The Bighead (26 page)

“
Wrong direction?
Spillover?
What do you
mean?”

Mullins shrugged, lit a cigarette
himself. “You’d be surprised by the murder rate along the state
line forty, fifty miles west’a here. BATF’s always findin’ bodies,
hooch-related.”

Hooch?
the priest wondered, but then he considered,
BATF, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
Firearms.
“You mean moonshine, unlicensed
whiskey.”

“
Right, Father. Them
shiner-runners off each other two a week, and a right dag bunch’a
sick’n crazy bastards they all are. But most’a them all happen on
the other side’a the line, an’ they ain’t nothin’ like these
murders I came to tell yawl about. You’re right, murders
round here,
’specially
sexual murders,
never
happen.”

“
And now all of a sudden
you’ve got—what?—half a dozen?”

“
A few more’n that, Father,
if ya wanna know the truth. I ain’t seen none’a the bodies myself,
but we all read the alert-fax from HQ at the substation. This boy
makes them ’shiners look like a bunch’a toddlers. Right sick what
he done to them gals, and that farmer. Real devilish work,
Father.”

Devilish.
Yes, the devils were everywhere these days, right
around every corner, the priest knew.
Human
devils. Psychopaths. It was sad
to recognize that the world’s evil reached out even this far. “Any
leads?” he lamely asked.

“
Naw, I shore wish I could
tell ya otherwise, but so far our forensics unit ain’t got squat.
We’ll get him though, whoever this sick son of a bitch is—an’
pardon my language, Father.”

“
Think nothing of it. And
good luck.”
I hope you bust him and break
his balls,
he thought.
Crack that motherfucker’s chops…
“I
better get back in to check on Annie.”

“
Good night, Father. An’
again, sorry ta disturb yer night like this.”

“
Don’t worry about it. Take
care.”

Mullins pulled off in his
shiny cruiser. Alexander watched the ruby-like taillights fade
around the bend.
Christ, what a
night,
he thought. Then he closed the great
oak door.

And locked it.

««—»»

“
She’s asleep,” Charity
announced, gently closing Annie’s bedroom door. “Went out like a
light.”

“
Good,” Alexander said.
“Rest is exactly what she needs.”

“
The poor thing,” Jerrica
added. “I guess everything just caught up with her at
once.”

Alexander nodded. “Yeah. A long, hot
day, plus that heavy wine on top of it, and then a cop coming by
with reports of murders—”

“
And me bringing up that
creepy Bighead story probably only made it worse. Me and my big
mouth.”

“
Don’t blame yourself—it
was nobody’s fault,” the priest asserted. “The important thing is
she’s all right. I’m sure all she needs is a good night’s
sleep.”

“
That’s what I need too,”
Charity said, caught in a yawn.

“
That’s what we
all
need,” the priest
finished.

“
Goodnight all,” Charity
bid and headed up the stairs. Alexander made to do the same, but
then Jerrica touched his arm. “Care to join me in a last glass of
wine?”

He considered it, then shook his head.
“No thanks. I’ve had my fill; any more alcohol for me and I’d be
the next one fainting.” She seemed disappointed, though, when he’d
said this, and she also seemed…fidgety. “You okay?”

“
Sure,” she said but her
mind seemed elsewhere. She followed him up the stairs, and once
they arrived on the landing, she appeared even more distracted,
rubbing her arms, her eyes down cast.

The priest’s brow cocked.
“You
sure
you’re
all right, Jerrica?”

“
Yeah, yeah. I guess all
the excitement’s still got me a little wound up. Good night,
Father.”

He passed her, down to his own door.
“Good night.”

“
Oh, and Father?” She
offered a final smile. “Thanks for saving me from those thugs at
the bar.”

Alexander laughed. “All in a priestly
day’s work.” Then he heard her door clicking shut as he shut his
own. He rubbed his chin, thinking. Yes, something was wrong; all at
once Jerrica seemed on edge, hyper even.

I wonder what’s eating her
all of a sudden?
he thought.

(II)

“
A cool shower, Jerrica,
that’s what you need,” she muttered aloud to herself. She wouldn’t
think about the sudden fear, which had nothing whatever to do with
those silly Bighead stories, nor even the grim revelations made by
the police officer. It was a fear of herself that suddenly seized
her.

And a familiar one.

But if it wasn’t one thing, it was
something else. That mean, irresistible edge began to rear. It had
been a while, hadn’t it? She thought she’d lost it…

So instead she took flight in her muse
of flesh. Once naked and in the shower, she let her visions claim
her; again, she fantasized of the two of them there, together, in
the cool sprinkle.

Herself and the priest…

Their bodies pressing. Their hands
lathering each other into suits of cool, white froth. She couldn’t
stop thinking about him, she couldn’t stop imagining…

Goddamn,
she thought, touching herself as the water sprayed
down on her face.

Yes, if it wasn’t one thing, it was
something else.

And she knew what the something else
was, all too well…

No,
she told herself.
I will not.
Yet she toweled off in haste, haphazardly, then
walked naked across the bedroom. Her laptop, sitting there like a
bored mascot, didn’t even occur to her, nor did the idea that she
might type in some more notes, get some work done. After all,
that’s why she was here: to work.

Her heart began to race;
she could feel the blood thumping hotly in her breasts. Her sex
felt inflamed and her hands shook.
Habituated personality,
the counselor
had said.
Conative fixation-disorder.
You’re a sex-addict, Jerrica, and when you can’t get sex, you seek
your escape elsewhere.

“
I. Will. Not,” came her
slow staccato murmur. Her hard eyes fixed down on the travel bag.
“I won’t. I…promised.”

It had been so long—it had
been
years.
The
only reason she even brought it was to remind her of her
resolve—

She began to masturbate,
flooding her mind with the images of her desires—with the image of
the priest. Her fingers slickened herself, her eyes were rolling
back in her head nearly at once—a minute was all it took.
Oh, God,
she thought. She
imagined his cock in her, stuck up right to the balls, while his
mouth sucked her tongue as though it were a cock itself. But she’d
already opened the tiny tin…

Oh, God…

It was something she learned from some
nameless former lover, some one-night-stand. She’d been fellating
him—his was quite large, as she recalled; perhaps that was the only
way to remember men, not by their faces or their names but by their
penises—and upon the brink of his orgasm, he lit a small glass pipe
full of crack. Jerrica’s hips tremored at just that moment, her
breasts seemed to rush forward in the sensations. She dipped the
fingers of her other hand into the tin of pearlescent powder,
brought them hastily to her nostril, and sniffed—

—
and came at the same
time.

It rocked her. It racked her. The
delectable feeling seemed to squeeze the juice out of her brain, a
wet sponge in a pail.

It seemed to take forever to wind
down, to finish. Next thing she knew, though, she was leaned
raw-breasted over the tin, dying for more.

“
I. Will. Not,” she avowed
to herself, as she had so many times. “No. No. No.
Enough.”

Then she upended the tin onto her
travel mirror—

I hate myself,
she thought.

I should kill
myself.

Then she began to cut the rest up into
lines.

(III)

She dreamed of hot, licking
lights and fertile air. She could
smell
the fecundity.

The broth,
she thought.

She dreamed of herself, standing in
worried wait before the bed. The bed’s host, another woman,
flinched with her legs spread, her face a stamp of pain, her gown
pushed up over the distended belly.

They’d told her what to expect, hadn’t
they?

That’s why—

The broth…

The broth.

The broth…

What had she done? She
couldn’t remember now, not even in her dreams. Or maybe she
only
thought
she
couldn’t.

Maybe it was something she dared never
to remember.

The host’s breasts began to bleed a
film of milk. The raw vagina spread, like a maw unhinging its jaw
and widening to eject some huge, unearthly contents.

“
Get ready,” came another
voice, some man’s. “Ain’t gonna have this. No we’se
ain’t.”

She opened her hands before
the painfully spread legs.
Please,
please,
she thought.
Let her git through this…

But then blood began to
pour.

She screamed.

And she saw.

Teeth like shredders grinding tender
meat—

—
then the dream
traversed—

Gerladine,
she thought, with tears pouring.

Geraldine?

Geraldine…

—
she thought once more as
she lit the match and brought it to her nipple—

—
and, again, the dream
prolapsed—

—
she was somewhere
else—

—
she was naked and sweating
in some moonlit field of thatch, her own wilted desires forcing the
fantasy.
No, no,
she thought.
I can’t allow this, not
even in a dream…

The priest was fucking her,
sucking her nipples as he fastidiously humped.
I love you. I love you, bitch,
he
said to her in his thoughts. Then he bit her nipple, till blood
gave. She screamed in ecstacy.

Yes, of course. It was just a fantasy
now, not a retelling. It was the fantasy of her forbidden
attraction.

Slap me.

He slapped her, hard, in the
face.

Bite me again.

He bit her so hard on the nipple, it
almost came off.

Choke me.

His hand grabbed her throat, squeezed,
as his hips continued to steadily pump. He squeezed, let go,
squeezed, let go, like that for some time, her brain flashing right
along with her running sex. He squeezed, let go, squeezed, let
go—

Squeezed.

This time, he
didn’t
let go. His grip
clamped off the blood to her brain as effectively as a hemostat.
Her tongue extruded, her eyes drawing to wanton slits. As her
vision darkened, a delicious buzz filled her brain, then began to
spread. Soon she felt disembodied; she could still feel the
priest’s cock tilling her sex, yet she seemed to be watching it.
She watched her body starfish beneath the frenetic, humping figure;
her face was a twisted mask of lined, dark-pink flesh, grinning
hideously. He squeezed harder, fucked her harder. She began to
orgasm in clutching, jerking salvoes…

He let go just before she would die,
her consciousness rising back through the blackened buzz, her skin
electric, her nipples erect as if plucked at with
pliers.

Come hard. Fuck me hard.
Fuck me till I bleed.

He did so, without
reservation. She was
still
coming.

I love you so much, my
precious bitch.

He pulled his musky cock out, jerked
it, squirted his semen right into her eye where the sharp stinging
sang to her heart. She drooled out of her mouth, coming like a
tap—swallowing demented pleasure like a snake swallowing goose
eggs.

Suck it up.

She sucked it into her mouth, sucked
out the final, finest drops—wicked salt on her tongue.

But then the dream changed again, a
noxious deception. It wasn’t the priest at all lying atop her. It
was someone else, someone so dark he nearly wasn’t there at all.
Someone hideous.

The malformed teeth glinted in
moonlight.

The giant hand stroked Annie’s
cheek.