The House Read online

  THE HOUSE

  Edward Lee

  "The Pig" © 1997 by Edward Lee

  "The House" © 2005 by Edward Lee

  cover art © 2005 Erik Wilson

  this digital edition August 2008 © Necro Publications

  first edition trade paperback

  ISBN: 1-889186-71-6

  book design & typesetting:

  David G. Barnett

  assistant editors:

  Amanda Baird

  John Everson

  Jeff Funk

  C. Dennis Moore

  a Necro Publication

  P.O. Box 540298

  Orlando, FL 32854-0298

  www.necropublications.com

  previous editions

  hardcover

  ISBN: 1-889186-58-9

  Printed by

  Publishers' Graphics

  Carol Stream, IL

  Book One: The Pig

  Book Two: The House

  BOOK ONE:

  THE PIG

  (I)

  Sissy looked at the shot glass full of pig semen and threw it back neat. Without hesitation and in a smooth, single gulp, she swallowed it all, smiled into the camera and licked her lips as though she'd just tasted exemplary cuisine, and then—

  "Sissy? What's the... No!"

  —then blanched and threw up on the floor.

  "Fuck, Leonard! This is sick!" she sniped, more falling out of her mouth as she did so. "That stuff tastes like...uuuuck!" Then she—

  RRRRRRALF!

  —threw up again.

  Leonard was appalled. Sissy was appalled...

  Even the pig was appalled.

  ««—»»

  But more than likely one may pause to wonder how—and more critically, why—the aforementioned pig semen found its way into the shot glass.

  This is the story of that conjecture, and it's true.

  It's called The Pig.

  ««—»»

  It shimmied and mewled, chortled and spat, jerked its rotund body each time one of the girls tried to grab its...well, its dick.

  "Owwww!" Snowdrop yelped. "The fucker bit me! It bit me on the back!"

  It was not a large pig, mind you, not like the 1200-pound Berkshires Leonard had helped his daddy raise back at his Davidsonville, Maryland, farm so many decades ago. Leonard, in fact, had lost his virginity, so to speak, to a Duroc 500-pounder named Lacie. Boys, after all, will be boys. Leonard would always remember that day, as millions would—the same day John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas by, contrary to what most believe, a custom-loaded .221-caliber mercury-tipped round fired not from a Mannlicher rifle but a bolt-operated Remington match pistol. The weapon was fired by a man named Jimmy Sutton who worked for another man named Charles Nicoletti. All that aside, Leonard had been 14 at the time, in 8th grade at Sligo Junior High. "Somebody shot the president!" Leonard exclaimed after rushing home from the bus stop.

  But daddy wasn't in the house.

  "Daddy?"

  Leonard had eventually found him instead back in the first barn, kneed right up behind an ever-cooperative Lacie. It didn't take daddy long to finish his curious business before he hoisted up the overalls and got back to work. "Good girl, that's a good girl. Better pussy on ya than my wife, s'for sure. I got sick'a stickin' my pole in that hole twenty years ago, but—Christ, Lacie!" JFK long forgotten, Leonard followed suit, figuring that a boy should emulate his father whenever possible.

  So much for male virginity and sexual innocence.

  But that was over 20 years ago, and this was the here and the now, the here being one of Vinchetti's safe houses 120 miles out of Trenton, New Jersey; the now being the summer of 1977. It was a nice area—used to be a farm itself by its looks: plush rolling hills as far as you could see, some busted barns which made for appropriate "sets," given the required "theme" of most of Leonard's, uh, "work." See, Leonard made "cinematic productions" for "the Mob," features which necessitated the compliance of a very special kind of "actress."

  "Come on, Snowdrop," Leonard insisted, the Canon Scoptic settled on his shoulder. "Try to visualize your presence."

  Snowdrop sighed, her sunglasses drooping. A tattoo on her left buttock read: WELL USED. Flaccid breasts dangled as she reached under one more time, and then—

  "Owww!"

  —the pig bit her on the back again.

  ««—»»

  The girls—correction, the "actresses"—didn't generally last long. Most had been drummed out of Vinchetti's revolving prostitution networks along the east coast, and most, if not all, were clinical heroin addicts of considerable time span: ten years or more. To make a long exposition short, Paul Monstroni Vinchetti, aka Vinchetti "The Eye," was a district boss in what the Justice Department referred to as the Lonna/Stello/Marconi Crime Pyramid, an armature of that mythical human machinery known as the Mafia. Quite a bit more powerful in 1977 than, say, 1997, where its resources dwindled considerably, yes, thanks to "rats" fleeing to the haven of the Federal Witness Protection Program and Identity Reassignment. Back then the so-called Mob easily retained much of its hundred-year-old stranglehold on anti-societal supply side economics. But two decades later would prove a different story as tax-exempt Indian Reservation casinos neutered the Mob's grip on gambling profits, while the Jamaican middlemen had completely shut out Italian types from the lucrative crack trade, along with little helpers such as shadowed CIA units and a certain airport called Mena in a certain state called Arkansas which ferried in dozens of tons of cocaine in a peculiar arrangement with certain Nicaraguans and Mexicans in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars per year payments in order to even more peculiarly provide military supplements to certain well-known enemies of the Mexicans and Nicaraguans, the security of which, for greater than a decade was provided by, in exchange for 10-percent net, a certain governor who would later be elected President of the—

  Well, no need for prattling. In essence, and for a number of reasons, the Mob lost its command of most of the money-making schemes that had made it famous. All that remained was book-making, one half of the national heroin trade (the other half being divided with urban Chinese), street prostitution in heroin districts, and— Pornography.

  Depending, however, upon one's definition of such. The Mob's biggest blow in this franchise came in the early '80s along with the advent of video cassette recorders. In the wink of a jaded eye, gone were grainy "loops" of yesteryear, the 8 millimeter porno stalls, and the anonymous "stars" of such endeavors. The mass-marketing and hence popularization of VCRs obliterated the demand for the grand old loops. Now, when you wanted to viddie some smut, all you need do was jaunt to the neighborhood video-rental establishment and for a scant three bucks take home the new kings and queens of sexual cinematography. No longer called "smut," no longer known as "stag films" or "fuck flicks," a new day had dawned for the notion of having sexual intercourse in front of a camera. It was an industry now—the "Adult Video Industry"—and it had fast infiltrated hometown America to the extent that the Mob's firm hold on mass-market pornography was all but lost. It was all Hollywood now, with stars, trade journals, and even awards!

  A snippet did remain, however, akin to a crumb dropped from a very large dinner table, and this crumb was referred to, simply, as "underground."

  For the remaining sick fucks who could not be satisfied by the more tame offerings of the "industry," and such ever-recurring names as Marc Wallice, Peter North, Chaisy Lain, and Debby Diamond; and such titles as Mr. Holland's Penis, Backside to the Future, and Desperately Humping Susan, a demand, too, remained. The unmentionables. The stuff that, be it by design or by provisions of Section 18 of the United States Code, could not be found at the local Metro Video Center. "Underground," it should be added, was the term used,
in parlance, by federal law enforcement officials, and this phenomenon is cited by those same officials to represent a couple hundred million dollars per year in gross monies. A good half of this is taken by child pornography—ultimately nefarious and heavily pursued by all forms of law enforcement.

  But back then, in '77?

  It was a smorgasbord of underground, and our friends from Sicily controlled it all! Things that hometown America scarcely even knew existed.

  "Scat" flicks.

  "Nek" flicks.

  "Snuff" flicks.

  "Freak" flicks.

  "Wet" flicks.

  And—

  ««—»»

  The German shepherd copulated with the woman in a manner that could only be described as frenetic. Great, great! Leonard thought, zooming in the Canon Scoptic 16mm for a from-behind crotchshot. Rocco'll love this one! The dog's penis, like a glistening pink bone, fired in and out of Sissy's vaginal ingress. "Cut!" Leonard loudly announced.

  Snowdrop, who was supposed to be rubbing the dog's testicles from behind, was out for the count. That quarter-gram of skag had zapped her; she'd be unconscious for a good four hours. The street stuff Rocco and his soldier brought up every week or so was sometimes deceptively potent; sometimes it wiped the girls out for a full day. Not that unconsciousness forestalled action—dogs would copulate with unconscious girls, as would men—but this week's dupe order called for action, and this was to be the last cut before Leonard put it on the editor, it being a neat little ditty entitled Dog Day Afternoon, and you can rest assured that the names Al Pacino and Lance Henriksen would not appear on the credits.

  Sissy winced in borderline withdrawal as Snowdrop fell over unconscious in the foreground.

  "Sissy, you're supposed to look like you're enjoying it, not like you're at your grandmother's funeral," Leonard pointed out during the cut. The dog, however, remained oblivious to the director's order, and just kept humping away as Sissy squirmed anxiously beneath. "Goddamn it, Leonard!" the dropout from Crofton, Maryland objected. She was 26 but looked 46, ten years of "slamming" skag wringing her life and looks out like water from a dish rag. When most little girls were playing with Barbies, poor Sissy was forced to grin and bear it while her father sodomized her twice or thrice daily, beat her, burned her, and kept her locked in a disused pantry for the entirety of her formative years. Upon escape, the dark devil of fate had led her to Vinchetti's open arms and the self-medicating bliss of addiction. She'd turned "beat" by 19, rode the "circuit" for the next five or six years, and now here she was—all 100 pounds and collapsed veins. The end of the line.

  "Push him off!" Leonard shouted. "Don't let him—"

  But, lo, too late. The shepherd's copulation slowed, then ceased. The dog wandered off, sated now, snuffling at the floor and leaving its human sexual cohort with a vaginal canal full of dog sperm.

  Leonard turned off the camera.

  "Come on, Sissy." Leonard wiped sweat from his brow, frustration and floodlamps baking him. He couldn't help but make the warning: "Rocco'll be here tomorrow night. We need one more wet shot for this movie, and I've still got all the processing and editing to do!"

  "Fuck wet shots and fuck Rocco and fuck you!" she yelled back, but it was a most peculiar image. She lay perfectly prone and motionless on the floor as she made this protestation, dog semen leaking from her sex. She looked like a corpse yelling. "I need to fire up, Leonard! I'm stringing out! I-I...I wish I was dead!"

  You will be if this movie isn't ready for Rocco.

  "The heroin's all gone, Sissy. You and Snowdrop used it all. From now on we'll have to ration it. We can't have this. You know how Rocco gets when he's mad." She turned her head, a plea in her eye. "Leonard, I'll do anything for you if you...if you...kill Rocco."

  Leonard about wailed. "No talk like that!" Leonard was lucky to be alive himself, considering his marker, which via their oral contract would be paid off in another month or so. It was rumored that Leonard's predecessor had tried to book. Rocco found him in a White Castle in New York City, then brought him back to this safe house and did "the job" on him. Part of "the job" involved cutting the man's face and Fed-Exing it to his mother in San Bernardino. The rest involved... Well, more on that later.

  "Don't even think things like that, Sissy! Take what you can get! Jesus Christ, you girls are impossible!"

  Then Leonard stalked out to the pen—

  "Here, boy, here—"

  —to get another dog.

  ««—»»

  He called the feature The Confessor, a meld of Bergman and Polanski, with bits of Hitchcock and Fulci tossed in for spice. The unnamed "Writer," broken in spirit and in love, is transported to an otherworldly vale where he meets...the countenance of truth...

  It was originally a short story Leonard had had published in a college literary journal.

  THE CONFESSOR

  by Leonard D'arava

  The thurible sways. The confessor, dressed in black, looks down from the smoking plinth.

  The writer stands in ashes.

  "Why are you here?" comes the voice, but it is no human voice at all. It sputters like rushing water, like dead leaves in the wind. The voice is incalculable.

  "Absolve me," the writer replies. Stand tall, he thinks. Be brave and you will prevail. "Forgive me in my state of disgrace."

  The pause howls. Then: "But I am not your confessor."

  These words, black as the confessor's raiments, make the writer feel barely extant. What is manhood—no, spirithood—but courage and faith? He's here for more than absolution. He's come for truth. He's come all this way, to this terrible vale, to ask: What is truth? What is truth really? But now that he's been granted his moment of petition, his resolve flees. His courage and his faith flee, too. At once, he feels worthless before the immobile figure in black.

  "So you've come to ask a question," it bids.

  The vale's graven dark oozes gossamer mists as if through pores. The writer thinks of sepulchers and uteri, of palls and wedding gowns and newborn pudenda and autopsy saws and grave-dirt; he thinks of the fornication of opposites.

  He's not quite certain what the vale is. An interstice, perhaps. A rive or a threshold. Whatever it is, it's far and away from the world. He senses higher orders beyond: orders which bar the admittance of any imperfection, but not heaven. Heaven is a different place. The writer thinks of life and death, yet he knows he is not dead. Maybe he's just still learning.

  Or perhaps this is the end. Perhaps he's learned all he'll ever learn.

  "I see too much," he confesses. "I feel too much."

  "You blame your loss on sensitivities?"

  It's as though the notion is absurd. "I..." the writer attempts, and nothing else. It's not forgiveness for his sins that he craves—that's another realm. He craves to be absolved of all he's misconstrued, and of his failure to calculate truth, real truth and what it adds up to. He feels like a seer who's seen all the wrong things.

  "Tell me what you've seen," the confessor says.

  The behest dilates in his mind, a black flower. What has he seen, though, that could be so deluding? Sadness? Dissolution?

  "Despair," he finally answers. "Too many lives and too many hearts pushed past the point of collapse."

  "Ah, despair." The confessor raises a finger. "And what of your own life? Your own heart?"

  "I don't know. Regret, I guess."

  "But you've been given so much."

  "I know! Forgive me!"

  The vale shimmers in its fulgent mist. The confessor says, "But I am not your confessor."

  The darkness, too, is incalculable. It's midnight now, wherever this place really is. It is the moment of reckoning's totality, the holy hour of the Druids. The full moon's bright light cuts the writer's features down to the starkness of bone, and the fragrant smoke which eddies off the thurible reminds him of the scent of her hair.

  "You deserve nothing," the confessor asserts, "because you've lost...everything. Are you listening to me?"


  Yeah, I'm listening. This fact, this aphorism, crushes the writer. That's how he feels. Crushed. I am a crushed man, he muses. It's almost funny.

  "Be brave, though, seer, and you will prevail."

  Will I? he wonders. But it must be so. The writer's love was gone, taken away or lost—it didn't matter which—by the decrees which ruled and ruined the world. Sometimes he espies the world of nothing but a demesne of rain and failure. Yes, he's lost his love; that's what had bidden this ultimate question. He felt desperate to pursue the truth out of his own doubt of it.

  "I've lost my love," he finally admits.