Deathbed Ch. 4

"Aitch said that when you were drunk you cursed the angel who told you how you could be saved. Do you think she was lying?" He curled his lip. "I'm sorry to mention Aitch again, but he and his wife are the only ones who told me anything about you."

"Persistent, ain't ya?" He screwed up his face for a moment and downed his second drink.

"Uh-huh."

"Fine, I surrender. There's no stopping a woman when she gets curious." He took a deep breath. "No, I don't guess it was a lie, but I can see it ain't gonna happen. In sixteen hours, that hope's gone."

He pointed to a grandfather clock in the dining room. "Eight o'clock now. Noon tomorrow is the deadline. That race happened at midnight fifty years ago, and there's some leeway just to make sure justice is done--heh. If you happen to meet some candidate for sainthood what wants to be faithful 'til death ending at high noon, you can give me a heads-up." He chuckled sardonically and poured himself another drink. "Well, I'm permanently in the job at that hour. I can't be taken by the Devil after that either, so it sort of balances."

"Taken by the Devil?"

"You wanted to know why I was still mostly human? Because I've still got my soul in my body, that's why. It's not burning in the pits of Hell. It's right here." He tapped his chest. "If I were to break the terms of the contract--that is, commit a mortal sin--I'd lose my soul entirely. Satan's got power over me since he animates my body, and I can't quit what I do without that faithful woman, but he can't take my soul from my body unless I fuck up, and that's only in the first fifty years."

He gulped his rye, saw my quizzical expression and smiled. "Hey, you asked. I don't make the goddamn rules. Seems I got a break in that big law court in the sky, since all I really did was run off my mouth at the wrong time. Fifty years probation."

"What would become of you if Satan took your soul?"

"Well, I'd be sizzling in the fires, that's what would become of me." He took the pan he had fried the fish in and threw it in the sink with a loud clatter. "And he'd have to find himself a new Hellrider, I guess."

I had the impression that his tongue had loosened partly because he was getting tipsy--he had three double whiskeys in him and was pouring yet another. I was halfway through my first, which was three-quarters water. "Though he might have something else up his sleeve--hell, that's guaranteed where he's concerned. Tricky bastard. Leave that shit; she'll clean it up. Hey, you wanna sit in the parlor?"

I was beginning to wonder where the family was, since the car was gone and none of them had showed themselves inside or out. Not wanting to talk any more about Aitch, I said nothing.

We went out to the front room and sat on the sofa, Deadman bringing the bottle. It had not escaped me that we were nearly replaying the previous evening's activities, but reversed in order and attitude as if in a mirror. I curled my legs up under me and held my drink as Deadman leaned into the corner of the sofa and threw an arm over the back. His movements were far looser and more relaxed than usual, even careless.

"So after tomorrow noon, you can't be condemned no matter what you do?" I said.

"Right. Then I'm safe, though it means I'll have to do what I do until doomsday. No way out, ever again."

"Job security?" I tried to joke.

He laughed with a hollow ring. "I've hated this for fifty years, and I'll hate it for the rest of time. I find those dead souls that I'm told to find, and the way they died and who they took with 'em ain't generally a sight for the delicate-minded. They fight me tooth an' nail and they try to run, 'cause they know me for who I am."

"I guess they would."

"Talk my ear off all the way, tellin' me they don't deserve this. Then when I get near the gate, they start to cry. Moanin' and wailin' and gnashing their teeth. They know what's coming. That's when they seem most human, you know? Sometimes it seems they have a good case. Not all the damned wrote their own tickets."

His face was paler than usual, his eyes staring a hole into the opposite wall. "I've got my human soul, but sometimes it seems that does me more harm than good. I wouldn't pay them no mind if I wasn't still human. So I hafta kinda spike that human part to do my job, and it might be getting easier at long last, and maybe that's good and maybe it's not. I have to get them there, and I have to fight anyone who would take them from me on the way. No matter what they say to me, I have to do my level best, every time. So many times..." The whiskey was drunk and poured again.

"Did you have to take anyone today?"

"Yeah," he said, taking his fifth drink. "I went on some trips. I got back here a few hours ago. I went up to see if you were awake, and you weren't. I stood there looking at you sleepin', all that dark-red hair spillin' over the pillows…" Deadman trailed off, reaching out and twining a forefinger into a loose lock of my hair.

"What is it?" I asked, for his face had changed.

"I dunno. I had a flash of something when I saw you like that. I'd forgotten until now." He closed his eyes for a moment and brought the lock of hair to his nose, sniffing it. "Just because of the color of your hair, I guess. Like dry blood all around your head, and you lyin' there so still and beautiful…" Deadman rubbed my hair over his cheek.

"As if…I were dead?" I wasn't frightened; I felt a strange warmth, my breasts rising and falling with my deep breaths. "You saw a vision of me dead?"

"Maybe I did. I know I won't have you for long, darlin'." Did he mean that he was going to send me home in a little while, or that my mortal tenure on the earth would be much shorter than his endless span?

"All I wanted was to get in there with you and sleep forever. So I got undressed and I crawled into bed and wrapped your hair around my throat and until you woke up I slept the way the dead ought to sleep. I didn't even dream about the children."

"Children?"

"Children. Burning in hell, forever. Who made this universe, dammit?" Deadman let go of my hair and dragged a hand over his face. "I hoped I'd get out of this. I believed that angel all the time, somewhere in my heart, and it's kept me going up to now. After that hope's gone…" He grabbed the whiskey bottle and took a slug straight from it, wiping his mouth. "I wish I could get shit-faced on less'n a whole fifth of whiskey. Takes too damn long."

"You've taken children to hell…? What's going to happen to that soul of yours if you have to do this for eternity?"

"Damned if I know," he said, with meaning in every word. "Like I say, he's a tricky bastard. He won't give up just because he's forbidden to take my soul. The contract don't say nothing about me offering it free of charge." For a moment, his face cracked, but he struggled with it. "Listen to me--drunk and mournin' on my own sorry ass. I sound like a goddamn fool."

"I'm sorry," I said, reaching out to touch his knee. "I wish…" He turned his head away, then looked back with such pain burning in the harsh lines of his face that I felt it lance through me like a spear. "I…I'm so sorry…"

With every cell in my body, I wished I were the woman of his dreams. To release him from this endless, merciless, damned existence… I moved forward and put my arms around him, my head on his breast.

The rider remained motionless for several moments, still holding the bottle. My tears began to flow silently, running down my nose and cheeks and wetting his shirt. They streamed from my eyes and washed pity, compassion, yearning for redemption through me until it seemed I would break apart from the swelling of my heart. He put down the bottle and took hold of my arms, seeming to want to move me away from him, but I clung tighter. "Don't send me away. Let me stay with you," I said. "I want to help you. Please."

Part Seventeen

"Now, darlin'…" he said with a quiet note of despair. I pulled his head down and pressed my lips to his. "Aw, Irene…" Deadman kissed me back, his arms sliding around my waist and shoulders. "It ain't no good in this world, but I couldn't pass you up for anything. God, you taste like paradise…"

His tongue slid into my mouth and we lost ourselves in voluptuous kissing and savage caresses for what seemed like hours. Somehow his clothes were off and I was raking my nails over his back and chest, leaving furrows that bled and closed up again in moments. Deadman alternately grimaced and moaned, licking his own blood from my fingertips, and stripped me naked there on the sofa.

His face went between my legs and he ravished me with his mouth while I screamed, yanking at his hair as he sucked hard at my clit and pressed his long tongue inside me. I whimpered with orgasms, my hips jerking from side to side with his heavy head and hands pinning me down and forcing my thighs open. He lapped and nipped the folds, pillaging every crevice of my cream and juices and ramming his tongue into me until I was sore and throbbing against his teeth.

Finally he left me alone, wiping the dampened hair of his beard with his palm and falling back with his erection rampant in his lap. I lay panting for a little while, but soon rose and straddled him as he sat upright on the sofa, the bedspread and afghans wrinkling around my knees. My vulva was raw, but I raised up as high as I could and spat on my fingers, spreading the saliva between my buttocks and working the moisture into my anus.

"Now, you hold on there," Deadman said with a snort when he realized what I was doing. "Not that I'm bragging or nothing, but your little back door's not going to let my cock in so easy. Matter of fact, I ain't never done that but once, and she told me to pull it out right smart soon's I got it in."

"I'm used to ass fucking," I replied with a sensual smile. "But I'll get something to help." Leaving him with a kiss, I took the can of shortening from the kitchen and returned with it, sitting on his lap. "Want to?"

"Why the hell not?" he said with a quirk of his mouth. "Seeing as you're used to it." He watched me insert a finger into myself and push in the shortening, which melted to slipperiness from my body heat and spread inside me and over my hands and buttocks. I thrust the finger into the tight hole and pressed and stretched it, using the other hand on my clit and rocking my hips up and down.

His face was flushed and his cock remained hard, and his tongue came out to lick his lips, eyes hooded and smouldering. Stroking my breasts, he looked up at me with a lascivious smile. "You're a crazy woman, you know that?"

"Uh-huh." I was as ready as I was going to be, so I positioned myself, kneeling over him on the couch and straddling his hips. I got a good dollop of the shortening on my fingers and greased him thoroughly; his cock quivered, sliding through my hand. I put the slick hand on my vulva and used the other to brace the head of his cock against my anus.

I took a deep breath and bore down, then flexed my knees and thrust downwards. "Aaahh!" I moaned, feeling the nudge and stretch of his gradual entrance.

Though Deadman remained still, letting me guide every movement, he gritted his teeth and began to breathe harder. When the tip of his cock popped into my ass, the intense sensations crackling through my nerves, he bucked his hips and gasped, nearly dislodging himself. "Sorry…that feels so fucking tight…"

"Just wait," I moaned, bearing down harder and frantically rubbing my clit. I was going as slowly as I could, knowing I had to be careful with a man of his size, but the incredible fullness was driving me wild. "I'm going to get your cock all the way in, because I want you to fuck my ass..."

"Never could turn down an invitation like that," he said in a growl.

"Uhh…ohh…please…you're so big…"

"What a pretty little slut you are." I worked my way down his cock, my tight passage filling with him, the feelings so intense they crossed over into pain, though the grease made me slick. "You're the hottest lady I ever ran across. You've done this a lot?"

"Uh-huh…I've been fucked up the ass…uhh…while another man was eating my pussy…and another one forcing me to suck his cock."

"What?" he said, incredulous. "You liked that?"

"Aaahhh…" I moaned, because I was nearly sitting on his balls, my anus stretched so far I knew I was going to bleed. Every movement sent scorching responses through my pelvis and down the backs of my thighs. "Ohh…you're making me take all of you…" I was impaled on him, penetrated in the most purely licentious way I knew. The sordid, taboo aspect of anal sex had always appealed to me, and the mere knowledge that I had a man's cock ravaging my ass always provoked me to orgasm after orgasm.

"You screwed more'n one man at a time? You into that kind of thing? Or you got gang-banged or something, baby?" His hands went around my waist as I quivered, my sphincter muscles gradually relaxing around him but still somewhat tense. "Damn, I'm hurtin' you."

"Yes…" I answered to all his questions. My fingers frantically worked my slippery vulva as I gradually humped up and down on his thick, agonizingly arousing cock.

"Well, get off me, then." He started to sit up.

"No! I'm fine--uhh! Do you like it?"

"Feels damn tight and hot…if that's what you mean. Did you get raped sometime, Irene?"

"Yes… Ohhh!" I threw back my head and climaxed. "Ahh…ohh… I was raped at a frat party in college when I was seventeen."

"Sorry to hear it, girl." He cupped my breasts and applied his thumbnails to my nipples. "Bad scene, huh?"

"Not like that…I was looking for trouble."

"Not *you*," he said in mock surprise.

"Everyone warned freshman girls about that particular fraternity's reputation, so I made sure to accept the invitation. I drank some spiked punch on purpose just to see what would happen, and I got so stoned I couldn't stand up. Three men took me in a bedroom and used me for hours."

My fingers kept going; I was so hot I felt as if I might explode. "All three of them fucked me, and two of them raped me anally. I had to clean them with my tongue and suck them off after they had come in my ass… I deep-throated one of them while another one was ramming his prick in my ass, and the third man lay underneath while I was on hands and knees and performed oral sex on me at the same time. It hurt, but I came over and over..."

"God damn." Deadman's eyes had narrowed with a hint of anger, but I could tell the idea turned him on--he was getting harder and rolling his hips slightly, though he seemed careful not to work me too much. "Well, now, knowing you--what'd you do to them when they let you go?"

"I called Papa when the drugs had worn off a little and I could talk. He was so furious he could barely breathe and he said he was on his way to take care of it because they'd hurt his innocent little girl. He also told me he'd given me that gun for a reason. So I went back with my revolver while I was still pretty out of it and I shot all three of them. First in the balls, then in the head..."

"No shit. You went askin' for it, they made you take it, and you killed 'em for it?" I felt Deadman's cock hardening to its largest extent in my ass. "Bloodthirsty lady…"

He began to move slowly up and down under me, scraping my nipples with his nails. The scratch I had inflicted on my breast still stood out as a red streak against my fair skin. I put my nails to his chest again and dug them in.

"My Papa got it hushed up…he's got some influence…with the governor. Self-defense, sort of, and they had given me the drugs; the authorities closed down the frat and left it at that. Papa was…proud of me...he said he'd have done it for me if I hadn't….aahhh …aaahhh, OOOHHH!" I climaxed again, drawing blood from his pectorals.

Deadman gasped. "Man, I can feel your tight little asshole grippin' me when you come…feels real good."

"Your cock's taking me…make me fuck you with my ass…"

"That why you like gettin' forced, girl? You got off on being raped up the ass?"

"That's not the reason I like being forced, no. That was when I discovered what it was like for me." I'd never told anyone this; I was drunk on sex again, giving him the key to me as he had done for himself earlier that evening. "I haven't let it get so out of my control again, though. It was rape in a legal sense--I was intoxicated and underage. I told Papa that I'd had no idea what was happening to me, and he was very sympathetic. He still doesn't know I asked for it, or that I wasn't a virgin when it happened. But I think about that night and I get so wet…"

"Thinkin' about the raping, or the killin'?"

"Both..." I said in a breathy, sexy whisper.

The rider smiled into my face, teeth showing between his sensual lips, and shook his head with a slight laugh. "You are one hundred percent crazy, girl."

"I know…I'm fucking you, aren't I?" I smiled and let the next orgasm seize me, the waves of muscular contractions deep and searing, as they always were when I was being taken anally. "Ohhh…OOOHHH! Ohhh…you like me this way, anyway…"

"You got a point there," he replied, and let out a low, rumbling growl. I knew he was about to come in my ass and pumped up and down on his cock as rapidly as I could. "You know, you make a habit of killin' men who fuck you."

"I suppose I do…"

"You gonna try killin' me again, darlin'?" He was breathing hard, his face wrinkling in a snarl, and I felt his cock begin to pulse inside me. "Gonna…put another bullet in my head? …Nnnggghhh!"

"Not until you shoot that load in me," I replied smiling, and he came with a roar.

Part Eighteen

"You OK, darlin'?" Deadman asked me as we went up the stairs, his arm around me. I leaned on him with a yawn. "I saw there's blood on my thighs, and it ain't mine. You didn't hurt yourself bad, did you?"

"No…" It was a fierce, throbbing burn between my buttocks, though it hadn't kept me from dozing for an hour on the sofa. "Well, a little."

"A little? You don't heal up the way I do," he said, shaking his head. "You ought to be more careful."

"Don't lecture me--you're not my father," I said in irritation.

"Damn straight I'm not…" He squeezed my bare bottom with a chuckle and opened the bedroom door. "OK, you take care of yer pretty ass on your own. Hope it don't bother you while you're riding on my bike."

"If I could get a warm bath, I'd be fine. Can I…?"

"Yeah, there's actually hot runnin' water in this dump, believe it or not." Deadman shut the door behind us with one hand; the other arm remained around me. "Though since the propane's screwy tonight, I dunno how much of a tubful you can get. Wonder what the hell's wrong with that tank--I guess I'm gonna have to go take a look at it. Once I get my clothes on, that is."

"I just need to soak a little, that's all…" I yawned again and stretched, my back curving in his embrace as he bent over me from behind and nuzzled my ear. "And then we'd better go look for my Papa in town, even though it's getting late. There's a motel there?"

"Yep," said the rider with a breath into my ear, running his tongue around the rim. "Only one for a long way, so there's not any other place he could have got himself a room."

He turned my face and kissed me on the mouth; I responded lightly, a languid warmth moving through me. "Mmm…you sure you want to go out, darlin'?"

"I'm sure I want a bath," I said with a smile, then sighed. "Papa is going to be frantic by now. I have to get hold of him somehow."

"Heh. Guess I need a wash too." He took the armful of our clothes that I held and threw it on the unmade bed. "Still got road dust and sweat, not to mention you, all over me. Mind if I join ya?"

"Not at all." I smiled at him and went into the bathroom to fill the tub. There was no shower, only an old footed tub with a hand sprayer and a corroded, mineral-encrusted tap, rust stains running down under it and surrounding the drain. The white tile floor was cracked and discolored in spots but wasn't dirty--the room, like the whole house, gave an impression of maintained decay.