Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror

He seemed merely delighted, not surprised. “I’m sure we each have our reasons.” Vigorously, he patted Justine’s cover as if it were the shoulder of an old friend. “I appreciate his philosophy here. The utter lack of reward for living a virtuous life. And every one of these sick sons of bitches in here states his reasons for acting like a depraved monster with such eloquence it makes you want to cry.” He shrugged. “But obviously you know that.”

Her grin turned mildly wicked, and she checked to make sure they were alone. “You want to know what I found most eloquent? When Justine’s captured by the bandit, and de Sade gets across the idea of a blowjob without using one concrete anatomical reference. I loved that.”

And thus it went on, impromptu critiques and appreciation of the works of a man who’d scandalized a continent, whose debauches were legend, whose name itself had enriched the vocabulary of the erotic. Time got away from them, and once she started to laugh as she imagined what by now must have been going through Jude’s mind downstairs. The poor woman frantic, calling paramedics, priests, a SWAT team. She should go quell Jude’s fears.

“I’m enjoying this,” he said at last. “I really am. You know the way you can just tell, sometimes, that you can talk to someone and let a half-hour go by and you won’t even know it? I knew you’d be someone I could talk to.”

“And how’s that?” She had to know. He was either far more intuitive than Jude, and most of the day-herd who muddled through downstairs, or she’d let something of night inside shine free.

“You didn’t look away on the street the other afternoon. You held your ground … and watched.” His eye contact was bold, candid.

She stood there, tongue-tip wedged between her front teeth, clothed yet her garments may as well have been sheer. Caught. She was caught. Knowing it had to come someday, but always taking for granted the person would at least have legs. Caught.

“It was the look on your face,” she whispered. “I—I didn’t even think you noticed me then.”

As he laughed and rolled his eyes, she found his easy candor extraordinary. And while she’d known plenty exhibitionists, she got no sense that his pleasure had derived from being watched. It had been grounded in the physical, she was sure of it.

“I get carried away sometimes. I really shouldn’t, but when it feels that good, and the mood strikes …” He shrugged, palms up. “You know, you may think it doesn’t, but your face gives you away too. Like does know like, when it knows what to look for. I don’t think I’m completely off-base here, am I?”

A blush threatened to warm her cheeks. Embarrassment? She’d not even thought it possible anymore. The challenge in her tone of voice was merely affectation: “What is it you think you see?”

He appraised. “In your eyes. It’s always in the eyes. This look when your guard slips. Something unsatisfied, maybe a little angry. Okay. I know—it’s like someone just stole the last sliver of chocolate torte right out from under your fork.”

Ellen’s laugh was soft, low, throaty, half-pleasure and half-challenge. Chocolate and sex. This man may have had no legs, but he most definitely had her number.

“Look,” she said, “I have to be getting back to work. But I think I’m going to need your name … and some way of getting hold of you later.”

* * *

His name was Adam, and the address he gave took her to a dim neighborhood where her footsteps were solitary echoes against walls of brick and stone, where the pale faces of residents peeped out from behind barred windows. Everything malingered beneath a stubborn dusting of industrial fallout, and the last of the year’s greenery twined dead and brown around sagging wrought iron fences. Privacy would be valued here, and respected.

Adam played the proper host, skimming through his apartment and around corners as quickly as if he were on a basketball court. He mixed fine drinks, served hors d’oeuvres that hadn’t come from a deli. He showed her his books, including the freshly reinstated Justine. He let her notice for herself his collection of fetish videos, and be the one to suggest slipping a disc into the player. There was a lot in the way of nipple clamps and whimpering, later the obligatory golden shower, and they were really just marking time here, weren’t they? She might’ve yawned once. Adam shut it off before the end.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve watched this,” he said. “Been awhile since it even did anything for me.”

“So why sit through this much if it’s that passé to you now?”

He shrugged easily. “Humoring you?”

“Oh, that’s a laugh,” she said, and she was Elle again, had become Elle without one bit of effort. Adam recognized this. Like knows like, and from here it was a very short trip to the bedroom.