Shudder (8 page)

Then Natalie herself returned, the smell of tobacco intermingling in a not unpleasant fashion with her perfume.

She gave him another “Hi,” and delicately cut a shred of cabbage into even more miniscule pieces.

Dave felt a nearing smell of something tasty and in a second, his Biker Grease with fries was in front of him. He took a fry and popped it into his mouth. “So, what are you doing these days, Natalie? Finished university? Married? Divorced?”

Natalie smiled and put her fork and knife aside. “I'm still single, as should be obvious...”

“Not necessarily...”

“Well, I'm not that kind of girl.” She took her fork again and chewed on a puny piece of a bean.

Dave bit into his burger. The flavor of fried meat, combined with the sting of onion, triggered an immediate response of pleasure from his whole organism.

Natalie swallowed and continued with her status update. “Yes, I finished university. I have a BA in Marketing and Public Relations and an MA in Sociology.”

Dave's tongue pushed the mashed burger ingredients into his right cheek to free up space for speaking, and having accomplished that he said, “Sociology? Deep stuff.”

“Indeed,” agreed Natalie earnestly, “and it's not just asking people who they will vote for and what type of customers will buy a washing powder, you know.”

“What else? Counting the population?”

“It's figuring out how life works. What makes people do the things that they do.”

Ha
, Dave thought,
another contender for the throne of the headshrinkers.
“Doesn't psychology deal with that?”

Natalie gave him a smile of appreciation for his interest. “Well, they deal with how the mind and emotions work, and then there's mass psychology, which is sort of in the middle, and then there's sociology, which is about how society works.”

“Hmmm.”

“For instance suicide. More than a hundred years ago, Emile Durkheim analyzed then existing statistical data concerning suicide. He saw that suicide rates were not at a constant level, but curved upwards or downwards.”

“Hmmm.”

“Yes, and when he superimposed the data on historical records, it turned out, that in times of war for instance...”

“There were much more suicides?”

“No. There were fewer suicides. Because people all had a single purpose and a single enemy, and everything made sense. When there is no common enemy, then people are again different atoms adrift, with everyone having to figure out for themselves what life is about, and then suicide rates shoot up.”

Dave moved his eyebrows in polite excitement at the information. “You mean that if life is peaceful and there is no hunger or plague, people tend to kill themselves more?”

“Aha. Well, depends on other factors too, but mainly—yes. One of the first great sociological discoveries.”

“Hmm.”

“And you, Mister Hmm?” Natalie giggled and cupped her lovely chin in her hands. “Are you married, divorced? What have you been doing for the last seven years? You went to Russia, right?”

Dave swallowed another piece of his burger and finished his orange juice. “Yeah, after leaving the army I became a medical student.”

“We met a few months before your graduation.”

“Right, but then there was another market crash, blah-blah, unemployment.”

“I remember.” Natalie nodded, “I got laid off from my part time job in the mall then. A blessing really, I concentrated more on the university and got all sorts of scholarships.”

“Right, and then I read that the Russians were looking for surgeons from the first world, and offering considerable money. Back then the Russian government was going to compensate the brain and skill drain on the country by hiring foreign professionals.”

Dave accompanied his words with a brief sarcastic smile. “So, I contacted the embassy and soon everything was ready and off I went.”

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” teased Natalie, “that was the first time in two months you had called me, and only to tell me that you are flying away in a few hours.”

Dave ignored the remark and popped the last solitary fry into his mouth. “I was sent to the freezing hell of Muhosransk and spent half a year there before running like hell.”

“Was it that bad?”

“It was beyond bad.” A frown flickered on Dave's face, and he continued. “So, I returned here, and decided to take a loan and open my own business.”

“Ah? What kind of business?”

“A detective agency.”

A burst of merry laughter escaped Natalie, before she regained control of herself. “Sorry. A private eye, eh?”

“Yes. Well, to cut a long story short, business was very bad, the whole idea turned out to suck horribly, but then came the outsourcing of much of the police work, if you remember.”

“Yes, of course. Some people were very angry with that.”

“Right, and some people were happy, people like me.”

“So, now you are a detective for the city police?”

“That's right.”

“Congratulations.” Natalie gave him a stiff nod, but her smile was very much alive. “What do you work at? All the crimes, or a specific field?”

Dave lowered his voice and cringed dramatically, “Sex crimes.”

“You always
were
a sex bandit.”

Dave pushed aside his plate and drained the last of his cappuccino. Natalie also put aside her half-finished salad, and drank her water.

“Time to go, maybe?” Dave said. Natalie nodded. Dave beckoned to the waitress and made a brief gesture with his fingers, as if he was typing on an invisible keyboard.

Ivy the waitress smiled and came over with a small printout.

Dave held out a firm hand in front of Natalie, implying that he will be the one to pay, and Natalie blew him a kiss of agreement. “I'll take you out next time, big boy.”

Ivy swiped Dave's card over her check box and after a brief churning sound, she gave him another printout and a pen. He signed at the bottom and received his card.

Natalie got up and Dave shot out of his seat as well and helped her put on her jacket. “Thank you, Dave,” she smiled at him, her face inches away from his. He put on his own jacket and they went out of the cafe, into the cool autumn night.

“How is Anton these days?” he asked as he took out his car keys.

“Dad? He's fine. Works a lot. We don't see each other a lot lately. Both too busy. You should give him a call. He'd be delighted to hear from you.”

“You think so?”

“Absolutely. Here, I'll send you his number. That way, incidentally…”She stuck out her pink tongue briefly. “You will have my number as well.”

“Sure, good idea.”

Dave said his number, Natalie typed quickly with her delicate fingers and in a few seconds the phone inside Dave's jacket gave a beep. He now had both Natalie's and Anton's numbers.

He looked at her face. So many memories had suddenly resurfaced in the last hour. “Would you like me to give you a lift home?”

“That would be great. I'm not in the mood to return to the club anyway.”

“Hop in then.”

Twenty minutes later, they stopped in front of Natalie's dull, concrete high-rise. She unbuckled herself, quickly kissed him on the cheek, and got out. “Don't forget to call, you asshole,” she whispered cheerfully and closed the door.

Dave smiled to himself and drove off towards home.

When Natalie returned to her flat, she made a few funny faces in the mirror and giggled, then abruptly all strength drained out of her, as it tended to happen quite often in the last year or two, and in another ten minutes she was in her bed.

It was late, she was, for some reason, knackered, and went to sleep almost immediately. Luckily, tomorrow was Saturday and she could sleep as long as she liked.

When Dave returned to his flat, he shook with sexual excitement and put on his shoes twice in order to go back to the Faceoff Club, and twice he took them off again.

On one hand, he did not have to go to work tomorrow. On the other, meeting Natalie made him feel surprisingly queasy about the prospect of another one-night stand.

As a compromise, he opened a can of beer and put on the collected first season of the original
Twilight Zone
.

By the time the aging actress had finally turned her back to our world for the sake of a fantasy existence on the screen, Dave had also nodded off. On the next day, he did nothing.

Georgette and Alec got into his car. As usual, he said he was a married man, and as usual, he offered a choice of going to a hotel, or to the girl's place.

As he was confident would happen, she happily offered they go to her flat.

Alec looked at the young teacher in impatient anticipation. Below her green coat, she had a red dress, which stopped five inches above her knees, and a very wide black latex belt on her waist.

In the very beginning, he had warned her—no kissing. Obediently, she had only sucked a little at his latex-clad fingers. He physically felt her arousal rise from this simple act.

There and then, he knew that she was ideal for this night.

Once in her flat, after mashing her ass and tits as the accepted polite overture, he took his black latex suit from his shoulder bag.

It had holes for the eyes and the mouth, and an area of transparent latex at the groin, with a tube for the penis, for his erection to fill up.

He put his suit on and led the excited Georgette to her bed. He put her on the bed and gave a few slaps to her plump breasts, before pouring some strawberry flavored throat lubricant on the latex skin of his penis.

He turned Georgette on her back, with her head hanging down from the bed, and poured some lubricant into her open mouth.

The significance of this act in itself upped the level of excitement additionally. She squirmed from the rising sexual tension that was gripping her. He saw her muscles stiffen.

With a slurp, his erection entered her mouth. With an excited gargle, she strained to stick out her tongue even more, to lick at the base of his penis.

Pelican baby.

In ten minutes, as layers of thick saliva from the deepest depth covered Georgette's face, and oozing stalactites projected from her head towards the floor, Alec pulled back.

He had almost ejaculated. It was far too early for that.

As she used the chance to inhale some air and show some class by speaking dirty in her now guttural voice, he went to the kitchen and brought back a glass of water for her.

When she took the glass gratefully, he gave her a small pill without any words.

Without any words, she swallowed it.

Her gaze was now only half-sane and he recognized the characteristic look of expectancy that she had.

Just like all the others.

He had broken her personality, at least for now, and revealed the sticky, organic, mindless mass below. A mass that he could now mold into any shape he chose.

He took out of his bag a metallic mouth restraint and even as he was holding it up, Georgette already opened her mouth expectantly. He fitted the contraption into her mouth and now she couldn't close it.

He took out scissors and a roll of velvet rope from his bag. He cut off a foot of the rope, tied Georgette's hands behind her back, and put her on the bed, on her belly.

Now she wasn't able to swallow her saliva even if she had wanted to, and every contraction of her throat would bring forth a new torrent of her inner liquids.

He took her ponytail into one hand, placed his other hand on her right cheek, and slid his penis inside her mouth again. He pumped for ten seconds, fifteen seconds, and the first convulsions rocked Georgette, as she tried to obtain a breath of air and some relief from the pounding.

He held her head in place firmly and only after another gargling spasm, which shot sprays of gooey liquid from her nose, did he retract his shaft.

Then he stopped, to let some air enter the gaping wet mouth and as she mooed something, he suddenly decided to take out the mouth restraint to hear what it was.

“Gaaah, fuck that faaaace...” Georgette screeched and gave a deep rolling cough, before Alec replaced the restraint and slid his penis back inside.

In five minutes, it was time for another break, to avert another looming ejaculation and to move forward another step of his plan for the night. He untied the hands of the gasping and coughing girl and rolled her over.

She was now again on her back. He then proceeded to cut off three more lengths of velvet rope from his bag and tie her limbs to the legs of her bed. She lay there, naked, limbs spread, transfixed, her mouth incapable of closing.

He went again into her kitchen and found a big salad bowl. Upon returning, he massaged her belly with his latex-clad hand. Perhaps she thought the pill she was given was some sort of aphrodisiac.

It was in fact a strong laxative.

Soon he heard the first rumbling coming from her stomach. She squirmed and mooed again.

“Give it to me. Do it. That's a good girl,” he muttered as he caressed her belly. When he saw her sphincter flutter and begin to open, he lifted her buttocks slightly with one hand and positioned the bowl with the other.