A. Homes - The End of Alice

“Calm down,” Henry says. “We can work with it. I’m a professional, don’t forget. I know whereof I speak. I know what to do. Put your mouth on the hole,” Henry says, referring to the slot in the door. “I’ll shoot you through the hole.”

Carefully casting my corporeal container into the curves of a contortionist, I fit my mouth into the slot in the door.

Henry’s needle pokes my cheek. “You’ll have to guide it in. I can’t see anything.”

I feel the needle in my mouth; a drop of poison drips onto my tongue.

“Ready?” he asks.

I curl my lickety licker around the needle, rolling it around until the prickly pointer is aimed down, under my tongue. A guttural aha indicates that the position is perfect, and Henry plunges the needle in. Flesh pierced, drug in, needle out. My head swims. The flavor of blood swirls in my mouth. I fall to the floor, slipping into something like sleep, like a dream. I travel back in time, living my life in reverse until I’m back at the beginning. The rest of my journey is a travelogue.

What makes a man become a man become a murderer? This is the story you’ve been waiting for. What makes a man become a man become a murderer? A girl. Ruby Diamond Pearl. Call her Jewel; ruby of my heart, Alice.

I have rented a small cabin in New Hampshire, the farthest part of a fallen family compound as advertised in the pages of the New York Times, May 7, 1971: “Contemplation? Quaint summer retreat, secluded, perfect for single person, near lake, no smoking, no small children.”

(The now yellowed clipping, the one-half inch of typesetting that changed my life — remember that her family paid to have it placed — I keep mounted for conservation considerations on a three-by-five, acid-free index card. Its presence is a cornerstone of my archive.)

I have come away, leaving life behind in an effort to escape the power of my predilections.

In Philadelphia I frightened myself.

Fitting feet in a children’s shoe parlor, having for the tenth time sold myself short, accepting a position thoroughly beneath and below me only to be closer to the objects of my obsession. I made my on-the-job entertainment my methodology for testing to see whether or not the shoe fit. Pulling close to the kinder who sat safely next to their maters, or the mater’s maid — the baby-sitter — I spread my legs and drew the foot toward my crotch. Tenderly cupping the heel, I slipped off the walking shoe and pressed the besocked pedalis against the bulge of my balls, then asked, “Can you wiggle your toes?”

And while Mummy watched, the little puellae gracefully gave me a sweet minimassage. No one ever said anything, stopped me, or even indicated they thought it anything out of the ordinary. “Go tell Aunt Rhody.”

“Good. Good. Now the other one.”

Massage completed — the immediate need satiated — I set the footie on the floor, picked up the old shoe, and directed my attention to the mother, the old gray goose.

“Were you thinking of something special? Anything particular come to mind? Do you see something on the wall?” And so the shoes were sold, the deal was done, again and again, day in, day out. But on that particular afternoon my frustration had peaked, and looking for something new, some fresher and more furious relief, I insisted on walking home a girl whose mother had sent her for Mary Janes. Using the odd excuse that the delicacy of her feet, their fine contours, shape, and delectability, made it absolutely essential for me to test the fit of all the shoes in her closet, I led her home, hinting that if the rest of her footwear was as ill fitting as those she’d walked in with, she’d quickly become deformed, defective, would suffer strange bony protrusions and other assorted crippling, crusty deformities. Within months she’d be walking like an old woman, if walking at all.

All too easily she took me to her parents’ house, a hideous modern monstrosity. I should add a brief description of the girl; she was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, my selecting her was part of the scare I gave myself. My standards were slipping. She could quite honestly be described as bovine-to-be, a cow in the future if not immediately. My only excuse my boredom, my deepening depression.

I imposed, inviting myself to her home, having become so practiced, so recently slick, that I believed I could get a girl to do anything. One quickly learns to detect the perfect princesses who will, all too willingly, say yes. In this case the illustration of interest, mounting desire, however unconscious, was extreme — played out in the pink puff of her lip. When she spoke, this thick lip rolled back exposing an enormous amount of gum, the lips themselves slightly swollen — and all ye men will understand this— quite clearly giving the impression of the lock they could form on one’s privatest parts. In other words, her mouth screamed blow job, forgive my crudity.

She led me to her room. Her chamber was painted Pepto-Bismol pink and featured matching plush carpeting, heavy wooden white lacquer furniture decorated with golden trim, and a canopied virgin bed — a twin — all of it implying I had entered the lair where an angel would sleep. I sat on a red-tufted chair that fit snugly under her vanity and tried not to spy myself in her mirror. She threw open the double doors of her closet. Laid out neatly on the floor were at least a dozen pairs of shoes. I smiled, pleased with the cache — this would take hours. To slow my excitement, to distract myself, I glanced around the room. Fixed on the wall were the theatrical masks of comedy and tragedy. On the night-stand, a pink diary lay open. I had no desire to read it, I knew it would only inflame, enrage my current condition.

“And what do you wear with those?” I asked, pointing to a pair of patent pumps.

A black velvet dress was extracted from the closet and waved back and forth in front of me.

“Show me,” I said.

She stepped into the closet, which was not really constructed as a fitting room, but she walked into it anyway, displaying a modicum of modesty. If she were truly genteel, she might have excused herself or me and made her changes in the bathroom down the hall. However, she stepped into the closet and pulled the louvered doors closed behind her. There was the sound of a bitty battle raging, crash and clang, hangers falling, thump, thump, elbows banging, so on, so forth, all of it fast and furious. Clearly she was rushing, working fast, hoping I wouldn’t lose interest.

Finally, she flung the door open and stood before me transformed.

I played dumb. Bending to my knees, I crawled toward her, felt her feet, squeezed her toes, all the while resting my left hand on the cool, smooth, silken skin of her bare white thigh. Sigh.

“What else have you got?” I asked, my eyes slowly rolling up from the floor, first sweeping under her dress, catching sight of the tender plump of her inner thighs, then traveling higher still, over the latent breast, ultimately catching her eye, smiling. “Let’s try something else,” I said.

And as she dipped back into her costume closet, closing the door behind her, I unzipped my own trapdoor, took wild Willy out, and let him get a feel for the room. Stroking myself, still sniffing the sweet stink of her, I wax and wonder and Willy grows strong and hard. As I hear her making final adjustments, banging against the doors, I tuck the mighty member away.

She has put on her pink tutu, her little leotard, her entrance is a dance she does for me. And while I am supposed to be admiring her technique, her ability to be en pointe on the Pepto-pink carpet, as she makes her jetes across the room, I am watching the breast buds bloom seemingly before my very eyes. The same goes for her crotch; through the cling of her tights I swear I can see the labia lips thickening, dousing the nasty nylon with something sweeter than sweat.