Flash-Fiction-Friday - FF-Talk-Nice-to-Me
by Eric LaRocca

The soles of his custom-made patent leather Oxfords click anxiously on the tiled floor of the doctor’s exam room. Jonathan McCoy can scarcely contain his delight. His hand rests on his wife’s thigh as he sits beside her, rubbing her leg, his fingers occasionally harassing the hem of her flower-print skirt. She doesn’t seem to mind. Her concentration is focused on the male practitioner, maybe 5’9 and gowned in a knee-length white coat. He stands beside the screen and points to the MRI scan of her brain glorified on the wall. Jonathan notices Colleen’s eyes water as the practitioner speaks and animatedly gestures to the monitor.

The highlighted photograph looks like a fileted jellyfish; a small round nugget of silvery whiteness, perhaps the size of a moth, noticeably lines the periphery of the organ. Jonathan’s ears do not seem to register the doctor’s words as his mouth moves, instead silence blaring between the openings of his lips; infrequently his auditory system records the word “malignant.” He catches the words: “atypical,” “surgery,” “chemotherapy,” and “futile” as well. His entire body loosens with joy; one instrument of his anatomy in particular seems to harden with enthusiasm, imagining her body’s throbbing kernel of discomfort. He thinks of deleting his online handle, cyst_licker_69, from the frequently visited chatrooms.

He reaches for Colleen’s hand and her grip is weak. Biting his lip, anxious for her attention, Jonathan unfortunately goes wanting. He admires her head – her perfect head – and studies the arrangement of hair, neatly pulled back in a bun. The stiffness in his trousers toughens as he imagines a small and orderly arranged aperture ventilating her left temple and advertising her cerebrum. The very idea of the integrity of her head’s organ spoiled by a minute knob of tissue only excites his growing erection more. Her cranium seems to bloat with the prospect of unlimited variations of sexuality.

She does not say much during the car ride back to the apartment on the Upper West Side. Only a few grunts and one word answers regarding her headache. She has always been one to talk to herself. But, not today. The silence is unbearable for Jonathan. He notices how the corners of her eyes collect water and her mascara clots in thick lumps.

Talk nice to me,” he hears in an unfamiliarly feminine voice.

He turns and the door to the bathroom closes, Colleen on the other side.

“Did you say something?” he asks.

Jonathan hears nothing other than the vehement arguing of taxi cab horns outside down on 73rd Street. The toilet flushes and Colleen opens the door.

“Don’t you have to be back down at the office?” she says, passing by him.

He loosens his tie, flexing his esophagus. “They can wait.”

Jonathan observes Colleen as she sits at the edge of the bed and kicks off her heels. He notices her flagrant preoccupation with reviewing his leather wallet resting on the nightstand, more importantly the small circular indentation pressing outward along the fold that’s about the size of his wedding band. She turns and he’s too late to hide his naked finger, undressed from several nightly meetings with bald women who hide small round secrets in their breasts and brains. Sometimes men as well, who keep similar unrevealed truths in their rectums.

“Don’t let me keep you,” she says.

He gently approaches her. “You don’t mind if I stay, do you?”

Colleen says nothing.

Jonathan sits beside her, mouth parting with the intent of words but eventually merely eliminating an exhalation. His hands are awkward and tremble, unsure where to begin. He rests one on her shoulder and she turns from him. He leans closer, pressing his lips against the nape of her neck, and drawing in her scent through his nostrils.

Talk nice to me,” he hears again.

“I will,” he moans, running his mouth along the extent her collar.

Colleen turns, seemingly bewildered. “What–?”

Jonathan’s mouth is far too preoccupied with her ear to offer an answer. His hands are already beneath her skirt and playfully teasing the knots of pubic hair. He presses his mouth to her face and frenziedly pecks her cheek, forehead, and lips. Dragging down her panties, he tours his finger around her frowning womanhood, brings his thumb to his nose, and violently inhales the dampness of her musk. She rakes her head back on the cushions, making soft cooing noises, visibly enthralled with the pleasure and yet thoughtful to discourage herself to indulge completely in the activity. He unzips his trousers and holds his erection with both hands, envisioning the small lump in her brain quivering the way her clitoris does under correct stimulation. Although he expects she might, she does very little to oppose him as he mounts her. He massages her nose and forehead with the length of his shaft, his appliance finally reaching her temple. His entire body shudders on the brink of orgasm.

Talk nice to me,” he hears again; this time the disembodied voice as fine and as trill as a whistle.

It’s then that he notices the left side of her cranium bloat exaggeratedly as though a balloon were expanding from the inside of her skull. Although nothing can discourage Jonathan from concluding the extent of his pleasure, his senses otherwise impaired by the ecstasy of satisfaction are perceptive enough to appreciate Colleen’s anguish as a portion of her head continues to swell.

“Wait–!” she sobs, her voice trembling with panic as she squirms beneath the heaviness of his body.

Colleen heaves Jonathan off of her and sprints from the bed to the washroom, occasionally scowling in unadulterated agony, the intense pressure of cranial inflation observably unbearable and remarkable in its profoundness. Jonathan rushes after her, grabbing and pulling at her dress. She screams, sobbing, as she catches the embellished nature of her distended skull in the bathroom mirror. Jonathan throws his naked body at her and she swings both arms at him, shouting until hoarse. She turns again to admire the deformity and her footing is unbalanced. She cries out and her wildly thrashing arms go limp as her head slams against the rim of the toilet. Her body is still, head draining redness all over the tiled floor. Jonathan turns her over and admires the vent perverted along the side of her head. Cartilage and puffy tumefaction bulge furiously from the yawning maw. Most notably ornamenting the rubbery looking matter is a bulbous wad of otherwise unnatural distension. Jonathan’s penis has not weakened in its stiffness; in fact, it’s harder than ever as he lovingly admires the tumor in its glistening brilliance. Shutting his eyes, he guides his quivering manhood into the outlet and begins to massage the plump tissue already lubricated with blood.

His entire body palpitates in euphoria as his pelvis rocks back and forth against the side of her head, the wetness of blood dripping from her hair occasionally tickling the sensitivity of his testicles. As he strokes his erection against the tumor one final time, the duct of his urethra opens and violently launches fat buttery globs of cream all over the exposed colorless tissue and splintered bone. He moans as he strokes the last of the discharge from his tube, smearing it in the grooves of her unprotected brain matter.

Suddenly, he hears it again.

Talk nice to me.

His eyes return to the tumor, three times larger in size than when previously observed, drenched in blood and wet ribbons of ejaculate.

“What–?”

He feels foolish speaking as his holds his sagging erection in one hand.

The tumor stirs in its place with a jellied gurgle. Its voice is infant-like. “Will you talk nice to me?”

Jonathan lowers his head, bringing his hands closer to the shiny fat wad of material. The growth seems to twitch excitedly at the anticipation of his touch.

“She talked nice to me,” it says, wiggling in the pulp of exposed oily material. “She was sweet to me. She can’t take care of me now, though. But you can. Right?”

Its impish articulation curls as though genuinely hopeful Jonathan might.

He holds out his hand and the clump slides from the channel of brain matter right into his open palm. It squirms gleefully as he holds it and carries it toward the bed where he rests it on a small pillow. The tumor wriggles, giggling merrily as it rolls onto the cushion.

“You have to talk to me,” it demands. “If you don’t, my cells will weaken and I’ll die. If you talk, I’ll give you whatever you want.”

“What – what should I say?” Jonathan stammers.

“Tell me a story,” it says. “Anything you like.”

Jonathan opens his mouth and says whatever comes to his mind. He speaks for hours and hours on end; the tumor merely sits, listens, and occasionally chuckles, bouncing with laughter.

In the morning, Jonathan wakes to a putrid smell drifting from the bathroom. All that is left on the cushion is a small ringlet of blood and semen detailing where the tiny growth had once been. It’s nowhere to be found. Jonathan’s nostrils flare again at the reminder of his dead wife. He cannot be bothered with that now.

He swallows an aspirin.

Nothing seems to soothe the intense pressure within his head. It feels as though his brain might explode.

He brings his hand to his ear and his fingers are wet with small beads of blood. His canal feels loosened, enflamed with redness, as though something has just crawled inside.


Eric LaRocca is a writer and long-time admirer of the grotesque and the bizarre. Although only 21 years old, he has had the privilege of having some of his short fiction published in several magazines in the US and the UK such as Dark Moon Digest, Massacre Magazine, Sanitarium, and The Horror Zine. He has also been featured in anthologies such as Of Devils and Deviants: An Anthology of Erotic Horror (Crowded Quarantine Publications). He currently studies at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, CT.

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