Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

'It's .. . it's my gun,' I said.

He looked down at the black little pistol hanging limply from my fist.

'What'd you hit me for?' he said after a pause.

'Show you my gun,' I said, still gaping at his blank, bleary, bewildered eyes.

'You hit me,' he said again.

We stared at each other, our minds working with the speed and efficiency of lobotomized sloths.

'Just a tap. Show you my gun,' I said.

We stared at each other.

'Some tap,' he said.

We stared at each other.

'Protect you with. Don't tell Gina.'

When he stopped rubbing the back of his head, his hand and arm dropped like an anchor into the sea.

'Thanks,' he said dully, and moved past me back into the living room.

Two snake-eyed peasants were conspiring together on the screen, and I wandered over to the liquor cabinet and stared

at the big photograph of Al Capone. Was it Al Capone? It was Al Capone. Robot-fashion I plucked three more fresh glasses from the neat stack there, poured in the dregs of ice from the bowl, and splashed some Scotch and water into each. I stirred them all idly with my finger, licked my finger and as a kind of dreamy afterthought, drew, from my jacket pocket the envelope of strychnine and poured about half of it (fifty mg) into one of the drinks. I stirred it with my finger again and was about to lick my finger but thought better of it. I poured the other half of the poison into an empty glass, filled it from the pitcher of water and stirred it with my finger again.

'I'm going to die, whip me!' Osterflood was saying on his back from the floor. 'Beat me, kill me.'

Gina had returned from wherever she had been and was standing over Osterflood, sweat glistening lightly on her chest

and forehead. Her child's face peered down at him as at an interesting toad. Osterflood was groaning and writhing

mildly on the rug. Then he stopped and said quietly.

'Whip me.'

Gina leaned down to her left and picked up her leather skirt and stepped into it, buttoning it loosely at her hips. She

drew out the leather belt.

'Would you two like a drink first?' I asked, holding the three Scotch drinks on a tray before me.

Osterflood didn't seem to hear me, intent instead upon some inner light. Gina reached her free hand out and took one

of the two harmless drinks and took a big swig from it.

'Frank, would you like I began.

Whack ! The belt burst across Osterflood's thighs like a cannon shot. He grunted and turned over onto his stomach.

Whack ! it came across his buttocks; whack! across the back of his thighs. His powerful body arched in pain and then

when Gina paused, collapsed trembling.

I noticed now a bloody gash on Gina's shoulder and blood mixed with saliva was still sliding from her lower lip. She

looked down at Osterflood and in a single swift terrifying motion slashed the belt across his back. Three or four

pinkish welt lines were now clearly etched on his body.

'Ahh,' I said. 'Is this part of the regular show?'

She stood without answering, breathing deeply, a single line of sweat now running from the side of her neck down in

between her breasts, which rose and fell moistly.

'I'm dying, I'm dying,' Osterflood moaned. 'Beat me, please beat me.'

'You white pig,' she said in a soft voice. 'Fat, man pig.'

Thock! I absentmindedly took a sip from one of the drinks and spat it out on the rug. Wrong drink.

A burst of applause flooded into the room and I glanced over to see a pompous little dictator parading down the aisle

of an auditorium to the applause of formally dressed spics, or chinks, or gooks or greasies.

'Drink,' I heard a voice say.

Osterflood had gotten now to his knees and was reaching out an arm toward my tray. His eyes were unfocused and glittering. . - .

I raised my free hand and Gina took from the tray a glass and handed it to Osterflood and he downed it at a gulp.

Holding the third drink in my free hand, I sighed. Osterflood had taken the wrong drink.

While Gina reached down to take another swig from hers, I returned to Sugar Ray and Al Capone and poured two more drinks. I marched back again with my tray of three and stood just beside and behind Gina.

'You're trying to kill me,' Osterflood said looking up at us from his knees. 'You shit-filled monster, you're trying to kill me:' He was staring at us glassy-eyed.

Gina looked down at him, her large brown eyes radiant and curious, and for the first time she smiled, slightly.

'Bad trip?' she asked quietly.

'I see it all now,' Osterflood shouted at us. 'You're the killer!' He began shaking his head and trembling. 'Now I see, now I see! It's you!' The 'Thock!' that caught him across the face surprised both him and me, and he fell forward with a crash.

`Yes, yes, whip me, I deserve it,' he groaned. 'Hit me again.'

Gina looked down at him, the soft smile still on her face, and sweat running now from her forehead, chin and both heaving breasts.

She raised the belt slowly till her arm was perpendicular above her head and then dropped it in a lazy arc snapping the belt at only half-force across his back. Osterflood writhed nevertheless, and Gina's soft smile became a sneer.

I put my tray full of drinks on the couch and came over behind Gina, reached my arms around and enclosed at last in my hands those two marvelous mounds. They were hot and sweaty and firm and I grunted with pleasure. As I squeezed and pinched, and sucked at the salty sweat of her neck, I felt Gina lean back again and 'whack' across Osterflood's buttocks, and after a short pause another heaving motion and 'whock!' and Osterflood and I both grunted, although presumably for different reasons. Then Gina turned to me and we were two hot mouths endlessly exploring each other's watery, snake-bulging wombs. Although my hands had removed her leather skirt and were around her bulging buttocks and digging into everything they could, my world was soon composed of mouths, huge caverns of tongue-tangled flow of motion endlessly plunging and being plunged, biting and being bitten, rising and sinking, filling and emptying, and I felt something scratching at my leg.

'A drink,' Osterflood was saying. 'A drink, you fucking killer. One last drink.'

Reluctantly, I tore my hands away from Gina and dreamwalked over to the couch and got him the desired drink.

I straight-lined and she broke her mouth from mine and arched her head away from mine and said shrilly 'Suck me, suck me,' and cupped her breasts out toward me.

I lowered my open mouth on to one and as I tongued and sucked and nibbled she moaned 'I'm a woman! I'm a woman!'

'I know, I know,' I said as I moved from one mound of hot, salty honey to the next. She squeezed my head against her.

'Hard, harder,' she moaned.

I opened my mouth so wide I was afraid I'd never get it closed again and had a surrealistic vision of going through the rest of my life like a gaping fish and I drew all of 'one breast into my mouth as far as I could while I squeezed her other with both my hands pinching the nipple hard. Groaning, she pressed me tighter, shuddered, and began to pump her pelvis against me hard, and it flowed out of me at last, a molten roll of white womb-wetting foam, her fold opening and closing upon it swallowing with its honeyed tongues, her golden bowls rolling with my roll, filling where I rose, parting with my plunge, delirious, writhing, moaning, groaning done.

Or mostly done. I un-swallowed her breast and managed to half-close my mouth and drew her warm soft body to mine and we churned at half-speed with each other, still enjoying the feel of it, my chin in her hair now, her lips and tongue idly tasting of the sweat of my chest and Osterflood was talking about dying dying dying and someone else was saying we could get there faster in a Ford.