Wrath James White presents Poisoning Eros I & II (26 page)

Finally someone noticed her, before she spoke. A
gasp, and then a cry, followed by a chorus of moans and
exaltations, people scrambling to their feet in a flurry of bows
and genuflections. Gloria shook her head, clicked her finger-claws
along the wood of the back pew. The room grew silent as they waited
for Gloria to speak.

“What are you doing?” she asked quietly, unsure yet
how she wanted to proceed. The bloodlust was gone for now; she felt
calm, at peace, but she also knew that once the effects of the
drugs wore off, so would her serenity.

No one answered. They looked at one another, pained,
puzzled expressions on their faces.

“I asked you a question!” she felt dizzy, unfocused,
the drugs were clouding her thoughts making her feel suddenly
vulnerable, afraid, and that… was making her mean, like a wounded
animal.

No one volunteered to respond. They hung their heads
and stood in stunned silence.

Finally, a young man stepped forward from his hiding
place behind a great marble pillar. He held his trembling hands out
to her, his black monk’s robe too big for his small frame, the hood
obscuring much of the curly black hair on his head. “Muh-mistress?
We, we were waiting for you.”

Gloria licked her lips and stopped scratching the
wood. “And what were you waiting for? What did you expect would
happen?”

He shrugged, and his dark skin had gone ashy. His
hands shook more than ever. “I don’t know, Mistress,” he whispered.
“Wuh-we were waiting for you to tell us what to do …”

Gloria stepped closer to the young man, and he
squeezed his eyes shut. A single tear fell. “Why are you crying?”
she demanded.

“I’m afraid,” he whispered, looking like he wanted
to crawl inside the pillar. “You’re so … so mighty. So powerful. I
don’t nuh-know what you might …” He didn’t finish the thought.

She stepped before him now, and using a claw pushed
the hood back. Her hand caressed his head, and his lips trembled at
the touch, his body shaking. “You’re wise to fear me,” she told
him, and then turned to the rest of the followers. “You would be
wise to fear me! I could … I could … I could kill all of you!” she
exclaimed as she almost staggered into their midst as the room
swirled, her mind reeling from the stew of narcotics surging
through her blood.

She felt like she was losing herself. Her own voice,
her words, felt alien, as if they were coming from someone else.
This arrogance and grandiosity wasn’t her. It was the drugs. This
was how she sounded when she was high. This demon had been inside
her long before her flesh wore its reflection on the outside.

Almost at once the rest of the followers fell to
their knees.

Gloria smirked. This wasn’t what she wanted. A flock
of mindless toadies doing her bidding with no real purpose? What
was the point? Why were they even here?

“Get up!” she cried, suddenly furious, the drugs
taking her mood from one extreme to the next. She didn’t know what
she wanted, what she needed. She wished there was one person in
this room who possessed a backbone.

Most stood. A few seemed frozen with fear, groveling
and cowering from their places hidden in the pews. A few feet away
a huddled lump lay on the floor, trying to shove his or her body
beneath the bench. Gloria grabbed whatever part she could reach and
dragged the body out into the open. She flipped the cloaked mass
over and a terrified pair of eyes glanced back from beneath the
hood.

“Did you not hear me tell you to get up?” she asked
quietly. She repeatedly blinked her long luxurious lashes, trying
to focus.

The girl nodded and pulled herself into a fetal
position.

Gloria reached down and used her claws to shred the
cloak, exposing the terrified girl hidden beneath the material. She
began to giggle uncontrollably as her mind swam in a narcotic
fugue. “You’re a moron,” she told the girl, and ignored her for the
moment while she turned to the rest of the crowd.

“Do you even know why you’re here?” she asked,
looking from face to face, scanning the room.

No one answered.

“Answer me!” she bellowed as she staggered once
again and barely avoided toppling over. Still, the room remained
silent.

“You’re not … you’re not s’posed to come up here,”
the black kid behind her said. Gloria was impressed. Moments
earlier the kid was ready to piss his pants. “It’s too … too
dangerous up here for you.”

“Dangerous
? Do I look like I’m in danger?”
she yelled. “I’m a
demon
!”

He nodded. “I know. But there are people who would
like to hurt you. We, we’re supposed to … to protect … you …”

“You’re supposed to protect me,” she said, facing
the crowd again, her devil-made might and delirious intoxication
fueling her bravado. “You? How? How do you expect to
protect
me?”

They wouldn’t look her in the eye, which she found
infuriating. They were all cowards. These were her worshippers …
her protectors? All they wanted was a chance to fuck her. There was
no worship here, no respect. Bunch of fucking cowards is what they
were.

Gloria reached down and clutched the girl off the
floor, holding her up by the throat. She was pretty. So fucking
pretty. The girl kicked out, tried desperately to find the ground.
Garbled, strangled words tried to slide out of her throat. Gloria
reached back and sliced the girl’s shirt open, exposing her back,
and held her up even higher.

“Does anyone in this fucking room have a backbone?”
she cried.

She tossed the girl to the floor like a forgotten
toy, and then turned and staggered back down to the basement. The
bitch had ruined her high.

Nathan Weathers was the only son of a United States
Congressman. His mother’s family were tobacco tycoons. He’d grown
up in a mansion attended to by nannies and servants. He’d attended
the best private schools. In college he’d begun experimenting with
drugs and got hooked on heroin and cocaine, graduated to meth, and
spent the last few years in and out of rehab facilities that were
more like country clubs.

Then he found religion: experimenting with Buddhism,
a brief turn as a Hari Krishna, and then studying Scientology
before meeting Bill Vlad after his last stint in rehab.

Eventually he wound up at the old church on Ninth
Street, enthralled now by the most amazing creature he’d ever
beheld. Living proof of heaven and hell. He’d signed over his trust
fund to Vlad, along with all of his worldly possessions in exchange
for being among the privileged few to meet Gloria face to face in
her private chambers. Nathan had never needed or wanted for
anything and he had never been so scared in his entire privileged
life the way he’d been last night in that basement.

The beautiful ebon-skinned demoness had been like
something from his wettest dreams and darkest nightmares. He’d
almost suffocated between her thighs; his jaw had locked up and his
tongue had chafed from licking her thumb-sized clitoris. When she
came he’d nearly drowned in her juices, burning his throat like
cheap tequila. Dying with his face between her thighs would have
been a blessing to him. What he’d felt for her, from the moment
he’d set eyes on her, went beyond adoration or even awe, it was
more like love or a spiritual lust. Even when she’d ordered the
Italian to fuck Nathan in the ass and he’d felt violated,
humiliated and debased, he’d still felt honored, blessed to be in
her presence, to do whatever she desired, to die for her if she
commanded it. He had been terrified beyond reason yet so powerfully
entranced that he couldn’t leave, couldn’t turn away. Even as she
began to eviscerate and dismember the Italian and the Middle
Eastern guy, neither the love swelling in his chest nor the
erection straining at his core had diminished one iota. He’d found
himself rooted to the spot, still enthralled by her beauty, her
savagery, her raw power and sexuality, waiting for her to bring him
his death, longing to feel her flesh once more even if it was
rending and tearing his own. He’d closed his eyes and imagined her
claws digging into his entrails, her fangs tearing out his throat
and he’d nearly ejaculated. But she’d dismissed him, refused him
the salacious annihilation she’d granted her other subjects. He’d
been unworthy.

Nathan couldn’t look at the other worshippers as he
made his way back up the basement steps and into the main chapel.
Shame raged on his cheeks, a burning reminder of his
unworthiness.

He’d touched a
god
, had made love to her,
offered his life—and she’d rejected him. He felt like everyone
around him now looked at him differently. Their questions brought
tears to his eyes.

“What was it like?”

“Man, I thought for sure she was going to kill
you.”

“What happened to those other dudes who went down
there with you?”

Tears stung Nathan’s cheeks as he turned and ran out
of the building, still naked, clutching his clothes and shoes to
his chest as he dashed down the church steps and into the night. He
paused at the corner to dress himself. It was raining, but Nathan
appeared not to notice as he made his way through the dark streets,
sobbing uncontrollably, stricken with grief and disappointment and
shame.

Nathan had been a fuck-up all his life. A disgrace
to his father, a burden to his mother, and now he wasn’t even
worthy of hell—not even good enough to be disemboweled and
dismembered by a demon. But this was one thing he wouldn’t fuck up.
Not this time. This brutal death was the only end that would make
sense of his life. It would drive his parents crazy imagining how
much he must have suffered, wondering how he could have volunteered
for such an end. They would be forever haunted by the look of
satisfaction on his face as he lay in his coffin. There was nothing
left of his life; he needed this death. But first, he knew he
needed to prove his worthiness to Gloria so she would take him to
hell with her.

He passed a pizzeria filled with cops, and then a
newsstand attended by an old man in a raincoat who was desperately
trying to pull his newspapers and magazines in out of the rain.
Nathan kept walking. He passed liquor stores, and the few
straggling peepshows left in post-Giuliani New York, storefront
churches with signs almost indistinguishable from the peepshows
except for the “Jesus Saves!” plastered in flashing bright red neon
letters instead of “Live Nude Girls!”

He turned the corner onto a dimly lit street lined
with prostitutes of various ages. An array of old, young, Black,
White, Asian, Puerto Rican, tall, short, slim, and morbidly obese
strutting in the rain before a line of slowly cruising cars, johns
feeding their disease before returning home to their wives and
children or their lonely apartments. Most of the streetwalkers wore
miniskirts or Daisy Dukes, some wore sheer catsuits or fishnet body
stockings. Some wore only a G-string and a halter top, looking
pitiful and shivering in the rain. Nathan passed a pregnant whore
wearing a bikini and a fluffy pink faux-fur jacket. She looked like
she was ready to drop at any moment.

Nathan knew exactly what he needed to do to make
himself worthy of Gloria. He would bring her a sacrifice.

The handsome young son of a US congressman walked up
to the pregnant whore, pulled out his wallet, and removed the last
six hundred dollars he had left to his name. “How much for the
whole night?”

The whore smiled at him. It would be the last smile
of her life. She snatched the money from his hands, shoved it into
a tiny sequined purse, and then stuffed the purse into her skimpy
bra.

“This’ll be enough. You can call me Kitty. Where to,
handsome? Where’s your car? There’s a motel around the corner, the
owner knows me there.” She adjusted her breasts and shifted the
purse around in her bra. “Or maybe I should get a cab? We could go
to your place.”

Her face had once been pretty but was now haggard
and pockmarked, her teeth rotted from meth and crack and bad
hygiene. Her breasts were bloated leaking milk sacks that stained
the little pink triangles of fabric that strained against her
nipples. Her legs were thick and muscular but jiggled with cottage
cheese where her thighs met her gluteus maximus, which was large
and round and likewise dimpled with cottage cheese. Her eyes were
still a gorgeous ocean blue and her lips were still full and
seductive. She even had dimples. Her hair was jet black, long and
curly. She had no doubt been quite attractive at one time, before
drugs and pimps and johns had leeched away her beauty. She looked
like what Sandra Bullock would have looked like as a pregnant
crack-whore.

“We should walk,” he said. “It’s just a few blocks.
I live at that old church on Ninth.”

“A church?” She looked at him suspiciously.

“It used to be. Me and a few friends are renovating
it. Going to turn it into lofts or something.”

“And these friends—they part of the bargain?” She
hadn’t started walking yet and was looking around as if planning an
escape route.

“Does it matter?”

She snorted. “Hell yeah, it matters! I’m fuckin’
with child
here, in case you hadn’t noticed. I ain’t in no
kind of shape for a gangbang.”

He smiled kindly at her. “How nice of you to be
concerned for your unborn child.” He cleared his throat. “It’ll
just be me and my lady. Nobody else.”

That seemed to relax her. “She wants to fuck a
prostitute? Or just watch?”

“Oh, she participates. You’ll like her. In fact, I’m
sure you’ll love her.”

“Does she eat pussy? It’s been forever since I had
another bitch lick my pussy. Not since I got knocked up.”

“I have a feeling she’ll eat the hell out of your
pussy.”

Kitty’s smile widened. “And she won’t care, me being
knocked up?”