Sex Zombie
by Rickey Windell George

1

It was not a hatred of mankind but more a hatred of self that got Seth Romieri out of bed the morning it began-such a day that the sun might have retreated at the futility of its task, at the infinite darkness in the hearts of men, at the souls so stained that no light could ever blaze there.

He did not look like the devil, standing five feet and eight inches tall, weighing a chunky hundred and seventy-nine pounds, with dirty blond hair (more dirty than blond) that never looked combed, and a conspicuously hooked nose set upon an otherwise bland white face with just a few faint freckles. He was a blender, some might say. The sort of fellow who faded into crowds, who got missed, who went unnoticed. He was not particularly ugly, but there was nothing of a standout nature in his looks either, nothing to proclaim him as being attractive.

Seth surveyed all this as he stood naked and dripping shower water in the little three by six bathroom on the top floor of his grandmother’s house. She was long dead now, but this would always be her house, and not because he had fond memories of her here but because nothing belonged to him. He paid the bills now, worked two jobs-at the hospital as an orderly Monday through Thursday, and at Mr. Gowson’s funeral parlor on Fridays and Saturdays-but still the place was not his.

Seth eyed his reflection in the full-length mirror on the door and what he saw was a void, a hollow pit, and if he didn’t fill it soon-God he’d tried for so long-the emptiness inside him was going to boil up and swallow him whole. He thought to amuse himself with one of the wig-heads. A pile of them waited in the bathtub at his back-the Styrofoam heads his grandmother had used for years and years to keep her many wigs in shape. He’d not been allowed to touch them when the old woman had still been kicking; they were precious, far too grand a thing for his dirty little pervert hands. Now that she was gone however, he’d bored holes into the Styrofoam faces, in the places where mouths would be, into the places where eyeholes should have been.

He fucked the wig-heads frequently.

He put the old wigs upon their bald Styrofoam scalps and he made them go down on him, sometimes thrust his fuck into the raggedly cut eyes, imagined himself screwing the brains out of the goddamned things. Of late however this activity was bringing him no pleasure.

He left the bathroom and plodded barefoot back to the room where he slept. He tiptoed, for he didn’t want to wake the girl in the corner or the man in the bed. The girl had been the first cadaver he’d stolen from Mr. Gowson’s.

His task had been to burry her after what had been a fine Saturday open-casket service. Seth could still see her in her box as she’d been when he’d set upon latching the lid, face fixed toward the heavens in a peaceful slumber. She’d been too pretty, too radiant to go into the earth. With that silken black hair and those lips, so kissable even sown shut.

Seth had tarried at the task of covering her box with earth, bidding his chance. The funeral parlor sat on a rise surveying the little cemetery as a normal house might survey the gardens and lawns. In the bright of day Mr. Gowson might have seen him stealing the body, the old man was a drunk however and would be well into his cups, Seth knew, by sundown.

Under the semi-dark cover of dusk, Seth had groped Justine out of her box and buried it empty and brought her home in the passenger seat-safely seat-belted-of his 1991 Plymouth.

That night, the first night she’d come home with him, he’d been so happy it had seemed he might burst. He talked to her as he could never talk to a real live woman. He played in her hair, undressed her, dressed her in some of his grandmother’s old things, and then undressed her again. Justine had died in a freakish fall down a flight of stairs and was in good condition but for the severe cleft on the back of her skull, deep enough for a man’s balled fist to be nestled in the indent.

Seth didn’t mind that though. Placing her upon her back in his bed, there were far more interesting openings-places where a man’s balled fist could fit if wedged-that he had his eye on. He was instantly hard as his hands traced her discoloring flesh-yes, old man Gowson’s makeup had only been applied to the face and the neck, those places where the mourners were going to see her skin. The good parts-her melon breasts and flat tummy and shaven vagina-were growing quite ripe. Unable even to get out of his clothes fully, so urgently hard that first time that his cock ached, he’d mounted Justine.

He’d tried live whores before, thought that might be the answer to his problems, but they always looked at him funny, they breathed funny. He didn’t know what to say when a woman spoke. He didn’t know how to feel when his eyes met another pair. He could not maintain an erection in the company of a living-breathing woman, so he’d turned to grandmother’s sowing manikins and the wig-heads and now Justine’s cold dead flesh. He’d humped as hard as he could, ejaculated into her lifeless womb in about three minutes, rested and done it again. Later he’d cut loose her lips and used her mouth. Later still he’d gouged out her right eye and aimed himself at screwing her brains out.

She was not looking so good today, all ripe and green and humming with flies in the corner.

Cornell, the man in the bed, was Justine’s replacement and a sorry substitute, but no pretty girls had died lately. Seth did not think of it as a gay thing, but then he didn’t think of himself as a necrophiliac either. He was simply exploring love in the only way that he could, sharing himself in the only fashion he knew how. He wanted to feel close to someone, connected to anyone. When Seth carried Cornell across the threshold and put him on his stomach in the bed, stripped himself and climbed on top of him, he’d felt connected. Cornell didn’t make a peep, didn’t breath any sort of displeasure and didn’t so much as twitch the wrong way. Like Justine, but not as pretty, he’d been a perfect lover, and Seth had used his rectum and his mouth and other holes he’d cut into the body all night long.

Seth climbed in bed beside Cornell now, cuddled up, lavished in the scent of sex and embalming fluids and body rot. He imagined himself wanted and loved and before long he was straddling the body, hard that quick. Lubing with a glob of petroleum jelly from the jar there in the covers, he pushed inside. The first groan was one of elation, of release and bliss, but the second was revulsion. It was as though Seth had slid his dick into a tub of ice water. Cornell had not been warm the night before, but Seth did not recall him being like ice. Justine had been chill as a mountain lake in the dead of winter the last few times as well.

Seth continued to buck and thrust, the bed creaking beneath him, the headboard bumping the wall. He didn’t like it so much as the night before however, and as he neared ejaculation he knew what had to be done.

2

Some plans are best cancelled, some journeys best untaken.

Jill Conway had gotten up bright and early to call her mother and break the news that she wasn’t going to be able to make it down to Virginia to see her, a destination she would have been starting out for in less than two hours, if still she was going. Jill had known it wasn’t going to be easy even before she’d picked up the phone, but she’d not expected her mother to hit her full force with an elaborate guilt bath from which no daughter could have walked away strait-backed.

"You really just don’t give a damn about me anymore do you?" Her mother had never been a woman to beat around the bush. "Just go ahead and say it Jilly. You think you’re too good to be down here with all us backwoods country folk. Little Ms. big-time-corporate-lawyer doesn’t have time in her busy schedule to come see her mother."

"You know it’s not like that mother."

"I know nothing of the sort. Just that we been planning this for over two months. I been looking forward to seeing you and now you’re trying to ditch me, like some little friend you’ve outgrown. You were always good for that, I just never thought you’d do it to your own mother."

"Ma!"

"Well Jilly its true!"

"It is not. I’m not ditching you; I just have so much work. I explained this to you already. With Maxwell and Cartwright merging my work is tripled, and you know I don’t like to fly, so I have to drive."

"Yeah, well with your father being dead I’m all alone." There was a tremble in the woman’s voice. Underneath the tough as nails bullshit tears weren’t far.

"Dad’s been gone for three years Ma, and if you didn’t want to be alone you could come up here and stay with me. I can get you a little condo less than three minutes from me; I’d see to everything."

"I don’t want your money Jilly! You think you can buy yourself a clean conscience. In the three years since your daddy died you’ve been to see me twice. Is that all I get for the dozens of skinned knees, the thousands of meals cooked, the trunk loads of clothes bought. I was there when you needed me."

At this point Jill was emotionally paralyzed, unable to argue any farther, especially when she was canceling her travel plans not so much because of her client’s merger, but more because of the man she was laying beside even as this phone conversation was taking place.

Chase was the navy boy she’d met on a business trip out west, who she hadn’t seen in months, who was stationed out there, who with all the bullshit in the Middle East might get shipped out of the country at any time, who was in town to see her. The night before had been his first night on leave, and though they’d already spent it together she was due for Virginia now in just a matter of hours, for a seven-day stay. She’d freed those days on her calendar over a month ago and while he’d not been in the picture that was fine. Now however, she didn’t want to spend these precious free days on the road half the time and then in the house of her youth, listening to the retelling of stories already beaten dead. She wanted to spend the next seven days with her man, with his dick. Even as she searched for excuses on the line with her mother, she could feel it hard against her backside, eager for her to hang up the phone.

"It’s such a long drive, Ma."

"You’ve got the money to fly."

"You want to see me burn to death in a plane crash?"

"I want to see you Jilly, but I guess that’s too much to ask so I’ll just say goodbye." There was enough ice in the old girl’s voice to pack a side of beef.

"No, wait." Jill knew before finishing that she was going to regret the next series of words to slip her lips, though not how deeply that regret would run. "I’ll be there," she said.

There was a disappointed groan in the bed beside her as her man’s hands slipped free of her breasts.

"I’ll have to cut it short though Ma, I really do have a lot of work." Jill reached around behind her, under the covers, finding Chase, tugging.

"Oh darling that’s fine," mother’s mood was all at once reversed. "What time should I expect you?"

"I don’t know… sometime tonight whipped down from the eight hour drive."

"Well it’s just a strait away Jilly, you can take I13 the entire distance."

"I know mother."

"Well I’ll leave the travel details to you. I wasn’t meaning to be such a bitch, it’s just that I really have missed you so much."

"I’ve missed you too Ma."

"Kisses then."

"And hugs too," said Jill, feeling like a little girl.

3

We don’t always know when our time has come, when our number is up, when we’ll be dead or worse before the next sunrise. Such was the case for Jill Conway.

She’d just pulled off the interstate and onto the lonely junction road that would bring her to her destination, a little Virginian town called Mural. It wouldn’t be long now. It was six forty-five p.m. and in just under another hour she’d be standing on her mother’s front porch waiting to see the woman’s face show behind the screen door. Then her mother would say how thin she’d gotten in the past year, the woman would ask if she’d been eating, if she was sick. Jill would say that there was no time to eat working in the big bad apple, and that she was quite well.

She wasn’t really looking forward to this span of days at home. Ever since her father died three years ago her mother had become very critical and very nostalgic. If she wasn’t complaining she was reminiscing, and if not reminiscing then she was complaining.

Jill was dreading the mundane days ahead of her when the glare off someone’s high beams caught her attention. The day had crept quietly away around her and she was knee-deep in dusk. There weren’t many cars on the highway this early southern evening, just hers and the glaring auto that was rumbling along ten feet or so behind her, in her lane, with its high beams blazing. She couldn’t see it clearly for the brightness of the lights, but she could tell that it was a truck of some kind.

"What the hell?" Jill looked in the rearview mirror for as long as she could bear the hurtful white glare. If the bastard wanted to pass her all he had to do was go around her. Then again he probably wasn’t that smart, this was redneck country after all. Jill signaled and eased over into the passing lane, where he should have gone in the first place. The blinding light faded as she moved out of alignment with the vehicle and she could see it from this new angle-a huge black pickup. The term monster pickup came to mind, seemed to fit well. Black and dusty and big, with a series of lights running along the roof above the cabin-two white ones like extra headlights and two orange ones.

"Go on, I’m out of the way," Jill said and then turned to her radio. Was that one of her favorite songs playing? It was. She turned up the volume though she could barely hear through the static. The song was Black Velvet. Jill played with the dial until she got a clearer signal and could sing along.

Black velvet in her soft southern style…

Suddenly the cabin around her was flooded with white light.

"What the…" her eyes watered against the blaze as she looked to her mirrors to find the truck on her ass once more, bearing down as before. A lump formed in the back of her throat and made it hard to swallow. Though she wasn’t singing along anymore the song played on.

A new religion that will bring you to your knees…

Jill’s heart began to race. Why had the monster pickup followed her into the left lane? If he wanted to pass why hadn’t he done so? If he didn’t want to pass then what the fuck did he want? Jill stepped on the gas and swerved wildly into the right lane. Simultaneously the monster pickup followed her and now the brights weren’t just burning behind her but flashing-dim, bright, dim, bright.

"What do you want?" Jill half screamed, and as if the driver in the monster pickup had heard her he shot into the lane beside her-real close. He was rolling down his window and signaling with a crank of his arm for her to do the same. Jill was hesitant at first but the look on his face was one of determination. He had something to say to her and he wasn’t going to leave her alone until he said it. Jill hit the button and the glass glided down. There was a blast of engine noise as the window lowered, as the monster pickup roared beside her.

The man screamed something over the rumbling engine but she couldn’t hear it. He was pointing down toward the back of her car.

"What?" she hollered, one eye trying to understand, the other on the road.

"Sparks!" she finally heard him say. "There are sparks!"

Now she was worried. She looked back as best she could. She didn’t see anything but that didn’t mean much.

"There are sparks coming off the rear… underneath your car!" The man bellowed at the top of his lungs.

Jill didn’t know quite what to do. This was a brand new Lexus, just three months off the showroom floor. Could she have bought a lemon-an expensive lemon? She looked to the dashboard, and then to the rearview as if she might see the sparks from where she sat, and then back at the monster pickup and its driver.

"Pullover," he shouted. "I can take a look at it."

Suddenly Jill didn’t know what she should do. There was an awkwardness about this situation. Why was this stranger so concerned? Then she remembered that she wasn’t up north anymore, she’d crossed more than a few state line and was officially in the Virginian boondocks. People were a lot different here, more old-fashioned, more kindhearted. She signaled and began over unto the shoulder of the road.

Jilly, her mother’s voice rang in her mind’s ear. You shouldn’t talk to strangers.

It was one of her earliest memories that came back to her, like the waters of some great river once pent up but now freed where the damn had burst. She’d been just five years old at the time. She’d been playing in her front yard, the yard of her childhood, when a man ridding a bicycle had come before the white picket fence. He’d rang a little bell to grab her attention and then he’d began to chat.

‘Hey cutie-pie,’ he’d said.

She hadn’t answered him; she didn’t know him.

‘I got something for you.’ He’d reached into a little pouch of goodies and brought back a bright red candy apple on a stick. ‘I made it myself.’

Always a sucker for sweets Jill had moved a few steps closer to the fence, close enough to reach the stranger’s gift.

‘Here you go sugar-plum.’

‘Thanks Mr.,’ she said and took the apple. She’d just began to unwrap it when her mother arrived on the porch.

‘Jilly! Get over here! You shouldn’t be talking to strangers.’ She started down the walk toward her daughter. ‘And you Sir shouldn’t be talking to my little girl.’ The expression on her mother’s face had been fierce and apparently the nice man had known better than to mess with her. He didn’t say a word, just adjusted his seating upon the bicycle and pedaled off.

Later Jill’s mother had cut open the candy apple and found it full of tiny needles. A few days after that the man was arrested and a local boy was rushed to the emergency room with severe oral laceration after biting into one of those apples.

"I hope I didn’t spook you." Jill’s Lexus had stopped and the good Samaritan had come to her window while she’d been remembering.

She jumped.

"I’m sorry. I wasn’t tryin’ to startle you."

"No it’s okay." She unbuckled herself.

"The name’s Seth."

"Jill," came a simple and somewhat cold response.

"I didn’t mean to scare you back on the road. I just didn’t want you to end up gettin’ stranded out here. In case you can’t tell this here highway gets pretty quiet sometimes and it’s a long way to the next gas station."

Jill was climbing out of the car now, eyeing the Samaritan. He was not very tall but rather thick, with hair that went from brown to blond in different light, a serious five o’clock shadow and bushy eyebrows that were threatening to connect. He was twice Chase’s girth she observed, and wondered why she’d left her fine man alone in Rockland to come all the way out here into the middle of this slack-jawed nowhere.

The things a good southern girl would do to make her mama happy.

Jill pictured Chase in her mind’s eye and wished that he had come. She’d asked but he’d been pissed that she was leaving in the first place. He’d said he was going to check on his baby sister out in Yonkers while she was away.

"I’m sorry if I seem standoffish, it’s just that where I live these days people don’t go out of there way to help each other that often."

The Samaritan nodded shyly. "I wouldn’t want a cutie-pie like you gettin’ into a jamb out here."

The word cutie-pie echoed inside her head. Couldn’t the guys around here come up with any other combination of words. Was he going to offer her a candy apple in a few minutes?

"Thanks," she said, not knowing quite what to say.

"You know much about cars?"

She shook her head, "no."

"I’ll look at it for you." He was down on the ground in the next few moments and then on his back and then under the Lexus. Stretching and reaching for whatever it was under there that he was after Jill was left with an interesting view of his crotch-the seam of his denims here, and a snatch of his stomach there, where his shirt had come untucked from his pants. It was a pudgy midsection she observed with a bush of blonde-brown hair shooting up past the waistline of his pants, snarled around his navel. He looked like a homely lumberjack to her.

"So where you headed?" came the Samaritan.

"Mural," came the answer.

"Ain’t that a kick in the head. Same place I’m headed."

Jill wasn’t really in the mood for the small talk. "Do you see what’s causing the problem?"

"Yes Ms. Jill, I do."

"What is it? Can you fix it?"

"Is this a new car ma’am?"

"Yes?"

"Well that’s good, I guess she’s still under warranty."

"Oh Jesus, what is it?"

"The entire under girdle is all crocked, looks like you hit something or maybe she’s just a lemon from the get-go."

"A lemon . . . this fucking car cost fourty-five thousand dollars."

"Shit!" came the Samaritan. "Is it too late for a refund?"

"A little," was Jill’s sarcastic answer. "I can’t believe this bullshit." Then she began to reason. "I guess it’s not that big a deal, I’ll take it to the nearest dealership tomorrow."

"I guess you could do that, I just don’t know that she’ll make it all the way to Mural. I give her maybe another two or three miles before this back tire goes. The way she’s twisted, the friction could cause you to loose a tire at any moment."

"Damn, damn, damn." Jill was becoming more heated as the minutes ticked.

"Why don’t you lock her up and leave her here. I can give you a ride to Mural and then you can call Triple-A or whatever."

Jill didn’t like the idea of leaving forty-five thousand dollars on the side of the road, and something about the Samaritan made her skin crawl just a little bit. On the other hand she didn’t like the idea of getting stranded out on this lonely highway by herself and having to walk alone in the dark to the nearest gas stop.

"Alright," she said. "Just let me get my purse."

4

Seth Romieri loved dead things: ferrets and gerbils, hamsters and dogs, cats and squirrels and people too. He’d had many pets as a child all of which had invariably ended up prematurely still and quiet and rotting. Some he strangled and others he bludgeoned, but one particular pussycat had been more fun than all the others because he hadn’t killed it right away. He’d pithed the animal the way they’d done a frog in school. Put a needle in its skull, killed the brain, but left the body alive. He could still feel the feline’s heartbeat against his ear after the deed was done. It lay there as quiet and as willing as any dead thing would, but remained oh so warm to his touch.

He looked at Jill as she took the passenger seat beside him and he thought of these things. It was taking every ounce of his ability to carry on this façade of pleasant conversation. It was making him ill to the stomach and shriveling him in his underwear, but it was necessary and he’d been practicing now for months.

Jill was not the first woman he’d flagged off the road with claims of sparks from the undercarriage. She was number four. One, two, and three he’d taken on to where they were going, they were just practice. Tonight was for real. Tonight he was ready.

"You mind if I smoke?" Jill had the cigarette out already when she asked. "No, Ms. Jill," Seth said and turned the key in the ignition.

"Why don’t we just leave it at Jill. Plain old Jill."

Seth’s intestines knotted. Why wouldn’t she be quiet? Why wouldn’t she shut her eyes and stop looking at him? Why wouldn’t she just let him touch her and not make a peep? "Who… are you out here to see plain-old-Jill?"

"Funny man," she said at his little play on her name. "A mechanical genius and a comedian too."

Again his insides churned, she was making fun of him, they all made fun of him. Play dead he wanted to tell her.

"I’m visiting my mother," she said.

Taking a deep drag off her cigarette she was just beginning to feel a few degrees more at ease when Seth’s hands caught her eye. Only one-the left-was on the wheel, the other was lost in the shadows down between his legs. Breathing a stream of smoke out through her nostrils, feeling suddenly repulsed, certain he was playing with himself. Jill focused out her side of the windshield into the deepening dark.

She tried to ignore him, but couldn’t stop thinking of him thinking of her and touching himself. What was he thinking? What was she thinking to get in this truck with him? What might he do next? After a few beats she said: "Look, I think I forgot something back at the car." She didn’t know what else to say, what kind of sick-o he was, how else she might be able to get away from him.

"Forgot what?" Seth glared with bloodshot eyes, his head pounding.

"I don’t know, just stop the fucking car you pervert!"

Seth’s eyes grew wild in the sockets then and his face knotted. "Shut up!" he screamed at her screaming. "Shut up and play dead!"

Jill’s hands flew toward the wheel then and a foot went for the break, "Stop this goddamn car!" She howled, spitting the cigarette in Seth’s lap as she made a strong effort at dragging the car off the road and into the roadside weeds, but then up went Seth’s other hand.

"Be dead!" he screamed and came out of the shadows between his legs-he’d

not been stroking himself after all-with a long handled heavy-headed hammer.

Jill barely had time to scream or even to realize what was happening before it broke the bridge of her nose, blinding her with white-bright pain. Groaning through clenched teeth it wasn’t until the second blow, when a gush of blood and a split tooth hit the windshield in front of her, that her world collapsed into blackness. Her unconscious bulk slumped leftward then, a red waterfall flowed from her nose, down her face, down the passenger side window-glass, down the door and into shadow.

"Be dead plain-old-Jill, be… fucking… dead."

5

When Jill woke she was not really awake.

When Jill woke she was not really alive.

The room was a nightmare chamber spinning around her as seen from a single eye. The stench of decay was a sea in which she was drowning and though she could not move she could feel wicked pain in her skull and rawness between her legs.

Seth Remeiri was naked and sweaty and on top of her, inside of her, and not for the first time. The scene was unfolding atop a filthy and unmade bed. Through peripheral vision Jill could see the body of a man on the left, his face down in the covers, the first signs of a worm infestation festering in the rotting musculature of his back.

She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t will it into being.

She wanted to cry but could not find the tears.

She wanted to die, but could not make that happen either.

She was Seth Ramieri’s living sex zombie now-the first of many. With a visibly broken nose, a lobotomizing bolt screwed into the back of her skull, having destroyed one precious center of the brain, and another such bolt murdering more brain cells on the right side, she looked like the bride of Frankenstein spread eagle there.

Seth didn’t care how she looked however, he felt loved as he moved inside her warmth-God her sweet cunt was so hot… so fucking hot… and still she would not make a peep.

It wasn’t until he’d blown his load with a spasm and a groan and collapsed, drooling, atop her-his face resting upon hers-that he realized her left eye had opened. Damn her, damn that bitch. She was watching him again.

"Be dead!" he screamed and bolted up onto his feet. He had a mind to seal shut the flapping lid of her eye with a safety pin but then came another thought, a better thought.

A wide grin broke across Seth’s face and he began jerking his meat up afresh, drawing nearer to his living sex zombie’s face, growing as he moved closer, as she stared blankly, as the bulbous head of his erection filled her one-eyed view. He wondered if the eyehole was as hot or hotter than her pussy had been. He wondered and then realized the answer as he thrust his bone-hard length into her skull, as the ball of her eye shattered, as she shrieked in darkness inside herself.

How long could this nightmare last?

Jill prayed death would be on the heels of the darkness.

Seth prayed his living sex zombie would last forever, for steaming hot it was.

©2002 Rickey Windell George

For a complete bio: http://www.thedeathcollection.com/bio001.asp. Rickey W. George is a member of the horror writers association, also the author and webmaster of the on-line horror collection: The Death Collection, which has been very successful in the digital world, having taken in 4400 plus hits in the last five months, also having enjoyed very favorable reader response and nearing 1000 story reads.
http://www.thedeathcollection.com -->Internet Explorer Only, No Netscape.