Boris felt his fur prickle the moment the steel door clanged shut behind him. The corridor outside the holding ward for homicidal lunatics smelled like bleach, cold coffee, and regret. His little paws clicked against the tile as he hurried toward the exit, Hannibal Lechter’s velvet-smooth voice still echoing in his ears. The meeting had yielded answers—but answers didn’t slow the ticking clock. Somewhere in Van Nuys, Buffalo Jill was sharpening her dreams with a knife, and Jonny’s elephant-like epidermis was already measured for the next addition to her chilling man suit.
Across town, Jonny hung in a nightmare cut straight from a pulp magazine cover. A dirt pit in a suburban basement. A single bulb swinging like a drunk with a secret. Above him stood Jill, looming over the edge, her shadow falling across him like a funeral veil. She was dressed down to a black tank top and the same model of blood red thong that Jonny had recently purchased at Victoria’s Secret to stuff in his mouth when he took his mid-afternoon naps.
“It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again,” Buffalo Jill crooned, voice syrupy and cruel. She nudged a bottle of Jergens toward him with the toe of her boot. The smell of cheap roses filled the pit as Jonny worked the lotion into his wrinkled hide. Truth was, he liked how the salve opened up his stubborn pores, but he’d written enough erotic fiction for publication on the Dark Web based on this very scenario to know that he had to stretch out the perverse torment in order to intensify the amorous climax. Jonny tilted his head back, eyes half-lidded with defiance and mischief, playing his part like a second-rate actor chasing a first-class curtain call.
“First,” he said, voice low and steady, “tell me how naughty I’ve been.”
