Monday 2 September 2019

Blue Monday: Better Than Therapy

Every Monday I'll be posting an excerpt from one of the stories in Lust in the Dust.

Better Than Therapy by Nicole Wolfe is an OMG bitter-dark zombie comedy with a clever twist. What can I say? It made me laugh, so maybe I'm just evil...



My zombie ex-boss burst into the kitchen, so I shot him through the head. I’m fairly certain he was a zombie, at least. Andrea chose that time to collapse. I rolled her onto her back and saw her lips were blue and a weird, gray fog had filled her eyes. I picked her up by the shoulders and she latched onto my arms. She made a weird slack-jawed sound that was half-hungry and half-pleading. She was too weak to overpower me, so I locked her in the kitchen’s walk-in freezer.

I found the hotel’s maintenance men barricaded in the boiler room. Most of the housekeeping staff had fled back to their families, half the restaurant staff had stayed, and nearly all the guests had run out and been eaten. The smart ones stayed in their rooms. I convinced the maintenance crew, Dick the bartender, and a guest who happened to be an Air Force sergeant to help me clear the hotel of zombies. It took us the rest of the night, but we did it and shared top-shelf drinks afterwards.

I took the top floor suite with the sauna as mine. I brought Andrea there after everyone else had collapsed from exhaustion or drunkenness. I wanted one last night with her. We hadn’t spent much time together in the last few months and I wanted to tell her everything I’d been afraid to tell her before. I doubted her brain could process my words by now, but I knew I had to get it out of me. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to move on, or put a bullet in her head, if I didn’t.

I tied her hands behind her back with a belt from a complimentary bathrobe so she couldn’t grab me. She didn’t resist, and it was easy because she was even more lethargic from being in the freezer for hours. The trickiest part was stuffing a washcloth in her mouth so she couldn’t bite me. After that, she leaned stiff as a board against the desk and moaned with her mouth full of terrycloth.

She looked pretty all tied up and gagged. I’d fantasized about tying her up many times, but I knew she’d laugh at the idea. Now she was all mine to have however I wanted. Her lover was a headless corpse. It was just us. I had planned to shoot her after I told her all the stuff that had been on my mind for months, but I couldn’t do that now. She was all I had, and all I wanted.

I caressed her face and she tried to reach my fingers with her mouth. I jerked my hand away, even though the gag kept her from biting me. I couldn’t risk infection. I wanted to celebrate our reunion in bed, but there was no way to do it without exposing myself. I had no condoms or latex gloves. It was our first romantic night together in a long time, and we couldn’t do anything...




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It's the end of the world as we know it.

Peace and plenty are ideals barely remembered. Everything we used to rely upon has crumbled away, and pleasure is something few can afford. Every joy has to be fought for. When all the trappings of a civilised life are taken away, all we can hope to truly call our own are our bodies and our hearts. In the ashes, we make alliances where we can, and find solace and humanity in unexpected places. And maybe even a little hope for the future…

Lust in the Dust brings together ten erotic short stories set in times where civilisation and the rule of law have crashed and burned. The aftermath of a terrible war, a zombie invasion, a cityscape over-run by nature, a medieval fortress. Wherever there is life, there is lust.

Edited by Janine Ashbless - with stories by S. Nano, Elizabeth Coldwell, Raven Sky, Sommer Marsden, Cara Thereon, Jones, Gregory L. Norris, Nicole Wolfe, Janine Ashbless, Quiet Ranger.

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