Jon Athan - Am I Beautiful?

“Stop!” he repeated, desperation straining his voice.

Miki said, “Almost done, baby, almost done.”

Matt threw a punch at her, landing a jab on her chin. He was a weak young man, though. The blades in his ball sac didn’t do him any favors, either. He hit her again. The corner of her mouth turned red. He swung at her again and hit the ceiling, knuckles popping upon impact. Miki smirked and squeezed the handles. The shears cut into the shaft of his erect penis. Sobbing hysterically, Matt pulled on the door handle.

But he had locked the doors because he was afraid of the local transients.

With another snip, his penis and scrotum were severed. One of his testicles was still attached to the scrotal sac by some veins. Blood poured out from the bottom of his amputated penis and squirted from the dick stump protruding from his crotch. His eyes jutted from their sockets as he stared at his penis in Miki’s raised hand. Connected by some skin, his mangled scrotum dangled from his severed dick.

In terrible, debilitating pain, he put his hands over his crotch and bellowed, “ Ahhh! ”

Miki closed the shears and thrust the blades at the center of his neck, immediately silencing him. They entered his throat under his Adam’s apple, piercing his larynx and esophagus. Red and sweaty, his face knotted, his eyes shut, and his tongue stuck out. Miki twisted the shears to widen the wound. He moved one hand up to his neck. He touched the blood around the gash, then the shears, then Miki’s gloved hand.

His lips moved, but only the sound of him gargling his own blood came out of his mouth. His head swayed on the headrest. His hand slid down to his chest. He remained conscious, but he was brought to the brink of death.

As she pulled the shears out, blood spurted from his throat and hit her chin. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing his blood across her jaw.

“I told you you’d wish you never met me,” she said.

She watched his suffering with wide, unblinking eyes. She had seen death— murder —several times before, and it was always beautiful. It was like reliving her first love again and again and again. She looked at the bleeding hole on his neck, then at the severed cock in her hand. The penis was flaccid but firm now.

She said, “A man once said he wanted to ‘fuck my tiny Asian throat.’ I always wondered what it would be like to fuck a man like that.”

She pressed the glans of Matt’s penis against the hole on his neck, then she twisted it left and right, as if she were screwing a nail into a wall. Thanks to the blood, the glans slid into the wound. She mashed as much of it in as possible—about two centimeters. The penis clogged his airway. Another lump stuck out of his neck like a second Adam’s apple.

Some men could suck their own penises, but most men couldn’t throat-fuck themselves like Matt.

The rest of his dick hung out of his neck. The scrotal skin, as well as one of his genitals, swung around the dent between his collarbones. It looked like a bowtie of flesh— a genital bowtie . One limp hand on his chest and the other on his crotch, Matt passed away while his penis was being pushed into his throat. Worried about getting caught because of her mask, Miki hadn’t murdered anyone since the boy at Griffith Park. Matt’s death encouraged her. She was ready to proceed with her plan.

She whispered, “I can still do this.”

She carved a smile onto Matt’s face, then she cleaned her shears with his shirt. She gathered her belongings, put her mask on, and then left the vehicle. She smiled behind her mask as she wandered the streets of Skid Row. Some people yelled at her, a few men catcalled her, but no one really noticed her enough to remember anything about her. She was a ghost.

Matt’s body was discovered in the early morning by a homeless man and then a homeless woman found him at noon. His body wasn’t reported to the police until that evening, though.

“They’re closing the schools,” Amber said in a hushed tone as she ran her fingertips across Adam’s strong, bare chest.

Adam lay in bed beside her, blank eyes glued to the ceiling. The dark circles under his eyes looked black in the moonlight pouring into the bedroom from the window. His jaw was clenched and his muscles were tense. His head seemed to hurt all the time, but no amount of medicine could relieve the pain. Ten seconds of silence elapsed.

He said, “I saw the news.”

“It’s a good thing, right?”

Fifteen seconds of silence passed.

“I don’t know,” Adam said.

Amber responded, “Well, there’s going to be a, um… A shelter-in-place order or something like that. That should help, right?”

With so much on his mind, Adam was slow to respond. He heard every word from Amber’s mouth, but it took him a moment to process it. Another ten seconds passed.

Before he could answer, Amber asked, “What’s wrong, hun? You’ve been so quiet recently.”

‘ Everything .’ He stopped himself from saying that word out loud. It was the truth, but he didn’t want to alarm his wife. The world was crumbling around him. Stress ate away at his health, killing him from within. He lay still, but he felt like he was free-falling, sick to his stomach just thinking about survival. He shouldered the burden of supporting his family during the pandemic.

Amber would have been happy to help. She knew something was wrong, but she didn’t see it. Optimism had a way of blinding people. Everything’s under control, she told herself repeatedly.

She said, “Talk to me. Please.”

Without moving his eyes, Adam responded, “Things aren’t looking good, Amber. Last year was our most profitable year ever. You know that already. We were on top of the world, all over the world. This year… We haven’t seen a cent of profit in weeks and we’re not expecting any for a few more. It could be months before we see any revenue. We’re being wiped out. It’s like the entire industry is… is being executed— publicly . Everyone’s watching but no one can help us.” He sighed and shook his head. He said, “I don’t know what I expected. I know everyone’s struggling, but I’m just… it’s… I guess I’m just a little shocked about it.”

What he really wanted to say was: ‘ I’m just scared .’ But he knew fear was a virus in itself, contagious like a yawn. Amber kept twirling her finger on his collarbone, half of her concerned face lit up by the moonlight.

Adam said, “Forget about it. We’ll rebound.”

“We will,” Amber reassured him. “And at least we’re healthy right now. That’s the most important thing, right?”

“Yeah.”

Adam’s voice sounded uninterested and tired, devoid of relief and gratitude. Words couldn’t reassure him. Only money could set his mind at ease. He was thankful for Riley’s health, but the pandemic wasn’t over yet. In fact, it looked like it was just getting started. To him, being grateful for surviving an ongoing pandemic was like being happy about winning a race before the race even ended.

Sensing his bad mood, Amber said, “If we need money, I’ll do more commission work. I’ll start making necklaces and pendants and stuff like that. People are always buying that sort of stuff online.”

“They can’t buy ‘that sort of stuff’ if they don’t have money.”

“Then I’ll get my old job back. You’re right, people might not have money for my art or knick-knacks anymore, but everyone is going to need help with their taxes.”

Adam sat up at the edge of the bed. Amber propped herself up on her elbow and watched him. They could hear faint voices outside.