Jeff Gelb: Hot Blood: Tales of Erotic Horror

He returned home with arms full of groceries, banging at the door with a foot. No one answered so he let himself in. Susan's clothing was gone. Mike searched for a message but there was none.

Mike was sucking on his fifth beer of the night when the phone rang. He stumbled over, picked it up, and before he could speak, a male voice asked, "Suzie? Just wanted you to know I'd be a little late. I'll be at Cafe Noir by 9:30. I'm the one with the biggest joint in the joint."

As Mike parked his Subaru at the darkened gas station across the street from the night club, he spotted Susan entering.

He sat in the car seat for a while, trying to sober up and collect his thoughts. It looked like Joey Clark had been right all along: Susan was hardly innocent. In fact, it was even possible that she had somehow put those obscene messages on the men's room walls herself — or had a pimp do it for her.

The smoke in the bar was thick as fog, but Mike spotted Susan against the far wall, speaking to a guy in a three-piece suit.

Mike hugged a darkened corner and watched them. The man had his arm around Susan, and she wasn't objecting. Mike saw her lean forward and whisper something to the man as one of her hands lightly brushed against the front of his polyester trousers.

"Suzie Sucks." The phrase kept repeating itself in Mike's mind like a broken record. But she doesn't suck , he reminded himself. At least not for free . The girl had been nothing but a hooker all along.

Suzie was leaving the club with Mr. Three Piece Suit in tow. Following, Mike saw them climb into a Cadillac and drive off. He then ran to his car and quickly weaved into traffic. Suzie and her John were headed north toward the Hollywood hills. Mike guessed they would park by the Hollywood reservoir and then Suzie would earn her money — and her reputation.

He turned his lights off as he approached the crest of the hill where he saw the Caddy parked. Sliding out of his car, Mike walked softly uphill till he found a hidden vantage point from which he could view the car's occupants.

Suzie's head was in the guy's lap, rising and falling slowly. Mike could hear the John's moans of ecstasy, the sound assaulting his ears like shards of flying glass. How much ?

Mike wondered absently. How much did it cost to have those lips make a man groan like that ?

Now there were new sounds from inside the car: gasps and even a tiny shriek. Mike's blood ran cold as his mind envisioned the John as one of those serial killer types who preyed on hookers. Maybe he was slitting Suzie's pretty throat right now. Maybe he shouldn't care, Mike thought for an instant.

He bounded out from behind the bushes and pulled the passenger car door open. The interior light came on, illuminating Suzie's shocked expression.

"Oh my God," she sputtered, blood dribbling from her mouth.

"Did this asshole hurt you?" Mike heard himself saying. Jesus , he thought, I still love this slut . "I'll kill him," he hissed, as he started to pull the John out of the car.

"Too late," Suzie whispered.

Mike pulled away from the man and watched his head flop to the dashboard, where it struck with a hollow thud. The corpse fell sideways past them onto the pavement.

"Jesus," Mike whispered. "You killed him."

"That's right," she said.

"But you had to, right? I mean, he was attacking you." Mike couldn't see any sign that the man had been armed. But he'd obviously struck her — Suzie's mouth was still bleeding. Even as he watched, she wiped her tongue along her wide upper lip, licking off the blood. She was smiling.

Mike had never noticed those oversized incisors before. She looked like a goddamned doberman , he thought.

"It's not your blood," he realized aloud, his voice quivering.

She smiled at him, dabbed at the bloodstains with a paper tissue, and started the car's engine. She reached over to him, patting his hand.

"That's why I couldn't… you know," she said. "I just didn't trust myself. The bloodlust runs strongest during sex."

As she pulled away from the curb and started back down the hill toward the lights of Hollywood, she blew him a kiss. "I'll really miss you, Mike," she called out.

In a daze, Mike tripped over the corpse and landed in a heap by the victim's feet. As he started to rise, he saw a pool of blood forming under the corpse's crotch.

Suzie Sucks , Mike thought with a shudder.

I arrived in Manning the day after I read of Jayne's death in the paper. It was front-page news across the country, the kind of story the press wrings dry.

TEENAGER KILLS CHURCH ORGANIST

IN BIZARRE SEX SLAYING

I wouldn't have read it if I hadn't seen Jayne's picture, her big tortoiseshell glasses perched on her small nose, dull brown hair gathered in the back, her usually timid, fleeting smile opening brightly for the camera. It was a recent picture and she'd changed little in the last ten years.

I immediately arranged to take a day off work, saw that my pet, Clarissa, had plenty of food and water, and left Los Angeles for Manning.

I was raised in Manning, a small Seventh-Day Adventist village in the Napa Valley. My parents still lived there, but when I arrived, I went straight to the boy's house. It was easy enough to find; reporters were gathered on the sidewalk waiting for a glimpse of the killer. I parked my rented car across the street and stared at the house, wondering what the boy was like, how he'd met her. And if she'd done to him what she did to me…

When I was sixteen, I thought of Jayne Potter only as the woman who, each week, placed a square brown cushion on the church organ bench, sat down, and played for services. I didn't find her attractive; she had fair skin, dressed plainly, and always wore her hair in a bun or braided. She didn't wear makeup, but, because that was against Seventh-Day Adventist rules, neither did any of the girls at the Adventist prep school I attended. They , however, were the stars of my fantasies; although restricted by dress codes, they somehow managed to dress in ways that accentuated their curves and angles to the fullest. Repression is the mother of creativity, I always say.

Miss Potter attended every church function and gave more than her share of time to its causes. At a bake sale or potluck, she was impossible to distract, so great was her concentration on her duties; she seemed driven, as if she had to participate in church activities, as if she were repaying an important debt. But in spite of her sizable contributions to the church, the congregation seemed to ignore her; sometimes I even thought they were shunning her. Most people that participatory were quite popular socially. Not Miss Potter. She smiled and nodded a lot but spoke little and was seldom if ever spoken to.

It wasn't until she came down with a summer cold and my mother had me take her some homemade cream of vegetable soup that our relationship began. I drove to her place in my mom's car. Miss Potter lived on the north side of town in a mobile home nestled by itself at the foot of a shady hill.

It was a hot summer day, but she came to the door wearing a heavy white terrycloth robe. I didn't expect to be invited in, but she did so immediately. Once inside, with the glare of sunlight out of my eyes, I could see that she wasn't wearing her glasses and her hair was down, full and wavy on her shoulders and back, and I discovered something. It wasn't an instant discovery; it took a while to sink in and wasn't fully absorbed until after I'd left her. I discovered that Miss Potter was beautiful.

She didn't seem sick. Her eyes were puffy, but that might have been from crying. I would later realize that she had been. I lost count of the times I found her crying when I came over for my visits. In fact, I lost count of the visits.