C. LaSart: Ad Nauseam: 13 Tales of Extreme Horror

“Here’s my number, Hon. Call me tomorrow night. We’ll figure it out.” She crushed the cigarette under her shoe then, with a wink, turned on her heel and left Jimmy to watch her hips swing as she walked back through the door.

He stood there for a moment dumbfounded. He had a date! It was too much for him to process. Instead, he tried to remember if he had paid Sam for his sandwich or not. Checking the remaining cash in his pocket, Jimmy got into the truck and headed for the liquor store across town.

Jimmy barely heard the liquor store’s little bell above the door. He walked to the back of the store and opened the cooler, locating his favorite brand of beer. There was a sale on cases, so he grabbed one instead of the usual twelve-pack. He heard Mama’s voice sound off in the back of his head, saying something about an alcoholic, but he ignored her. He was too happy about his date. Mama would have plenty to say about that too.

On the way to the counter, Jimmy’s eyes fell on the magazine rack in the corner and he stopped. Unlike the racks in other stores, the front was higher so you couldn’t see the covers, only the very top where the name was. The beer wasn’t the only change in the house since Mama had died. He didn’t have very many of these magazines, but had collected a few.

He looked at the rack longingly, trying to decide if the embarrassment of purchasing them would be worth the excitement of having some new material for his fantasies. He decided he wanted them and grabbed two without even looking to see what they were.

At the register, a kid who looked barely old enough to drink rang up the case of beer, and then stopped with his hand on the nudie mags. He looked around suspiciously, leaning over the counter until he was a little too close for Jimmy’s comfort. Then he spoke in a hushed and secretive voice.

“You don’t want these , man.”

Jimmy was flooded with embarrassment, wishing he hadn’t grabbed the books at all. A big breasted blonde mocked him from the cover, one hand holding up her breast like an offering, the other hidden in the mystery between her legs. Jimmy looked away, ready to pay for the beer and abandon the magazines.

“I got something better than this shit.” The young man smiled and winked. He looked around one more time for good measure, reached beneath the counter, and came up with a shoe box held together with masking tape. “Check these out, man.”

Inside the shoebox were DVDs, their covers depicting scenes much worse than any Jimmy had ever seen in his magazines. His heart raced at the thought of watching naughty things instead of just looking at glossy pictures, but the excitement quickly waned.

“I don’t have a way to play them. Just a VCR.”

The kid made a noise of derision and shook his head, placing the box back under the counter and coming up with a larger one. “That’s dinosaur shit, pops. But I do have some VHS. Now what you want? Gang bang? Anal? Fetish? Lesbian?”

“Lesbian.” Jimmy said quickly, surprising himself. “And, um, whatever else you think is good.”

The cashier made a show of digging through the box and inspecting each one, before setting three aside and returning the others to their hiding place. He put money in the register for the beer, but the crumpled twenty for the videos went directly into his pocket. He smiled at Jimmy in a creepy way that made him want out of the store as soon as possible, putting the movies into a paper bag.

“You have a nice day, man. Let me know what you think. If those don’t get you off, nothing will!”

Jimmy grabbed the beer and the bag and left without a word.

The phone rang ten times when Jimmy finally gave up. Charlene told him to call her tomorrow night, but he was too excited to wait. He managed to hold off until after dinner, but spent the entire time staring at the old phone where it sat on the kitchen counter.

Scenarios played through his head. What if she had gotten into an accident on the way home from work? What if she fell and was lying on the floor only inches away from the phone, suffering some terrible injury and forced to listen to the telephone taunting her with its every ring? Or worse! What if she was in her bedroom romancing with some other guy?! The possibilities were endless.

What he really wanted to do was drive straight to town and find out why she wouldn’t answer the phone, but didn’t know exactly where she lived. He also realized somewhere deep down that this would not be normal behavior. He wanted to be cool with Charlene. Act cool. It became his mantra.

Jimmy popped the tab on a beer and began to wash the dishes. Edna DeLeon hadn’t approved of a lot of things, and automatic dishwashers were one of them. Real women, she told her son often, didn’t need a machine to do their jobs. No machine could ever get the dishes as clean as good ol’ elbow grease.

He was coming to hate his Mama. At times he fantasized about hopping in the truck late at night and driving out to that cemetery to piss on her grave. It would be beer piss too! Sometimes these thoughts caused him guilt, but as time passed, the thoughts increased in frequency and the guilt diminished. As he finished the chore, his eyes fell upon the paper bag on the counter .

Jimmy picked up the bag with the intention of stashing the movies in a drawer, certain that he wasn’t ready to watch them. But he found himself taking them out of the bag and inspecting each one.

The covers depicted things that would’ve made his Mama turn over in her grave; the backs had paragraphs describing what each video promised to show him. The language was colorful and foul. Most of the words he didn’t completely understand, but having made it half way through high school, he’d been exposed to enough teenage guy-talk to get the gist of it. He grabbed two more beers, drinking one in a single gulp. Just the thought of actually watching the movies made his hands sweat and his heart race. He felt such a bittersweet mixture of excitement, disgust, embarrassment and arousal.

As he grabbed another beer and slid the first video into the VCR, his Mama’s voice came again. Jimmy wasn’t crazy. He knew her voice wasn’t real, but she was there none the less, babbling with rage. Oh no you DON’T James Allen DeLeon! My own son, a drunken whoremaster! Not in MY house!

“Shut up, Mama.” He said, sitting on the worn couch and pressing play.

His eyes went round and his jaw slack as the images began to grind upon the television screen without any beginning credits. There was no plot whatsoever, no pretense at acting; just raw footage of men and women at their most perverse and primal. Jimmy loved it.

Two hours and countless beers later, Jimmy was just starting the third video. He had masturbated until he no longer could, the beer and his exertions leaving him weak and tired, but still he watched, his gaze riveted onto the screen. Somewhere in the night, an animal wailed in pain and terror, but he paid it no heed.

James Allen DeLeon was learning the erotic details of a lesbian relationship, in living color.

When Jimmy awoke in the morning, his head was pounding almost as hard as his heart. He had been in the middle of a graphically erotic dream turned nightmare. In his dream, he was one of the guys in the video, doing nasty things to women, but when he looked up, all of them wore his Mama’s face. He sat up fast in bed; his throbbing head making him regret the decision instantly. He felt dirty and hung-over.

And oddly satisfied.

After a hot shower and a hearty breakfast of eggs and hash browns, Jimmy began to feel human again. A couple of aspirin washed down with half a gallon of water restored him to his previously joyful mood from the day before.