Bullet Through Your Face (reformatted) Read online

  Gray tried to say yes but his tongue clogged his mouth. Sucking breaths, he nodded.

  “I knew ya’d like it. My brothers tolt me ‘bout it, ‘bout how they’ll come better during a blowjob with a finger up’n their ass. Some gland up in there, little gland that makes yer jizz er somethin’.”

  Gray could fathom absolutely no response. Had she said her brothers? Her brothers had given her a lesson in rectal anatomy? Gray didn’t even want to guess, didn’t want to imagine what kind of family she might have come from. But of course she’d been right, too. Her technical intricacies had provided him the best orgasm of his life. She rubbed his testicles some more and he was still spasming down. A finger up the ass, huh? Until then the only things to ever be up Gray’s ass were turds, but he could hardly argue.

  He slowed the car down, unaware until now how he’d been accelerating through the event. Finally he blurted out, “That was great.”

  “I wanna do things ya like, ‘cos I like ya. If I do things ya like, then you’ll pick me up agin, next time ya see me hitchin’home from the crab-pickers.”

  “Kuh—count on it.”

  “Cain’t have ya thinkin’ I’m a slob,” came her next inexplicable chatter. Now she was rubbing his bare stomach, looking down at his groin. “Cain’t be leavin’ a mess on ya, ya know? I always clean up my messes.”

  Gray flinched, nearly yelped again when she abruptly popped his penis back into her mouth and sucked hard, sucking off those oozing remnants. His hips and thighs tingled fiercely as the last lingering semen was drawn out. His cock felt fat, half deflated but still buzzing in luxuriant post-climax. She sucked her mouth off again and simultaneously slid her hand back up the spitty shaft, squeezed tightly with her index finger and thumb collaring his corona. A final pearl of sperm appeared and she licked it right off.

  Good God . . .

  Gray eventually managed to get his mind back on driving. Her hand lingered on his balls, a finger teasing between them. Jesus Christ, can she give a blow job . . . Every aspect of his reproductive capacity—from nerve reaction to sperm supply—felt utterly drained, a bucket tipped over and emptied.

  “You’s shore came a lot,” she observed next, smacking her lips, “and you gotta nice cock, a nice-looking knob, and it ain’t all bumpy like a lotta of ‘em.”

  All Gray could say to the most inane compliment of his life was “Thank you.”

  “And you’re nice’n clean too,” she kept chattering. “No foreskin—not that I got anythin’against ‘em but—Chrast—so many fellas don’t wash it out and it’s got all that smelly stuff in it. Yuck.”

  “I can’t say that I know what you mean,” he tried to joke, “since I don’t have the benefit of your experience. So I’ll take your word for it.”

  The attempt at levity went over her head. Another smack of her lips, then she poised in the seat, animated. “And, ya know, yer come tastes good, not like a lotta fellas, all bitter’n all.”

  My come tastes good, Gray repeated the remark in his mind. Oh dear me, is this a night of revelation or what? Maybe if he ever got a girlfriend again, he could tell her that on the first date. By the way, I have it on some very qualified authority that my sperm tastes good.

  The girl stared out the windshield and stroked her chin as if pondering a puzzle. “I wonder if what’cha eat effects the taste of your come? Ya think?”

  Gray’s smile of incredulity bloomed on his face. “I . . . don’t know. But I suppose it’s an interesting question.”

  “Like, if all a guy eats bacon, does it make his come taste like bacon? Er-er-er, what if he eats lots’a candy?” Her stare beyond the glass deepened. “I wonder if it makes his come sweet.”

  “Perhaps it does.” Gray could barely stifle a chuckle. This is some conversation. “You’re really great,” he finally said when he got his breath back. Now she was daintily rebuckling his slacks, tucking the shirt in, making sure the zipper’s tab was right when she pulled it up.

  “There ya go . . .”

  “Look, you know, I mean,” he began to babble, “didn’t you say said you walk this way a lot?”

  “Yeah. Ever nat. Ever week-nat that is.”

  “Well, see, why don’t we make a deal? I drive home this way every night too, the same time, and I was thinking that maybe I could pick you up like this and drive you home, for, you know—”

  She seemed elated. “You’s’ll drive me home ever nat fer a blow job an’ gives me twennie five ta boot?”

  “Yes,” Gray said. “Why not?” The quiet calculation registered: twentyfive dollars a night, five nights a week. A little over six grand a year. Piece of cake. His two ex-wives were remarried now—no more alimony. “I mean, you need the money for your baby, and I,

  you know, I need—”

  Her hand, perhaps unconsciously, squeezed his crotch. “That’d be dandy ‘cos, like, most’a the guys who give me rides ever nat, they’se only pay like five’r ten bucks an’ a lotta times they’se try to do things I never agreet to. They’se all mostly crackers, see, dirty

  fellas and mostly drunk. But I like you. An’ you’s say you give me twenniefive fer a blow? Ever nat?”

  “Sure,” Gray said. “Every night.”

  She lived way back in the boondocks, all right. An old county utility road took them deep into the woods. The moon had risen higher; it was a half-moon, a yellow lump hovering. Gray kept taking sideglances at it, for whatever reason, but it just made him more aware of the girl. For the whole time he drove, she never took her hand off his crotch. He could feel her hand’s warmth through the material. Then she was rubbing more intently as her big dark-caramel eyes wandered over the scape of the forest. It didn’t take long before Gray was hard again.

  The Corvette’s tires crunched over gravel. At the end of the road, a clearing opened, and a little two-story farmhouse sat wedged into sprawls of high weeds. Blistered once-white paint peeled back to reveal old, dull-gray wood, and there were dark shutters with slats falling out. An attic with one blank window peaked out of the structure toward its rear, some shingles missing from the small belfrylike roof. Alarge garage branched off one side, obviously a makeshift addition, and behind it, an expansive area surrounded by an eightfoot-high plank fence, more old unvarnished gray. Amid the weeds crawling around the house, Gray noticed orange bloated objects sitting lopsided, and then he realized what they were. Pumpkins, he thought. Well that’s damn appropriate, because this dump could pass for a Halloween house of horrors any day. Gray didn’t want to hang around. She had a kid, so she probably had a husband. And the husband must have a shotgun, to fit right in with the rest of this backwoods cliché.

  He pulled up at the end of the gravel drive, stopped. “Look,” she said, “I means, you been real nice’n generous to me, ‘specially offerin’ ta pick me up ever nat, but, see, I lives here with my two brothers Jory’n Hull, but, see, they’se’re mechanics, they’se work on cars.”

  “What about . . . I mean, aren’t you married?”

  “Aw, no, I’se ain’t married!” she exclaimed as if it was an absurdity. “I gotta baby, shore, but that was juss by some fella who raped me once.”

  “Oh, wow,” Gray said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ ta be sorry ‘bout ‘cos she’s a beauter-full baby.” Her fingers, very daintily, tacked around Gray’s crotch. Things were moving down there again, the tent struggled to rise against the tension. “I’se don’t want ya ta think I’m greedy’re nothing, but, ya know, seein’s that yer hard again, I thoughts ya might wanna come in an’ give me a fuck.”

  Just hearing the word—fuck—come from her mouth made Gray feel like he might come right there in his pants. His chest tightened. “But-but you said you had two brothers.”

  “Yeah, I’se do, but, see, they’se ain’t here right now, won’t be home till tuh-marruh nat on account they had ta go ta Pennsylvania ta buy car parts at some big car convention. So’s you kin come in, an’ we’se won’t be disturbed. But, ya know, I
’d have ta charge, like, maybe . . . forty?”

  All reason was lost now. Gray turned off the motor and the lights, opened his wallet, and gave her a hundred dollars.

  “Tarnations! Ya don’t have ta give me that much!”

  “Take it,” he said. His words came out parched. “You’re really just so . . . beautiful . . .”

  Her face leaned forward in the dark. He couldn’t see it as much as feel it—its softness, its warmth. She kissed him very lightly on the lips while her hand lingered at his crotch, his lust rekindled now fullforce. Yes, so much lust for her, lust that felt like an inchoate, molten mass.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “I’ll’se make ya feel real good. You ain’t even gotta use a rubber if ya don’t want.”

  Rubbers were the last thing on his mind just then. In fact, everything was—everything but her. Gray got out, almost fell over in some distractive euphoria. Did she giggle? She led him into the house, holding his hand. The front door creaked open; she switched on a light.

  What a dive, Gray thought. This looked like the place Jed and Granny lived in before they moved to Beverly Hills. More dilapidated inside than out, a shit-heap. But then he scolded himself. Certainly she was underprivileged. No education? Picking crabmeat? And she’d do that to support her child rather than go on welfare. In a lot of ways, she was a better person than he.

  “Sorry’se ‘bout the mess,” she apologized.

  The words barely registered. Gray stood in a prickling fog, staring. His eyes seemed to be entities with minds of their own; he couldn’t take them off her. She nonchalantly turned, tossed her head, gave a despondent smile. Then she took off the halter and, just as nonchalantly, stepped out of her cutoffs.

  God Almighty, Gray thought.

  Even in this tacky place, in this tacky lamplight . . . she was beautiful. It was a sporadic kind of beauty, an honest kind, utterly divorced from centerfold appeal and women’s-mag chicness. Here was a real woman, however unsophisticated, full of real life. Even her flaws were beautiful: one upper front tooth slightly crooked, one distended nipple minutely larger than the other, an old scar on one knee. Beautiful, Gray thought in his daze. His mouth felt dry. She didn’t seem the least bit inhibited about standing before a perfect stranger totally naked. Fine hair showed traceably from her underarms. A plot of dark-blond fur puffed from her pubis, and within it, just barely, he could see the lovely folds of her femininity.

  The large, high breasts swayed as she stepped forward. “You ready?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he nearly croaked.

  The vision entranced him, pulled him to his knees. Now he was face to face with the nebulous triangle of hair. Gray brushed the hair with his lips; it was so soft he barely felt it. Just as soft were the backs of her thighs, over which his hands glided until they found their way to her buttocks. His mouth urged closer, the hair tickling, and when his tongue slipped against the nugget of her clitoris, her ass clenched in his hands.

  “I-I lack that,” her whisper flittered down from above.

  Lack. Like. Yes, he wanted her to like it, that most irrational part of himself. The other part was buried somewhere, interred in a sepulcher of modern common sense. Licking a prostitute’s vagina wasn’t something the upwardly mobile did in this day and age, but Gray did it anyway, reveling in her sharp taste and moist heat. He could hear her breathing faster. She tweezed her clitoris between two fingertips and gently pulled up. The action extruded the little acorn of flesh more directly, so Gray could lick it better. The fingertips of her other hand pushed the back of his head. She was gasping gently now, the knowing human noise turned Gray on more, and her own excitement couldn’t be contested. He could taste it, that salty glaze beginning to flow from the folds beneath the downy hair. Gray couldn’t have been more pleased with himself. He was a tekkie, a computer geek, yet here he was arousing this worldly woman of obvious sexual experience. If anything, her responses were very flattering.

  But his own needs were raging—the needs he was paying for.

  “Now, baby—”

  Gray looked up, saw her face looking back down at him between the beautiful breasts. The face was flushed, the eyes narrowed with desire. Her hands were on his shoulders next, urging him to stand, and when he was back on his feet, the front of his pants bulging, she kissed him and ran her tongue between his lips.

  “Git’cher cock out, baby,” came the next parched whisper. Gray did, and was tempted to jerk it off right there when she turned around and bent over to clear off some space on the kitchen table behind her. His eyes ran up the back of her legs, over the tight, white rump, up the sleek lines of her back. When he squeezed his penis—just once—it didn’t even feel like his. It was insanely hard, throbbing like some convulsant animal, a fat veined lizard.

  Then she turned back around, almost dizzy now. She sat up on the edge of the table, lay back, and held her legs wide open for him, her feet poised high in the air. “Put it in me, baby. Juss stick it right in . . .”

  Gray stepped up, slack and shorts down at his ankles. He eased in and out of her, biting his lip. Not again . . . The simple feel of her inside turned him into a hair trigger about to fall. Struggling, he summoned more baseball images.

  “Hard. Do it hard.”

  Gray tried but— Forget it. Not even imagining being in the showers with Randy Johnson could hold off the inevitable. Gray’s balls drew all the way up to the root; he gasped. The first spurt of his orgasm vaulted out of him and into her, a flood-gate knocked down, but before he could even be aware of the second spurt—

  —some blunt object cracked him on the back of the skull. And Gray’s world, as well as all of his desires and all of his dreams and all of his love, turned black.

  He awoke, lying askew, on a gritty bare-wood floor. A bright light burned from above, but before it, two blurred shapes began to sharpen. “How’s it goin’ there, City Boy?” someone asked like a voice echoing from the bottom of a well.

  Gray’s head barked with pain. He squinted upward and focused.

  Two men in overalls grinned down, stubbled faces, mouths full of black teeth.

  “’Cos that’s where you’s’re from, ain’t it? The city?” Gray groaned at the pain in his head. Another pain, somewhere else, nagged at him, but he couldn’t place it.

  “Must be from the city, Hull,” another voice, losing its well-bottom echo, speculated. “Them fancified city clothes, an’ that Callaway ’Vette? An’he’s got credit cards too. Only city fellas have them.” Gray strained his vision at the younger of the two overalled men.

  Mussed hair stuck up in spikes; he grinned as he ruffled through Gray’s kidskin wallet.

  “This here’s my l’il brother Jory, and me? I’se Hull,” said the other one. This was too proverbial: these guys were hicks, hayseeds, right down to their dusty workboots and denim overalls. The girl set me up, Gray realized, bringing a hand to his head. And, Christ—what did they hit me with? A fucking refrigerator?

  “Bet’cher noggin hurts,” said Hull, the older one, thumbing the straps of his overalls. Chest hair and muscles showed beneath the bib. “Jory jacked ya out a might hard.” The man tittered. “Bet’cher backside smarts too, huh?”

  Only then did Gray calculate that other pain. He leaned up and saw that his X’andrini black silk shirt had been removed, and his Italian slacks—$150 at Grenadi’s For Men—had been pulled down.

  His anus seemed to throb in time with the pain in his head. “What . . . what did you do?”

  “Jory here, see, he already had hisself a nut up yer cornhole.

  While’s you was havin’ yer beauty sleep.”

  “Tightest boy-pussy I ever had, I still say,” Jory added. He was still riffing through Gray’s wallet. “Hey, Hull! City’s got a couple hunnerts here!”

  Gray groggily leaned up. The answer to his question had already been answered by the throbbing rectal pain. But Gray asked anyway. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Are you saying that you sodomized me?”
/>   The two rednecks belted laughter. “Sodder-mized? Shee-it, you really is from the city!” Jory exclaimed.

  Then Hull: “We don’t call it sodder-mee here, City. We’se real folks, and what we’se call it is cornholin’.”

  Jesus Christ . . .

  “An’ I ‘spect,” Hull went on, “Jory here’s gonna have hisself another nut up yer cornhole, like, real soon. Me, I’se usually just good fer one nut a day s’bout. But a young fella like him? Got a hard dog three, four times a day, he does.”

  Gray couldn’t believe this. I’ve been abducted by homosexual rednecks. Hull, he could see, was rubbing the front of his overalls like someone in a grocery testing avocados for ripeness. Jory, on the other hand, still had his penis hanging out the front of his overalls. He flicked off a little raisinette of shit.

  When Gray adjusted his position on the floor, he heard a metallic clatter, and then he made the next—decidedly grim—discovery. A steel shackle girded his left ankle, and from the shackle a chain extended. A heavy chain. The chain looked about six or eight feet long. Its other end was padlocked to an iron ring bolted to the floor.

  I’m fuckin’chained to the floor!

  “Had to chain ya,” Hull explained. “Caint have ya gittin’ out. Sheriff’s station ain’t but five miles yonder, off the Route.”

  I’m chained, Gray thought again as if to finalize the reality. This fact probably meant that his hosts wouldn’t be letting him out of here any time soon . . .

  “Gits my dog hard juss lookin’ at you, City,” Hull went on. “Come on, now. Hands and knees.”

  Gray was incredulous. Hull was dropping his overalls, and so was Jory. “You got to be shitting me, man,” Gray remarked. “You don’t expect me to—”

  Hull slapped him hard on the head; Gray reeled. Then he got into position, chain clattering.

  “Hands’n knees now, like a pooch.” Hull produced a buck knife for a little extra incentive. It glinted.

  “Yeah,” the other one chuckled. “Ever heard’a screwin’ the pooch? You’re the pooch.”

  “Look,” Gray pleaded in a last effort, “do you guys really have to do this? I mean, you got the girl. I’m sure she’d be a hell of a lot better than me.”