A Naked Kiss from a Broken Doll

A hyper-realistic giallo upcoming from Hammer & Anvil Books

 

 

“The very fact that the commandment says, ‘do not kill’ makes us aware and convinced that we are descended from an unbroken chain of generations of assassins, for whom the love of murder was in their blood, as it is perhaps in ours ~ Sigmund Freud”

Lo strano vizio della signora Wardh, Directed by Sergio Martino

 

At this moment she was in the confessional. Purple words flowed freely, as she fingered between her legs, rubbing the clitoris. A taste of holy water and the smell of frankincense and myrrh. She saw a string of flickering lights from the ninety-nine cents store. A string of lights that had been used to strangle previous customers that had entered the booth before her. They had never left. She moaned excitedly then left leaving behind a bad confession. Not knowing what else to do, she opened a vein in each arm. Penitents who passed by stepped over the red pool gathering outside the door.

 

In the park, mutations of former trees bore mute testimony to her slowly gathering fear. Acid-nerves-twist in the pit of her stomach. Minutes ticked by.

 

“Only I identified Death. It’s easy,” Cenci said while while removing a cigarette from a beat-up pack. She and Criselda were sitting on a couch in Criselda’s apartment.

 

Cenci lit the cigarette and dragged the smoke it deep into her lungs as she was lighting it, a feat that always made Criselda gag. Didn’t matter, Criselda had quit smoking 5 years ago, enjoying a piece of nicotine gum now and then. She would chew it in private since she was self-conscious about her chewing.

 

“The dance of cadavers as they fucked on coffins,” she continued. “I saw them. Yes. Juice stained the oak lids.” She stamped out the butt after a few more drags. “Didn’t want it anyway,” she said. She reached under Criselda’s skirt. Criselda wanted to push the hand away but relented and let Cenci proceed.

 

Sightless eyes watched them as they indulged, the air was permeated with the smell of sex and skin and cigarette smoke. The pitch black pubic hair was on display, matted into a sopping mop of fear and cravings. A scorpion twitched in the corner. Criselda reciprocated and parted the lips to catch a fleeting glimpse of the Oracle. Later Cenci posed for photographs in the bedroom while figurines were placed on discarded organs.

 

Bent over, Cenci’s heaving breasts swayed with the rhythm of Criselda’s hand plunging deep into her vagina.

 

“Please! Please! Go deep! Cenci begged. “It’s been so long. I killed the last one! Aaagh!”

 

Black fire radiated from Cenci’s pubic mound, turning into radiant crimson, enveloping Criselda’s fist. Screams started and stopped and continued for seven minutes. Criselda’s screams, then Cenci’s moans, then together, lips touching, they collapsed on the floor, having rolled off the bed.

 

“You ok?” they asked each other simultaneously. Neither answered and they lay on the floor nauseous and tingling, staring at the ceiling. Three hours had passed. They looked for the clocks, but the timepieces had been removed. Having entered a maze, they had become entrapped.

 

13th Hour.

 

Criselda noticed that the nude woman had a tattoo on her chest, right on top of the breasts. She couldn’t perceive it clearly since the woman was rather far away. As the woman got closer, as her mouth got closer, Criselda could see that the image was an animation of Christ on the cross, drawn in the style of Max Fleischer, with delicate colorings of red, gold and blue. Criselda could hear the last word uttered by our savior, synchronized with the beat of the ceiling fan. It was barely audible, the shadows increasing with each tick of the clock. Criselda had her left hand on the subject’s sex organ now, her right hand flicked open the switchblade again. Outside the window, under street lamps, lovers French-kissed before passing out bored. Lazy hookers fingered themselves and lightbulbs exploded. An illness was preset.

 

Her playthings were degradation and vice. Criselda had become the vampire of the Atomic Age. Criselda plunged the blade deep into her, just below the sternum. A quick puncture, a surprised look, the prey collapsed into Criselda’s arms. Christ continued to mouth unknown words.

 

“I’m scared now, there is something waiting to touch me, to warn me about my mistakes. At 4 a.m. the panel of accusers will convene to read through the list.”

 

Criselda listened to Cenci’s confession. In this manner she neutralized the problem. Sound-snaps were already in progress.

 

“…and then while he was sodomizing me, I retrieved the autopsy knife I had hidden beneath the mattress. I reached behind me and sliced off his cock on the upstroke on his pullout. He was stunned, maybe confused. Not sure how I should have read his expression. His mouth remained open in a voiceless scream that never ended.

 

“Not sure how long, everything was slo-mo, he keeled over. While he writhed, I pushed the blade underneath his chin and slowly pushed (a little sound of jawbone scraping and flesh separating, not much, though) and watched it come out his mouth. Fuck, I was sweating. Wondered if there was my juice mixed in with the blood dripping out of his mouth….”

 

“Always the sound of butterflies. Soft flutter on my clitoris. Am I absolved?”

 

Sometimes the women were overcome with the urge to remove themselves from the existing scenarios. They would check the current locations of the existing wounds that had ensnared them, trying to determine if a pattern existed. Forensic criminal roleplaying intrigued them. They were in love with the constellations of pain.

 

The ceremony of her pet’s submission affected Criselda in unique ways. Criselda noticed her own handwriting started to change in a myriad of variations: the slant of the letters, the dotting of the i’s. It was a vicious pleasure. These things added up until the obsession was overpowering.

 

The bell rang three times. How does someone know someone? The relationship with her perverts thrilled her. When she made them die slowly for their transactions, she felt whole. Taking their lives with her hands, as she saw the recognition of the death sentence in their eyes, their regrets at knowing that they had destroyed other lives, as well as their own, made her coherent. She knew they shared a sin but Criselda knew her sins were composed of the purity of revenge. It was the essence of cleansing and it made her content.

 

Whimpering was heard among the clandestine clouds that were hiding behind the crumbling buildings. Police scanners were reporting random acts of violence. Murders were being committed by solitary perpetrators. It was logical; if there was no partner, there would be no betrayal. The benefits of the drug traveled up the spinal column, making her forget what she did last night. Bloodstained plastic sheets and shiny knives danced in front of her.

 

One bird was flying solo, crashing into another leather window. Songs minus musical notation. Absent pianos provided a background atmosphere, just a sweet death. Another by-product of a diseased mind tortured by the current fascist government. The Media unspooled images that slapped her in the face.

 

“You were there too,” Criselda said. Her vacant companion gave her the once-over.

 

“You just didn’t care,” her friend replied. Touch me there.” She motioned towards Criselda’s mouth.

 

“I can see them now,” Criselda responded. “Just like you told me a couple of days ago. A guest in a convent that murdered all the guests. Must have been nice.”

 

The two of them stayed locked in Criselda’s apartment for 7 days, resting. Foreign eyes glanced at their nude bodies. There was no touching, because Criselda had requested it. The velvet drapes burned. All that they had heard was true.

 

a buxom silhouette before the fatal crash.” 

 

Many tongues. Many fingers. Curled hot iron twisted between her wet legs. The movie posters were torn down. The strippers had left for the day. The stage was vacant. Hollow eyes behind the backdrop the hookers were likely to construct a new religion that was more honest and open. 

 

“Come on darlin’. That’s it. On my face! That’s what was requested for salvation. She escaped unharmed in the bent light.” 

 

A miscellaneous prostitute wandered randomly in pursuit of her purpose into an apartment on the 7th floor. Perhaps she had the wrong address. 

 

“Who’s there?” 

 

In the living room the chalk-lines moaned and moved slightly. This scared her. 

 

click click click  

 

The blade tapped gently against the grimy windowpane. Looking through an outline of a figure whose eyes were gouged out, she decided to imitate and plucked out both her eyes. This would please her parents. They would know what happened to her.   The searing pain in the back of her neck was caused by the straight razor invading the cervical plexus, slicing nerves C1, C2 and C3. Blood spurted out onto the brilliant yellow wall, etching her name into the plaster. Her eyes looked upward as an iron rod was inserted into her vagina, pushed through, travelled along the alimentary canal and exited through her mouth. Spit Roasted. The rod was inserted into a huge cement planter that had contained soil, no foliage. She had become an adornment. She had become a piece of furniture.  Pendulous breasts were on fire. Her arms started twitching and urine watered the soil. Her purple satin corset was stained with red thick fluid, edging the tops of her full fashion stockings with the Cuban heel. Fungus grew in praise of the killer’s achievement. The murderer fled through the missing door.  

 

“Please identify the other ones. If it’s not too much trouble.” 

 

The coroner (aka her pimp) said, “It was a curious fact that there was minimal fluid on her bare ass. Red ligature marks encircled her throat and occurred post-mortem. She was one of the prettiest women I had seen.  With an abnormal shape of pain and a slight emphasis on pleasure she had fucked her way to completion. They pushed away from her, a dildo about 7” in length was shoved in her cunt. Never cared much for tragedies. Can I leave now?” 

 

Incandescent letters shimmering, throbbing, rose from the steamy ocean. The sky as background was slashed in several places. Bloodshot eyes peered through the slits. The sky as plastic backdrop quivered with each stroke. Re-arranged, the 8-meter-high letters spelled out “BIRTH OF CRISELDA” in Broadway font. Amphibious beings leapt out and descended. Cellophane coated with shellac caught on fire. The projector lens crackled but continued. The silence was a backbeat. 

 

Police scanner inappropriate music inordinate touching under radio waves. Blatant rip-offs.  Politically correct fucking. Self-righteous deserved diseased crucifixion deaths.  “I’m sure they’ll love it! So clean! So pure!”  

 

Voiceover: “Yes? The telephone is dead.…I guess I loved him. I was…ashamed, so I removed the eyes. He wouldn’t see what I had done to his lovers’ victims. You can’t keep pushing it in. The splatter only activated my guilt. I had that taste in my mouth again, my teeth vibrated softly. This music…the sounds in the sacristy…two depraved beings plotted more depravities…words of confession. I slowed it down then shoved it in deep, deep, deeply…. lovely….” 

 

Criselda paused, she was unsure where to go with this. She wiped her forehead with a white scarf retrieved from her coat pocket.  She then wrapped the white silk around her neck, making sure to knot it fashionably. 

 

The pleasure of love that she cherished became ataraxia that she despised. Spitting out names at random cracked windows, victims of burglaries. A gift for the discarded lovers. In the orphaned bar, she fed coins into the jukebox. She adjusted the barbed wire halo around her head and wiped blood from her eyes.

 

“Don’t know why I want to struggle now. I’ll lash back. I’ll lash back.”

 

A twisted robotic dove slept in her arms last night, providing comfort for her prospective victims. A murderess thinking only of herself, she considered herself affable. There were so many on her list, so many that deserved it.

 

She awoke early and tried to shake off the previous week’s events. She responded to a random mirror in the next room, because that is where her thoughts were hidden from her. Rising from the mattress on the floor, she stretched her arms upwards and outwards, some joints cracked. She reached down and spread her labia apart, trying to perform an inspection. It had been used a lot recently and she felt slightly sore.

 

“I have to remember to trim my pubic hair, scratchy. scratchy.”

 

Walking to the next room, she stood in front of her favorite full-length mirror and surveyed her body. She was 38” X 29 X 38; voluptuous not perfect. Men always wanted her, she knew it. Perfect bait for a perfect crime. She had been fighting depression for years, the “saintly blues,” she called it.

 

“In order for you to change your long-term image, you need to change your life.”

 

She she lifted her breasts and let them drop, still firm, they fell into place. Her medium-length black hair was slightly damaged – wrong shampoo or too many dark thoughts. She liked her hair color – it complimented her olive southern Italian skin tone; her genes came from Calabria and Sicily, with a bit of Piemonte.

 

She had to assert herself, she had to get moving, she had to tell the fertile dead birds she had many tasks at hand. It was time to get dressed.

 

Caterina woke from her haze at the faint sound of the intercom buzzer. She had been staring out the window of her third-floor apartment into the end of the late August evening. It had been an overcast day, mid-eighties temperature, very humid. She felt dirty even though she had showered about an hour ago. Her skin was sticky as if she was covered with a very thin layer of invisible scum. She was thinking of showering again before he arrived, but it was no longer possible.

 

Paura. She remembered that term. A term from childhood; her nonna said it often when they watched scary movies on television in their tiny apartment in Rome. She missed her. Now she was thirty-five, still in Rome and earning a very good living as an escort. She liked most of her clients, some were creepy, but most were harmless. generous old men, who really wanted talking more than fucking. She finished her cigarette and tamped it out in the cracked crockery ashtray, which coincidentally once belonged to nonna.

 

The intercom buzzed again. She walked over to the speaker. Caterina was wearing a see thru peignoir, which provided a glimpse of her black satin wasp, tightly cinched and full fashioned seamed stockings. Not a totally comfortable outfit, but she felt very aroused wearing it. She hardly ever admitted it but she did enjoy her profession sometimes. Her high heels click-clacked faintly on the marble floor. This client was one she saw once a week, very nice mature gentleman; always brought her blue irises.

 

“Who’s there?” she asked.

 

“You’re favorite. The one who loves you.”

 

Caterina smiled to herself and buzzed him in. She went over to the door and turned the lock, so he could get in; she walked over to the chair in the middle of the living room, and sat down, back to the door. he had a cute fetish. he liked to sneak in and surprise her from behind. She thought that maybe he really did love her. She lit another cigarette and waited. As she blew smoke towards the ceiling she heard a slight click. Then nothing. Caterina strained to hear more. Nothing.

 

“You’re moving very quietly today, my lover. I’m impressed.”

 

She felt a hand grab her hair roughly and pull her neck back. A hand in a black leather glove covered her mouth. She could smell the odor of old leather, tainted with moisture. Starting to shake, she urinated in her seat. Her arms flailed as she tried to get out of the chair.