Chapter Twelve

The ludicrous alarm clock melody woke Dave up and he smiled and slowly stretched his limbs. He had only slept for slightly more than four hours but in spite of that he felt great.

His whole body still remembered the currents of rising pleasure that had ran through it numerous times yesterday, and the exploding releases.

Especially the exploding releases.

His mind also retained some vivid images, shards of last night’s games.

Georgette was eager to show that she was modern and up to date, and that had made it easy to push her in the directions in which Dave wanted to go. She did overdo it.

Not only because, like all women tended to these days, she called herself his dirty whore and praised the might of his penis—he had long ago made his peace with this phenomenon. In the last decades everyone found out about sex from porn, so it was not particularly surprising that everyone therefore tended, to a smaller or larger extent, to reenact some type of behavior they had soaked up from vids at puberty or before.

However, as she had passed the threshold, her face changing to that of another creature, Georgette had wriggled nimbly to position her face below his butt, and had started licking it insistently.

Although her mumbling along the lines of “Give it to me, I want it,” could theoretically have been interpreted in a myriad ways, the way she started making anticipatory fart-like sounds with her mouth as she licked had left little room for doubt.

The very thought almost killed his erection then and there. It was touch and go for a minute or two before he willed himself into regaining the incoherent necromancy of the intense urban fuck.

Oh thee, most fragile thing, the stressed out adult’s natural erection.

All in all, it had been a great night. Not fantastic but great, and he now felt like a new man.

He fiddled with himself for another five minutes, remembering episodes of last night and slightly editing them the better to fit his fantasies.

Then he finally got out of bed, a glow of well being permeating every object brushed by his content gaze, and opened the bedroom window wider.

He indulged his lifelong habit and breathed in deeply, looking at the city below in an almost benevolent way, and then he lay down on the floor and did his push-ups.

Upon straightening out again, he felt energy flowing through his whole body, or at least pounding in his neck, and a strong hunger for a good breakfast. He went to the bathroom and studied himself in the mirror. Undeniably, he needed a shave.

He looked at his reflection and watched the blade leave sparkling clean pink roads in the white foam. Still in an amiable mood, he made himself some coffee, saw that he had a little more time, and decided to make full use of it by taking a morning dump.

As he sat on the toilet seat, relaxing his muscles and hearing the first splashes down below, he remembered again the ass-licking incident with Georgette. What was it with people these days?

He remembered when he was a child, say fourth grade, he and his buddies would steal women’s magazines to look at the semi-naked models in sexy lingerie. As well as to hungrily read everything that promised to touch upon erotic topics, and since everything did, they were never disappointed.

Back then, there was normal advice in the articles: Seventy-Seven Sex Tricks to Know, or How to Keep Him from Fooling Around, or Making Sure He is Yours Forever.

In those days, the readers of the magazines learned normal stuff, like how to swallow semen without tasting it, or what fruits to feed their lovers and husbands to sweeten it, or how to finger their prostates while sucking them off.

Also, of course, nuances like positions which make deep-throating easier, lubricants needed for pleasurable anal sex, what positions of the female body make the ass look tight and firm, how tying the wrists together is not weird but makes the relationship last longer...

Once, years later, he leafed through the magazines of his girlfriends, because he was still young and inexperienced and ended up having girlfriends. He noticed the appearance of advice concerning urine-play. The article in question illustrated at length how it was a safe disinfectant, at which time of the day it would be best to indulge in the practice, and how it was in fact astoundingly healthy.

In the last years, to this treasury of intimate knowledge he noticed in the Internet another addition, a growing crop of articles carping how to best play with crap.

Again, what you should and shouldn’t eat and how long before hand, how if you do not do it with strangers the health risks are minimal, and yet again tips how to swallow while minimizing the taste... Now mainstream fashion and advertising had incorporate jolly fecalist hints into themselves too.

Nudge, nudge, nod, nod, fist, fist. Crap, crap.

“Be yourself,” Dave said to his reflection in a mock advertising voice. “Eat some shit. Partyyy, yeah.”

He washed off the remaining islands of foam and went to have breakfast.

There were in the fridge, he knew, fresh eggs and sausages this time, but on the other hand, after the dump and the shave, he was on the verge of running late, so he again had a quick ham sandwich, and went out.

As he drove to the office, he remembered conversations about sex first with the other students and then with his army buddies. When he would explain how the very thought of some things made him squeamish, they would say, “Loosen up. You just gotta be yourself.”

Then, when he would point out that if he was not comfortable with something, he was likely to manifest it via a soft schlong and thus not get any pleasure, they would all say with mad grins that this was what Viagra, Verilinne, and Meth were for.

Dave could not articulate his discomfort with this attitude but there was something inherently defective in the trend of dealing with life through all these legal and illegal uppers and downers.

There just had to be something wrong with this approach.

By the time he reached his office, he had pummeled and kicked a number of people from his memories, and these victories in the shadowy puppet theater of the mind helped him regain his confidence and good spirits.

Maldiva was also in good spirits, as always, and was perhaps also feeling more attractive, since she had three or four big blobs of white gel in her hair.

“Good morning, Mister Cohran.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “Mister Fortham from the police called five minutes ago.”

“Yes? What did he want?”

“He said that you should open your inbox as soon as possible, so you may discuss what’s in there.”

“What’s in there?”

“He didn’t say.”

Dave faltered, before continuing to peel his coat from himself. “How did he sound?”

“In good humor, I think, Mister Cohran.”

Whatever was old Andy pleased about? Dave felt a stab of apprehension. Fortham was a good buddy but his sense of humor was sometimes twisted.

He switched on his computer, and sure enough, there was a blinking tiny envelope. It turned out to be a letter with an attached video clip.

In the body of the letter was the following message: “See what you make of this. Security camera recording from the office building opposite Bardales home. See 2:50 a.m. to 3:03 a.m.”

Dave immediately downloaded the clip and pushed ‘play’.

In the beginning there was just the street on which presumably the office building stood. He moved the clip forward to 2:48 a.m. The angle was different, it was a slow sweep camera apparently, and in one corner, he saw the entrance to another building.

At 2:50 a.m., a small figure in the semidarkness darted into the entrance. After a lack of anything happening, apart from a man walking a dog, at 3:03 a.m. the figure darted out of the building and disappeared into the shadows beyond the camera’s reach.

Dave went back to 2:50 a.m. and as the figure appeared, he hit the freeze and then the zoom. In spite of the shadows, he could not mistake the frozen figure with anything else.

It was a fifth grader toy-girl of the cyberpunk line.

Dave stood up with a thoughtful expression, which it was his habit to maintain to hide his agitation—even when there was no one around. He walked around the room, waiting for his heartbeat to quiet down again.

Then he picked up the phone and called Fortham.

“Ah, Cohran, you’ve seen the footage?”

“Yes, I have.”

“We were reviewing the recordings of all the security cameras in the area, and this is what we found. Damn strange, no?”

“Damn strange is right. What do your experts say?”

“Dave, you keep forgetting, you are our expert, heh.”

“Shit.” Dave had to smile.

“How is the case going, anyway?”

“Fine, I’ve got good leads, I think.”

“Well, good to know. Did you see the report of the dead season girl?”

“Yeah. Whoever the bastard is, he’s still at it.”

Andy was silent for a while, chewing over some thought. “You know, I checked records.”

“And?”

“The dead girls have been found annually at least since the late nineteen seventies.”

It took Dave about five seconds to register what Andy was saying. “My God, you can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I am. In fact, I suspect that if the filing system had been better before that, it would go back even further.”

“Christ.”

“Aha.”

Dave tried to say something useful. He failed. So, he asked something useless. “What is this? A father and son business?”

“A granddad and grandson more like it. It shouldn’t be an endless string of copycats, because we’ve never publicized the Season Girls.”

“Well, maybe it’s a cult of some sort?”

“Maybe,” Andy’s voice suddenly dropped an octave, “or maybe some nameless ancient evil.”

“Don’t, don’t do this to me, man, I’m creeped out with the doll-killer already.”

“Okay, just kidding. You know what I think?” Andy switched again to his ghoulish announcer voice, “I think we finally have a robot loose, life imitates art, only this time it’s a robocidal sex robot.”

“Thanks a lot, Dracula.”

“Don’t mention it. Hey, you want the files I found on the Season Girls?”

“Sure, of course, send them right over.”

“Okay, didn’t want to infodump you without asking you first.”

“Thanks, I’ll be waiting for them.”

“I’ll send them in a minute. By the way, I checked. No one’s on this, surprisingly. You want the assignment?”

Dave hesitated. There were too many weird assignments suddenly clustering around him. On the other hand, he’d known such things to lead to bonuses in the paycheck. “Ermmm...yes. Sure, why not?”

“That’s the spirit, see ya.”

“Bye.”

Dave rang off and went to pour himself a glass of water. He saw that it was almost lunchtime and went out for a bacon bagel. This exercise helped him put off doing some work for about forty minutes because he walked slowly.