To Jack Spiller's way of thinking the Alibi Tavern off 5th Avenue existed for the sole purpose of bagging women. Everything about the place set the stage for a clean kill. Several aquariums tastefully lined its walls with colorful assortments of tropical fish gliding inside the glass tanks, giving the Alibi its requisite ambience of elegance.In stark contrast the deep blue lighting that washed the room would not have been out of place in a fuck film. Its long bar was a polished mirror of brass and mahogany, and no long-stemmed beauty could sit upon the tall bar stools without revealing the full measure of her legs. Pumping through the sound system nightly was the kind of funk that might have caused ordinary speakers to internally hemorrhage, pulsating music that throbbed with heavy drum beats and an occasional undulating jazz sax meant to bring the staunchest ice maiden's blood to a rolling boil. The place had a high-classed whore feel to it that Jack appreciated and it could give him a hard-on even if it were empty.
"Yeah. That snow's comin' down pretty hard. Keeps all but the diehards home. Whoever comes in here tonight probably has a damned good reason not to want to be someplace else."
"So how's it hangin' in the legal world, Mr. Spiller?" the college kid behind the bar asked, setting a glass of Dewars in front of him. "Can't complain, Andy," he nodded to the young bartender. "Two professions that never want for customers are morticians and divorce lawyers. Kind of slow for a Friday night, isn't it? You working the bar solo tonight?"
"I'm counting on it," Jack said under his breath as he sipped his drink. He turned to make his first inspection of the Alibi crowd. Usually by 11:00 the place was knee deep in women and the selection was more varied, but on most weekends the accompanying shark frenzy was usually of the catch-as-catch-can variety. Tonight's snow storm had thinned the crowd, but that meant Jack could take his time sniffing out that hot blood.
He turned to scan the two dozen workable women in the room and came to the brunette in the black leather mini seated on the last stool at the far end of the bar near the Alibi's largest aquarium. The woman was spending more time looking at her wine glass than she was drinking from it, absorbed more in her thoughts than in her surroundings. On any ordinary Friday the stool alongside such a brooding beauty would not have remained empty for more than a heartbeat, but tonight's storm had provided Jack with a clear path to it. He slapped a ten in front of Andy and headed toward her, his smile already in place. This part he had down cold.
"Messy night," he said to the woman whose hair shone like black marble under the blue lights. He nodded toward the empty stool at her side. "Okay if I sit here?"
Looking up from her glass she did not return the reassuring smile Jack had expected, simply nodded while barely looking at him and fumbled in her purse for a cigarette. She struck a match but the flame did not catch, and when she struck another Jack noticed how badly her hands were shaking.
"Shit! " she said, trying for a third strike.
Jack pulled out a monogrammed silver lighter and lit her cigarette for her. "I don't get the chance to light up too many ladies anymore," he said without losing his smile. "You want the lecture about how those things can kill you, or should I introduce myself first? I'm Jack—"
"—Listen, . . . Jack," she interrupted before he could complete his sentence, smoke spilling from her mouth as she spoke. "You might want to practice your loungespeak on someone else. I'm not really much in the mood for conversation tonight, okay?" She gulped her wine and followed that with a long draw on her Marlboro, astonishingly ungraceful at doing both. After a moment's silence she managed to compose herself enough to look back at him. "Look, I'm just not feeling very sociable right now. I'm sorry if I seem—"
"—Spiller," Jack continued, not missing a beat. "Jack Spiller. If you don't feel like conversation, that's okay. I can always talk to the fish." He gestured to Andy to refill the woman's glass, but her attention was already too focused on the aquarium to notice. She was watching a large black molly as it darted after a fat guppy that had a belly suggesting she might be carrying young. The dark-haired woman studied the two fish as if the glass tank contained a hidden meaning that only she understood.
The young bartender behind the counter had been eying the woman closely. When he caught Jack's attention the kid looked like he might be about to say something. But when the woman looked up and noticed him staring he simply emptied an ash tray, smiled nervously, and polished another beer mug. For the next few minutes Jack saw Andy watching her from the other end of the bar. Something had passed between the kid and the woman, but Jack did not know what.
"The bartender here keeps looking at you. Do you know each other?" he finally asked the woman. Her attention had returned to the fish inside the tank and she paid no attention to Jack's question. An uncomfortable moment of silence passed, and Jack thought it might be time to try out some other stool where the climate was a bit warmer. One too many cold fish had occupied this corner of the room.
When she suddenly spoke again her words startled him, and for a moment he thought maybe someone else was speaking. Her tone was different as if a massive cloud had lifted from her thoughts, removing with it the memory of the blitzkrieg she had launched moments earlier.
"Do you see that one down there, the fat fish sweeping along the bottom of the aquarium?" she asked without removing her eyes from the glass tank. Her voice, so distant before, now invited a response.
Jack turned to look at the aquarium. The woman was pointing to a bloated ugly whiskered fish that was sucking up the filth and algae collected near the bubbling diving bell on the floor of the large tank.
"That's a catfish," he said. "It's a fresh water scavenger. They call it a—"
"—Bottom feeder," she added. "Yes, I know. Feeds off the waste the other fish leave behind, lives off the food they drop. Eats their shit and scavenges for whatever it can find that the others have lost or don't want. Just lays down there at the bottom waiting. Just waiting . . ."
She leaned toward him and he caught a faint whiff of a sea breeze in her perfume. When her dark eyes locked with his Jack felt encouraged, and he moved his face closer to hers. The important thing was she was talking now, even if it was only about the goddamned fish. But if talking about fish was what steamed her panty hose, then what the hell, he could play Jacques Cousteau.
"My name is Pia," she mentioned closely enough for him to feel her warm breath on his face. "I have a tropical fish aquarium like this in my apartment. Not this big, of course, but I've got a pretty good assortment."
"I've always had an interest in tropical fish, Pia," he said, testing the water. But she didn't bite, just went right on about the marine life in her apartment.
". . . Angels, mollies, rainbows, miniature sea horses. Even betas, those fighting fish that rip each other apart when they mate. Do you know sometimes the male beta will squeeze the eggs right out of the female until she's dead? Doesn't give a shit. Just wraps himself around her and squeezes her fucking guts out." She tamped her Marlboro out in the ash tray, and flashed a sudden smile at Jack. "Figuratively speaking, it's not entirely unlike what happens to women in places like the Alibi, wouldn't you say?"
He returned her smile and lit another cigarette for her. "If you're that much into fish-tank microcosms, you might want to note those two kissing gouramis sucking face up there by the castle turret. I prefer to think of my relationships with women like that, Pia. I'll take giving pleasure to giving pain any day. I don't agree with your analogy. I know that when I squeeze a woman I'm not thinking about her eggs, at least not since I slept with my ex-wife. That's because I'm pretty sure hers were hard boiled."
He stopped talking. She had snuffed her cigarette in the ash tray and pressed a long finger to his lips.
"Shhhhh! Don't talk!" she said, and lowered both her hands slowly into his lap. She licked her lips and shut her eyes. "I know about men and pleasure. A man finds his pleasure just like a beta, just like that fucking bottom feeding catfish. You want proof? Wait and
see . . ." she whispered.Moving her fingers along his thighs, slowly inching her palms upwards, she scratched and kneaded at the muscles in his legs with her long nails as she moved her hands along his pants. The gesture caught Jack off guard and he looked over his shoulder to see if she were attracting anyone's attention. Andy was still watching from the far corner of the bar, but when Jack caught
his stare, the bartender quickly averted his eyes."What are you—?"
"—Don't say a word," she whispered. "Just feel . . ."
The woman's hands stopped at Jack's crotch, and suddenly Pia was stroking him beneath his balls. She toyed with the zipper on his pants, tugging at it and teasing him, but she did not reach in. Jack's mouth twitched in an involuntary smile. He did not know what game she was playing, but when a woman switched gears this quickly that often spelled trouble. Mind-fucking was the specialty of the neurotic, and a guy had to be careful because even in the classiest Manhattan bars there were plenty of women who had lost their ozone layer.
Her mouth brushed against his ear closely enough for Jack to hear her quick breaths, and he felt Pia's tongue warm and moist against it as she spoke.
"Do you want to fuck me?" she whispered as casually as if she had been asking him for the time. Her hand traced the outline of his cock, and Jack felt it throbbing hot between his legs. "Do you see, Jack? It's just as I said. Here's another bottom feeder right in my hands. That piranha in your pants can't wait to tear into me. You're just dying to fuck me, aren't you? Isn't that what this is all about?" Her tongue explored inside his ear and he felt himself growing hard against her palm.
"Look, Pia. I'm—I'm not sure this is the right place for this sort of thing," he managed to say. His embarrassment surprised him, and knowing she was aware of it only made it worse.
She removed her hands and placed them on the counter, wrists held together tightly as if bound together by imaginary cuffs.
"Or is this the way you like your women, Jack? All bound and confined so you can do whatever it is you want to them? What would you like to do to me, Jack? Would you like to touch me while my hands are tied, maybe slide your hands to that soft moist spot between my legs, to feel me getting wet between your fingers? Would you like to touch me down there, Jack? Or maybe you'd like to taste me? To feel your way inside me with your tongue, with your cock? To feed on me . . .?"
She slid off the stool and held his face in both her hands. "I'll get my coat and have the doorman find us a cab. From the look of that bulge I think it's just about feeding time in the aquarium." She hooked both arms around his neck and licked his lips as if tasting him. "Mmmmmmm," she said, turned and walked off.
Watching her leave Jack gulped down the rest of his Dewars in one motion and felt his face go flush. Either he had scored big in record time or he had just met the most neurotic nymphomaniac in Manhattan. In either case, it looked like tonight he would be doing the wet nasty with the strangest package of she-stuff he had bagged in a long time.
The bartender had been watching their interplay, and once the woman in the black mini disappeared he stepped over. Jack had expected him.
"That could be one crazy piece of ass, Andy. Have you seen her in here before? I noticed you were watching her."
"Yeah, Mr. Spiller," the kid answered. "Yeah, she's been in here. But I think maybe there's something you should know, although I'm not sure I—I mean, I'm not certain how she—" He choked on his words as if he had trouble believing them himself.
This was shaping up to be one gonzo night out.
"Andy, spit it out fast. The lady is leaving with me. What is it? Is she a hooker, or is she packing a pair of gonads under that skirt?" Jack hoped that he was making a joke.
"No. It's a little more complicated than that, Mr. Spiller. The thing is—I'm pretty sure I saw her in here a few nights ago, maybe Monday or Tuesday when things were slow. She sat in this spot near the fish tank, just like tonight. Except—except she was—"
The bartender leaned forward, looking over Jack's shoulder to make certain the woman in black had not returned from the coat check counter.
"Mr. Spiller, no more than four nights ago when that lady walked in here she was pregnant . I mean, she looked like she could have broken water that same night right here on the floor, she was so damned big. Now here she is looking like the goddamned playmate of the month. There's something squirrelly going on here, if you ask me."
Jack's smile flickered before it faded. It was true that Pia had been less than friendly when he had first sat on the stool alongside her, as if she had been submerged in some uncomfortable thoughts. He took a moment to weigh the possibilities. Well, this was New York. Hell, anything was possible. But on a winter's night in Manhattan there was really only one consideration here, and playing Sherlock Holmes was not it. He had come to the Alibi for one reason, and he had found it. Case closed. The smile slowly returned.
"Andy, it's colder than my grandmother's papsmear out there, and the snow is flying. Mother Nature can be a real cunt when she chooses, but there are some things the old broad prefers to keep a mystery, like the thoughts that rattle around inside a beautiful young woman's mind who finds herself cold and alone on a Friday night. Married, single, or fat with child, all women are enigmas wrapped inside a mystery, my friend, and that's why we enjoy fucking them." He slapped another ten into the bartender's palm.
"I hear you, Mr. Spiller," said Andy.
"—And so do I," added Pia, who stood behind Jack draped in black fur. She said nothing more, just smiled, turned toward the door and walked out. An enigma wrapped inside a mystery and black fur.
He followed her to the taxi that waited at the curb and climbed in.
The storm had gotten worse, and the ride to the woman's apartment was slow, punctuated only by the driver's occasional curses in Spanish at the sluggish traffic. Pia's somber mood had returned, and she sat silently in the cab alongside Jack staring at the blowing snow as she had stared at the aquarium inside the Alibi. When the taxi pulled up to the Park Avenue walk-up Jack wondered if maybe he should just drop her off and call it a night. Getting laid was not worth bumping heads with some pissed off husband waiting in her bedroom. And if Andy were right, if this Pia's emotional dive-bombing was because of some hormonal bullshit coming off a postpartum trauma or a miscarriage, maybe he was in over his head.
But he could still smell the scent of sea breeze on the woman at his side, and remembering how her long fingers had tugged at his pants he imagined the taste of Pia's cunt warm inside his mouth. What had she said about that catfish on the bottom of the large tank, just waiting?
Okay, then. He also would wait and see. . .
Her apartment was large for mid-town, and Jack wondered how the woman had managed to pay for it. The place was furnished more tastefully than he had expected, but it was much too neat to indicate the presence of a new baby. The soft leather upholstery and plush carpeting were white enough to be almost blinding, suggesting the modern and expensive taste of an unmarried career woman, not the more practical taste of a mother. Pia's dark clothing and hair contrasted sharply with her surroundings, and Jack felt like he had stepped into one of those old black-and-white movies.
Only the lighted fish tanks along the wall gave the room any real color. On the bookshelf were two aquariums, the larger one with a variety of tropical fish as colorful as a gum ball assortment. The smaller one alongside it contained a lone fish, an ugly black thing that idled on the bottom along the multicolored gravel and between the large rocks. Jack looked into the smaller tank and the dark fish inside stared blankly back at him with tiny red eyes, its gills brushing lightly at the water.
When Jack looked closer the fish's mouth slowly fell open and the gleam inside its mouth shone in the soft light of the aquarium, revealing spiked teeth like a fence of tiny daggers. Jack turned toward the woman, but she had already anticipated his question.
"It's a fresh water piranha, Jack," she said as she removed her coat and kicked off her heels. "Very rare, and extremely valuable. Can't let the little guy fraternize with the others, can we? But let's forget the fish for a moment, okay?" She opened up a cabinet, pulled out a bottle of Dewars and poured him a glass over ice. "I'm pretty observant, Jack. This is what you're drinking, isn't it?"
"Thanks, but how did—?"
"—I was watching you when you came in tonight. A smart girl notices details. You wouldn't have stood a chance with me if the bartender had brought you a beer. But Dewars, now that's a drink for a man who knows who he is. And that Armani suit you're wearing? Not exactly off the rack. It's the power tie that gives you away, though. I'll just bet you're a lawyer, right?"
She took his hand, leading him to the large divan near the fish tank, and sat beside him without her eyes leaving his.
"Civil law. Divorce cases, mostly." Jack always enjoyed this part, and it took all his effort not to appear smug as he spoke. "And you?"
The woman hesitated, as if considering whether to answer. "I'm a collector, Jack. It's a bit complicated, but you would be surprised how valuable some things are that people just throw away. Like I said, I'm pretty observant. Things that other people consider worthless are worth something to me. We're alike, you and me. You make a living out of marriages that have gone south, marriages that others might consider worthless. I've had two of them, and my share of men as well, and I've always tried to salvage something of worth from them. It's always a little sad to see something of value turn to shit, so isn't it more logical to try to take shit and turn it into something valuable, something useful?"
"Is that why you were so distant earlier this evening? Had you lost something valuable?" Like maybe a little bambino you were carrying around in your belly last week? he thought. He was surprised at his curiosity, but the pieces of the puzzle just did not fit.
"A woman alone on a bar stool always loses something valuable, Jack." Revealing nothing about motherhood or of ninth month miscarriages, instead she took the drink from his hand, reached to turn out the light, and moved closer to him. "Don't we all have a bit of that same scavenging bottom feeder in us, Jack, even if we hate ourselves for it in the morning?"
Her next move toward him was so sudden that Jack almost flinched. She pressed her body against his chest with an urgency that caught him unaware, kissing him hard while her tongue probed inside his mouth like a living thing.
Jack's instincts kicked in fast, and he pulled at her leather skirt sliding his fingers beneath her panties. But she had already begun to slide out of them, squirming against him as he tugged the skirt and panties from her ass. When her clothes lay curled on the white carpet, she ripped his shirt open in one fierce tug, and licking his chest she tore at the zipper of his pants. Within moments they lay naked in each other's arms on the divan, and Jack took one of her breasts hungrily into his mouth.
"Wait," she said. "There's something I want you to see, something I want you to watch. Will you do that for me, Jack?" She pulled herself away from him, and as she stood before him naked in the dim light given off from the two aquariums he could feel her warm nipples still pressed against his chest. He was unable to do more than grunt an agreement to her request.
She reached into the larger tank. A dozen fish inside scurried from her hand, but the woman had her attention on the plump catfish that lolled on the bottom of the aquarium, floating there in its blind disregard while the others scattered. It stared dumbly at the invading hand, too bloated from its own feeding to move. In one quick motion Pia cupped her fist around the whiskered scavenger and pulled her hand dripping from the tank.
Looking at Jack with a smile that suggested she was about to let a shark out of a paper bag, Pia dropped the catfish into the piranha's small tank and climbed back upon the divan with Jack.
She slid her face down his body toward it, covering his hard cock with her hungry mouth, taking him full inside it.
"I want you to fuck me now, Jack. And I want you to watch that little fish while you're fucking me." She reached for his cock and it came alive at her
touch.Inside the tank the catfish slowly drifted toward the bottom, oblivious to what waited for it below. But Jack found it hard to concentrate on the aquatic drama with Pia's tongue curled around his prick right down to his balls. When he closed his eyes the woman suddenly stopped and sat up, still straddling him.
"No, Jack!" she said. "I said you've got to watch. I want you to see this." She slipped his cock inside her as she spoke and leaned back, arching her spine so that he was deep within her, but she watched his eyes to make certain that his attention did not leave the small tank.
Forcing himself to concentrate Jack watched the catfish explore the bottom, as if it were only dimly aware that something else shared the tank with it. Searching for food, it sniffed at the gravel, the whiskers of the scavenger combing along the floor of the aquarium for any stray particles of food it might find.
From behind the rock the piranha emerged like a shadow. The catfish had only a moment to turn before its dark pursuer lunged at its tail with its mouth open wide, closing its jaw with a snap only after the whiskered fish was already half inside it. The head of the catfish protruded ridiculously from the piranha's mouth, a thick stream of blood drifting slowly from the dying creature toward the surface. The catfish wriggled and struggled inside the mouth, and the piranha's head shook violently until a great smear of blood covered the bottom of the tank.
When Pia spoke again Jack had become so engrossed in the struggle that he had to remind himself that he was still inside her.
"Do it now! Fuck me hard, Jack! Fuck me as hard as you can!" Pia shrieked as she rode on top of him, ramming him deeper inside her, and she shrieked louder with each thrust. She undulated faster slamming her ass into his thighs as she rose and fell on his cock, and he felt her growing moist inside, the cavern of her cunt growing wider to accept him. She pulled him to the floor and rolled herself under him, squirming and thrashing as she pulled him closer to her, and he probed deeper inside her until he could feel the hot rush bubbling between his legs.
But still Jack knew he had to look back at that goddamned fish tank, had to see the denouement of the drama behind the glass. With the woman still twisting herself into him he looked up to watch the aquarium just one more time. The smear of blood had cleared and the piranha idled on the bottom, alone again. Having fed, the large blood-soaked fish was even fatter now, gorged with its catfish feast. For a moment it looked to Jack as if the piranha were fat not because it had just swallowed another fish, but because it was carrying young . . .
. . . as if it were pregnant!
The memory hit him like a splash of cold water. When he was a child he used to watch his tropical fish collection in horror whenever the fat females would deliver the little ones. The babies always dropped out of them like squirming little flecks of dust and fled the mother because . . .
. . . because the mother fish always ate their young!
The chasm of Pia's cunt opened beneath him.
"What the—!" he managed to say as he looked into the face of the woman whose legs now held him fast to her in a vice-like grip. Pia's eyes were open and glowing red, and she smiled at him with teeth that were almost blindingly white. The mouth of a great pit seemed to spread out beneath him.
"We all have a little of the bottom feeder in us, Jack," she repeated, as she spread her legs wide. A deep cavern opened where her cunt had been, a giant gulf that sucked at him like a powerful vacuum, drawing him inside her, deep and deeper, engulfing him with a warm wetness that carried with it both the scent of a sea breeze and the smell of a woman. He felt the rows of teeth tear his flesh, chewing it as the soft fleshy maw of the beautiful young woman's cunt swallowed him whole.
The woman lay on her back breathing heavily on the floor. She knew it would be difficult standing up. It always was afterwards. Laughing to herself she gently rubbed her great expanse of stomach, pulled herself upright, and whispered softly into her own belly.
"Congratulate me, Jack. I'm going to have a baby. . ."
Bottom Feeder has previously appeared in On Night's Wings #2 (August 1993), The Blue Lady #1 (fall 1995), and The IF issue, 69 Flavors of Paranoia (February 1999).
About the Author:
Kenneth C. Goldman is a previous high school English and Film Studies teacher (Horror and Science Fiction in Film and Literature) at George Washington High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is a member of the former GWA, the Genre Writers Association, and the Horror Writers Association. He has published over 180 stories in small press since 1993 including: Crossroads, Black Moon, Night Terrors, Musing, Psychotrope (United Kingdom), Hadrosaur Tales, The Q Review, evernight, Calliope, The Darklands Project, Dread, Spine Chiller (Australia), Black Rose (Ireland), Odyssey (North Ireland), The "IF" Issue, Mindmares, Star Antholgy, The Black Abyss, Sepulchre, The Darkest Hour : An Anthology of Short Chillers, Minions From Beyond (Canada), The Sixth Sense Anthology, Monkey Spank, Flesh and Blood, Dark Matter, The Edge, Widdershins, Dragon Dreaming Anthology, 69 Flavors of Paranoia, Storyteller (Canada), First Class, The Twilight Garden, The Shadow Feast Best of 1997-1998 Anthology, Deadbolt, Midnight Carnival, Altered Perceptions, Millenium Science Fiction & Fantasy, The Threshold, Seductive Torture, A Midsummer Night's Terror, Fantasque, Agony in Black.
About the Artist:
Sean Simmans is the Cover Illustrator of DEAD END STREET PUBLICATIONS LLC and the Creator of THE BELIEVABLE TRUTH @ Scowlzine and VIBE Nation (UK). In addition he illustrates for UMM Magazine (Canada) and is staff illustrator for Blood Moon zine.
