Hell Hath No

By Justin Aclin

            The sex was all right, but something was bugging Donnie.  Maybe it was the way she looked at him afterwards, in the dark.  Looking at someone in the dark is tricky business, but she definitely had it down, and it weirded Donnie out.  His back was to her, so he couldn’t see her eyes, but he could feel them digging into him like a burrowing animal.

            The sex was all right.  In fact, it had been rather wonderful.  Donnie should know, having had such a wide variety of it in his short life.  He had done it just about every way, with not quite every person, but enough, so that he had a nice cross section of what it was like.  But no matter what sort of strange and kinky permutations he tried, he always came back to the old standards, and that was what he had been engaging in that night before. Donnie had been on top, and after he spent (he wasn’t sure if she had finished or not, and frankly, he didn’t care.  It was getting harder and harder for Donnie to finish nowadays and if he saw a chance he ran with it) he climbed down beside her and lay on his side facing away from her.  But he could still feel the eyes.

            Donnie had met her at a birthday party.  It was for some rich little snot and Donnie was loading the helium tanks for the balloons for the clown.  The woman had been there, a cousin of a friend of a parent, someone who was in town with nothing to do but go to extravagant birthday parties.  All this had been told to Donnie at some point in the evening, and some of it registered.  He took her to dinner, and considered a movie but opted to go straight to the sex.  Life was, after all, short.

            Donnie’s apartment was specifically formulated so as not to give the impression of being a love nest, which it was.  All the decorations were tasteful, but not so over-tasteful as to be obviously trying.  There was no champagne.  Donnie owned no romantic music.  No, Donnie’s apartment was designed solely to give women the impression that Donnie didn’t do this sort of thing much, which he did, and that they were special, which they weren’t. 

The apartment building Donnie lived in had once been a hotel, so there was a door in the wall that used to connect his room to his neighbors’ but no longer opened.  Doors Donnie could hear everything that went on in his neighbors’ apartment through the door, and he was almost positive they could hear everything that went on in his, all the groaning and the calling out to God.  Donnie didn’t care.  The shit he heard through that wall pretty much ensured that he would never give a fuck what his fucked-up neighbors thought of him.

            Sure, the sex had been all right, but it didn’t give this woman the right to stare at Donnie all night and unsettle him.  It hardly gave her the right to be there after the next twenty minutes.  However, Donnie became obsessed with not turning around.  That would be saying that she was succeeding in freaking him out.  That would be letting her win.  Thankfully, it didn’t go on for long.  She spoke.

            “Did you enjoy it?”

            Donnie was relieved.  He turned around to face her.  He could make out her silhouette but no facial expressions.  He could still feel her eyes studying him, though.  “Oh, yeah, baby.”  He said.  Then, with some, hesitation, “Did you?”

            She moaned softly.  “It was the best.”  She put one shadowy hand on Donnie’s chest.  “Did they enjoy it?  All the others?” 

            Red light.  Donnie slipped into defensive mode.  “The few ladies who have been lucky enough to have been brought here have enjoyed it, of course.  But frankly, only the very few and special get this far.”  This was true, provided “few and special” means, “everyone who didn’t scream.”

            But she kept on prodding.  “Oh, come on,” she said.  “A good looking guy like you?  Charming.  Ravishing.  Surely you must be just drowning in women.”  Her voice was like what he heard in his dreams.  It made his defenses melt away.  She was stripping him naked.

            “Well, yeah,” he admitted.  “There have been a lot.  You know, through the years.”

            “And did you love any of them?”

            “Nah.”  Far away, Donnie was amazed at how easily he was letting this information slip. 

            “None of them?”  There was an element of pity in her voice.  “That’s a sad life, isn’t it?  Haven’t you ever known love?”

            “Well, you’re going to laugh, but…”  Somewhere inside Donnie, something panicked.  He couldn’t believe he was about to reveal what he was about to reveal, but he was powerless to stop himself.  It was like watching a horror movie and wanting to scream, “Don’t go in the door!” but you can’t change what’s going to happen.  “Actually, the only time I’ve ever been in love was with my cousin.”

            She didn’t laugh.  “Really?  Tell me about it.”

            “Well, I was young.  Much younger.  She was beautiful.  She was even younger than me.  And we… we knew we were doing things we shouldn’t have been, but we didn’t care.  We were in love.  It’s weird… that was the last time I really remember being happy.”

            “What happened?”  It must have been a trick of the light, but suddenly the silhouette of the girl looked like three girls.

            “Whoa,” Donnie said, “You didn’t say you were bringing friends.”

            “What happened?” She asked again.  If there really were three girls there, in the dark, they talked with only one voice.

            “Well, the more we did it, the more cocky I got.  And eventually, I didn’t see why I should keep limiting myself to just one person.  So I didn’t.  She found out and… I don’t know.  I guess she got angry or something.  Her family moved away after that.  I haven’t heard from her since.”

            “Do you know where she is now?”
            Donnie shook his head in the dark.  He knew she could see him.

            “Would it surprise you to know she killed herself?”

            “Yeah, I guess it would.  Why do you ask?”

            “Because she did.”

            The red light went off again.  This didn’t add up.  Even in the slightly confused state Donnie was in he could see that.  The fear was audible as he stammered, “How do you know?”

            “Because I talked to her.”

            This didn’t make any sense.  Donnie had met this chick at random, hadn’t he?  But he was beyond the point where any of that mattered.  He was back in his lull, watching himself talk to this woman. 

            “Wow.  Do you think she was still mad at me?”
            “Oh, I know for a fact that she was.”

            Donnie laughed nervously.  “Well, you know what they say.  ‘Hell hath no fury…’”

            She stood up beside the bed.  The three shapes were slightly more distinct now.  “Who says that?”
            “Oh you know.  Everybody.”

            “Well everybody is wrong.”  Yeah, there were definitely three of her.  Donnie could tell by the three pairs of glowing red eyes staring into him.  And then they pounced.

            Frank and Margaret had just settled into sleep when the screaming started.

            “There he goes again,” Margaret said.

            “He seems to be enjoying himself particularly well tonight,” Frank remarked as he rolled over in bed.  “Usually it’s just, ‘Oh God, yes.  Oh yeah.’  That kind of shit.  He’s really wailing.”

            “Do you suppose we should call the police, Frank?  I mean, it’s two thirty in the god damn morning.”

            “Nah,” Frank replied, “it’ll probably stop soon.”

              And it did.