Grimoire Diabolique

THE MCCRATH MODEL SS40-C, SERIES S

“She’ll have to eat it,” Prouty said, “otherwise, she’ll drown.”

Vinchetti appraised the situation, a dark, if not bewildering, scrutiny. “You’re one sick motherfucker, Doc—to think of something like this.”

Hey, you’re the one who insists on these little revenge skits, you stromboli-eating whack-job, thought Doc a.k.a. Dr. Winston F. Prouty. Fifty-seven years old, tall, lean, gray-templed, Dr. Prouty looked liked his former self in his clean white lab-coat and perfect posture. Deloreanesque, distinguished. Not too long ago, he’d been earning over a million a year as one of Beverly Hills’ most prominent reconstructive plastic surgeons. Tit-jobs for the stars. Brad Pitt noses for every Brad Pitt wannabe in La-La Land. Doc had liposucked Nicholson five times, and had created enough Hollywood cleavage to rival the East African Rift. Posh office on Wilshire Boulevard, waterfront Malibu beach house, Lamborghini in the drive. It had only taken a year to lose it all—thanks to a high gambling marker with the mob… oh, and the Demerol habit. Now Dr. Prouty worked for Vinchetti.

“It will, in the least, provide a captivating demonstration of the extremities of the human survival instinct,” the doctor appended.

“Doc, I love the way you talk!” Vinchetti replied and smacked his hands together.

That’s because I have an education, unlike you and your goombah psychopaths. He tightened the straps on the lab table, checked the angle of the lights for the video camera. Vinchetti always wanted these little vignettes preserved on tape, for sale to his sickest clients, and to serve as reminders to his own people: This Is What Happens If You Fuck With Paul Vinchetti.

Indeed. It was.

Paul Vinchetti II was the supreme boss in what the U.S. Justice Department referred to as the Vinchetti/Lonna/Stello Crime Pyramid, an armature of that mythical human machinery known as the Mafia. When his father had died of a coronary while eating calamari and white pizza, Paul had taken over the entire ball of mob wax by waging war with the rest of the families. He had the muscle. Now he controlled all of the white heroin distribution on the east coast, as well as underground porn distribution, and, of all things, magazine distribution. Slowly but surely he was working his way west with gambling and black-market import interests. The gambling—that’s how Dr. Prouty had gotten involved.

He’d run up a couple of hundred grand at the blackjack tables, and shortly thereafter had lost his license. (Two botched blepharoplastys in a row had left a corporate attorney’s wife and a DreamWorks exec with insufficient blood-supply to the eyelids. Eventually, the eyelids had rotted off.) The lawsuits had taken everything, but that wasn’t Prouty’s biggest worry, and neither were the impending criminal charges for performing critical oro-facial surgery while under the influence of a pharmaceutical morphine derivative.

Unable to make his payments, Prouty knew Vinchetti’s district boys would come a’callin’, and when they did, they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. “We can hang you upside-down by a meat-hook through your asshole,” they’d been kind enough to explain, “and then blow-torch you to death, or…”

“So how long’s it take, Doc?” Vinchetti asked.

“Oh, twenty more minutes perhaps, before the copper sulphate adequately saturates the duodenal blood vessels.”

“And where the hell’s Tony?”

“I believe he’s trying to locate a camera, sir.”

“The fuck?” Vinchetti complained. “What’s taking him so long? We got more cameras in this joint than Paramount. Jesus Christ.”

“They were making some snuff tapes in the basement last night. Remember? The deputy police commissioner’s children?”

The memory rekindled on Vinchetti’s expression. “Aw, yeah, that’s right—the baby triplets. I’ll bet that’s gonna be some sweet work.”

Dr. Prouty frowned to himself. He remembered seeing the crew bring in the pit bulls.

A chuckle, then: “Teach that fuck cop to bust my guys,” Vinchetti continued. “Fuckin’ guy’s been on our pad for five fuckin’ years, and now he wants to break bad? “ Another chuckle. “He’ll know what bad is when he sees that tape.”

Prouty felt a twinge in his belly, in spite of his now-well-honed clinical detachment. But getting back to his own predicament, when given the choice of hanging upside-down from a meat hook in his rectum or working for Vinchetti, the doctor had unsurprisingly picked the latter. This involved an expeditious relocation to one of Vinchetti’s compounds on the outskirts of Pennellville, New York. The facility was part safe house, part recovery ward, and part full-tilt mother-fuckin’ chamber of horrors. Its remote location made it perfect for all of the above, especially the video end. All manner of illegal and homicidal pornography was made on the premise: snuff flicks, nek flicks, “wet” S&M, and various other types of productions the likes of which could make even the lowest demon queasy. But Dr. Prouty had little to do with the videos; his chief purpose at the compound entailed changing appearances. Two weeks of cold-turkey withdrawal had cured him of his Demerol addiction, after which he’d begun to utilize his clinical expertise in order to pay back his gambling debts. Whenever it was looking like the feds were going to grab one of Vinchetti’s men cold, said man would come to the compound and, thanks to Prouty’s skills, leave several weeks later with a new face. Simple. And Prouty didn’t really mind at all. They gave him a little room to live in, three meals a day plus all the satellite channels, and it sure as hell beat hanging from that hook. Escape was impossible; the compound was constantly locked, full of guards, and close to fifty miles from any other dwellings. It was this or the hook.

This worked.

These little side jobs were another matter, though. Not only was the compound used as a production stage for the most unimaginable endeavors in visual pornography, it was a stage, too, for Vinchetti’s own personal desires for vengeance. Whenever somebody stole from Vinchetti, or lied to him, insulted him, slighted him in any way, it was Dr. Prouty’s job to initiate a creative revenge which Vinchetti would personally witness and have video-taped for posterity. The deeds definitely tested Prouty’s intestinal fortitude but then… there was always the hook… so he simply did what he was told and didn’t morally question himself about the victims. Hell, they were all probably bad people anyway.

Quite often, Prouty kept them alive for as long as possible. Non-anesthetic lobotomies were another Vinchetti favorite, as were full body flensings, acid catheters, and “trunk jobs.” Genital mutilation comprised so much activity in this place that it had actually grown blasé; you could only dissect some many penises, remove so many scrotums, poach so many testes, and gun-brush so many urethras before it lost its thrill. Hence, Vinchetti kept pressing the doctor for new and original spectacles.

Like this one.

The woman’s name was Darcy, one of Vinchetti’s part-time paramours. Vinchetti liked them skinny and trashy (such women reminded him of his New Jersey childhood) and Darcy definitely fit the bill. Ninety-five pounds, tiny-breasted, and with a mouth more foul than the bottom of a slaughter house dumpster, Darcy had made the faux pax of telling one of the other girls: “Vinch has a little dick. It’s teeny, like my pinkie.”

Big mistake.

The other girl had ratted and now here Darcy lay, side-strapped nude to Prouty’s work table. It was an odd sight, to say the least: Prouty thought of conjoined twins connected at the mouth. See, Darcy shared the lab table with another of Vinchetti’s employees, one Hymie Levy. Hymie was a young mathematics whizz-kid who’d graduated with honors from Georgetown Business School, and now—or it should be said, until very recently—he’d served as one of Vinchetti’s accountants. Standing at a full five-foot four, Hymie weighed—easily—three hundred pounds, and the reason he occupied space on the torture table was simple: he’d been skimming money from Vinchetti’s trough. Hence, the mandate. If you stole even a nickel from the boss, you got the table. It was the principle of the thing.

Vinchetti was wincing at the site of Hymie strapped naked to the table. “Christ, Doc, that’s a lot of matzah balls; he looks even worse with his clothes off. The kid’s got enough blubber on him to keep an Eskimo family eating for ten years. No wonder there’s people starvin’ in the world. This fat fuck ate all the food.”

“I wouldn’t be too hasty in accusing the obese of a lack of will-power,” Dr. Prouty pointed out. “Recent research from John’s Hopkins indicates that perhaps as much as forty percent of obesity in America can be attributed to a previously unidentified icosahedral virus. Nonstructural protomers in the viral shell allow it to roam undetected by immune responses and directly attack the mitochondrion mechanisms in human fat cells. The result is a cell that cannot effectively turn glucose into energy—hence, an excess storage of adipose matter. Obesity is a tragic disease, not an instance of willful over-indulgence.”

“Aw, put a lid on that liberal bullshit, will ya, Doc? The fat motherfucker’s fat ’cos he can’t keep his fat fuckin’ hands out of the fuckin’ refrigerator. He eats six fuckin’ meals a fuckin’ day. He stuffs his fat motherfuckin’ face every fuckin’ chance he gets. It ain’t no fuckin’ virus, Doc. It ain’t no fuckin’ disease. The only problem this fat fuck has is a fuckin’ fork-to-mouth problem.”

Prouty knew the futility of taking exception. “Of course, you’re quite correct, sir. Pardon my oversight.”

Vinchetti smiled subtly. “Damn straight. And this fat fuck’s defnitely had his last fuckin’ meal.”

“Actually, sir,” the doctor reminded, “if you give the matter some abstract consideration, they’ll both be spending their final moments of life… eating with quite a bit of gusto.”

Vinchetti’s eyes dimmed for a second, then, “Oh, yeah! I get’cha, Doc! Man, is this gonna be sweet!”

Indeed, Prouty commiserated. Medium doses of Phenolax had rendered both subjects unconscious, after which Dr. Prouty had stripped them and strapped them, face to face, on the table.

Then he’d… connected them… at the lips.

Vinchetti was leaning over, peering at their faces. “So how’d you do their lips, Doc? What, you stitched ’em together? That looks like some pretty tough work.”

It was actually the simplest chore of all; the only “tough” work was suitably arranging Hymie’s incredible bulk on the table. “With this,” Prouty said, and held the instrument up.

At first glance, one might think the doctor had raised a chrome-plated curling iron, or even an electric steak knife. A power cord led to a shiny oval-shaped housing which fit comfortably in Prouty’s hand. From the front end protruded two very narrow steel tubules, whose gap could be adjusted by a knob at the base. “It’s a McCrath Model SS40-C, Series S, top of the line.”

“The fuck’s that?” Vinchetti queried.

“It’s a surgical stapler.”

And a fine one at that. It functioned similarly to an ordinary office stapler, though its feed mechanism was much more intricate. The impact tubule, containing the foot-end, ran parallel to the loading tubule. The two objects to be coupled were merely fitted into the gap at the end of the device, and—CLACK!—the power button was applied. The ends were joined while a curvicular one-millimeter surgical-grade staple was fired and shunted to the foot-end—and anything between it. The instrument was mainly used for long lacerations over deep wounds and re-attaching mesenterial tissue during primary abdominal operations. In this case, however, it was providing a very new and creative utility.

“You stapled their lips together?” Vinchetti deduced.

“That’s correct, sir. The entire procedure took less than a minute, I’d say.”

Vinchetti stepped back, astonished. “That’s really neat-o!”

Dr. Prouty rolled his eyes. Yes. Neat-o.

At the same moment, the door opened, and in walked Vinchetti’s most trusted lieutenant, a weasel-faced little man with hair like steel wool and more pock-marks than Tommy Lee Jones. Tony Guerini had worked his way up from the bowels of Trenton. As a kid, he’d bagged for the numbers racket in all the worst neighborhoods, and as a teenager he was working enforcement. When a hooker gypped her pimp, it was Tony who uglied her up, cutting off her clitoris for the first offense, her nose for the second, then the head for the third. When a numbers collector came up short, it was Tony who shattered his spine, and when a distro guy stepped on the smack a little too hard, it was Tony who cranked the tourniquet around his neck till his eyeballs popped half out and his face hemorrhaged. Tony was an industrious young man. And by the age that most young men were graduating college, Tony was proving himself as a most reliable “button” for the Vinchetti Family. He deemed no job too abhorrent, no hit contract too deplorable. Be it a hardened crew-boss from a rival family or an eighty-year-old lady who was a crooked cop’s mom, Tony would tear out the heart of the crew-boss with a claw hammer and rape the old lady to death without so much as a blink. He’d once machine-gunned an entire busload of first graders simply because one of the kids was a judge’s grandson, and when the Catholic diocese had threatened to not pay back their loan, it was Tony who kidnapped those three nuns from St. Christopher’s and…

Well…

You don’t really want to know what he did to them.

It should suffice to say, then, that Tony didn’t tiptoe through the tulips when it came to getting family work done, and when the Paul Vinchetti had had to go to war, Tony was his commander in the field. A loyal friend and most trusted adjutant.

“Tony!” exclaimed Vinchetti with enthusiasm. “Where ya been, my man! The fun’s about to start!”

“Wouldn’t miss it for a cock-suck from Jenna Jameson,” Tony replied, sporting a high-end Sony Max-Cam. Then he took a look at Hymie’s bulbous hairy buttocks. “Er, on second thought, maybe I would.”

Vinchetti honked comradly laughter and slapped his friend on the back. “Aw, come on! Big, bad, tough-guy, human meat-grinder like you? You’ll love this!”

Tony (who, by the way, wore an absolutely ridiculous white suit, black satin shirt, and red tie) screwed the camera onto a Vivitar tripod. “Fuckin’ Hymie,” he muttered. “I told ya, boss. I told ya that tub’a shit was skimming some cream off the top.”

“Yeah,” Vinchetti remarked. “I had Lunky put a hidden camera in the cash room. Got the walrus-lookin’ fat scumbag rippin’ me off on tape.”

“How much did he pinch? Couple hundred large?”

“Fuck, no. Twenty bucks. It ain’t the amount, ya know? It’s the deed. Ya gotta be loyal in this business.”

Tony nodded sternly. “Damn straight.”

Dr. Prouty, meantime, stood aside, barely listening to the wise-guy banter. He hoped they could get on with it soon. Emeril Live came on in an hour. Bam!

Now Tony was widening the hoods on the lights. “So when did ya tell him you had him cold?”

Vinchetti’s slick grin turned up higher. “This morning right after breakfast. You should’a seen him, Tony! He put down four plates of hash and eggs, so then me and Knuckles Jr. bring him into the office, show him the tape. He was blubberin’ like a baby—a giant baby!—and he’s on his knees beggin’ for his life, kissin’ my wing-tips. Thought he was gonna upchuck all that food right there on the carpet.” Vinchetti’s eyes took on a glitter. “And it’s a good thing he didn’t ’cos…”

But Tony’s attention had drifted to the broad lab table where Hymie and Darcy lay strapped. He squinted in confusion. “Who’s that there strapped next to him? Darcy?”

“Yeah, she mouthed off,” Vinchetti explained. “Didn’t know a good thing when she saw it, if ya know what I mean. Kind’a hate to see her go, though. Flap-jacks for tits and a pussy on her about useless—you could stick a magnum of Asti Spumanti up there and there’s still be slack—but, man, could she chug a cock. I’ll tell ya, Tony, she’d have my rod in her yap right down to the root and still, somehow she’d be able to tongue my asshole.”

“‘S’shame to have to deep-six a talent like that.”

Vihchetti made an odd pause. “Well, you know what I’m talkin’ about, Tony. Right?”

“What’cha mean, boss?”

“Yeah, sure. I heard she’s been blowin’ you all along, same time she was blowin’ me. Heard you were fuckin’ her too.”

Tony shot a dark glance right back. “Hey. Boss. Jokin’ around like that ain’t funny. I would never, and I mean never, fuck around with your private stock.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Tony said.

Vinchetti eyed his friend a moment more, then cracked his hands together and burst out laughing. “Hey, Doc! Would ya get a load of this guy? He thought I was serious!” Vinchetti slapped Tony hard on the back, still honking laughter.

Dr. Prouty rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, boss, you’re a real comedian,” Tony said.

“Bet’cha about shit yer pants, huh! Naw, Tony, I know you’d never fuck me over; I was just funnin’ with ya. But this crackhead bitch here—she’s got a good one comin’.”

“So what she mouth off about?”

“Can ya believe it? The little spunk rag said that I…” Vinchetti thought the better of elaborating. “She just got mouthy, you know?”

“Sure. Ain’t nothin’ worse than a split-tail who don’t know her own place. Only time a chick’s mouth should be open is when someone’s got a hard-on to stick in it. Rest of the time it should be closed.”

Dr. Prouty nearly blanched. I have a feeling these two don’t make any charitable donations to the National Organization of Women.

“I hear that,” Vinchetti agreed. “And what do guys like us do every time? Give ’em some green, put some nice jewelry around their skinny necks, and then they start to think they’re special. They start to get uppity. Start mouthin’ off, start gripin’ and takin’ you for granted. Well fuck that shit.”

Tony nodded in this deep philosophical unanimity. “Fuckin’ chicks. Ain’t none of ’em no good when ya get down to it. Ain’t nothin but a bunch of cum drains, boss, a bunch of low down dirty whores.” But Tony flinched immediately after he’d spoken the words. “Er, what I mean is all of ’em except your wife, boss.”

A laudable exclusion, Prouty thought.

Vinchetti returned the nod. “Well, yeah. Right.”

“So what’cha got planned for these two?”

“Oh, it’s a doozy, Tony! Doc here came up with the idea. Take a look, take a close look at ’em.”

Tony leaned closer over the two immobile faces. “Looks like… What the hell? Looks like they’re stuck together somehow… by their lips.”

Vinchetti chuckled. “Yeah, ain’t it neat-o? Doc here’s got this machine that stapled their lips together.”

“It’s a McCrath Model SS40-C,” Dr. Prouty piped in, holding the device up. “From their ‘S’ series, ‘S’ for small. It’s quite a quality item. The adjustable impact and foot assemblies allow for a—”

“Shaddap,” Vinchetti said, turning his attention back to Tony. “Ain’t that somethin’? Ain’t that some work?”

Tony continued to examine the fine details of the “work” with a watchmaker’s study. “You ain’t kiddin’. But… I don’t get it. They ain’t dead already, are they?”

“Naw, just unconscious. Doc here shot each up with some heavy duty tranks.”

“Actually,” the doctor interjected, now holding up his Bush automatic syringe, “I used the latest barbituric-acid derivative, Phenolax. Induces total unconsciousness in less than twenty seconds. It works by reducing the biogenic output of the diazamine receptors in the brain and—”

“Shaddap,” Vinchetti ordered then said back to Tony, “And they’ll be coming to in a few minutes—that’s when the fun begins. Remember what I said about Hymie, right? The fat hump plowed down four plates of hash and eggs for breakfast, and I’m talkin’ stacked plates, Tony. I’ll bet this kid’s got five pounds of grub in his belly, and now Doc’s gonna make him throw it all up.”

Tony’s minor powers of calculation ticked for a moment, then he saw the ploy. “Aw, boss, that’s low down. He’ll be puking it all up right into Darcy’s mouth.”

“That’s the plan. Slick, huh? And shell have to scarf up all that puke and fast, or else she’ll kick, right, Doc?”

“That’s correct, sir,” Prouty replied. “Once Hymie begin’s to aspirate the vomitus, it will have no place to go but into Darcy’s oral cavity, and due to the obvious fact that their mouths are surgically adhered, Darcy will need to swallow it all as quickly as it is disgorged. If she does so, she’ll survive; however, if the volume of the regurgitant exceeds her capacity to swallow it, her tracheal passage will become obstructed, whereupon the vomit will congest in the upper bronchi. As I was remarking to Mr. Vinchetti earlier. She’ll have to eat it, or she’ll drown.”

Vinchetti cracked his hands together. “Damn! Ain’t it great the way Doc talks?”

Tony’s brow furrowed in an expression of deep admiration. “I like it. The skinny bitch drowns in Hymie’s hash and eggs.” Then he scratched his head. “But how are you gonna make him puke?”

“Doc just injected him with this fancy stuff,” Vinchetti answered.

“A simple saline and copper sulphate solution injected intra-muscularly,” Doc said. “Once the compound comes in sufficient contact with the stomach’s exterior blood supply—”

“Shaddap,” Vinchetti said. “Just take his word for it, Tony. It won’t be long before Hymie’s blowin’ chunks like a fuckin’ bilge pump.”

“You figure she’ll be able to do it?” came Tony’s next query. “You know, eat all that puke?”

Both mobsters considered the rather remarkable question. “What do you think, Doc?” Vinchetti asked, chuckling. “I mean, seein’ that you’re a gambling man, if you had money to bet, would you bet she could do it?”

“I would, sir,” Dr. Prouty responded in certainty. “The primal instinct for a human being to survive is unfathomably spirited. In fact, I’d say she’ll survive several cycles.”

“Cycles?” Tony asked.

Vinchetti explained. “See, if the bitch manages to swallow all that puke, then Doc injects her with some of that fancy copper stuff. Get it? Then it’s her turn to puke into Hymie’s mouth. They’ll just keep puking back and forth like that till they croak.”

“That rocks!” Tony exclaimed.

Prouty noticed a gradual increase in respiration in the victims. Eyelids began to flutter. “If I may interrupt, sir. I believe our subjects are regaining consciousness.”

“Tony! Turn on the camera,” Vinchetti made the zealous command. “Get us a wide shot, the whole table. I want to see ’em convulsing’n shit.”

Tony did so, and soon the convulsing began. First, though, came the initial recognition of the calamity. Hymie and Darcy’s eyes did indeed flutter open. They stared glazily for a few seconds… and then the rest hit them: they were strapped to each other, face to face, irrevocably joined at the lips.

Then they began to scream into each other’s mouth.

The sounds were muffled, of course, more like a panicked mewling, Hymie’s lower, in staccato-like gruffs, Darcy’s a long high baffled whistle. It was a sound unlike any Dr. Prouty had ever heard. An additional leather strap girding their necks prevented any possible action to pull back and tear out the staples. The victims squirmed within their bonds, bug-eyed, trying to kick, frenetically jerking, trying to somehow twist out—but each and every gesture proved futile.

All three men stood stock-still, watching raptly. A considerable erection became evident at the front of Tony’s preposterous white slacks, but Vinchetti himself seemed to be growing bored. “Hey, Doc. We got video runnin’ here, ya know, and we ain’t got till fuckin’ Christmas. When’s Hymie start to let ’er rip?”

Prouty felt a few pops of sweat come out on his brow. “It used the maximum human dose, I assure you, sir. Given Hymie’s greater than average capillary tract, due to the excess of fat, the vomitive compound may take a trifle longer than expected to reach the target duodenal blood vessels. You see, sir, a person such as Hymie—clinically obese—actually possesses a higher volume of hemoglobin due to the fact—”

“Shaddap,” Vinchetti said. “Just make him puke, Doc. If that sack’a blubber ain’t pukin’ in five minutes, I’ll have my boys hang you upside-down from a meat-hook in your asshole. Savy?”

Dr. Prouty gulped through a nod as he spied the recurring image in his head.

“Shit, Tony,” the boss went on, “this is makin’ for some pretty dull footage. I think what we need is a little rodwork to spice things up while we’re waitin’ for Hymie to blow chow.”

Tony popped a brow, half eyeing Darcy’s quirming buttocks. “Yeah, boss, but you know, like I was saying before, I’d never fuck around with any of your squeeze.”

Vinchetti cracked a laugh. “She ain’t my squeeze no more, Tony. Shit, you think I give a shit now? Once we’re done with the fun and games here, I’m gonna have Knuckles Jr. carve her up and put her in the grinder for the pit bulls. So go ahead, paisan. Use it or lose it.”

Tony shrugged. “Don’t mind if I do.” He lowered his ludicrous slacks and zig-zag-patterned Fruit of the Looms, freeing a hard penis that looked more like an eight-inch length of knockwurst. He slicked it up via some spit in the palm and wasted no time getting it where he wanted it. As if Darcy’s plight weren’t regrettable enough—now this: perfunctory sodomy. She really began to squirm.

“And don’t forget the wet shot,” Vinchetti reminded. “After all, this is video.”

“Got’cha, boss. When I’m done coring this stringbean, her ass is gonna look like a rum bun.”

Since Darcy and Hymie were strapped face to face, her buttocks were positioned quite conveniently. All Tony need do was step right up and slip it in. Her whistle-like mewls heightened whilst Tony’s frightfully thick member methodically plumbed the depths of her rectal passage.

Then Vinchetti looked over at Doc and said, “You too, Doc. Get on it.”

Prouty froze. “Uh, pardon me?”

“Whip out your johnson and put it where the sun don’t shine.”

Prouty’s mouth fell open but no words came out. A quick appraisal of the obvious (there were two naked asses on the table, and one was currently occupied) did not leave him with much of a positive conclusion. “Uh-uh-uh… you want me to-to-to—”

“That’s right, Doc. Get your dick out, get it hard, and fuck Hymie in the ass. Jesus Christ, you act like I’m askin’ you to build the Great Pyramid.”

The doctor looked at Hymie’s clenching buttocks. It was hairy… and huge. It lay there on the side of the table like one fifty-pound bag of flour stacked upon a second. Doc made the only logical response. “Uh-uh-uh… sir, I-I-I couldn’t possibly—”

Like magic, Vinchetti shucked a small semi-automatic pistol and aimed it right at Prouty’s face. “Come on, Doc. Chop chop. You know how I hate loud noises.”

Prouty stood in total paralysis. “But, sir, given the sheer size of Hymie’s buttocks, not to mention the considerable over-hang of flesh… I rather doubt that a… successful insertion… would even be physiologically possible.”

Vinchetti cocked the pistol.

Oh, dear, Dr. Prouty thought. “As I said, I’ll give it my most concerted effort, sir.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Prouty could scarcely imagine a predicament such as this. Tony didn’t seem to be having any trouble at all, but of course, for one thing, Tony was a demented sexual psychopath and, two, the lithe female derriere he so frenetically sodomized was a bit more pleasing to the erotic imagination than the corpulent mass that Prouty was tasked with. He lowered his trousers and briefs only to find his own penis so withered it appeared to be retracting into his body. I’m going to put THIS, he thought, and looked at Hymie’s ass, into THAT?

The doctor remained locked in rigor.

“Look, Doc,” Vinchetti said with an eerie calm. “Either you cornhole Hymie or I’ll kneecap you and feed ya live to the pit bulls. Now quit dilly-dallying. Get some shit on your stick.”

A deep breath, then—capitulation. Dr. Prouty began to masturbate, standing right there with his trousers at his ankles. His penis felt like a piece of warm taffy (a small piece), and now his previous words were haunting him in a manner that he could scarcely conceive of. The primal instinct for a human being to survive is unfathomably spirited, he determined just moments ago. Well, here was his chance to prove that particular maxim.

Oh dear me… He could imagine how he appeared: huffing and puffing, knees shaking and eyes squeezed shut, hands plying a dead dick. The mewls of horror issuing from the table didn’t exactly help him get in the mood. He reassembled any erotic image in his mind: Farrah Fawcett in Playboy, the models in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue, and all those nut-brown, bikini-lined Beverly Hills bimbos he’d had on his own table not too long ago. He imagined Cindy Crawford’s hand in place of his own, while Ginger from Gilligan’s Island tended his testes with her tongue. The latter image was beginning to work until some devious mental glitch replaced Ginger with Gilligan himself.

Back to square one.

How about that nameless brunette from the Tobe Hooper flop Lifeforce? Ooo-la-la. And all those silly ditzes in those Girls Gone Wild video commercials? Better. When the doctor thought of Ellie May in her too-tight one-piece lounging by the cee-ment pond, he actually felt the inklings of, perhaps, legitimate vasocongestion. It’s working! he thought. It’s working! But, alas, a fraction of a second later, Jethro trundled into the image and all was lost again.

“Time’s runnin’ out, Doc. I’ll give ya to the count of three.”

The doctor wiped his mental slate clean. Enough of that! Instead, he put his fate simply into the hands of the human survival instinct.

“One.”

I’ll do it!

“Two.”

Come on!

“Thr—”

Presto! The genuine threat of death did the trick, and no forced thoughts of voluptuous vixens were necessary. Before the doctor could worry any further, six hard-as-ever inches stuck out grandly.

“Three cheers for Doc!” Vinchetti celebrated. “Not bad for an old fuck!”

I’d duly flattered, Dr. Prouty thought.

“Now get that California baloney pony where it belongs, and don’t make me have to count to three again.”

Dr. Prouty didn’t expend precious time thinking; he merely followed Tony’s fine technical example, spat into his hand, and transferred the all too critical lubrication to his erection. Then, with some effort, he pushed up the upper slab of Hymie’s buttocks and—

Don’t think about it! Don’t think about it!

—slid his glans into the terrifying crevasse. Luck was on his side—for a change—as said glans found the area in question almost instantaneously: Hymie’s rectal sphincter. Dr. Prouty urged his pelvis forward, felt some understandable resistance, then sighed in relief.

He was in!

“There ya go, Doc. Now give that fat shit a butt-fucking like his momma never dreamed.”

It felt like the tightest of o-rings clamped around his penis. It did not feel good. Nevertheless, realizing his life was at stake he… butt-fucked the living daylights out of Vinchetti’s unfortunate former accountant. An errant glance aside showed him that Tony was doing the same to Darcy as she continued in her whistle-like protests. The slaps of their groins to their subjects’ rumps provided a bizarre stereoscopic sodomy. Tony was going hell for leather, and some inexpressible inclination caused Dr. Prouty to keep pace.

“Remember, boys,” Vinchetti said, “I need wet shots. Spunk ’em both up good. Oh, and Doc? How’s this for a deal? If you get your nut before Tony… I’ll let ya go.”

Dr. Prouty’s heart surged at the pledge, then more survival instinct kicked in. No erotic imagery needed, no luxurious fantasy required to prompt the called-for effect. Deft as a porn star, the doctor withdrew his member and—

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

—fired half a dozen gouts of sperm a yard across the table.

“Holy shit, Doc!” Vinchetti cheered. “That’s some serious baby-batter you’re pumpin’ out! Hey, Tony! The old geezer beat ya to the finish line, and—holy shit!—he just hosed ’em both down!”

This was a fact. Dr. Prouty’s veritable vault of semen had not only plastered Hymie but Darcy as well. Like trails of egg-drop soup, the viscid lines lay across their sides. One shot even made it to Darcy’s left ear.

Prouty leaned back against the wall, too exhausted to even pull his pants back up. Inside, though, he beamed. He’d done it.

“I’m proud of ya, Doc,” Vinchetti said, “and I’m a man of my word, so don’t you worry. But we still got a little more to do before you go waltzing out of here.”

“Of course, sir. Thank you, sir.”

I’m free! Prouty thought. I’m finally going to get to leave this h ell hole!

The thumping from the table intensified; Tony was reaching his own moment of crisis, care of Darcy’s throttled rectum. The stainless steel examination platform actually shook from the concluding strokes. Then—

“Here’s one for the Gipper, bitch—”

Tony too demonstrated an impressive ejaculation, spackling Darcy’s clenched, moon-white bottom until it sufficiently shined.

“Good cum-shots, boys, real good,” Vinchetti praised.

Tony’s cheeks billowed as he let out a long breath. “All in a day’s work.” Then he looked down at his slackening penis. “Hey, boss, how do you like that? Clean peter, not a speck’a shit on it.”

“Yeah, these crackheads, ya know? They barely eat nothin’,” the boss eloquently pointed out.

Prouty, when he dared look himself, wasn’t nearly as lucky. His penis was caked with feces; he even noted a telltale piece of corn. Embarrassed, he quickly rebuckled his pants before the others could notice.

He’d… clean up later.

Vinchetti shot him a glance. “Okay, Doc, now that you’ve had your fun, when’s the puke party gonna start?”

It was a reasonable question. Both subjects continued to mewl, writhing within their bonds. Dr. Prouty knew that if he didn’t get this show on the road, all previous bets—i.e., his freedom—were off, and he knew what the problem was: sheer physical mass.. He prepared another injection of the copper sulphate—ten times the recommended maximum human dose. A dose this large would cripple liver and pancreatic function as well as cause considerable brain damage but…

Hymie won’t need any of that, the doctor realized. All Hymie needs to do is vomit.

And vomit Hymie did—in grand style—less than a minute after the second injection. Much gastric turbulence preceded the event—sounds akin to a fish tank—and then came the salvo of muffled retches. Lip-locked, Hymie and Darcy’s eyes shot wide open, their faces turning red, their limbs suddenly seized by shock.

That’s the ticket, Prouty thought in relief.

Hymie’s fat cheeks ballooned, then the retching deepened, and after that, a simplicity of molested nature took its inescapable course.

“Here comes lunch!” Vinchetti shouted in glee.

Even the doctor, in the most abstract of notions, found the atrocious exhibition to be strangely fascinating. One stomach emptying into another. Food consumed previously being ejected into an adjacent mouth only to be consumed again. It was the ultimate in recycling.

Vinchetti and Tony hooted and hollered like a pair of riotous fans at a football game. All the while, Hymie continued to throw up into Darcy’s mouth, and Darcy—little trooper that she was—continued, somehow, to swallow each hot, chunky gust. Dr. Prouty, in a moment of morbid query, wondered what hash and eggs tasted like the second time around.

It went on like that for a good ten minutes, and even when the contents of Hymie’s stomach had clearly been displaced, he just kept right on retching.

Vinchetti asked the seemly question, “Hey, Doc? How can he keep puking like that?”

“Dry heaves, as one might say,” Prouty replied. “The copper sulphate will remain active for hours; the stomach will continue to spasm whether there’s food in it or not. All he’s vomiting up now is latent bile.”

“I like it!” Vinchetti barked.

“Latent bile,” Tony remarked. “That’s a doozy of a dessert.”

“And would you look at the skinny bitch?” the boss added. “She looks knocked up!”

The two subjects shivered on the table, both their faces pinkened in exhaustion, Hymie still dry heaving, and their open mouths still securely stapled together. Prouty had been right in his estimation: Darcy, in order to stay alive, had indeed consumed the entirety of Hymie’s vomit, but in that absolutely massive transference of partially digested food, one had to consider the disparity of proportions. Hymie, a 300-pound glutton, and Darcy, a 90-pound crack-tart. Now her own stomach was surely stretched to its physical limit; hence, the effect left the rack-skinny girl with an abdomen so bloated she looked as though she were in her third trimester of pregnancy. It was an amazing sight.

“Okay, Doc. Time to get things goin’ in the other direction.”

Dr. Prouty administered the next injection of vomitive, this time to Darcy, and the desired effect was almost instantaneous due to her diminutive body weight. The show began again, Hymie now on the receiving end.

“They’ll just keep going like that till they die,” the doctor assured.

“Aaaaaack! Aaaaaack! Aaaaaack!” was the sound that Darcy made once she began heaving in earnest.

“Peachy,” Tony said.

Vinchetti frowned. “Yeah, but its gettin’ a little—a little. Hey, Doc, what’s the word I’m lookin’ for?”

“Wearisome?”

Vinchetti scratched his chin. “What’s that mean?”

“Boring.”

Vinchetti cracked his hands together. “That’s the word! Come on, let’s go into office, leave these two to puke themselves to death. You too, Doc. I wanna show you and Tony my latest vid.”

“Aaaaaack! Aaaaaack! Aaaaaack!” Darcy seemed to reply as they left. Vinchetti led them out of the work room and down a few dank cinderblock halls. Muted shrieks could be heard from a number of closed doors, and from somewhere deeper in the block compound, the pit bulls were at work again. Vinchetti stopped and opened one door, stuck his head in. A woman blubbered in a voice scarcely human: “Please, no more, no more…”

“Hey, fellas, how’s it going?” Vinchetti called in.

“Great, boss. This hosebag’s really kickin’ it up.”

“Neat-o. Later.” Vinchetti closed the door, leading on. “Paulie and Charlie’re in there skinnin’ the bitch who runs our massage parlors in Utica. She was takin’ clients on the side.” He shook his head a moment. “Fuckin’-A. Looked like Paulie was pulling down wallpaper.”

“Cunt had it coming,” Tony remarked.

“It’s a good trick. When they’re done skinnin’ her, Logman comes in and fucks her to high heaven. Comes all over her whiles she’s shakin’ on the floor red as a beet.”

“Cool,” Tony said. “So what’s this new vid you’re talkin’ about, boss?”

“Aw, it’s great, Tony. You’ll love it. Come on in.”

Vinchetti’s office looked typical for a man of his stature: rich paneling, a side bar, cherrywood furniture. Behind the desk, a dark portrait of his father loomed, overseeing all. Several televisions and a row of VCRs occupied the opposing wall. Vinchetti hit the PLAY button on a remote.

“Nice,” Tony said, looking up at a screen. There, a exquisitely shaped female rump was poised, fine and white as alabaster. Elegant fingers slipped back, parting the buttocks to reveal a delicate rectum.

Vinchetti whistled. “How’s that for an ass? Ain’t that somethin’?”

“Sure is, boss. Fuckin’ thing should hang in a museum,” Tony remarked.

Next, on the screen, a greased erection appeared, and within seconds, the beautiful derriere was being fastidiously sodomized. Dr. Prouty watched from aside, fairly bored.

Vinchetti turned up the sound. “Stick me!” a woman’s hot voice implored. “Stick me right in the ass! All the way in! Hard!”

The penis on-screen obliged.

“Thing is,” Vinchetti went on. “See that cock? It ain’t my cock, I can tell ya that. But the ass that it’s goin’ in and out of happens to belong to my wife.”

Tony’s face was already going pale as cream. Before he could reach into his jacket for his gun, Vinchetti had already drawn down on him with his own pistol. The room seemed to freeze, its only movement coming from the TV screen where the sodomy continued. Eventually the camera lens opened, enlarging the scene well enough to show Vinchetti’s pert strawberry-blond wife bent over a vanity. The man sodomizing her was Tony.

“Boss,” Tony grated, “you don’t understand…”

“I understand that you’ve been butt-fuckin’ my wife in my bedroom. What else I need to understand? See, I had Lunky put a camera in there after he put the one in the cash room that fingered Hymie.”

Beads of sweat trickled on Tony’s forehead. “She came onto me, boss—I swear. Said if I didn’t do it, she’d tell you lies about me. I swear on my mother’s grave, boss!”

Vinchetti upped the volume some more, and now his wife—between proddings—snickered, “Thank God you had the balls to put the make on me, Tony. Ain’t no one else in this joint’s got the balls to.”

Tony paled further as Vinchetti kept the pistol aimed at his head.

“A woman’s got needs, ya know?” her voice continued. “A woman needs a cock up her ass sometimes, not that little thing my husband’s got. Christ, it feels like one of those little Vienna sausages.”

Oh, dear, Dr. Prouty thought.

Vinchetti turned off the video.

“Come on, boss,” Tony pleaded, having already urinated in his farcical white slacks. “It was just one of those things, ya know? I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

“Sure, Tony, sure. And I don’t mean nothin’ by this…” He gave a curt nod to Dr. Prouty who immediately stepped up behind Tony and snapped him in the side of the neck with a Bush automatic injector full of tranquilizers.

Tony staggered a moment, then was unconscious before he hit the floor.

Vinchetti’s wife had been previously “prepared.” Naked, of course, she sat strapped to an examination chair, her pretty head belted back against the adjustable head rest. Terror sheened her impeccable white skin and jutted her breasts out like ripe peaches above the chest strap. Tony, too, had been strapped to a chair, though far less intricately.

“You’re a genius, Doc, a friggin’ genius!” Vinchetti complimented, rubbing his hands together.

Dr. Prouty rolled his eyes.

Neither victim could make much in the way of vocal protest, just grunts from Tony and raving whimpers from Vinchetti’s wife. No, their mouths had not been stapled together like Hymie and Darcy—Vinchetti like variation. Instead…

Pretty proficient work, if I may say so myself, the doctor thought.

He’d run a half-inch-wide esophageal catheter down the throat of Vinchetti’s wife, after which he’d instigated what you might call a stomach pump in reverse. He’d also, quite skillfully, performed a modified ileostomy on her upper-left abdominal quadrant. In medical terms, the procedure (unlike the more familiar colostomy), circumvented the mid-small-intestinal process (known as the jejunum) through a surgically constructed stoma (or aperture) after which the small intestine was severed at this proximal point and stitched to the inside of the stoma. Dr. Prouty’s modification, however, bypassed this final step, and merely extricated the severed intestinal length.

In less-than-medical terms, he’d cut a slit in Mrs. Vinchetti’s belly, reeled out some gut, and snipped it.

He’d left the lower end of the intestine to dangle. The higher end he’d stapled to Tony’s lips via the McCrath Model SS40-C.

“Looks like a hose runnin’ from her stomach to Tony’s yap,” Vinchetti observed.

“Yes, a… hose,” Dr. Prouty offered, “from which chyme, mucosa, and partially digested intestinal material will empty.”

Another familiar Vinchetti chuckle. “The low-down prick likes stickin’ his dick into my wife’s shit, let’s see how he likes eatin’ it, huh?”

“Precisely.”

“It’s almost like you hooked her ass up to his mouth!”

“In a manner of speaking, that’s correct, sir. However, I thought you would enjoy a variation of that description. What I’m referring too, of course, is my decision to transect the jejunum rather than, say, the sigmoid colon.”

“Huh?” Vicnhetti expressed his incomprehension.

“It’s the large intestine that wilts the majority of moisture from the feces, sir. But severing the digestive tract at the jejunum will detour that effect.”

Vinchetti’s brow creased. “She’s gonna shit in his mouth, right, Doc?”

“Yes, but with intestinal matter that hasn’t been fully subjected to the complete digestive process. What voids into Tony’s mouth will be essentially diarrhea.”

Vinchetti cracked his hands yet again. “The Hershey Squirts! Neat-o!”

“Yes, sir,” the doctor continued to elaborate, “and given my previous preparation of goat cheese, raw garlic, baked beans, and canned dog food, it should make for an interesting mix.” (After the ileostomy, Dr. Prouty has emptied this mish-mash of ingredients into Mrs. Vinchetti’s stomach through the esophageal tube by means of a surgical aspirator pump.)

Tony’s mute face began to redden, as Mrs. Vinchetti’s bowels began to move.

“He’ll have to eat it,” Prouty said, “or he’ll drown.”

The gray-pink length of intestine began to squirm. Muffled gargling could be heard, and Tony’s cheeks billowed hugely at each blast of diarrhea..

“Gorgeous, Doc. You’re a true star.” Vinchetti patted Prouty on the back and led him out of the room.

Dr. Prouty tried to rein his enthusiasm, to control himself. “So, um, we’re done now, sir?”

“With them two? Sure. We’ll let Tony chug on that for a while before I have the boys feed ’em both to the pits.”

Warm joy surged through Prouty’s veins. “So then… I can go now?”

“Sure, Doc, you can go just like I promised—”

Prouty nearly squealed in delight.

“—after pigs can fly and fuckin’ Santa Claus come down the chimney to hold my dick for me when I piss,” Vinchetti finished. “When bears wear funny hats and the pope shits in the woods.”

Prouty’s heart seemed to drop to the floor. He stood and stared. “But… sir. You said—”

“Yeah, I know, I said you could leave if you fucked Hymie in the ass and got your nut before Tony.” Another slap on the back. “But there’s one thing you gotta learn, paisan. My word ain’t worth a tick on a dead dog’s balls. Never trust a goombah slime-bag mafia fuck like me, Doc.” Vinchetti walked on, belting laughter, but then he turned and winked. “Me, you, and that fancy stapler of yours? We’re gonna have ourselves a lot of fun in the years to come. Later, Doc! Have a great day!”

Dr. Prouty watched his boss disappear down the hallway.

Oh, well. It could be worse. There was always the hook.