician,” Spiric groaned, “Seems to think that the slightest whiff of excitement will do me in. You can imagine what he must think of
you
. Thinks my frail old heart can’t take it. I’ve tried to tell him… I’m far stronger than any of them realize.”

“I’m sure,” Fiona replied, eyes still on the door.

“You have a lovely voice,” he said. “You’re not from London…”

“Cheshire…”

“Ah. Redhead?”

That took her by surprise. “Yes.”

Spiric nodded, very slightly. “An informed guess,” he said. “Franco knows what I like. Describe yourself to me.”

This is how he gets his kicks
? She thought.
We could have done this over the phone
. “Um… Five-foot six. A hundred and five pounds…Slim…Athletic, I suppose. I work out.”

“Of course you do. Breasts?”

“Two of them,” she said.

He chuckled. “Size,” he said. “What size are they?”

“34C,” she said, resisting the temptation to embellish the truth. “Long legs, a small waist, flat stomach, and round ass.”

Spiric nodded and she could see him painting a picture in his mind. “What would you say is your best physical feature?”

“Well,” she said. “I do receive an awful lot of compliments about my arse. And I am quite proud of it. But others say my eyes.”

“Green?”

“Hazel. Some say my hair. Which is shoulder length, incidentally, and wavy.”

His heat rate had been slowly climbing throughout the exchange. He sighed blissfully. “You had better not be lying to me.”

She grinned and realized she was beginning to enjoy herself. “Certainly not.”

“Age?”

“24.”

“Young,” Spiric remarked, a little drool escaping from the corner of his mouth. “Good.”

That seemed enough to provide him with a picture. She was glad she didn‘t have to go into more detail about the length of her fingers or the contours of her face. “So… How does this work?” she asked. “You still want me to dance for you?”

“I do,” said Spiric. “You’ll have to describe it to me, of course.
Every
detail.”

“Ok,” said Fiona. It didn’t sound to her like such a bad deal. “Music?”

“You brought some?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then. Be my guest.”

Fiona took the CD from her purse, crossed the room and inserted it in the stereo.

“Not too loud,” Spiric wheezed. “I need to be able to hear what you’re saying.”

She adjusted the volume, treble and bass, and found her favorite track. Then she checked her hair and make-up in the cabinet’s glass front, without for a moment considering how pointless it was. “I’m just taking off my coat,” she said, as she did so.

“What sort of coat?” the blind observer groaned. “Describe it.”

“Black fur,” she said. “
Fake
fur,” she added, so as not to be misleading. “Ankle length.”

The music began to play and the room was filled with the soft, deep sounds of acoustic guitar, double bass and slow drums. Fiona liked tango music when she danced privately. It was warm and passionate and she didn’t have to try so hard to be sexy. It came naturally to her with the rhythm.

“I’m wearing a strapless, satin dress, tight around the waist and bust, in a dark shade of purple,” she said. “The hemline’s just above the knee. I’m also wearing black high-heels with purple bows… and simple black stockings. There’s a split down the right side of the dress, so you can see a couple of inches of thigh above the stocking. I’m taking a step forward and bending my knee a little to show that off…”

“Yes,” said Spiric, the image clear in his mind. “Continue…”

“I’ve got my hands on my hips,” she said, speaking slowly, trying to add a little sexual emphasis to the words. “Just swaying in time to the music… Raising one arm, running it over my stomach and chest… Up above my head… Still swaying…” She closed her eyes, listening to the female singer’s beautiful voice. “I bend forward to reach my toes… Hands grab my ankles… And I rise, slowly, running my hands up the length of my legs…”

Spiric was silent now and completely still, deep in concentration. The noise of the monitors had slowed to a steady, unobtrusive beat, almost in time with the tango music.

“I turn,” Fiona continued, voice lowered to a purr. “So that my back’s to you, and I repeat the move. But this time my hands are on the back of my legs and as I rise, I’m running them along the back of my thighs. I pull the skirt up… just a little… so you can see…” She maintained her precise narration as she unzipped her dress, brushed it down over her hips and let it fall to the floor.

She turned to face Spiric once again, offering him a detailed description of her strapless black and white laced bra and matching thong. “I drop to my hands and knees,” she said, as she did so. “And I crawl like a cat across the floor… All the time I’m looking straight at you.”

It had become a game and Fiona was enjoying it now. She felt in absolute control of the room. His blindness had gifted her an extra level of confidence. She didn’t seek the root cause of it, but there was something about dancing for a blind man, teasing him with image—she felt
powerful
.

She spun about on the floor, turned her back to him and unhooked her bra. She raised herself up onto one knee, then stood, hooking the thumb of her left hand in her g-string, while holding the bra in place over her breasts with her right. She played with the thong a little, twisting her body in time to the music like an enchanted cobra, then dropped the bra, covered her breasts with both hands and turned back to face the bed. She described each move as it was performed and offered him a detailed illustration of her breasts as she revealed them: “Very round and soft…Small nipples. Very red. Very hard.”