Sex and Murder Magazine

By Jeff Sinclair

Thursday, May 20th

11:11 AM

Three.

That's three goddam girls in the space of eleven minutes wearing black tights and sexy shoes with straps and stiletto heels. This is good shit. Real good shit. Camera's fully charged and I've got all night to get more than enough footage.

…five-hundred dollars…

Five-hundred-got-dam-dollars for a twenty-one minute amateur candid video. Unbelievable.

Something's terribly wrong with a world that rewards the making of trash like this… and from some Joe Schmoe backwater bastard like myself. Mind you, it ain't trash till someone admits to fetishistic desires, and in this case, there ain't no shortage of 'em, that's for sure. If women only knew how visually dependent men are, maybe they wouldn't let it all hang out the way they do these days.

Or maybe they would. Maybe that's the point, Chuck, ever think of that? Maybe it's an exercise of power; make a man into putty and he's yours to be molded, is that it? Better yet, make every unfortunate bastard that sets eyes on you into putty and you can stroll right into the White House untested (hasn't that happened just recent?).

Jesus H Christ, we men're stupid. At this rate, they're gonna snatch the government right out from under us. President of the United States, a woman. Shit, before you know it, North Korea'll slide one of those nuclear missiles our way and woops—there goes the neighborhood! Welcome to New America, boys n' girls—it's a giant ashtray. Here, have an egg roll (or whatever it is they call food over there—cat guts n' dogmeat).

Yeah, I know I'm a bastard by your standards, if you can call them standards. Only thirty-five and refusing to get with the times, you say.

But, see, I am got with the times. That's why I'm here in New York (festering shitstain it is), skulking around in the subway system, sticking out like a sore thumb in a forest-green hunter's vest and trucker's cap with nary a care. I'm an opportunist, and there's a market for some pretty repugnant shit these days. You've got men glued to their computer monitors nightly with their pants at their ankles, seven days a week. Husbands, fathers, barely-legals, you name it, just inhaling this stuff, and there ain't no slowing it down neither—

—hold up—

Seventeen.

That's seventeen women I got for a video in the space of twenty-five minutes, and all before lunchtime. Jesus Christ on a tricycle, I'm gonna be rich.




7:31 PM

Rush hour's over and I'm up to ninety-nine women. Got some real slutty ones in there, too. Fishnet stockings, knee-high leather boots of every color in the goddam rainbow; heels so high they look like Klingons ready for battle. Hell, at this rate, I'll have four or five videos ready for purchase by morning. Press the clips together tonight, add some shitty tunes got from the public domain and slap a label on it:

Voyeur Compilation: Wednesday I-IV

Monday and Tuesday's work netted me eleven hundred. Wednesday alone will net me twice that amount. If I can keep this up, that's five thousand a week, and it ain't even summer yet! That's when the shorts come out!

Holding the camera in my lap for a long while, observing the latest bit, somewhere inside of me I begin to understand what all the fuss is about. Somewhere deep inside I begin to realize how us guys get roped into the voyeur thing.

It’s about blatant objectification in the privacy of our minds. It’s about ownership.

It’s about lust.



9:01 PM

One hundred twenty-three.

Slowed down quite a bit. Taking swigs from a fifth of Jack, so I'm feelin' hella good. Been sitting on a bench near the east end of the line, watching the rats congregate around something I can't quite see from my angle. It's amazing how scavengers can sense the presence of filth from so far away. I seen them scamper all the way down here from the other end of the station, and that's a good long haul.

Must be something dead they found.





9:31 PM

One hundred thirty.

Not much traffic down this way. I'd go west, but I'm drunk as hell. The nag called me five minutes ago. Told that bitch to suck it. Probably sucking on one right now, the cheating bitch.



10:34 PM

One hundred thirty-three. Last one was wearing a fur coat. But under it? A thong. Just a thong. She flashed me the front and the back. Was a hooker for sure. Will have to edit that one out.

Rats’re having a good ol' time down there on the tracks.

Squeak squeak.



11:15 PM

Tired…

Squeak.



11:47 PM

Just had one helluva dream about a future where thongs are outerwear. Just thongs. And high heels. Young chicks, old chicks…they were all up in it. Thongs in the mall. Thongs in coffee shops. Thongs standing in line at the DMV…

…hell of a lot of squeaking going on down there…



12:01 AM

Dozed off again, then looked up to see her standing nearby.

Her.

Jesus H, is she somethin’. That Sesame Street song comes to mind:

One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just don’t belong. If you guessed this one is not like the others, then you’re absolutely…

…right!

She was different, all right. Dressed in some comfortable black slacks, a loose black blouse, Adidas runners, and minimal accessories, she had what appeared to be a handmade purse slung over her shoulder—khaki, with intricately-stitched patterns, including big bright sunflowers on either side, an NYU patch, and a knitted green scarf tied around the strap. On her way home from school, eye strain visible, but their cerulean blue nonetheless clear and reflective, shoulder-length raven black hair framed her soft, cherubic features.

First impression: this girl couldn't hurt a fly, and wouldn't. She’d sooner pitch a campaign for their civil liberties. A diamond in the rough, she glances at me, smiles (thinks I’m cute—can see it in her eyes), and my whole world is alight.

“Come by here often?” I ask.

“Every night for the past week, though I’m considering starting the trek one stop over, starting tomorrow.”

“Well, shit. Am I so hideous?”

She laughs. It’s a pleasant laugh; a polite and humble laugh. The kind that makes you wonder who broke her heart to make her hold it back.

“Not at all,” she says, and turns to give me her full attention. Her eyes radiate warmth. I can see myself settling down with her, our entire universe contained within a white picket fence and well-trimmed hedges. “It’s just that no one’s ever here. It’s been giving me the creeps.”

Squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak.

“Looks like we’ve got an audience,” I say.

“I noticed." She moves closer to the edge of the platform, looks down at the tracks and gasps. “My God. Have you looked down here?”

“Can't say I have. Nor want to.”

“Come over here. Come look.”

I stand up, still drunk, take a few seconds to center myself, and join her near the edge of the platform, staring into a shifting abyss.

The sight is arresting: an ever-moving swirl of damp, oil-black fur and a scatter of red slits for eyes, tumbling and blending like a soup mix from hell. The rats had converged on something, their collective squeaking now one terrible drawn-out squeeeee, translucent pink tails whipping and undulating like angry snakes. It sobers me up real quick, and I look up at the girl, her baby blue eyes stricken by a girlish fear that makes me want to throw her over my shoulder and haul ass out of there.

The lights around us wink out; in the tunnel and on the platform. Immersed now in darkness, pale reflections in the rats' impenetrable eyes our only source of light, the twelve-twenty train is heard, its approach like thunder rumbling along the tracks, reverberating through the tunnel a distant, ominous roar. The urine-stained old thing will arrive in less than ten seconds, and we blink at each other in the viscous black like creatures made of air, afraid to move.

The train screeches to a halt, the doors open before us, and the lights inside, though flickering, are nonetheless inviting. The rats squeal louder than ever. It's all we can hear as I take the girl's hand, leading her ahead of me in the dark to step over the gap and into the last car of the train. I follow, eager to escape the screaming pitch I swear is gonna make my ear drums bleed, and when the doors close and I look around me, I find that I'm alone.

The girl is gone.



12:27 AM

I pop my hand through the plastic emergency panel and tug sharply on the handle. The train lumbers on through the tunnel, but two minutes later, I see a transit worker coming toward me from the car ahead. I meet him halfway, demanding he stop the train, telling him someone's in danger, someone's missing, turn back. But he can't make sense of a word I'm saying. I'm out of breath and my goddam Southern accent and drunkenness are getting in the way.

When he’s finally able to understand, he sits me down, radios someone on his Motorola gadget, and tells them to send a constable to the station. He apologizes repeatedly, tells me he can't reverse the train—it being the last of the night—but assures me someone will contact me at the number I've given him. He says it's procedure. Happens all the time. Asks if I know the person I think is in trouble back there.

"No," I say.

But for the next twenty-three hours, I can't get her out of my head.

Friday, May 21

11:13 PM

Just arrived at the east end. I’m alone in the station, and somehow this doesn‘t surprise me. Eyes're burning and my stomach's in knots, despite getting a call from a transit constable at two in the morning, telling me he found nothing at the platform where I lost the girl. Also, transit personnel in the booth two flights up saw the girl leave the station, then hail a cab.

"She's fine," the constable said.

But something wasn't right. Mr. Constable didn't see or hear the rats. The fucking horde of crimson-eyed rats multiplied to such a density they'd no doubt scurry onto the platform before long. And what's more, I knew—was absolutely positively fucking certain—that something terrible was going to happen right at the moment I guided the girl over the gap and into the train.

Now, as I stand on the platform looking down at the tracks (not a solitary rat to be seen or heard), I realize something terrible should have happened to both of us.

Just for shits n’ giggles, I fire up the camera and walk from one end of the station to the next, filming everything; the chipped black columns, the white tiles stained urine yellow. The graffiti. In this city, it’s hard to be surprised by anything, but I can’t suppress the cold bloom at the base of my spine when I switch to night vision and see the hundreds, if not thousands of inverted crosses scrawled everywhere; even on the ceilings.

Something had pulled us here last night—I can feel it now, like the memory of first love; that all-consuming, life-is-wonderful, tickling sensation accompanied by the rush of falling.

The rats hadn’t converged on a dead thing last night, but they were feeding. They were gorging themselves on the vortex of energy I now stand at the center of—right where the train had picked me up, right where I’d lost the girl—my whole body throbbing, overdosing on pleasure, arms outstretched on either side of me like a Baptist besieged by the Holy Ghost. In the throes of this pulsing surge, I’m convinced of the following:

) I’ve made contact with something not of this world.
2) It may be a ghost, but it sure ain’t holy.



11:58 PM

Been thinking about her all day, my thoughts becoming increasingly protective, possessive as the night wears on. Her plump little lips, pert nose, high cheekbones and ruddy cheeks; her raven hair and paradise eyes. Her voice, deep and womanly, despite her petite frame and classic, girlish Norman Rockwell smile.

I hadn’t accumulated much to live for in my thirty-five years. Meager savings, random short-lived entrepreneurial aspirations, and a wife of three years I’d fallen out of love with on account of her infidelity just months into our marriage. I wasn’t doin’ so good. Maybe my at-first-sight feelings for the girl are irrational. Maybe I’m in a bad place. Regardless, I’m taken by her, and driven by a foolish, masculine need to be sure she’s okay. I’m pondering all of this as I backpedal out of the vortex once again to catch my breath. I’m convinced this phenomenon is responsible for her vanishing, and the inverted crosses, I’m further convinced, are responsible for the phenomenon itself.

“Hey, baby.”

It’s her voice.

I turn around, almost throwing myself to the ground in the process. Must be wide-eyed like an acid fiend, because she’s on the verge of laughter. Feels like my body’s been separated into sections by a tiny knife, all of them hovering, buzzing with energy. I’m muttering incoherently, and, inspecting myself to make sure all the pieces are there, I realize I’m drooling.

“Looks like you were thrown into a washer set to spin,” she says, giggling.

Takes a while to get my bearings, to feel my eyes are back in their sockets and wet with life, but when I’m able to focus, I look her over—from head to toe several times—and realize something:

It’s not her.

It is her… but it’s not her.

She’s leaning against a column, intoxicating in a short black dress; a sheer, v-neck thing showcasing her cleavage, an immaculate bundle undoubtedly presented to me by a push-up bra (as if she needed it). Her hair is longer than it was yesterday, reaching her lower back, her eyes are now a delicate pale blue, and her skin, though not sickly white, is certainly of a porcelain quality, heated and perfect. Too perfect.

I realize I’m staring at her toned legs in fence net stockings, voluptuous for her frame, accentuated by low-rise black shoes with stiletto heels and a network of straps.

“See something you like…”

“I’m just…glad you’re okay…”

She throws her head back and laughs, and this time I notice a strange echo trailing behind it. A reverb shatters the decibels of her hysterical guffaw, scattering them throughout the station.

“Oh yes,” she says, “I’m quite all right. Not sure why you’d think I wasn’t, but it’s awfully sweet of you to be concerned.”

Something ain’t right. Nevermind the echo. The human mind, in its persistent state of denial, can explain the echo to pieces. What isn’t dismissible is her constant, knowing smile. It’s as if she’s been reprogrammed. She stares at me intently now, with eyes incapable of dilation.

“Of course I was concerned,” I say, on the verge of exasperation. "The rats, I thought they—”

“Yes? You thought they…”

“…they were almost on the platform, and it was so dark. So damned dark, and I thought you were in trouble…”

“Silly man, I can handle a few rats.”

“A few?”

“Relax,” she coos, fluttering her eyelashes. “I'm fine, Mr. Knight-in-shining-armor. Can't you tell?”

I look away. Stomach's churning. Knees're weak.

“Hey,” she says, and approaches me, each step deliberate and predictable. I look up again, avoiding her gaze, but drinking in everything else. My God, the muscles in her legs. The light sheen of perspiration covering them. Her womanly, child-bearing hips swaying, her breasts pressed together, the mischievous smirk on her cherubic face with the bee-stung lips coated with deep dark red lipstick, oh God.

She’s standing close enough that I can smell her perfume. Cocking an eyebrow, she says, “Is that for me?”

“Cut it out.” But I don’t want her to cut it out. “Tell me what happened to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean. You’re d-different now.”

“Different?”

“Were you sent to screw with me? Mess with my f-footage by some other company?”

“Footage? Oh, you mean the naughty videos you’ve been making of poor, unsuspecting female commuters? That footage?”

“It’s my wife. She hired you.”

She laughs. I take it as a no.

Pressing against me now, looking up at me with unchanging, unblinking eyes, she takes my hands into hers and places them on her ass. This is like a pill; a great big dose of A-okay as all of my doubts are whisked away.

“Like that?”

“…yeah…”

“…squeeze it…”

I do.

She turns around, arches her back and presses her ass against my bulge, undulating up and down, rubbing herself against me. Before long, I realize she's nudged me back into the vortex, the something-not-of-this-world, and though I’m aware of this, I’m unable to move.

“My wife…” I murmur with slack jaws, except it sounds more like, “Myrife…”

“Fuck the wife,” she says.

Limbs’re locked in place as she continues to grind against me. My eyes are moving, however. They’re shifting not of my own volition, but moving nonetheless, roving her body, collecting and multiplying and feeding the details of this peculiar encounter through my brain: the fence net stockings, the voluptuous legs and hips and breasts and lips, and her voice and her long, beautiful hair gripped in my fist—Pull it, she says—and the pulsing, the throbbing, the Oh God, Oh God, falling from my gaping mouth in a never-ending river of drool and pleading for mercy, realizing I’m caught in the maw of an unseen beast not meant to be understood, realizing I’m too weak to challenge this thing, to resist her body I can now see from every angle, coaxing me, siphoning me, and boom, boom, boom goes the pulse all through my groin, boom, boom, boom goes the yearning for release as she presses with a purpose now, grinding harder, gasping and moaning and grunting and—

I fall to my knees.

Splish.

Looking around me in shock, eyes wide, fumbling about like a man who’s lost his glasses, hands in the water going splish, splish, splish and the girl’s nearby. I can hear her heels click, click, click on the concrete tiles as she takes a couple steps back. I can hear her laughter, quiet and mocking.

Everything’s so bright. The white tiles, glowing. The sign on the other side of the tunnel—Mind the gap!—so bright. Splish, splish, splish and I look around my hands to find that I’m on all fours in a puddle of my own urine and saliva.

The girl is still laughing, batshit hysterical now, and one quick glance is all I can handle because what I see—her face—or rather, the sight of what I see her face has become, is too terrible to endure.

Backpedalling.

Trying to stand, but slipping.

Falling.

On my hands and knees, scurrying like a rat, still drooling, still urinating, still ejaculating, the climax won't stop, won't stop—Oh God, Oh God, Oh God—and the words and the questions, the HAVE TO GET AWAY and the WHAT IS HAPPENING and the FORGIVE ME, FORGIVE ME, FORGIVE ME and the clicking of the heels, gaining on me because I’m continually slipping, falling on my face, smashing my face—

And fingers in my hair, gripping. My head pulled up, and up, and up, and—



12:21 AM

“Yes, I need emergency. Have an ambulance sent to 121 Street Station. Yes. Yes, that’s right. Male, late twenties, maybe early thirties.

“No.

“No, I’m sorry; I don’t even know where to start. Your guess is as good as mine. He’s soiled himself like I’ve never seen. And there’s blood.

“There’s blood everywhere.”