Nicholson Baker: House of Holes

“I doubt it,” said Harry. “I was reading Hawking’s book about the first seconds of the universe. I think our monster is as close as I’ll ever come to knowing what that’s like.” Harry hesitated. He looked a little green around the gills. “I’m going to have to leave you on your own here. I’ll be watching on the monitor. Men can’t take pornfumes for very long without fainting. We need breathing equipment. Women seem more immune.” Harry withdrew.

Rhumpa walked out onto the tiled edge of the ancillary holding tank. She called out, “Hey, pornmonster! Cuntcall! Here it is!” She cupped her crotch through the wetsuit.

There was a burbling and a different feeling in the air. Rhumpa sensed that the pornmonster had slid into the ancillary tank. She waited.

“If you’re here,” she called, nervously, “let me see your biggest hand.”

There was a powerful odor of sexual fluids, and a huge mottled hand appeared. Rhumpa was shocked by how large it was, how freshly formed and strong. It reached and found the bars that separated her from the pornslurry.

“If you understand my cuntlips talking to you, and if you understand how I like to frig myself silly every morning before I go to work, please hold up your middle finger.”

The pornmonster flung up his middle finger, and a splash of iridescence surged over Rhumpa in a wave.

She called on the walkie-talkie back to Harry at the control console. “Harry, unlock the electric gate. I need to go mano a mano.”

“Can’t do it, for insurance reasons.”

“Pish-posh,” said Rhumpa. “He needs a friend. He’s been in these tanks too long.”

Harry made a doubtful sound. “Okay,” he said. The gate clicked open, and Rhumpa stepped out, unprotected — a set of jiggy curves in a wetsuit. She knelt and put her rubber-gloved hand in the liquid. She could feel the energy of warm spiffle juice going up her arm. Under the liquid she flipped out her middle finger. “I’m here to talk about hot, hard holefucking,” she said. “Come on over, you big sexy vulgarian, climb out where I can see you naked.”

Almost before she’d finished there was a sudden volcanic swirling of the waters. An amalgamation of body parts heaved itself up on the widest part of the ledge and stood dripping. There must have been a hundred penises — some pale pink, some coffee colored — along with breasts and eyes and clits and an enormous mouth at the center. It stood on a mass of arms and legs.

“There you are,” Rhumpa said, more appalled than she let on. “Take a moment to relax. May I touch you?”

Seventeen penises nodded yes.

“Where’s your head?” she asked.

The hands and feet shook: none.

“No head? Why not?”

Then ten hands grabbed ten semi-erect cocks and began stroking them. Another ten hands circled tiny clitlike buttons of flesh in folds of skin.

“Must you do that right now in front of me?” Rhumpa asked.

Suddenly a very large hand came thrusting out of the central fleshball and scooped her up.

“I’m lurid and loveless and lost,” the monster seemed to say. “I need a real person. I’m growing out of control. I’m propagating without guidance.”

“You need a head,” she said. “If I dance for you, will you develop a head?”

All the legs and hands said no. No way. No head today. And the big hand gave her a squeeze to say, “Never mind my head, dance for me anyway.”

“Let go of me, and I’ll dance,” Rhumpa said.

The hand put her down and smacked the water hard. Another drench of sexual splatterment went over her. It made her tingle everywhere. She felt she was in touch with a giant collaborative moan.

Climbing the five steps of a metal ladder, she stood on a tall platform that technicians used when they needed to open or close a hydraulic valve that led to a smaller treatment tank. She began singing the Benassi Brothers, swinging her ass: “I love men, money, power, and I love my sex.” She could see the monster turning on its legs, trying clumsily to keep time. On an impulse, she unclamped and unsealed the front of her wetsuit and danced with her breasts on display, her nipples high and pointy in unpuzzled skyward erections. Almost immediately, many monster hands took hold of many penises, and there was a general convulsion of orgasmic fluid release. The monster sat in a puddle of its own secretions.

Then it revived. Rhumpa spoke: “I will give you good loving if you grow a head.”

There was silence, and then a bulb formed at the top of the fleshy confusion. There was a huge sucking sound, and a head popped into place. It was a normal head, male, with a mouth and a nose and two eyes, and it blinked at her.

“Can you hear me now?” she voiced.

Out of the mouth came a strange amphibious croak: “Aaaa-oooowwwawaooo.”

“Take a moment to organize your thoughts,” she said. “You are built from other people’s orgasms, and yet you seem to have a soul.”

“Not much of a soul, but it’s there,” said the pornmonster.

“And do you wish to be freed from the tank?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you think you would live a normal life if you were free?”

“No, not normal,” said the pornmonster. “I have way too many sex organs for that. But I could lead a better life. I would like to help in some way. My name is Friggley.”

In the control room, Harry watched and took notes, squeezing his crotch from time to time. The creature looked like a hedge ball with frondy things hanging off it. It moved rapidly but shufflingly forward, a tumorousness of overstimulated desire. Harry observed as it surrounded Rhumpa and slid her wetsuit completely off. One after another of the penises found and sounded her cervix. Rhumpa seemed, oddly, to be enjoying it — it was a gangbang from a single source. When the fleshly storm had passed, she leapt onto its back and grabbed hold of what looked like two scrotums.

“Harry, open the main hatch, I’ve got my new friend Friggley by the balls, and I’m going to take him to the Handjob Festival.”

Harry, in awe, opened the main gate of the tank enclosure, and Friggley shuffled down the road. Then, in a sudden flurry, more drama. The Pearloiner leapt out from a bush with a cackle and tried to snatch away several of Friggley’s clitorises and hide them in her freezing jar. A small tussle ensued, which Friggley easily won by clasping the Pearloiner in several of its wank-strong arms. “Don’t let her go!” said Rhumpa. She seized the precious clitty jar, remounted Friggley, and the curious trio lurched toward Lila’s office.

The Pearloiner was sitting on the couch, staring forward remorsefully. She’d been crying. The icy jar of clits was on a side table, shedding a soft gray mist. Zilka and Cheyenne stood on the open pussyrug, stripped down to their bras. Friggley was tied by the balls outside.

“It was a misguided passion,” the Pearloiner was saying. “There are better things to collect. I see that now. I’m truly sorry for my compulsive thieving.” She fished in the jar, finding the plastic bags with Zilka’s and Cheyenne’s clits in them.

“Thank you, Madame Pearloiner,” said Lila. “Zilka and Cheyenne will fix your hair and dress you for the Sherry Cobbler and Farewell Handjob Festival. As a first step, we must forgive.”

The two lovely almost-naked women washed and blow-dried the Pearloiner’s hair and dressed her in a white shirt and a flattering navy-blue linen jacket. They left her naked down below.

“Now, Madame, you know what you must do,” said Lila. She put the clitorises in the Pearloiner’s open palms. “Cup their pussies and reinstate their joys. Only you can give back what you took away.”