The New Flesh

Penelope Aftergut had a taste for sweets and a penchant towards cruelty. She avoided doctors, believing from experience they were useless. Unfortunately, they were a necessary evil. Suffering from severe leg cramping during her more ambitious activities, she reluctantly made an appointment, deeming her high sugar intake the cause.

A fellow she met online, in a lesser known chat group for the cruel, and who she subsequently met in person along with others of like mind, agreed to accompany her to the doctor’s office. She was not the only one with little respect for physicians.

Exactly one hour after standing in her front yard, dressed in the customary suburban mom attire, waving to her children as they trotted up the school bus steps and grinning at the squirrel in her yard, she sat naked on the edge of the tub, water running warm washing the blood from her red stilettos. Her long blonde hair fell in her face as she worked lavender scented soap onto the spikes of her shoes. She pushed her hair back with the crook of her elbow and watched the water-downed blood stream and swirl down the drain.

After drying her shoes, she slipped her feet into them and faced the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. She turned around admiring the tattoos on each shoulder blade. They caused quite the stir at her club as she performed the activities with nothing on but her heels. A black thorny rose splashing three drops of blood, creating the words "Conquer me completely" puckered from her right shoulder blade. A raven with one eye hanging by a thick rope-like optic nerve oozing the words "Torture me so sweetly" on her left shoulder blade. These words she taught her pet raven, Pookie. It’s the only time she ever felt bad for her cruelty, as the raven on her shoulder with the missing eye resembled her dear pet.

She covered her ample breasts with her black lacey bra, slipped on a sheer, white, button up blouse and wiggled her black leather pencil skirt past her curvy hips. She wrapped her massive blonde locks to the back of her head and secured the loose bun with an ice pick.

The doorbell rang and Pookie spouted, “Torture me so sweetly…Torture me so sweetly…Torture me so sweetly.” Like any obsessive-compulsive raven he said everything in three’s. “Conquer me completely…Conquer me completely…Conquer me completely.”

“Ah Pookie. I do love you.” She said as she reached a red-painted fingernail inside the bars of the cage and caressed his head. “Love you…Love you…Love you.”

David stood at the door. Very few men made her female parts throb. David did. She believed lust to be a most wonderful and cruel feeling. She looked in his eyes and felt the warm, wet heat shudder from her.

“Hello David,” she said and gently and purposely rubbed her breasts on his chest as she stood on her tip-toes to kiss him on his cheek. He stepped away from her not completely comfortable with this moral dilemma.

“Ms. Aftergut,” he said. Penelope laughed. Then he laughed.

“Are you ready?”

“I am.” They walked to his car and he opened the door for her. They spoke of their mutual friends and activities on the thirty minute trip from suburbia to the medical center. He never mentioned his wife, though he did speak of his daughters. Penelope didn’t mind. They would take their game to the next level. The look passed between them. Words were not needed. They arrived in the multi-tiered parking garage and he opened the door for her and reached a hand out to help her out of the car.

Sitting in the doctor’s office together, they resembled any normal married couple, she leafed through House and Garden and he glanced through an old Field and Stream.

“Ms. Aftergut,” the nurse at the door, holding a chart in her hand said. Penelope shot a quick grin at David as they entered the office.

“Dr. Jacobs will be with you in a moment.”

Penelope took a seat in the examining room. ”Thank you.”

One hour later the door abruptly opened and there stood the good doctor.

“So you have leg pain,” he said without looking at Penelope.

“Yes, when I exert a great deal of force on my legs they cramp up terribly.”

“Mmmhmm,” he said and this time looked at her and then at David.

“What do you take for the pain?” He said with a slight irritated and bothered tone.

“Extra-strength Tylenol,” Penelope said, feeling herself growing agitated with his abrupt and careless manner.

She watched as he wrote out a prescription on his pad. He handed it to her. “Do you always wear shoes like that?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Yes but I thought it may be related to my addiction to sweets.”

“Try more sensible shoes and lay off the sugar. That should help.” He said, as he leered at her and licked his lips.

David got up and walked to the door, blocking the doctor’s exit.

“I have a better idea.” Penelope began to undress.

* * *

Penelope left tiny stiletto shaped blood prints on the tile as they left the doctor’s office and had a smidgen of blood on the bun at the back of her head. How odd that no one even peaked in the room with the good doctor carrying on the way he did.

Sore, bruised and battered she walked to her front door, turning to wave at David whose moral dilemma was vanquished on top of the good doctor’s body. She blew him a kiss and closed the door. Pookie was reciting his spiel as Penelope walked over to him.

“Mommy had a very good day, my pet,” she said as she caressed his head.

And exactly one hour before the children would arrive home from school Penelope stood in her kitchen in her suburban uniform, hair in a ponytail, baking cookies like any good, normal mother would do.

"Penelope's Good Day"
Copyright: © 2009 Suzie Bradshaw

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Suzie Bradshaw loves speaking and writing about herself in the third person. She also doubts that light is really the fastest thing in the universe and in her next life she will prove Einstein wrong. But in this life all she wants to do is write. Is that a song? She's had stories published on Microhorror.com and SNMHorrormag.com. Suzie says thank you for reading!