Stiffs
He
was surfing porn when it happened. A
lightless flash, a sickening sideways lurch, a quaking at the molecular
level. He pitched from the chair to the
floor. Next came the crash of cars and
the howl of alarms. An airliner roared
as it plunged from the sky, followed by a shudder and boom as it shattered
somewhere across the city. But not one
human scream.
He
pulled himself to his feet, struggling in the tangle of trouser laced around
his ankles. The two lesbians still
leered at him from the monitor, entangled in an impossible knot of limbs and
nylon.
"What
the hell was that?" From the window
he looked down upon the bright summertime street. It was choked with a tangle of cars entangled
in a pileup that stretched beyond sight.
The pavement was a Jackson Pollock rendering in oil, coolant, and gasoline. Steam hissed and curled upward from fractured
hoods. A hundred bodies lay within sight
on the sidewalks. He stared,
unbelieving, for a long time. Then he pulled
up his pants and raced downstairs.
On
the street, he wandered aimlessly, mute as the dead open mouths that lay all
about. Everyone, the fallen dead where they
last stood, walked, or drove.
After
a while he cried, although there was no one for him to cry for. No family, and really, no friends; just
co-workers. Nearly all his ostensibly
human interaction occurred on the Internet.
Really, inside his head, in endless recycling porno fantasies. Relationships consummated and ended in a
mouse click. A new romance for each new
picture. And now, that was all there
ever could be for him, because, as he soon concluded, whatever did this
appeared to have wiped out the entire human race. He soon
deduced its scope by surfing every possible television channel and radio
frequency, by making random cross-country calls on his cell phone, and after
raising nothing from the radio in a stalled police car.
"Now
how am I ever gonna get laid?" he
shouted in the midst of a major intersection, besieged by the dying caterwauls
of automotive security systems. He was
in anguish, because even if his sex life had been virtual, at least there had
been a chance he could make it real.
Now, none. All he could hope for
was that the electricity would stay on so he could keep surfing. But it had no appeal for him, anymore.
Then
he saw the dead girl who had fallen face first across the bus stop bench. Her short skirt lifted and fell with the
whimsy of the breeze. Candy apple
perfection, bisected by a pink thong. He
felt that familiar need. And he had a
fantastic idea.
Gasping
with excitement, he found a mailman's cart and wheeled her down the avenue to a
nearby apartment building. There he took
for himself a room, pitching the previous occupant, a toothless old lady, from
the bedroom window. And there on the old
lady's former bed, reeking of powder and lilacs, he took the girl, in every way
he could imagine, all night long.
The
next day dawned still and hot and at first he thought it had all been a
dream. But the sickly sachet of the wet
sheets and the girl's stiff body, curled on the floor, proved otherwise. He gazed upon the girls pale flesh and he
thought, "Nice, but there are plenty more fish in the sea." After a hearty breakfast of the old lady's
bacon and eggs, he was out on the street, trembling with excitement. There, the flies were already at work.
"Damn! Why couldn't this have happened in
winter?"
And
that thought begat his second fantastic idea.
Armed
with the hand cart and an enormous SUV, stripped of its seats, he let his
libido lead him as he collected the stuff of his wildest dreams, what had kept fresh
overnight inside air-conditioned interiors.
A coed from a coffee shop, a buxom MILF from a hair-salon, a pair of
waitresses, even an elegant grandmother beside the watch case at the
jewelers. Soon, he had a dozen beauties
stacked in the truck behind him, and was crawling like a beetle around the
snarled traffic as fast as he could. He
was squirming in his seat and licking his lips, but he dare not indulge until
he ensured his collection wouldn't spoil.
It was midday when he pulled up to the supermarket.
He
raced into the store, stumbling over the fallen bodies and slipping in spilled
milk. In the back room he found the meat
locker, filled with meat frozen hard as stone.
He
wheeled his ladies inside the locker where they would keep as long as the
electricity did. And if it didn't, well,
he could always move them someplace where the juice still flowed. Or pickle them in bathtubs of alcohol.
He
was dying to romance one of them, but first he had to find a suitable place,
a true base of operations. A few blocks away stood a luxury apartment
building and there he found a large ground floor apartment. He could walk his dates home and pass them
inside through the window.
Later,
in the cool twilight, freshly showered and dressed, he came for a girl. This time he chose one of the
waitresses. He wheeled her home,
chatting gibberish, more verbose than he'd ever been on any dates in his old
life.
Back
in his room, when he laid her naked on the bed and saw what a good choice he
had made, there was no necking, no foreplay.
Just a massage to loosen her cold, stiff limbs. Then a home run at first bat. And even though he wanted to go and pick up
another girl, she was so good, he had her again. Then he said, "Time to go. I promised your folks you'd be home by
midnight."
Back
at the locker, he chose the girl without a curfew, the hot MILF. He wheeled her home, mixed two cocktails,
drank both, and finally understood Mrs. Robinson's appeal. It was dawn when he brought her home,
although he wanted her to stay. But he
didn't think she'd have the same appeal after laying around his apartment all
day. It wasn't a suitable atmosphere for
a long-term relationship.
And
so his life went for a year. He
gathered up more beauties, iced them, and satisfied all his hungers at the supermarket, in particular, at the meat
locker. He made a daily withdraw from
there, and while the steaks soon ran out, the women didn't.
Then
one day, on the street, he met the girl.
A real girl. She was tall,
blonde, and gorgeous.
"Hi
there," she grinned.
"I...I
didn't think anyone else survived."
"Well,
some did." She reached out and
curled his hair. "You live near
here?"
"Yup."
"Let's
go," she said.
Inside
his apartment he stuttered apologies for the mess.
"Shut
up," she whispered, and kissed him.
Then she began to take off his clothes.
"Don't
fight it, baby." She pulled a
bottle of vodka from her backpack and poured a great slug down his gagging
throat. Then another. Before long she had him naked and drunk. She pushed him down to the floor and shoved a
handful of pills in his mouth.
"What
the hell?"
"Horny
Goat and Viagra, baby. Let's ride!"
The
pill cocktail hit him like a crate of raw oysters. He felt like a crazed stallion in heat. But she held him down and rode him like a
bronco buster. When she was finally
satisfied, he still swayed like a flagpole in the wind. "Priapism", he mumbled. "It won't go down for hours."
"It
won't go down forever, honey," she said, and then broke the vodka bottle
against his temple.
It
was dark when he awoke. He was rolling
along atop an auto mechanic's wheeled creeper.
And that he was tied to it, naked.
And still stiff as a pipe. He
groaned. The girl, towing him just
beyond his sight, laughed.
"Almost
there!"
When
she wheeled him inside a butcher's shop he began to thrash against his
bindings. But they were far too tight.
Inside
the meat locker that he knew was his destination before he even saw it, were
some dozen of his fellows. All strapped
naked to creepers and pointing skyward in eternal salute. Like a hospital ward of frostbitten
priapriatics. One was even still alive. He rolled his eyes feebly in the sudden
light.
The
girl stood over him with a watering can.
"Time
to water my garden," she said, and sprinkled his privates. The frost hardened instantly.
"Now
go to sleep. I may see you tomorrow,
because you're new and exciting. Unlike
these two losers. Booooring!"
With
her booted foot she kicked two green-tinged men bound to creepers out the door. Then she shut and locked it, sealing him in a
cold eternity of ecstasy. He pondered
that for some time. Then he smiled.
***
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