Glory

Betty wrapped her arm around Art, feeling the warmth of his soft baby body against hers. She straightened her back, settled in position, smiled broadly, and awaited the click of the camera shutter.

But the smell had already shot her back in time to a damp men’s room a lifetime ago.

The blended aroma of cigarettes, disinfectant, and whatever cologne the photographer had steeped himself in, transported her across time so clearly she could still taste the blood on her lips and feel the clammy toilet bowl under her palms.

Vance never knew about her first marriage. At 15 she became infatuated with Dr. Bert Castle, her charming Dentist. He hadn’t cared a jot for her until the year she turned 17, the year her hips rounded and became soft but firm, and her breasts finally filled her blouse with ample handfuls of creamy flesh.

They eloped in the Spring. She thought married life would be all tender love making, hot dinners, and fat, smiling babies. But Dr. Castle was not what he had appeared to be.

So many evenings he would leave and not return until morning. No explanation offered. He slid into their bed smelling of liquor, spicy perfume and stale sweat.

Over the months, anger built up in Betty’s heart, gradually overwhelming her once meek soul.

One cool evening, when the leaves were just about to drop, Bert sauntered through the kitchen after dinner. “I’m heading out. Don’t wait up.” It was a statement that required no reply, he had made that much abundantly clear.

From the drawer at her hip she grasped a set of car keys entrusted to them by Mr. Barbar next door for safe keeping. In Old Man Barbar’s Ford, she followed close behind their brand new powder blue Morrie. Moment’s after him, she crept down a grim-looking driveway. In the half light she could just make out a small sign; “The New Brunswick home for Retired Servicemen”. Bert disappeared to the left of a large brick building. With tight chest and shallow breath, Betty followed on tippy toes. Beyond the dim lights of the carpark, a long low building was lit up from within. The lights shone like gaudy baubles; plastic glinting, cheap, and nasty. When she finally built up the courage to enter she was greeted with a wall of hot bodies, flesh, and lascivious movement.

Her fear and inexperience fell away. All that was left was a white hot rage that filled her mouth with bile. The blood viciously pumped around her body from her tingling thighs to her flushed cheeks, filling her with arousal, disgust and fury.

Hoping to take a moment to catch her breath, she made her way through a sea of clammy bodies, towards the toilets. But in her haste she almost walked directly into Bert. He stood, back to her, casually leaning against the wall chatting to a boney, crepe-skinned woman, smoking a long brown cigarillo in a Bakerlite holder. Without thinking she darted through the closest door. She moved so fast she hadn’t noticed it was the men’s bathroom. Inside her shock grew, first at the sight of urinals, then on seeing prolific man-on-man action taking place against the dim recesses of the lavatory walls. She ducked into a stall and slammed the door. Before her tears could roll past her chin she heard the door open again and footsteps move across the linoleum floor in time with the music pumping through the walls. The stall beside her closed with a click. The tips of familiar shoes grazed the divider under her side. The sound of a buckle being unfastened, clink-clink-clink. She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled her feet up to her body. Shivered on the toilet, she heard a familiar voice say in a casual cadence “Hey baby, I’m ready”. She opened her eyes and saw a ridged penis protruding from a hole in her stall wall. The smell of Bert’s French cigarettes, his musky cologne and the disinfectant used to wipe down the walls, made her head swim. Her hand shot to her throat is shock, then disgust, then all encompassing rage.

She yanked the scarf from around her neck and wrapped it around the head of his cock, pulling it towards the wall with a thud.

“Oh a kinky one aye?!” These were the last words she heard from Bert’s lips.

With her other hand she pulled a long chrome dental pick from her purse and thrust it through the hole just to the right of his protruding member. She thrust with her whole body until the hilt of the pick hit his fleshy exposed crotch and the pick exited his body at the base of his buttock. A long spurt of hot arterial blood shot through the glory hole and hit her in the face, covering her lips and nose.

His scream was out of this world. Like nothing she had heard before. Like a vixen caught in a trap, crossed with the screams of a person being burned alive, and the scraping of metal against bone.

As he screamed and slumped against the filthy toilet floor she propelled herself onto the toilet cistern and scrambled out the window, dropping roughly on the dirt below. She ran into the velvety night leaving his screams to mingle with the music and laughter from the main room, never to speak of it again.