Read Hard Bite and Other Short Stories for Free Online Page B

right, sweetheart. A little louder.”
    Chickadee takes a deep breath and shouts, “All right, Mr. DeMille…I’m ready to wake the goats up!”
    I fergot about the goats. Bleating starts to beat the band. The neighbors start screamin’. I yell, “Cheese it, da cops!” and we all stampede outta there.
    Sirens was yodelin’ in the distance and searchlights was piercin’ the sky, an’ the Zombie Monkey gnashed his teeth and sank into the big sleep for another sixty-one years.
    Judge, dat’s nuttin’ but the truth, I swears. Let me go and I’ll be on my way if ya don’t mind… Judge? †

 
     
    Killer Orgasm
     
     
    She has nerve, that woman, looking like that. Chopped, frizzy hair and a no-name purse. Flat shoes. Him beside her. They’re together like a cop and handcuffs. He looks like a goddamn starved dog on a leash. Silvery hair and a gut starting, but the blue eyes and rugged chin still blaze. I can tell he still gets hard but she’s dry as a bone. He probably doesn’t ask for it more than once a month. And here I sit, on hot lava, and no man in my bed. Things couldn’t get any wronger. I better stop staring, even though I got my Celeb-U-Dark eyewear on. Stir some sweetener in my coffee, pretend I’m not watching. It’s good this restaurant is packed. Couples everywhere, dammit.
    For a long time I thought something was wrong with me. Then I realized women like her get men like him fresh out of high school, when he still finds the missionary position exciting. They marry, have kids and somewhere after her 39th birthday, she decides sex is done. Add a decade of marriage on top of that, and there he is, house paid off, kids in college and retirement just over the hill. Doomed. Well not anymore, Bucko. Baby girl’s coming to get you.
    The minute she takes a big drink out of that glass of iced tea, he’s mine. I fixed it before the waitress served it to her. Arsenic. Works fast. Looks like food poisoning at first. You’re thinking I’ll get caught, right? Nope. I have no ties to these people, none at all. This is a public place with at least a hundred other diners, and before she turns her toes up, I’ll be gone. Until the funeral, of course.
    Forgive me if I sound harsh. Life hasn’t been easy, and I thought my man hunting days were over. Used to be, before Franklin rocked my world, I was sooo upset that all the good men were taken. It was after another affair with a married man—I could never tell they were married until waaay too late, and I’d already been kicked to the curb a dozen, yes, TWELVE times—that it suddenly dawned on me if the problem was all the good men were attached, then I should just unattach them. Problem solved. It was my bolt of lightning, maybe the only one I’ll ever have.
    Let me explain a sexual fact; an aroused woman releases oxytocin, the hormone that triggers orgasm. No oxytocin, no big O—females can’t get off without it. Oxytocin makes women get easily attached, even addicted, to a man who satisfies them. Guys can just zip up and walk away, but oxytocin keeps a woman wanting. Dr. P told me that kicking an oxytocin addiction is like coming off heroin for some women. It was like that for me, TWELVE TIMES IN A ROW. Did I say that already? I was physically addicted to each man and the cravings nearly drove me mad. At one point I was going to kill myself, but then I got the lightning and forgot all about suicide.
    After that, time was spent looking for just the right situation—a restless man with a contented wife. So contented she was downright complacent. Complacency is a sin. It’s a major ingredient of sloth, which is on God’s greatest hit list. I never worry about adult children or grandchildren because everybody, even Moms, have to die sometime. She just exits a little earlier than expected. In the movies, it’s usual for a femme fatale like me to get the man to do the killing--I have a nice nose, now, and implants, real eyepoppers--but I’ve always been a