Someone could see her, she thought. Someone could see her like this, walking nude through the storm. What would they do? Probably commit her to a mental institution, she thought dully. Well, maybe that was where she belonged. Maybe they ought to lock her up in a padded cell and throw away the key, maybe that was what they ought to do with oversexed little girls who couldn’t control themselves, who had to give in to their passions or die of frustration.

  There was another girl who had taken her place as heterosexual tramp, according to what she had heard. A girl named Jan Cameron. Only Jan had not suffered from frigidity, not as she understood it. Jan just liked to make it with boys every chance she had, and it was the same sort of thing for her that girls were for Susan.

  Nothing over changed.

  Things always stayed pretty much the same.

  She kept walking, moving onward through the rain. She remembered the tremendous source of joy that Maggie Swarthout had been to her, the tremendous feeling of happiness and fulfillment that had coursed through her body when the dark-haired beautician had first made love to her.

  At the time, she had been dumb enough to think that all of her problems were over, that all of her sexual difficulties were gone forever. How silly! Because the real problems, the tough ones, the basic and fundamental ones, were problems that you somehow never managed to solve. They were a part of you. You either lived with them or you died from them, but there was one thing that, damnit to hell, you never managed to do.

  You never solved them.

  The rain was doing wonderful things for her. Why, her whole body felt alive and singing, and her skin felt cleaner than clean, and her hair was wet and her heart was singing, and—

  And there was a shape further down the street.

  Moving toward her.

  Running toward her—

  Of course! It was the girl, the naked girl who was also walking through the rain, the girl she would make mad love to while the rain poured on them! She ran forward, anxious to meet the girl. And then, suddenly, she stopped in her tracks.

  It wasn’t a girl.

  It was a man. A tall man, wild-eyed, with a huge bloody knife in his hands.

  She opened her small mouth and shrieked her lungs out in terror.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  RAY AND THE townie were smoking cigarettes. The roommate was sprawled on a folding chair trying to catch his breath. He kept saying Jesus Jesus in an awed tone of voice. The right thing to say, Ray couldn’t help thinking. After all, they were in a store that had formerly been a church. What the hell.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve just about had it,” Ray said. “If you want to ball her any more you can do it by yourself. No more three-horse parleys. I’m beat.”

  “So get dressed,” he said. “And let’s get the hell out of here.”

  The girl wanted to know if they had had a nice time. They told her she was the sweetest thing since saccharin. She giggled and told them that they were kind of nice, too, and she liked college boys a lot better than the town kids, and maybe she could come to one of their college parties sometime. Ray tried not to laugh. He told her sure, they’d take her sometime.

  “Look,” the girl said. “You fellows like me, don’t you?”

  The roommate said they did. Ray gave her a little good-bye kiss on each of her nipples and told her they were both in love with her. This seemed to please her. They all left the empty store. The girl walked one way and they walked the other.

  In the distance, they could hear a girl screaming.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  MATT DIDN’T KILL her right away.

  That was a mistake, probably. If he had cut her throat right at the start there would have been no trouble. Just the one scream, and probably nobody would have paid any attention to it.

  Instead, he raped her.

  It was a struggle. She fought him, and she was all slippery wet, and he had to keep stopping to slam her so that she would lie still. But she just wouldn’t quit screaming. When he went to slam her one time and just succeeded in poking out one of her eyes, then she really screamed her heart out. So he gave up and let her scream and just concentrated on raping her.

  It didn’t take too long. She fought him, but even then it didn’t take too long. He hammered away at her, and his blood boiled in his veins, and with a mighty cry he let go and poured his venom into the softness of her.

  Then he killed her.

  He chopped her up a little, first. He used the knife, slashing at her breasts and sex organs and belly. And then, as with Maggie Swarthout, he administered the coup de grace, a neat slash of throat from ear to ear.

  But he had waited too long, had spent too much time with her. He had let her scream and that was a major mistake, because people had heard her scream and people were coming and he was caught there and he couldn’t run away, couldn’t possibly run away.

  A pair of men were bearing down at him. He went for them with the knife and they scattered and he whirled around, ready for the next attack. He was a dog at bay, or a wolf at bay, or a cornered rat, and he was all mixed up and he just wished they would let him alone because there was a whole townful of women and they all had Kitty’s face and he had to kill them all before—

  But he lost that train of thought. They all had her face—but who was she? What was her name? Damnit to hell, he couldn’t remember his own wife’s name!

  God! He didn’t know his own name!

  He saw a man, standing ten yards off, holding a shotgun. He wanted to ask the man who he was. He wanted to ask the man who he was. He wanted to . . . to kill the man, that was it! He lowered his head and held out the knife and charged the man like a bull charging a flag.

  A loud noise, like thunder.

  A loud, ear-splitting noise. Not thunder, though. The shotgun going off.

  And a tremendous raw-hot pain in his chest. His whole chest was on fire, burning up. The knife dropped from his fingers. He went back on his heels, then sank slowly to his knees.

  Another loud noise. The second barrel of the shotgun. He heard the noise and felt the onslaught of pain and then he did not feel anything, not at all, not as he slid backward and sprawled on the pavement, not a single thing did he feel.

  Because he was dead.

  T H E • E N D

  MY NEWSLETTER: I get out an email newsletter at unpredictable intervals, but rarely more often than every other week. I’ll be happy to add you to the distribution list. A blank email to lawbloc@gmail.com with “newsletter” in the subject line will get you on the list, and a click of the “Unsubscribe” link will get you off it, should you ultimately decide you’re happier without it.

  The Classic Erotica Series

  21 Gay Street

  69 Barrow Street

  The Adulterers

  April North

  Born to be Bad

  Campus Tramp

  Carla

  Circle of Sinners

  College for Sinners

  Community of Women

  Flesh Mob

  Gigolo Johnny Wells

  A Girl Called Honey

  High School Sex Club

  I Sell Love

  Kept

  Of Shame and Joy

  Sin Hellcat

  A Strange Kind of Love

  So Willing

  Tramp

  The Twisted Ones

  A Woman Must Love

  About the Author

  LAWRENCE BLOCK is a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master. His work over the past half century has earned him multiple Edgar Allan Poe and Shamus awards, the U.K. Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement, and recognition in Germany, France, Taiwan, and Japan. His latest novel is Dead Girl Blues; other recent fiction includes A Time to Scatter Stones, Keller’s Fedora, and The Burglar in Short Order. In addition to novels and short fiction, he has written episodic television (Tilt!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights.

  Block contributed a fiction column in Writer’s Digest for fourteen years, and has published several books for writers, including the classic Telling Lies for Fun & Profit and the updated and expanded Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel. His nonfiction has been collected in The Crime of Our Lives (about mystery fiction) and Hunting Buffalo with Bent Nails (about everything else). Most recently, his collection of columns about stamp collecting, Generally Speaking, has found a substantial audience throughout and far beyond the philatelic community.

  Lawrence Block has lately found a new career as an anthologist (At Home in the Dark; From Sea to Stormy Sea) and holds the position of writer-in-residence at South Carolina’s Newberry College. He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.

  Email: lawbloc@gmail.com

  Twitter: @LawrenceBlock

  Facebook: lawrence.block

  Website: lawrenceblock.com

 

 

  Lawrence Block, Flesh Mob

 

 

  Thank you for reading books on GrayCity.Net
Share this book with friends