Jeff Gelb: Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

A sick, icy chill snaked through her bowels.

"Oh, my God," she muttered.

She nudged his head with the side of her face. It moved easily. She bumped her cheekbone against his ear. His head swung away, then flopped back and hit her as if trading blows.

"Shit!"

He's dead! The bastard's dead !

Joyce squirmed under his terrible weight.

This won't be easy, she thought.

She took a deep breath, then attacked. She bucked, she twisted, she shoved and tugged at Ken, she kicked and thrust at the bottom of the tub with her feet, she clawed at the sides with her hands. But she couldn't roll him off. She couldn't lift him. She couldn't writhe her way out from under him.

All her efforts hardly moved him at all.

Finally, she was too exhausted to continue the struggle. She lay beneath him, limp and sweaty, arms at her sides, fighting to breathe.

Calm down, she told herself.

Right. Calm down. I've got a fucking stiff on top of me. Not to mention. .

Don't even think about that.

There has got to be a way out of this.

A way out of it fast!

Use your head, use your head.

The problem — the major problem — is the damn tub. The way it's holding us in. Of course .

If only we'd done it on the bed! I could've just rolled him off me…

If only. A lot of good that'll do you.

If only he hadn't fallen on me, that's what .

What happened to him? A heart attack? An aneurysm? Who knows? Who cares? The jerk was pumped up with steroids, probably fucked up his system.

And now I'm the one who's fucked .

For the first time since she'd landed on her back under Ken, Joyce noticed the overhead mirror. She stared up at it.

No wonder she was trapped. She could hardly see herself. Only her face and legs were visible. The rest of her was hidden beneath Ken's massive body. She raised her arms. They came up into view below Ken's armpits. They looked so small.

Her legs looked useless. Beautiful, useless legs, with their knees in the air — legs spread wide and painfully apart and jammed against the walls of the tub by Ken's thick thighs.

She tested them. She was able to unbend her knees. She could straighten her legs, lower them, and raise them high.

When she moved her legs at all, Ken seemed to shift position deep inside her, probing and exploring.

She didn't let that stop her. She watched her legs in the mirror and kept on testing their maneuverability. She found that she could kick around pretty well, but mostly just from the knees down. What she couldn't do was bring her legs together. Though she tried, they remained tight against the walls of the tub.

Maybe…

She lifted her right leg high, hooked its calf over the edge of the tub, shoved her right elbow against the bottom, and struggled to raise and turn herself, hoping to roll Ken off. She couldn't budge him.

Okay. This doesn 't work . Something has to work .

She lowered her leg. She tried to relax.

I can't actually be stuck here .

But I'm certainly being stuck .

At least I should be able to do something about that, she thought.

She slid her open right hand into the tight crevice between her belly and Ken's. His skin was slippery against the back of her hand. She shoved downward. Their pelvises, locked together, stopped her fingertips. She tried getting to him from the side of her groin. No way.

"Great," she muttered.

Then she screamed and kicked and pushed and twisted and squirmed, determined to get him off her, out of her, knowing she could do it — she had to do it and she could — mothers picked up cars, didn't they, when they had a kid trapped under a wheel? She could lift Ken. She would. She would hurl him aside and scamper out of the tub. When she found that she couldn't, she wept.

Sometime later, the candles began to die. One by one, they fluttered, flared brightly and went out. She was left in darkness.

Just as well, she thought at first. Nothing to look at, anyway, but a dead guy pinning me down.

She didn't feel that way for long.

Terror began creeping through her.

A dead guy. A corpse. I'm trapped by a corpse .

What if it starts to move?

It's only Ken, she told herself. It's not any fucking ghoul or zombie or spook, it's just Ken. And he's dead, kaput. He isn't about to start moving .

But suppose he does? Suppose he wants revenge? I'm the one who killed him.

He had a heart attack or something. Wasn't my fault.

Maybe he doesn't see it that way.

Shit! He doesn't see anything. He's dead! Besides, he died happy. What a way to go, right? He came and went.

She heard a laugh. It sounded a trifle mad.

He didn't come, she reminded herself.

Coitus interruptus croakus.

She laughed again.

She went silent, the sound of her laughter frozen in her throat as she imagined Ken lifting his head, kissing her mouth with his dead lips, whispering, "I've got some unfinished business," and starting to thrust.

It took the light of morning to ease her terror. She slept.

She woke up aching and sweaty, her rump numb, her legs lifeless. She flexed her muscles, kicked and squirmed as much as she could. Soon, circulation came back. Her buttocks and legs burned. They felt as if they were being pricked by thousands of needles.

When she felt better, she noticed the odor.

The overhead mirror revealed its cause. Down between Ken's feet, a turd was hanging over the edge of the drain.

"Shit," she muttered.

She closed her eyes.

Don't sweat the small stuff, she told herself.

Think , think.

Okay, it's Saturday. If he doesn't miss his flight or something, Harold will be getting back tomorrow evening. Around seven. That gives me better than a full day to get out of here. Or hubby'll get the surprise of his life.

How's this for a horror story, Harold? Write this one up, why don't you? Maybe you'll win a fucking award !

Won't happen. I'll be out of this mess long before he gets home.

Right.

How?

I can float Ken off me!

She thought about that for a while. If she filled the tub, wouldn't the rising water lift him? Sure it would.

I might drown in the process .

But if I can hold my breath long enough…

She raised her legs, stretched them out, tried to squeeze them closer together… and came nowhere near the bathtub's faucets.

So much for great ideas.

There has to be a way. There…

"Get off me!" she shrieked, and fought the body. It was rigid with rigor mortis. It felt even heavier than before. Finally, exhaustion made her quit.

There is no way, she realized.

I'm gonna be trapped under this goddamned stiff until Harold gets home.

After that, she spent a long time crying. Later, she dozed. When she woke up, her butt and legs were numb again, but she no longer felt the horrible desperation. She felt resigned.

"When rape is inevitable," she muttered, "relax and enjoy it." What asshole thought up that one? she wondered.

This isn't the end of the world, she told herself. It may be the end of my marriage, but that's no great loss. Harold will come home tomorrow and get me out of this.

It's awful and disgusting, but I'm not going to die from it.

Later in the day, the stench got worse as her own excretions joined Ken's.

When darkness returned, so did her terror.

She lay motionless, hardly daring to breathe, waiting for Ken to stir. Or to speak.