Grimoire Diabolique

PROLOGUE

The Onomancers had failed, and so had the Sibyllists. The Haruspicators came next, keen-eyed yet solemn in their blood-red raiments. One of them nodded within his flaplike hood, and then the young girl was stripped naked and lain on the onyx slab.

It was one of the geldings, who’d previously had his eyes sewn shut, that clumsily shoved the ivory rod into the girl’s sex. The slim naked thing’s hips bucked, and the shriek of pain launched out above the ziggurat as though she were shouting to the gods themselves. Blindly, then, the gelding held up the bloody rod for the Synod to see.

No doubt, a true virgin.

The gelding was summarily beheaded, his body dragged off by silent legionnaires. Next, the highest of the Haruspist’s slipped the long sharpened hook deep up into the girl’s sex. She flinched and died at once, a tiny river of red pouring forth. But the Haruspic priest was already at work, his holy hand a blur as the hook expertly extracted the girl’s warm innards through the opening of her sex. Barehanded, then, he hoisted up the guts and flung them down to the ziggurat’s stone floor.

The wind howled, or perhaps it was the breath of Ea himself.

But when the Haruspist gazed intently at the wet splay of innards….

He saw nothing.

The King’s jaw set; he seemed petrified on his throne. Only one recourse remained, and if it too failed, only doom awaited the King and his domain. He turned his gaze toward the last flank of robed and hooded priests—the alomancers. The King gave a single nod.

One figure stepped forward, face hidden within the hood’s roll. From one hand, a thurible swayed, a thurible full of salt.

He depended the thurible over the fire… until the salt began to burn.

Smoke poured from the object’s finely crafted apertures, and the figure leaned forth—and inhaled the holy fumes, one deep breath after another, until he collapsed.

The King stiffened in his throne; legionnaires burst forward to render aid. Eventually—thank Ea—the alomancer revived after a distended silence. Even the wind stopped, even the clouds seemed to freeze in the sky.

The alomancer shuddered. Then he gazed at the King with eyes the color of amethyst, and he began to speak….

I

It started when the salt spilled.

The man looked ludicrous. Black hair hung in a perfect bowlcut, like Moe. He stood at the rail, tubby and tall, with a great, toothy, lunatic grin. “Ald, please,” he requested. “It’s been eons.”

Rudy and Beth nursed cans of Milwaukee’s Best down the bar, Rudy pretending to watch the fight on the television. They’d made the rounds downtown, hoping to cop a loan, but to no avail. Then they’d retreated to this dump tavern, The Crossroads, way out off the Route. Rudy didn’t want to run into Vito—as in Vito “The Eye”—a minute before he had to. He felt like a man on a stay of execution.

“Are you the vassal of this taberna, sir?” the ludicrous man asked the barkeep. “I would like some ald, please.” “Never heard of it,” swiped the keep, who sported muttonchops and a beer-belly akin to a medicine ball. “No imports here, pal.” This is The Crossroads, not the Four Seasons.”

“I am becruxed. Have you any mead?”

Rudy could’ve laughed. Even the man’s voice sounded ludicrous: a high nasal warble. And what the hell is ald?

“We got Rolling Rock, pal. That fancy enough for ya?”

“I am grateful, sir, for your kind recommendation.”

When the keep came down to the Rock tap, Rudy leaned forward. “Hey, man, who is this guy?”

The keep shrugged, tufts of hair like steel wool poking out from his collar. “Some weirdo. We get ’em all the time.”

Beth, frowning afresh, looked down from the no-name fight on TV. “Rudy, don’t you have more to worry about than some eightball who walks into a bar? What if Vito shows up?”

“Vito The Eye? Here?” Rudy replied. “No way.” The assurance lapsed. “Hey, maybe Mona could loan us some dough.”

“She barely has money for tuition and rent, Rudy. Be real.”

Women, Rudy thought. Always negative. He glanced back up at the fight—Tuttle versus Luce, middleweights—but thoughts of Vito kept haunting him. What will they do to me? he wondered.

The keep set down a mug of beer before the ludicrous man, but as he did so, his brawny elbow nicked a saltshaker, which tipped over. A few trace white grains spilled across the bartop.

The odd patron grinned down. Focused. Nodded. He pinched some grains and cast them over his left shoulder. “Blast thee, Nergal and all devils. Keep thee behind, and slithereth back into your evil earthworks.”

“We ain’t superstitious here, pal,” the keep said.

“To blind the sentinels of the nether regions,” the man went on, “who stand to our left, behind us. Dear salt, a gift from the holiest Ea, and all gods of good things. To spill the sacred salt is to bid ill fortune from heaven. It was once more valuable than myrrh.”

“Who’da hell’s Merv?” asked the keep.

“Beware the woman infidel,” intoned the patron. “Your paramour—”

“What’da hell’s a paramour?”

“A lover,” Beth translated, for all the good her education had done. “A girlfriend.”

“She is so named,” the ludicrous man said, “…Stacy?”

The keep’s pug-face tensed up like a pack of corded Suet. “How’da hell you know my girlfriend’s name?”

“I am an alomancer,” the odd patron replied. “And your lovely paramour, hair like sackcloth and teeth becrook’d, shalt be in a moment’s time abed with a man unthus known.”

The keep scratched a muttonchop. “What’d’ya mean?”

“He means,” Beth said over her beer, “that your girlfriend is cheating on you with a guy she just met.”

“A man,” the patron continued, “too, of a formidable endowment of the groin.”

“‘At’s a load of shit,” the keep said. “You’re a nut.”

This guy’s something, Rudy thought. He was about to comment when someone tapped on his shoulder. Oh… no. Very slowly, then, he turned to the ruddy and none-too-happy face behind him. “Vito! My man! I was just downtown looking for you.”

“Yeah.” Vito wore a tan leather jacket and white slacks—Italian slacks. They called him The Eye, since only hi5 right eye could be seen. A black patch covered the left. “Your marker’s due Friday, paisan. You wouldn’t be forgetting that, huh?”

“Oh, hey, Vito,” Rudy stammered. “I remember.”

“That’s six large. The Boss Man ain’t happy.”

“Barkeep,” Rudy changed the subject. “Get my good friend Vito here a beer on my tab, and one for this guy, too,” he said, slapping the ludicrous man on the back.

Vito jerked a thumb. “I’ll be over at the booth marking my books. Come on over if you got anything you want to talk to me about.”

“Actually,” Rudy seized the opportunity. “I was wondering if like you could maybe give me a little extra t—”

“I ever tell you how I lost my eye? About ten years ago, I ran up a big marker on the Boss Man’s tab, and I made the big mistake of asking him for a little extra time.”

Rudy gulped. When Vito disappeared to the back booth, Beth jumped in to complain. “That’s great, Rudy. We’re nearly broke, you’re six thousand in debt to a mob bookie, and now you’re buying beers for people. Jesus.”

“Guys like Vito like to see generosity. Part of their machismo.”

“And now look what you’ve done!’ she whispered.

The inane, toothy grin floated forward; its owner took the stool next to Rudy. “Innumerable thanks, sir. It’s not ald; however, I’m grateful to you.”

“What the hell is ald?” Rudy asked.

“A high and might liquor indeed, and a favorite of the mashmashus. We invented it, by the way, though your zymurgists of today refuse to acknowledge that. You see, the great grain mounds would accumulate condensation in the sun. The dregs, then, seeped into pools of effluvium, which were squeezed off into the casks.” He sipped his beer, cross-eyed. I am Gormok. And you are called?”

Gormok? What kind of fruitloop name is that? Rudy wondered.

“I’m Rudy. This is Beth, my fiancé.”

Beth frowned again, and Rudy supposed he could see her point. Nothing he’d promised her had come true. His gambling was like a ritual to him, an obsessive act of something very nearly reverence, and it kept a monkey on their backs the size of King Kong. The stress was starting to show: tiny lines had crept into Beth’s pretty face, and a faint veneer of fatigue. She’d lost weight, and the lustrous long caramel-colored hair had begun to take a tint of gray. She worked two jobs while Rudy sweated bullets at the track. And now mob men were calling. No wonder she’s always pissed. I’m gonna get my eye poked out next Friday and here I am buying beers for a shylock and some loose-screw named Gormok.

“And I affirm,” Gormok went on in his creaky, sinitic voice, “that your generosity will not go unrewarded. If I can ever be of service to your benefit, I implore thee, make me aware.”

“Forget it,” Rudy said. Nut. He drained his beer. “Where’d the barkeep go? I could use a refill.”

“Our humble servitor, I believe,” Gormok offered, “is at this sad moment seeking to contact his unfaithful paramour.”

Rudy spied the keep down the other end of the bar, talking on the house phone. Suddenly the guy turned pale and hung up. “I just called the fuckin’ trailer,” he muttered. “My girlfriend ain’t there. Then I ring my buddy down at The Anvil, and he tells me Stacy left after happy hour… with some guy.”

“A gentleman, too,” Gormok reminded, “unthus known and of a formidable endowment of the groin.”

“Shadap, ya whack.” The keep went back to the phone. Beth maintained her terse silence. But Rudy was thinking.

“Gormok. How about doing that salt thing for me.”

“An alomance! Yes?” came the grinning reply.

Rudy lowered his voice. “Tell me who’s gonna win that fight.”

“Alas, the gladiators of the new, dark age,” Gormok remarked, and peered up at the boxing bout on the bar television. “But have thee a censer? Clearer visions are always begot by fire.”

“What’s a censer?”

“It’s something you burn things in, during rituals,” Beth defined. “And don’t be idiotic, Rudy.”

Rudy ignored her, glancing about. “How about this?” he ventured, and slid over a big glass ashtray sporting the Swedish Bikini Team.

“It shall suffice,” Gormok approved. He sprinkled several shakes of salt into a bar napkin and placed it in the ashtray. “A taper, now, or cresset or flambeau.”

I hope he means a lighter. Rudy flicked his Bic. He lit the napkin, which strangely puffed into a quick flame and then went out. Gormok’s face took on a momentary expression of tranquility as though he were indeed taking part in some ritualistic worship. Then the odd man leaned forward… and inhaled the smoke.

Rudy stared.

“The combatant dark of skin and light of garb,” Gormok giddily intoned, “who is called Tuttle, before two minutes have expired, will emerge victorious by a single blow to the skull of his oppressor.”

Rudy snatched up Beth’s purse.

“Rudy, no!”

“How much money you got?” he asked, rummaging. He fingered through his fiancee’s wallet. “Twenty bucks? That’s it?”

“Damn it, Rudy! Don’t you dare—”

Rudy turned toward the mob man’ s booth. “Hey, Vito? A double sawbuck says Tuttle KO’s Luce this round.”

Vito didn’t even look up. “No more credit, Rudy.”

“Cash, man. On the table.”

Now Vito raised his smirk to the TV. “Tuttle’s getting his ass kicked. Don’t make me take your green.”

“Come on, Vito!” Rudy barked. “Quit bustin’ my balls. Are you a bookie or a book collector?”

Vito made a shrug. “Awright, Rudy. You’re on.”

Rudy jerked his gaze to the TV, then drooped. Luce was dancing circles around his man, firing awesome hooks which snapped Tuttle’s head back like a ball on a spring.

“You’re such a fool,” Beth groaned.

“Hark,” Gormok whispered, and pointed to the screen.

Tuttle shot a blind jab which sent Luce over the ropes—

“Yeah!” Rudy yelled. Then: “Yeah, fuckin-A yeah!” he yelled louder when the ref counted Luce out and raised Tuttle’s arm in victory.

Vito came over. “Good call, Rudy. Just don’t forget that six large.”

Rudy’s smile radiated. “That’s five thousand, nine hundred, and eighty, Vito.”

“Yeah. See ya next Friday, paisan.”

Vito left the smoky bar, while Rudy fidgeted on his stool. Even Beth was rubbing her chin, thinking. And Rudy had a pretty good idea what she was thinking about.

“How’d you do that, man?” he asked aside to Gormok.

“I am an alomancer,” Gormok answered through his ludicrous grin. “I am a salt-diviner for the Fourth Cenote of Nergal.”

What you are, Rudy thought, is a nut. But I love ya anyway. He put a comradely arm about Gormok’s shoulder. “So, Gormok, my man. How would you like to come and live with us?”

II

“Who’s that?” Mona winced when they got home.

Snooty bitch. “This is our very good friend, Gormok,” he told the blonde coed. Her 38C’s pushed against her blouse. “Gormok, this in Mona, our housemate.”

Gormok appraised the attractive, tight-jeaned student. “Men have rown leagues for such beauty, priests have scaled ziggurats.”

“Uh… huh,” Rudy said. “Mona, how about going to your room to study, huh? Gormok and I gotta talk.” Mona made no objection, padding off with her English 311 text, Pound, Eliot, and Seymour: The Great Poets of Our Age. “Sit down, Gor,” Rudy bid. “Make yourself at home.” Gormok did so, his lap disappearing when he sat down on the frayed couch.

Rudy nudged Beth into the kitchen. “Get him a beer. He seems to like beer.”

“Rudy, this might be a bad idea. I don’t know if I—”

“Just shut up and get him a beer,” Rudy politely repeated. He went back to the squalid living room, bearing an ashtray and a shaker of salt. “So, Gor. Tell me about yourself.”

The lunatic grin roved about. “I am but a lowly salt-diviner, once blessed by the Ea, now curs’d by Nergal.”

“Uh… huh,” Rudy acknowledged.

“I was an Ashipu, a white and goodly acolyte, but, lo, I sold my soul to Nergal, The Wretched God of the Ebon. Pity me, in my sin: my repentance was ignored. Banished from heaven, banished from hell, I am now accursed to trod the earth’s foul crust forever, inhabiting random bodies as the vessel for my eternal spirit.”

“Uh… huh,”

“Jesus,” Beth whispered. Disapproval now fully creased her face when she gave Gormok a can of Bud. Yeah, we’ve got a live one, Rudy thought. The next fight—Jenkins versus Clipper—was on the west coast; it would be running late. “That’s pretty, uh, interesting, Gormok. You think maybe you feel like doing the salt thing again?”

Beer foam bubbled at Gormok’s grin. “The alomance!”

“Uh, yeah, Gor. The… alomance. I could really use to know who’ s gonna win the Jenkins-Clipper bout.”

Gormok’s grin never fluctuated. He knelt on tacky carpet tiles and went into his arcane ritual of burning salt in a napkin, then inhaling the smoke that wafted up from the ashtray. He seemed to wobble on his knees. “The warrior b’named Clipper, dear friend, in the sixth spell of conflict.” Then he collapsed to the floor.

“Holy shit!” Rudy and Beth rushed to help the alomancer up. “Gor! Are you all right?” Rudy asked.

“Too much for one day.” Gormok’s voice sounded drugged. “Put me abed, dear ones. I’ll be better on the morrow.”

“The couch,” Rudy suggested. “Let’s get him on the—”

“Deep and down,” Gormok inanely remarked. “I must be deep, as all damned Nashipus are so cursed. Get me near the cenotes.”

“A cenote is a hole in the ground,” Beth recalled from her college myth classes. “They’d hold rituals in them, sacrifice virgins and things like that.”

A hole in the— “The basement?” Rudy suggested.

Beth opened the ringed trap-door, then they both lugged the muttering and rubber-kneed Gormok down the wooden steps.

“Better, yes! Sweet, sweet… dark.”

They lay the bizarre man on an old box-spring next to the washer and drier. Dust eddied up from the dirt floor. “He’s heavier than a bag of bricks!” Beth complained.

Rudy draped an old army blanket over him. “There.”

“Ea, I heartily do repent,” Gormok blabbered incoherently. “Absolve my sins, I beg of Thee!” He began to drool. “And curse thee, Nergal, unclean despoiler! Haunter! Deceiver of souls!”

“Uh… huh,” Rudy remarked, staring down. Yeah, we’ve got a live one, all right. A real winner.

III

In bed, they bickered rather than slept. “I can’t believe you invited that weirdo into our house,” Beth bellyached.

“I didn’t hear you complaining,” Rudy refuted.

“Well, you do now. He’s… scary.”

“You don’t believe all that mumbo-jumbo, do you? It’s just a bunch of schizo crap be made up.”

“It’s not made up, Rudy. I majored in ancient history, that is, before I had to quit school and go to work to keep you out of cement loafers. Cenotes, ziggurats, alomancy—it’s all straight out of Babylonian myth. This guy says he’s possessed by the spirit of a Nashipu salt-diviner. That’s the same as saying he’s a demon.”

Rudy chuckled outright. “Somebody hit you in the head with a dumb-stick? He’s a flake, Beth. He probably escaped from St. Elizabeth’s in the back of a garbage truck and read about all that stuff in some occult paperback. He thinks he’s possessed by a demon. And so what? Let him think what he wants. What’s important to us is the guy’s genuinely psychic. You heard him, he predicted that fat barkeep’s squeeze was cheating on him.”

“That could be just coincidence, Rudy.”

“Coincidence? What about the Tuttle fight? He didn’t just pick the winner, Beth, he picked the round. He picked a KO by a guy who every bookie in town said was gonna lose.”

“I don’t care,” Beth replied, turning her back to him amid the covers. “He’s scary. I don’t want him in the house.”

“Beth, the guy’s a gold mine on two legs. We keep him under our wings, we’ll never have to worry about money again. We’ll be—”

The scream came down like a guillotine blade. Rudy and Beth went rigid in the bed.

Then another scream tore through the air.

“Thuh-that came from M-Mona’s room, didn’t it?” Rudy stammered.

“Yuh-yeah,” Beth agreed.

“She’s your friend. You go see what happened.”

“Fuck you!” Beth shouted. “Inconsiderate coward son of a—”

“We’ll both go, then. Here. I’ll protect you.” Rudy boldly brandished one of Beth’s nail files. Then, disheveled in their underwear, they crept out of the bedroom.

“Aw, Christ,” Rudy muttered when he saw the trap-door to the basement standing open.

Then they padded down the ball, and peered into Mona’s room…

“Aw, Christ,” Rudy muttered again.

But Beth didn’t mutter. She screamed.

Gormok, his face smeared scarlet, grinned up at them in the lamplight. And atop the stained bed lay Mona, naked and quite dead.

She was also quite eviscerated.

The student’s trim abdomen had been riven open, and from the rive an array of organs had been extracted and arranged about her as if for some macabre inspection. An outline of slowly seeping blood spread about the corpse like a Kirlian aura.

Gormok was eating something dark and wet out of his hands. Her liver, Rudy realized. He’s eating Mona’s liver.

“Friends! Hello!” Gormok greeted, chewing. “How art?”

Rudy bellowed, “What in God’s name did you do!”

“Not in God’s name,” Gormok lamented. “In Nergal’s. Lo, and to my eternal shame, behold the freight of my curse. I try to fight it, on my heart. But the blasted Nergal has condemned me to such heinous acts wheneverest I breathe on the salt’s divine fumes.”

“Uh… huh.” Rudy shuddered, feebly wielding the nail file. Should I kill him? he debated. But he thought about that. He’d never much liked Mona anyway. Bitchy, arrogant, and always taking cheap shots. Sure, he’d fucked her a couple times when Beth was at work (—no great shakes in bed, either. Like fucking a starfish—) and since then she’d regularly implied that it wouldn’t be a good idea for Rudy to ever raise her rent.

“Gormok, wait here a minute. Beth and I have to talk.”

“Of course! Enjoy your discourse, dear friends,” Gormok invited. “Whilst I enjoy my meal.”

Rudy had to about carry Beth back to their bedroom. She was going pasty-faced, pale. “Rudy,” she fretted, “we have to get out of here while we still can! We have to call the police!”

“Don’t overreact, honey. He’s harmless.”

“Harmless!” Beth’s eyes came close to jettisoning from her head. “He’s eating Mona’s liver! You call that harmless?”

Rudy had a plan, but he had to play it out right. “Listen, Beth,” he said in a consoling, quiet voice. “Mona’s got no relatives or friends—hell, she doesn’t even have a boyfriend. She’ll never be missed. And she wasn’t doing well in school, anyway—”

“Rudy! You call the police right now!”

“All right, all right.” Rudy held up his hands, his hair sticking up. “I’m calling the police. See?” He picked up the phone and began to dial.

But not the police. Instead, he dialed 1-900 Sportsline. He listened a moment, tapping his foo. Then he hung up and smiled.

“Clipper won the bout in the sixth round.”

Beth went into a staccato burst of crying and screaming. “Rudy, you’re out of your mind! What is wrong with you?”

“Baby, it’s only because I love you,” Rudy, well, lied. “I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for us. I want us to be married someday, have kids, and all that.”

Beth sniffled, looking up. “Really?”

“Of course, honey,” he assured her and gave her a hug. “But I need you to have faith in me, okay? I want you to go to bed now. Just trust me.” He lovingly touched her cheek. “I’ll take care of everything.”

Rudy did exactly that. First, he put Gormok back to bed in the basement. The alomancer, smiling calmly, said, “I’m sated now, dear Rudy. My curse is relieved, and now I can sleep. And I am heartily sorry for any inconvenience i have caused you.”

“Hey, Gor, don’t worry about it.” Rudy winced a bit, thinking of Mona’s liver. “These things happen all the time.”

“Until the morrow, then! And for now—sleep. For to sleep is perchance—to dream.”

“Uh… huh,” Rudy said.

When he went back up, this time, he locked the trap-door.

Digging graves was hard work, harder than one might expect. Yet dig Rudy did, maniacally in his boxer shorts. He dug deep.

Inserting Mona’s internal organs back into her opened abdominal vault proved a trying task too, but at least it was unique…

And later, in the little moonlit backyard, with the crickets trilling and the grass cool under his bare feet, with the scent of the bay in the air, Rudy buried the fickle bitch.

But one more task remained. Gormok said he was cursed to commit murder on any day that he performed a salt-divination. That’s a big problem, Rudy realized. He couldn’t very well have Gormok cutting folks up and eating their livers every time he gave Rudy the read on the next fight or ballgame, now could he?

So…

He crept quietly back down into the basement.

Gormok slept on, murmuring sweet Babylonian nothings.

Here goes, Rudy thought—

—and raised the fire ax.

“Sleep no more!” Gormok quoted Bill Shakespeare as the great blade cut down. “MacRudy doth murder sleep!”

Blood flew like spaghetti sauce. Things thunked to the floor. But there was no other way! Hell, I’m doing him a favor, Rudy felt convinced as he chopped and chopped.

And chopped some more. Once he’d succeeded in severing Gormok’s limbs, he tied off each stump with twine.

What a day, he thought when he was done.

IV

Beth, shrieking, pummeled up the basement stairs the next afternoon. “What did you do!”

“Hey, didn’t I say I’d take care of everything?”

“Rudy! You turned him into a… a torso!”

“Yeah, well, he can’t hurt anybody now, can he?” Rudy rationalized. “And he doesn’t even care, as long as we keep him happy.”

Beth’s face crimped. “What do you mean?”

Rudy thought it best to change the topic. “Look!” he celebrated and waved a sheaf of $100 bills. “Our man came through again. Pimlico, baby! Afternoon Tea by a nose in the first! The odds were 32-to-one! Can you believe it?”

Beth, quite reasonably, went nuts. “Rudy! You bet again? He’s a murderer, for God’s sake! We can’t keep a murderer in our basement! Much less a murderer who’s a torso!”

“Sure we can.” Rudy placed the stack of bills in her hands.

Beth went lax, astonished. “This looks like about ten-thou—”

“Eleven thousand clams,” Rudy corrected. “And I already paid off Vito The Eye. We’re rolling from here, babe.”

Beth’s eyes stayed fixed on the money.

“But, uh, you see,” Rudy commenced with the bad news. His throat turned dry. “There’s a catch. Remember when I told you, ‘as long as we keep him happy’?”

“Yeah?” Beth replied.

The catch was this:

That morning, Rudy had shown the head atop Gormok’s de-limbed body the racing journal as he held the fuming ashtray under the alomancer’s nose.

“Afternoon Tea, dear Rudy,” informed the happy head. “In the first tourney.”

Rudy didn’t argue, in spite of the odds. But since last night, a question had itched at him like stitches healing.

“Hey, Gor? Yesterday you said something like you had to commit a murder any day you do the salt thing.”

“Upon any such day I perform a holy alomance, yes,” Gormok affirmed. “Nergal, the abyssal prince, has cursed me as such.”

“What happens if you, uh, don’t commit a murder?”

“Then the gift of prophecy is lost to me. Forever.”

Balls! Rudy thought. Shit! Fuck! Piss!

“Unless,” Gormok’s head leaned up and added, “I am, as a substitute, properly relieved of the groin wheneverest such needs of passion call.”

Rudy’s gaze thinned. “You mean…”

“No!” Beth wailed upon the revelation. “No no no!”

“Honey, come on,” Rudy urged. “It’s the only way. If you don’t, he can’t pick the winners anymore.”

“Rudy, read my lips! I’m not going to have sex with a torso!”

Ho boy, Rudy thought. Women. You ask them to do a little something and they get all bent out of shape. Time to lay on the heavy bullshit, he decided. “It’s for our future, sweetheart. It’s for our children.”

Evidently, children was the magic word. Beth pouted a moment more. She looked at him, pink-faced.

“Our… children,” she whispered. “I—I…”

Rudy hugged her, stroked her hair. “It’s the only way, honey. I wouldn’t ask you to do it, but it’s the only way. Don’t we want our children to have the very best?”

“Our children,” she dizzily repeated. “I guess, I guess you’re… right.”

Then she turned for the basement steps, began to descend.

That’s my little trooper, Rudy approved.

Little trooper was right—and then some. Rudy, being an investigative kind of guy, felt it only fitting and proper to make an observation or two, so he sneaked down a few minutes behind her and peeked through the slight gap in the door…

Good God! he thought.

Most would deem this a reasonable thing to think when witnessing one’s fiancé engaged in the physical act of love with a living torso. Beth wasted no time in the deletion of her garments, and, despite a rather disconsolate look on her face—just as reasonable—she commenced to her task with something that could only be described as a formidable resolve. She squatted over Gormok, who lay unsurprisingly motionless atop his blanket. This afforded Rudy a front-on view, and though Beth’s discomfiture was plain, she soon began to ease into the brass tacks, so to speak, of the project.

In the dim basement light, her face flushed, and her small, pretty breasts began to sway. Meanwhile, her companion gibbered sweet Babylonian gibberish in response to her attentions. How does she do it? Rudy wondered. This was, after all, a torso. Moreover, ha wondered next: What is she thinking about?

Now there was a question! What would any woman think about while slamming glands with a dismembered salt-diviner? Perhaps it was brute rationalization, but Rudy came up with the only answer his psyche would allow.

She’s thinking about me—

Of course. Who else could she be thinking about? Certainly not Gormok. In moments, Rudy became aware of a considerable hardness loitering at his groin. My girlfriend’s humping a torso and I’m getting a woody. And as he watched further, the image transposed…

He imagined himself in Gormok’s place, right there on the basement floor and shuddering in bliss as the slot of Beth’s womanhood slid hotly up and down over his cock. His crotch felt smoldering, his heart raced. Beth’s breasts bobbed vigorously on her chest as she stepped up the momentum. Up and down, up and down, hot and frantic, her hips began to locomote like a machine, until—

Aw, Christ…

“Sweet mercy of Ea!” Gormok exclaimed at the obvious brink of his crisis.

Rudy caught his breath, and realized that he’d had a crisis of his own, his libido relieving itself to the sheer exploitation of his underpants…

I just watched my wife-to-be get it on with a fat torso, he realized. And I spunked in my shorts.

He crept back upstairs, as bewildered as he was disgusted. But he did feel convinced of one thing at least: it was all for a good cause…

V

No, a great cause, an absolutely big time wonderful cause. Within a week, Rudy was something he never recalled being: debt-free. Exit the ’76 clunker Malibu, enter his and hers Mustang GT’s. The 52” Sony TV was nice too, and so was the Adcom stereo and the $50,000-worth of new furniture.

And the new house. A spacious, skylighted A-frame off Bay Ridge Drive. It was the nicest house in the area that had a basement.

VI

Gormok remained surprisingly content, considering what Rudy’s greed had divorced him of. He jabbered and drank beer through a convalescent straw during the day, propped up behind pillows in bed, while Rudy cashed in at the track. Not once had Gormok’s divinations failed, and soon Rudy’s biggest problem was what to do with all the money. Beth, of course, had her ups and downs—the freedom to buy anything she ever wanted was a bit spoiled by the constant sexual service she was required to perform upon the libidinous torso in the basement. Eventually, she began to complain…

“That thing downstairs made me give it head today!” she spat at Rudy. “Did you hear me! I had to give head to a torso!”

Just like a woman, Rudy frowned in thought. You give ’em a good thing and they STILL bellyache. “Honey, he’s not a thing. He’s not an it. You’re talking about Gormok—he’s our man.”

Beth gaped. “Our man! Then you go down there and fuck him! See how you like it! You go down there and blow our man!”

Rudy thanked the fates Gormok wasn’t gay. “Stop being selfish,” he told her. “Don’t we have everything we want?”

“Yeah, Rudy, we do, and that’s my point. We have enough now, so I shouldn’t have to do it anymore.”

Rudy looked up reprovingly. “Beth, there’s never enough.”

“Oh, so that’s it, huh?” Beth, who rarely wore anything other than panties these days (due to the mounting frequency of Gormok’s need), stomped exasperated around the kitchen table. “You think you’re going to spend the rest of your life cleaning out the goddamn racetrack while good old Beth fucks and sucks a dismembered Babylonian alomancer!”

“Don’t be vulgar, honey. It’s not like you.”

Beth’s little breasts jiggled as she belted out a bitter chortle. “You make me fuck a torso and tell me not to be vulgar! I’m sick of it! You hear me! I’m sick of fucking that disgusting, ridiculous, grinning… trunk!”

Rudy brought a finger to his lips. “Keep your voice down. He might hear you. You’ll hurt his feelings.”

“God,” she lapsed, paling. “He takes forever sometimes, and—” she gulped “—he’s—he’s—he’s just so… huge.”

Then quit complaining, Rudy felt inclined to say. Women always want the big dick—well, baby, now you got it. At the table, he weeded out the ones, fives, and tens, into the garbage.

“Beth, oh Bethieeeeeeeeee!” called out the familiar nasal warble from downstairs. “Wither thee, my sweet beatific vision? My lovely, lovely Beth of the light-brown hair?”

“Oh, no,” Beth croaked.

“Leave me in turmoil no longer, oh, my wondrous angel, so lovely of countenance and sweet of loins. Come! I beg thee! Come assuage my beckoning fancy.”

Rudy cocked a brow. “Assuage my beckoning fancy?”

Beth glared at him. “That means he horny again, Rudy.” Her eyes rolled back in despair. “I don’t believe this. All I ever wanted was a nice normal average life, and what do I get instead? A torso with a boner.”

“Dearest Beth, please! Partake of my desire! My loins cry out for thee!”

Beth’s disdainful glare focused. “And you, you fucker. You haven’t made love to me in months.”

Rudy shrugged. It was not an easy thing for a man to rise to the occasion when he knew his squeeze was doing the bop with a naked torso. Hey, she’s got her gig, I’ve got mine, he thought. His bevy of call girls at the track wore him out. Some of those girls could suck the paint off a battleship. Not much lead left in the old pencil after when they were done. “It’s all the stress, honey,” he lied through his teeth. “All this betting everyday—it takes a lot out of a guy. And now the IRS is all over me.”

“Wondrous Beth!” the torso whined on, “my passion throbs for thee! Oh, let thy lovely loins be wed again to mine! Let your angel’s lips give succor to my manly love, and drink of my warm and copious seed!”

“You better get down there,” Rudy advised, “unless you want me to lose everything on the next race.”

Beth stared at him, her shoulders slumping.

“I hate you,” she said.

One thing Rudy had added to the new house, unbeknownst to Beth, of course, was the hidden video camera in the basement. Rudy, after all, was a successful man now, and successful men didn’t watch their girlfriends tuck torsos through mere cracks in basement doors. No, they watched with state-of-the-art video equipment. And Rudy had a lot to watch…

Jesus Christ in a hotdog stand, he thought, staring at the screen in his den and adjusting the remote, low-light lens.

Despite his arousal, Rudy could no longer deny that watching Beth’s sexual feats maintained in him a necessary level of disdain for her. It didn’t matter at all that he coerced her to tend to Gormok—that was beside the point. And so was logic. He needed to hate her as much as he could in order to compel her to continue. In truth it was money, not love, that made the world go round, and Rudy liked the world very much.

Sometimes, though, the things he saw on the screen really bothered him. Like right now, for instance. Beth was performing an act of fellatio on Gormok the likes of which would make Linda Lovelace look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. “Goddamn! can she smoke a pole,” he whispered aloud. And he saw with even more distaste that her earlier claim was no bull. To describe Gormok as huge was sheer understatement. Try hung like a fucking Clydesdale stallion. That fruitloop motherfucker’s got more dick than four or five guys, Rudy grimly realized, and at the same time he stroked his own endowment, which in comparison, more resembled a Jimmy Dean breakfast link than a penis. And what Beth was doing to Gormok more resembled a freak-show sword-swallowing than simple fellatio. Down her assiduous lips went, all the way to the hilt, a Gormok’s legless hips squirmed in pleasure. Where did it all go? Deep throat, my ass, Rudy thought. This is deep stomach. She never sucked my cock like that, the dirty bitch.

And Rudy’s hatred did not abate in the least as his hand assuaged his own beckoning fancy. I’ll bet the little whore is enjoying it, he convinced himself. I’ll bet she’s getting off! And, Christ, she’s making more noise than a truck-load of hogs at the slop trough!

As was his habit now, Rudy pretended it was the pillar of his own manhood that was being so fastidiously gobbled up by Beth’s suck-to-wake-the-dead yap; it was the only way he could tolerate this—to fantasize. But when he eventually relocated the wares of his prostate gland and balls onto the Scotchguarded carpet, the fantasy shattered. His own release was a mere dribble compared to Gormok’s veritable whale blasts of sperm, which Beth allowed her face to be showered with as the alomancer gibbered in glee…

VII

Rudy knew it would happen eventually, but he had a contingency plan for that too. One night he woke to find Beth staring at the big bay window in the bedroom.

“Honey?” he feigned. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t even sleep anymore. I can hear him down there. He jabbers all night long.”

This in fact was true. Even from the basement, Gormok could be heard mattering inanities in arcane languages, and bubbling nasal laughter. Well, maybe if you fucked him a little better, he’d simmer down, Rudy thought. Ain’t my fault you’re a dull fuck. Suck his big dick harder—try that, bitch. Suck his ass—that’ll keep him happy.

Beth sat on the bed and began to cry.

“Sweetheart,” Rudy offered a phony consolation. “Don’t cry.”

“You said we’d get married,” she sobbed. “You said we’d have children.”

“Honey, we will.”

“When, Rudy? I need to know when.”

“Soon, I promise.” He stroked her hair, kissed her teary cheeks. “I’ve got a plan,” he whispered. “The race track, the ball games and all that? That’s smalltime.”

“What are you talking about?” she sniffled.

Rudy reached into the nightstand. “See this? It’ll set us up for life in no time, honey.” What he showed her was the NASDAQ Index of The Wall Street Journal. “We’ll be millionaires, Beth. And then, I promise you, we’ll get married and have kids just like we planned.”

“Please, Rudy, please,” she sobbed, hugging him back.

“I promise,” he reasserted. “But you’ve got to give this just a little more time. Okay?”

Beth’s sobs began to abate.

“Honey? Okay?”

“Okay,” she croaked.

“Oh, Bethieeeeeeeee!” shot the voice from below. “Come hither, please!”

VIII

Within a few months they’d moved out of the A-frame in favor of a waterfront estate. The his and hers Mustangs were replaced by his and hers Lamborghini Diablos. Rudy merely had Gormok perform a few divinations, then laid his money down at a broker’s. It didn’t take long. Blue Chip stocks. Municipal bonds. T-Bills. Not to mention the thirty-million in 6-month CD’s. Even in the highest federal and state tax-brackets, Rudy had enough to keep them pig-shit rich for life. And that bevy of call girls? Well, now they were his girls. He had thirty of them, one for each day of the month, and he put them all up in luxury condos he paid for in cash. Things weren’t bad. No, not bad at all.

And Rudy found a great solace in his calendar month of bimbos; they provided him the escape his psyche needed, the abstract catharsis which relieved the entails of his complicated, high-stress lifestyle. Plus they fucked good, which furthermore relieved the hatred he now harbored wholesale for Beth. Rudy got lost in his women, and this banished the steady and bothersome awareness that his fiancé was impaling herself on a “bigger” man than he, limblessness notwithstanding. Becky was his favorite, a slim, sultry blonde, whose specialty was tongue-baths, which made Rudy a great adherent of personal hygiene. Then there was Shanna, the full-tilt brunette with a rack of tits you could use to drydock a Los Angeles-class sub, and a welcome propensity for always asking Rudy to enter through the, uh, back door. And we mustn’t forget Chrissy—now there was a woman! She had looks that would make Jessica Alba seriously consider suicide, not to mention a mouth that could suck-start a Ford Tri-Motor.

Yes, Rudy’s buxom recreational brigade all proved quite adroit at helping him cope with his problems, to the extent that his only real problem was wondering just how much joy juice his vesicles could manufacture. A man could only put out so much, but lo and behold, his girls were always ready to prove that he was possessed of an endless reservoir of love lava. And on those dread occasions when he felt the old crane simply wouldn’t rise, his bevy of beauties were always quick, by their sheer expertise to prove a grand synonymy with Jesus—in that they could raise the dead. Rudy loved his women, he cherished them. And whenever he grew sick of one, he simply dumped her and found someone else. Just as there was no shortage of beer in Bavaria, there was no shortage of beautiful women who liked moolah. What a life!

In the meantime, Rudy urged Beth to research, as thoroughly as possible, every aspect of Mesopotamian mythology, ancient ritualism, pre-Christian divination, and the like. She even found one book called The Synod of the Alomancers, and learned everything about the Cenotes of Nergal, the Nashipus, the Ashipus, the ziggurats, and all the intricacies of the regalia and the ritual. Rudy felt this necessary in order to make Gormok feel more at home. He had contractors make a mock temple out of the basement. He purchased real censers and thuribles, standards and statues and murals etched with the holy glyphs. He even had a clothier make a special hooded black robe and sash, identical to those worn by the ancient alomancers, which he donned each time he asked Gormok The Talking Torso to perform another divination. Rudy wanted the atmosphere to be right for his dismembered bread-winner; he figured it was the least he could do.

On the other hand, though, Beth grew more and more sullen. She rarely even spoke, not that Rudy was around much to talk to—his harem kept him busy, when he wasn’t busy himself wheeling and dealing at the broker’s. Beth became stoical, morose. Now, the ludicrous head atop the diviner’s torso insisted she service him many times a day, amid an array of kinky twists which were better left undescribed.

But more months went by.

And Rudy’s fortune increased exponentially.

IX

It was funny, sometimes, how the universe worked. Rudy recalled telling Beth once that there was never enough, but actually, now, he found he was wrong. Already he was one of the richest men in the country. What more did he need? So it was rather appropriate, in a cosmic way, when Beth walked into his den one evening and dropped the bombshell:

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

At first Rudy felt enraged. “Pregnant! You’re shitting me! This is a joke, right?”

“It’s no joke, Rudy. I’m pregnant.”

He gnashed his teeth and jumped up. “You mean you let that goddamn horny torso knock you up?”

“I have to fuck him ten times a day,” she drily pointed out. “What did you expect?”

“Well—well, goddamn it, Beth! I thought you were on the pill!”

“The pill isn’t foolproof, Rudy.”

Calm down, boy, he induced himself. Don’t panic. “Yeah? Well, it’s no problem. You’ll simply get an abortion.”

Her race looked carved in granite. “I’m not getting an abortion, Rudy. I’m having this baby.”

“No. You’re not.” He opened and closed his fists, to quell his rage. “You’re not going to have a kid by that thing’s spunk.”

“Thing?” Beth chuckled. “I thought he was our man. Forget it, Rudy. I’m having this baby. You won’t give me one, so I’ll settle for Gormok’s.”

You evil calculating bitch, he thought. You did this on purpose, didn’t you? You went off the pill on purpose just to put me on the spot.

“But I’m willing to make a deal,” she went on. “I will get an abortion on two conditions. One, you make me pregnant, and two, you kill Gormok.” Then she passed a small box to him. “Open it,” she said.

Rudy opened the box to find it occupied by a Smith & Wesson Model 65 .357 Magnum.

“You’ll do it right now, Rudy. No more lies. No more false promises. You’ll dig a grave in the back yard. Right now. And then you’ll take that silly thing outside and you’ll kill it. And I mean right now.”

Rudy didn’t care for being dictated to, especially by a woman. So she’s calling the shots now, huh? Beth the little Torso Fucker. Well… It was all he could do not to smile.

“All right,” he told her. “You’ve got a deal.”

Rudy found the shovel. Then he went out back,

He’d been thinking along these lines for a while now anyway, hadn’t he? The shovel bit into the soil. He didn’t need any more money, which meant he didn’t need Gormok, either.

And there was one more thing he didn’t need:

Beth, he thought, and grinned.

He’d gotten what he wanted out of her. And another point: she was starting to look really beat these days. Skinny, pale, dark circles under her eyes. I’m a high-roller now, he congratulated himself. Why’s a big time, big-buck guy like me need a little-tit, string bean bitch like her?

He could move his harem here! Shit, those girls made the Playboy Mansion look like a dog pound. And there were some new ones now too, like Beverly: California tan, waxed pubes, 40 double-D’s and nipples sticking out like a pair of golf cleats. Her tits should hang in The National Gallery! he reveled as he dug. And Melissa? A cosmetic-surgery paragon; she had a body on her that would put a stiffer on the Pope! Then there was Alicyn, whose vaginal barrel was more dextrous than an olympic gymnast. Oooo-eeee! he thought. Not to mention Shelly and Kelly, two brick-shit house redhead twins whose favorite bedroom game was “Sandwich.” Rudy never hesitated to play the part of the cheese.

There were so many, an endless Whitman’s Sampler of sex!

Shit yeah! I’ll move them all here! The entire bimbo brigade! I’ll build a fucking luxury apartment complex in the back yard! He could picture it. A different chick every day, a mass orgy every night! He’d eat Beluga caviar out of nut-tan bellybuttons, abdomens. Slurp Perrier-Jouet from Tit Valleys. Blondes on the half-shell, baby! Redheads Au Gratin, and Brunettes Au Jus! I will live like a Renaissance prince! Yeah. And Gormok? And Beth? Rudy’s grin darkened in the moonlight. He rested a moment. Then he began to dig the second grave.

“You come out here with me,” he insisted. “I need you to hold the flashlight.” “All right,” Beth agreed. “And bring the gun.”

Even bereft of arms and legs, Gormok was not easy lugging up the stairs. The fucker weighs more than a pallet of bricks! Rudy thought between grunts. Then, as he lowered the torso into the wheelbarrow, Rudy winced as if slapped. Gormok, apparently unable to control his renal system, urinated quite liberally into Rudy’s face.

Beth laughed.

“Dear Rudy, ho!” Gormok exclaimed. “My deepest apologies! Such incontinence, I assure you, is quite a contretemps!”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rudy forced himself to reply, dripping warmly. “I guess a man’s gotta go when he’s gotta go.”

“And, goodly friend, hast lovely Beth enlightened thee? The wondrous news that the harvest of my loins hast given her a belly large with child?”

“Uh, yeah,” Rudy replied. His back strained as he trundled the wheelbarrow along the pool deck. “That’s, uh, that’s why we’re going out back, you know, to have a party, just the three of us.”

“Great Ea! My joy comes unbridled!” Gormok exclaimed, close to tears. His stumps roved in glee. “A celebration!”

There’s gonna be a celebration, all right, Rudy avowed as he grunted onward. I’m gonna bury both of you whacks, and celebrate by pissing on your graves.

The great back yard of the estate shimmered in quiet moonlight. It was warm out tonight, and pretty—a great night for burying people. Rudy pushed the laden wheelbarrow to the back of the property. He hefted Gormok’s trunk and set it beside the first hole. The mound of freshly turned soil blocked the second hole from Beth’s sight.

“But such a strange place for a celebration,” Gormok’s head remarked, craning atop the torso.

Rudy took the gun from Beth, who stood aside with a smirk. He checked the cylinder, saw that it was loaded, then snapped it shut with a flip of the wrist.

“Do it now,” Beth ordered.

Rudy smiled. “What I’m gonna do, you torso-fucking little slut, you Babylonian-cum-swallowing whore, is kill the both of you.” Then he aimed the revolver at Beth’s stone-cold face.

“Go ahead,” she told him. “You think I don’t know what you’ve been planning? Use you brain, Rudy. Think! Gormok’s an alomancer—he can foresee the future. If you think all we’ve been doing down there is fucking, then you’re even dumber than I thought.”

“I… You…,” Rudy said perplexed. What the—

“I had the guy at the gun shop take the powder out of the bullets,” Beth next informed him. “It won’t fire.”

Rudy snapped the trigger a dozen times, each drop of the hammer resounding in a quick metallic click!

“But this one will.”

Rudy peed his pants when Beth pointed another revolver in his face. “Now… kill Gormok,” she said.

“With what?”

“I don’t care. Just kill him.”

The gun barrel steadied on the point between Rudy’s eyes. A moment later, he had his foot behind the shovel, the blade at Gormok’s throat.

“Have no fear, dear Rudy,” the torso strangely commented. The silly face smiled in moonlight. “Fate beckons us all, the joy-filled summons of providence.”

Beth kept the gun on him as Rudy bore down. He stomped the back of the shovel until the blade separated Gormok’s head from the armless shoulders. Blood pumped from the stump, soaking Kentucky Blue sod. Rudy kicked the head into the grave.

“And now you kill me,” he said, turning.

“Oh, no,” Beth replied. And before Rudy could turn completely, she brought the gun-butt down hard on his skull.

EPILOGUE

Rudy would’ve been wise to read some of the books he’d had Beth get out of the library. Gormok had verified all she’d discovered. The spirit of a condemned salt-diviner could never be killed, only the body it happened to occupy at the time. The spirit merely moved on to possess the body in closest proximity.

Later, Beth calmly buried Gormok’s head and torso. She also buried Rudy’s arms and legs. Then she went downstairs, and to the basement’s new tenant, she whispered, “Goodnight.”

“On the morrow, my sweet beauty!” Rudy’s head replied but in the familiar high, nasal warble. “I bid thee the most heavenly dreams!”

Now she could have all the babies she wanted. It wasn’t like Rudy was going anywhere. And if she ever ran short of money…

There was always the ashtray, and the salt.