No . . . mother never said there’d be days like this.

On the surface it's not a bad set-up. I’m in bed with a blonde who has exemplary tits, D cups if they were a day. I’ve always liked women with very long hair and hers is perfect, bright vines which have grown almost to the small of her back. The face too is pleasant, replete with sparkling diamond eyes. So far, so good, but here’s where this tryst starts to fall short of the glory of Penthouse Forum - like the Godzilla movie posters said, size does matter. From two blocks away you could look at her and immediately know she shops at the Big and Tall stores (she's 5'2, you do the math). I’d almost finished with her by imagining I was actually with Sherilyn Fenn (and Sheryl Lee), but then she wanted to get on top. I was charitable (simply translated: drunk) and agreed, and was soon thinking less about Sherilyn and Sheryl, and more about asthma attacks.

I consented to the aforementioned atrocities, and accept full responsibility, but the crowning touch was beyond my control - a factor substantially worse than merely being here.

This blonde with a satisfying bra size but a slow metabolism is dead, and she's still on top of me. I think it happened at 3:36 a.m., the time on her digital clock which I saw when I craned my head to the right. This is the extent of my mobility, that and being able to move my right arm. The left is pinned by . . . damn, I don’t remember her name. Did she even tell me? I probably wasn't listening. Whoever she is, she has my legs and torso welded to the mattress. I can’t turn my head to the left because her elbow finished between my ear and shoulder. On a scale of one to ten this hits the upper echelons of embarrassment, a nine at least. To achieve a perfect ten, let me add my pathetic confession - I'm still hard. No one has to know about this, so I'm telling myself the frantic gyration beneath her is merely a desperate attempt to squirm away. Only that and nothing more.

Sherilyn and Sheryl . . . Laura (or Madeline) and Audrey . . . the stoplight . . . Sherilyn dancing to Badalamanti's score . . . a secret scene never shown, Laura and Audrey experimenting . . .Mission accomplished. Coherent thought is once more possible.

The first thing to remember is not to kick myself in the ass too much for going home with . . . whatever her name is (was). I hit the bars too late, so all the eye candy had been taken - swept off their feet or clandestinely slipped that magnificent invention, the date rape drug. All that was left when I saddled up to the bar were the bottom feeders, and knowing anyone I went home with would diminish my pride come sun-up I started doing shots in a hurry. Ego abuse and a hangover are a bad combination, but at the time I thought it was better to go home with an undesirable than go home alone. When the nausea kicked in and driving home would probably mean killing an innocent family in a station wagon coming home from Disney Land, I started doling out the pick-up lines. It took two before I struck gold - such as it was - with my big date. My face was stinging on both sides by that point (One proposition thought my line was too crude for just one slap).

I'm not as desperate as I probably sound, so let me explain where I'm coming from. When I was fifteen I went sledding in my neighborhood, and a neighbor’s dog kept leaping on my shoulders, apparently mistaking me for a willing mate. It didn’t matter that I no more resembled a dog than an emu, not to my canine suitor. Reality would be ignored for gratification. I’m not trying to say I'm a dog (though I guess I am), only that it’s natural enough to overlook the big picture when it suits you.

As for what killed her, I’d say cardiac arrest or aneurysm. It wasn’t me, I was just lying there waiting for the end, hoping sooner than later. I don’t see why she'd get that excited since a girl her size has likely been with a multitude of guys. The American ideal of beauty is technically some bone-rack little bitch with borderline anorexia, but let’s not forget men are opportunists. Many of the big girls have quite a self-esteem deficit, and they’re grateful for any attention. If sex is the only way to prolong the flattery, you can expect a "Tally ho!"

I suppose I can rest easy knowing the risk of her getting pregnant vanished.

Right now my breathing is so shallow you’d think I'd been trapped in an elevator for hours. My . . . struggle . . . was more exertion than I can afford. It would almost be better to die than summon help, which if I'm to live seems to be my fate. It’s too dark in here to see just how much I have to circumvent, but I feel like Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street when he melted through the mattress. I estimate three hundred pounds, at least. I recall setting a 350 pound maximum limit, and congratulated myself on finding someone well below that. She had a very small car, though, which quickly smote my satisfaction.

I couldn’t even tell you where she drove me, not even if I’d been sober during the trip. Assuming there's a phone I can strain for, I won’t even be able to tell the operator where to send the police. I guess they could trace the call, though maybe they only do that when they suspect a prank. Someone in dire need might well be ignored.

I'm not entirely convinced I want to be rescued. They’d have to deploy the jaws of life. It feels like my ribs are about to crack and crumble into bone dust. With my luck this will end up on an emergency rescue show, and everyone will think I'm a loser who can't get laid within my own weight division. Word would travel far and wide, and everywhere I went I’d be The Guy Who Almost Suffocated Under His Obese One Night Stand...

Okay, what was that? I heard something. I wasn't expecting to, can't tell if it happened somewhere off in the house or right underneath the bed. Maybe we're in a bad part of town and someone broke in. Oh hell, what if she’s married? It’s hard to imagine a husband taking much offense over a woman like this sharing the wealth, but on the other hand he might be insulted that he couldn’t even establish dominion over such a disposable female. I could almost see myself blowing some guy’s brains out for that, though I’d take solace in having my own lovers on the side. It’s quiet again. Everyone say it with me: too quiet. My heart is racing. If it is someone with malicious intent, he could carve on me for hours and I couldn’t do anything but bleed. My left arm has fallen asleep, and the discomfort of her elbow in my neck is taking its toll. I really should have exercised more, maybe joined a fitness program. I haven’t lifted weights since high school, and back then I was struggling to bench two hundred. You don’t have to have to a good physique when your parents buy you a Mustang, I quickly learned, and thus bid adieu to curls and presses. The game doesn’t change much when you get older, so I stuck to drinking and driving. It's strange to have her chest pressing on mine, but not feel her heartbeat. It was when I could no longer feel that trip-hammering that I knew she hadn’t just passed out. I never believed she was drunk to begin with, and that she had stayed sober so she could take advantage of a guy like me. The slut.

There it goes again, that noise. It definitely came from within this room. I’m reaching for the night stand now, hoping to find a phone. If the publicity gets too intense I'll fake my own death, but I want out of here now. She dragged me in here without turning on lights until we tripped over the bed. I don’t know what the room interior looks like. It will be daylight in a couple hours, and that will help because it’s hard to take initiative in the darkness. Even if I couldn’t reach a phone it'd help morale if I could see one. After all, a mother has to see her child trapped under that car before she gets the superhuman strength to lift it.

Wait. One. Damn. Second.

The noise again, but something else. I felt a kick. It wasn't a heartbeat, the location of the kick was in her stomach.

Again.

Again.

Different places, but neither at her breastbone. I’m feeling them in my abdomen.

Is it just rigor mortis? Could that happen so soon, and would it feel anything like this? I don't know anything about it, I'm not an old hand at this kind of thing. Oh, there's no way . . . No, I don't buy it for a minute. If she'd been pregnant, the kid would have died with her. It wouldn’t be kicking me now like this was my fault. Besides, I’d have noticed her pregnancy was really starting to show. Drunkenness is imperfect in explaining away all discrepancies.

The noise wasn't the kicking, though, because you wouldn't have been able to hear even Pele in the womb. This was more . . . wet, like pasta being turned around a fork and pulled from a plate.

I need the light right now. Something like this doesn't happen when sunlight is bleeding through the drapes, it's an unwritten rule. I can feel her bedside lamp but the knob is beyond reach. There doesn't seem to be anything but the lamp and her clock, which is only a clock. No radio. I'd turn that on just to drown out the noise, but all I’ve managed to do is set the alarm to go off at 9:48. If I'm still here when it goes off, I'm certain I won’t be alive to hear it. The wet noises have gotten louder, more intense. Why the hell was a pregnant woman haunting a singles bar? She'd have a better chance of me paying her rent than committing to a long term relationship the father wouldn't give her. Something wet just dotted my stomach. A pool of it is spreading on me, and it’s really pouring out now. It's escaping her gut, and I'm sure it is blood. A lot of blood.

I'm thrashing under her again, this time to really get out from under. There is definitely a hole in her stomach. Its slick edges are being ground against me like a new sexual orifice, and more of its contents are sluicing out. This, along with the still-present nausea of too much drink, just caused me to vomit. Depending on the trajectory, most probably ended up in her hair and down her back. The slickness of her blood and . . . tissue, I'm guessing . . . has formed a rivulet that is streaking to my groin. Despite the lubrication of all this leakage, I'm making no progress in freeing myself. My left arm still hasn’t regained all its feeling, it is dead weight of pins and needles. The circulation has been stemmed the arm won’t move I can't move it. Another sound, but I recognize it as me screaming as loud as I can, given my restricted situation. Not even loud enough to be heard in her well-stocked kitchen, much less the next house over.

Between these cries is the sloshing of the juices as I weakly try to capsize her.

Sloshing, then the dripping and pouring as they rush out. The tearing sounds have probably continued throughout all of this, but at some point I became more aware of my panic than its cause.

Something new - an indentation on my stomach, something probing the area with very slippery digits. I'm feeling faint, all my blood is collecting in my head. Unconsciousness now would be nothing short of a blessing. I'm almost there.

I hear and feel her stomach hole suddenly expand, like an artist angrily tearing a page from his sketchbook. More indentations on me, including something softer like cartilage. I think it's a nose. The pressure just below it has changed. Opening wider. That would be the mouth.

The last impossibility of this ridiculous night - it already has teeth, and very good teeth at that.

The tearing has momentarily ceased, and I hope when it starts again in about two seconds I’m not awake to tell you what happens ne -

END

BOTTOM FEEDER
is Copyright 2000 by Ryan Harding and is published in feoamante.com and Feo Amante's Story Time with his permission.

Visit Ryan's website at SILENT EMPIRE