Robert Devereaux - Baby's First Book of Seriously Fucked-Up Shit

His ear teased him. He thought he heard the scrunch, slow and covered by woman-delight, of snow outside, almost as if someone were approaching the window. Then, shatters to scare the shit out of him, as the wood-slatted shutters angle-arced open over him like twinned jib-swings, booming right and left to let in a stinging spray of glass, abrupt waves of waspish pain carried in on unspeakable stench and winter cold.

Marcie’s back welled crimson under triangles of glass. Laura was screaming, trying to gain her balance on the waterbed, trying to cast off the cracked glaze that coated her torso. But then invader-stench hooked Travis’s nose, and through the misted ache of his unblinded eye, he saw the jag-torso’d dead woman crawl through the window to lay claim to their lives.

Aysha undressed. She unwrapped her lover beside her bed, oil-lit dark skin oily and cool beneath her fingers, his clothing slick with savory-smelling unguent. Decades of hatha yoga had slimmed and toned his body, reminding her always, and especially now, of Jesus on the cross.

“I’ve missed you, Rajib,” she said softly.

“It is good to be with you,” came his reply.

She put her arms around him, standing there, and felt his hands lightly slat above the small of her back. White skin to brown, blond hair to black. Lovely naked embrace, full body.

He was soft below where she remembered whippet hardness, thin sickle of dogtail roused. Her fondling did nothing. She fell to her knees, kissing a quiescent chest and abdomen, no breath there, just aromatic sheens of ooze like ancient spices preserving a corpse. Dark pubic wire. The small retired wrinkle of Rajib’s penis. Aysha took it in like a second tongue, all of it, bathing it with saliva but to no avail. It had a subtle sweetness about it, like salt-sweet taffy, and the tip oozed drops of liquid manna, rolled like honeyed wine on her tongue before sliding down her throat.

“No blood,” Rajib said, resting his hands on her bare shoulders. “No hardening. Lie down. And I will pleasure you.”

She obeyed, settling on the cool blanket and watching the dark form of her husband part her thighs with bonelike steady hands, blessing her womanhood with his eyes. Lower he went, half on the bed, half off, until his lips touched her labia and his nose and forehead settled into a beloved pattern of duck and rise. She watched him as the feelings began, connecting with his eyes as in the old days, but in them, there cowered that dead thing she’d first noticed on the stage. It gleamed in oil-light. It thrilled, mingled there with his kindness. No breath on her yoni, no coming up for air, just movement and steady rise, soft sly tongue on her clitoris, then teeth, something new, upper teeth to lower trapping the wet nub, slick of cool tongue traveling to and fro, but the stiff enamel pressure crossed the line from pleasure to pain.

“No teeth,” she said. He had taken her hands, as in the past, holding them at her sides, gentling her fingers.

Something sharp in his eyes. He eased off. His brow rose abruptly and she saw mustache and lip and teeth above the curl of her private hair. And then, like a rot weiler let loose, he lunged in and down. His hands closed on her hands, kept closing, crushing bone against bone. Bites of outrage ravaged her sex. Frantic with struggle, she tried her best to escape him, but it was useless: he was strong beyond mortal strength and his black locks flew hither and yon, all glistening with blood. Fear frenzied her, and in the midst of her frenzy she felt her bladder let go inside her red-runnered belly. A bloody gush of urine fountained against his face, awash over eyes which did not blink.

“No teeth,” she said.

At once he eased off. Tongue again played slickly at her sex, its nub tip-tormented by tonguetip. Rajib’s dead eyes shone a dark bloodlight of awareness across the heave and roll of her body. So tender did his corpse-hands move upon her palms and fingers, and with such love, that Aysha felt his touch travel to her nipples, tighten them, a pure twin lick of love unstinting.

Haloed shadows lapped in an array of grays on the ceiling glow, one barely substantial nimbus bobbing like a projection of Rajib’s spirit. Focus rose to that nimbus, its rhythm, as each sensual wavecrash tumbled quicker upon the last, and again, and yet quicker, until there was nothing to do but yield up into the lovely god-glow with heart and mind and soul.

Feathering down, she gathered him up to lie upon her, naked brown corpse more caring than any living lover she’d ever had. His long dark locks tickled her shoulders. And though he slabbed upon her, no arhythmic answer to her in-out of breath, the dance of consciousness in his eyes made her cadaveric embrace all right, nothing freakish about it nor anything perverse: What, after all, animated her from moment to moment? And what distinguished her from him but breath and blood and rates of decay?

Outside, a siren screamed by. Its passing made Aysha aware of the distant weave of sirens in every direction, a thick blanket now, once tentative and threadbare.

“It’s starting,” he said, emotion unreadable as ever. “It seems that I have come too late.”

She hugged him fiercely, suddenly afraid, wishing her touch could do for him what he had done for their son. In her dead lover’s arms, she wept.

Their screams mingled, Marcie’s and Laura’s and his.

Muffled flesh. Shoots of liquid falling everywhere. Arm and elbow flying, warm buttock, wet red hair matted about fingerfucked cuntmouth, hands hot and gone, waterbed slap under greenhouse coziness and the ecstatic shouts of love newborn. They settled down slowly, in a heap, a wild tea party, un-Poppinsesque, bumping the ceiling in an ecstatic display of belly-laughter before parachuting downward.

Sirens whiffled in the distance.

“A restless night,” said Laura.

“With any luck!” said Marcie, fruity alto laughter on the follow-up.

“Wow,” offered Travis, mind-blown. “Wow, wow, double wow!”

“Articulate as always.”

“Where have we been all our lives?” he wondered.

“Um,” said Marcie, “on our way here?”

“I guess .”

Laura surprised him: “I love you guys a whole heap.”

“Same here.” Gratitude in their neighbor’s voice.

“And I love the fuck out of you two.”

Quick Marcie: “As long as you also fuck the love out of us as frequently and as diligently as you can.”

“Oh, Jesus in heaven, what have we here!” He thought then of the baby. “We ought to check on Jenny.”

Laura groaned. “I guess I’d better. No need for you two to get out of bed.”

“No, I mean I want all three of us to go.” He warmed to the idea. “No clothing, just as we are, hugged through the apartment, shushing one another into Jenny’s room, and peeking into the bassinet. I want to hold you close. I’d like to touch your beautiful naked flanks under moonlight, as Jenny sleeps below.”

They grumbled, but they acquiesced.

The air in the baby’s room was warm and close, but it concentrated his daughter’s perfect smell and that was one virtue in it at least. She looked the perfect angel lying there.

Travis reared back at the pungency of the stench, an oh-no alarming in his head. “My baby,” Laura gasped, then rushed in. Marcie followed and Travis came after, praying it wasn’t what he feared.

Laura lifted the limp child in her arms, a wet bundle of laundry. Travis snapped on the overhead: no blinkback of light from the baby, not even a brief squeeze of closed eyelids.

He saw the reddish froth at Jenny’s nostrils and mouth. From the floor, the space heater roared obscenely.

“Quick,” said Marcie. “The changing table.” Box of tissues, whip-whip-whip, wiping the froth away, gentle but quick.