Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror

“You’re an hour late and I’ve got to make that train,” she fumed, shimmying out of her skirt in their bedroom. At 34, she looked good, he observed, better than when they’d met. Her chest, while not that of the goddess, was ample, if over-nippled. Her middle was potting out a bit but her hips always nailed his eye to their hidden valley, something which, at this particular moment, did not work in his favor.

“I’m changing Tony, you’ve seen it before. Go get something to eat.”

He reached out to massage her exposed behind. She slapped his hand away. “Go. There’ll be plenty of time for that next week. Right now I’m late and you’re pissing me off.”

Her dark eyes pierced the mental fog that arousal always drew around him. Loni grew easily irritated with his physical obsessions. Sometimes it was flattering; now it was in her way.

“Alright, alright,” he grumbled. “Did you leave me anything?”

“There’s Chinese in the fridge, some spaghetti from last night. You’ll have to warm it up yourself. If I miss this train, there’s not another one until 11 and Angie will be sitting at the station waiting for me all night.”

She finished pulling on jeans and drew a sweater over the bra strap Tony had been admiring from behind. She turned and caught him still staring.

“It’s only seven days. Go rent Vampy Vixens or something. I’ve gotta go. She slipped on a pair of black flats and grabbed her suitcase from the bed.

“I’ll call ya tomorrow. Now goodbye.”

She pecked him on the lips and was out the door.

The ache in his crotch flared again as he realized that was all he was going to get for quite awhile. Shrugging in defeat, he shambled into the kitchen.

He decided on the Chinese, but after aimlessly poking through pea-pods and some mutant pygmy chicken, ended up re-Saran-ing most of it. He wasn’t hungry, damnit, he was horny! He tried watching TV, but none of the canned laughs took his mind off the vision of pink lips wrapping around his erect member, a halo of beach-blown hair teasing his legs.

On a sudden impulse he pulled out the telephone directory and looked up the address of the Redroom Hotel. It turned out, as he’d expected, to be in a run-down section of the city, maybe a half hour’s drive. He watched some more TV, knowing in some way that he was killing time.

Waiting. Waiting …

… until the clock said 8:37. That would put him there around nine. Tony turned off the television and went to the garage.

* * *

Run-down is not the word for it, he thought as he pulled into the lot. The unlit sign (which was big enough that he still picked it out from a couple blocks away) didn’t exactly promise the Hilton, and nobody seemed to be around. Who knows how long that note had been markered onto the peep show door anyway, he admonished himself. It was probably put there by someone in town for a night or two who was since long gone. He stopped in the hotel courtyard and shook his head. This was asinine. He could get mugged, get AIDS—maybe this was the site of ritual sacrifices. The newspaper’d just run an article about the rash of them downtown this year.

A clomping noise broke the pensive silence; made him whirl around, his heart kicking in double time. A sudden wind blew a drop of cold sweat from his forehead into his eye. There, on the brown brick wall at the end of the courtyard, a shadow grew, larger with each staccato slap. The clicking was footsteps, he realized, and they were coming his way. Go back—go forward—he didn’t know which way to turn. And then, as the shadow reached gargantuan, grotesque proportions, its Dr. Frankenstein stepped into view—a short, Asian fellow carrying a briefcase and striding quickly towards the parking lot. He bent his head as he passed Tony, seeming intent on not making eye contact. Tony relaxed and abandoning his thoughts of turning back to the car, decided to check and see if anyone was in room 112. He was here after all, and had a whole night to kill.

Night cloaked the courtyard sidewalk in shifting mystery. Bushes and weeds poked tendrils across the path, slowing his progress, their cold, tenuous gropings of his legs and belly made him shiver. The encroaching undergrowth made him wonder if this hotel was still in operation, but then, when he glanced around, he realized there were lights on in some of the rooms. The sign was out, the sidewalk beacons were unlit, but a blue glow poked through the curtains of the occasional occupied room. Upon reaching 112, his fears were confirmed. No light at all. He knocked anyway, and the door creaked open an inch at his attack.

“Hello,” he called through the black sliver of an opening. It was somehow darker in the room than it was outside. “Anybody home?” he drawled with mock levity.