"I got thirds!"

"I want to go last, when he"s so full he"s leaking out of his nose!"

I tried to step away, but the inhumanly muscular monks held me firm.

"I"m really not h.o.r.n.y right now," I insisted. "In fact, I may never be h.o.r.n.y again."

"My friend is shy!" That d.a.m.n old caretaker guy again. "He doesn"t like to pitch! He prefers catching!"

"No problem. Fetch the bicycle pump!"

Someone brought over a bike pump, complete with needle tip. The head monk fussed around with the poor dead guy"s junk, then pushed the needle into the pee hole at the shriveled tip. I had an anti-erection, my d.i.c.k actually retreating into my body as I watched.

He began to pump. And, incredibly, the corpse"s johnson responded by filling out in length and width, until it stuck up like a tent pole. The monk kept pumping, and then the s.c.r.o.t.u.m inflated. First apple-sized. Then grapefruit. Then soccer ball. I winced, waiting for the POP, but he quit before it got to medicine ball proportions. Which is a good thing, because b.a.l.l.s that big would be bad medicine indeed.

"This is wrong on so many levels," I said.

Someone stuck a tube of KY into my hand, the head monk said, "Have fun," and then I was tossed onto the corpse, the coffin lid slamming closed above me with devastating finality.

I lied. There isn"t any sodomy in this chapter. Instead, there was a good minute of mindless screaming panic, followed by a minute of mindless yelling terror, and another two minutes of unmanly begging.

"We"re not opening up until you finish," head monk spoke through the coffin lid.

"I"m finished." I hoped I sounded sincere. "It was fantastic. Best dead s.e.x I ever had."

He wasn"t buying. "The only way you"re getting out of there is by embracing your necrophilia. That"s why you came, isn"t it? That"s why we"re all here. To make our fantasies come true. To taste the forbidden."

"I tasted it. It"s like rotten meat, and disappointingly unresponsive."

"We can stay here all night if we have to."

I collected my thoughts, the sum total of which were Get me the f.u.c.k out of here. Then I calmed down a little. Then I started screaming again. Then calm. Then more screaming. Then even more screaming.

Finally, I took a deep breath, and really started screaming.

Being hysterical is pretty exhausting, so I took a time-out and tried to rationalize what to do next, other than scream.

Unfortunately, clearing my head made me even more aware of my current situation, and how disgustingly horrible it was. I was trapped in a coffin, lying on top of a naked dead guy with nuts the size of a basketball. A curly-haired basketball with a bratwurst glued onto the top. It pressed against my pelvis in a way that could only be described as awful.

My upper half wasn"t any happier, with my face inches away from a dead man"s. He didn"t really smell like rotting meat. Not exactly. It was more like meat that was about to go bad, but dunked in formaldehyde first. His flesh was waxy, sort of stiff, and cold in a way that only dead people get. I moved my hands up across his nude, hairy chest, fighting the urge to vomit, and then pressed my elbows into his gut to force some distance between us.

It was a mistake. His autopsy meant his ribs had been cut away, and no ribs meant no internal support. My elbows ripped through the st.i.tches and my arms disappeared into his still-moist body cavity.

I felt things. Horrible things. Squishy things. To prevent the organs from leaking, the clever embalmer had placed them in plastic bags, like some sort of lunch snacks from h.e.l.l. I thanked the darkness that it was dark and I couldn"t see anything, because I had no light. But I screamed anyway.

When the screaming finally stopped, I screamed a little more, and then realized the only way I was going to get out of here is to do what women have been probably doing with me ever since I"d been s.e.xually active.

I"d have to fake it.

Unfortunately, the only way to fake a s.e.xual movement is to perform a s.e.xual movement. So I locked my knees on either side of his hips, his giant s.c.r.o.t.u.m tucked beneath my legs like a fleshy bicycle seat, and began the humping motion. I also began to cry.

The coffin went with the rhythm, back and forth and back and forth, and it was a high end model which meant springs in the cushion which meant this felt even more like the real thing. Even though I couldn"t see I squeezed my eyes shut and invented G.o.ds in my imagination so I could pray to them to make this end. I tried to think back on happy times, but too many of my happy times involved s.e.x and that didn"t help me block out the unhappy fact that I was fake dry-humping a corpse. I tried thinking about happy times when I was a kid, and unwillingly focused on the time I was six years old and my mother bought me a Hoppity Horse for my birthday, and how I used to love bouncing up and down the neighborhood and, oh G.o.dd.a.m.n it...

I threw up in my mouth. Energy drink and pizza mixed with stomach acid. I swallowed it because adding puke to this situation was possibly the only thing that could make it worse.

Scratch that last thought. My pelvic gyrations had loosened up some trapped air in the nether regions of the cadaver, prompting extreme flatulence. He ripped one so loud it sounded like a trumpet. But is sure as h.e.l.l didn"t smell like one. You think you know stink? Dead guy farts are number one on the stinkmeter. It was so bad, I"m sure if I could see I would have seen green gas.

"Do it! Give it to him!"

I wasn"t sure who the head monk was cheering on, me or the dead guy. But I knew in order to properly fake it, I had to add some vocals to the rhythm.

"Oh, daddy!" I moaned, trying not to breathe. "Oh, yes, daddy!"

Someone slapped on the top of the coffin, urging me on. There was more corpse farting, more crying, more humping, and finally I couldn"t handle this anymore without a complete nervous breakdown and I cried out "Oh, G.o.d!" and then went still.

Eventually, miraculously, the coffin lid opened. I made it. I was alive. Amazingly, wonderfully alive. Now I needed to find my gun and eat a bullet.

The strongarm monks pulled me out of the coffin, my arms slupping from the dead man"s chest cavity, glistening with guck.

"Congrats!" head monk said, giving me an attaboy slap on the back. "You really rocked his dead world!"

I wiped my hands on his fake robe.

The rest of the perverts queued up for their shot at playing Megaball, and I managed to stumble into my pants. I even got my gun back. I c.o.c.ked the hammer and stared deep into the blessed release promised by the inside of the barrel, and then remembered I only had one bullet left, and if anyone should die, it was old caretaker guy.

I looked around for the bike pump, flitting with the idea of filling his nads up with air before sending him to h.e.l.l. Or maybe I would just pump him up and let him live. Live out the remainder of his pathetic life with unusually large t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. The humiliation he"d suffer. The stares. The laughter. Plus, it would be impossible to find pants.

Regrettably, the bike pump was nowhere to be found. Neither was old caretaker guy. And I"d apparently won the loser trifecta, because Bill, the man I"d been hired to follow, was also MIA.

Some pinhead hopped into the coffin with Frankengroin, and I picked up the flashlight and made my way to the exit before the groaning began. I needed some fresh air. I also needed a hatchet and some steel wool, so I could access and scour the last half an hour from my brain.

Conveniently, the exit was a large door marked EXIT, which opened up to some concrete steps. I took them up, and they ended in a maintenance closet, which opened up into the mausoleum. It was an easier-and faster-entrance than the nightmare slide, but lacked the dramatic effect.

I pulled out my gun, did a quick search for old caretaker guy, scared the h.e.l.l out of some grieving old man, mourning his dead wife or some similar maudlin bulls.h.i.t, and then made my way through the cemetery, across the street, and into the first place that sold liquor.

Three shots and two beers later, I called the police.

The cop I called was a somewhat tasty little morsel named Lieutenant Jackie "Jack" Daniels. So-so face, great legs, nice rack, especially for an older broad. I knew her back in the day, when we were partners in blue, and she continued to have a crush on me almost two decades later.

"I don"t owe you s.h.i.t, McGlade. And if you bother me again I"m going to send some uniforms over to trash your apartment and beat you with phone books for so long you"ll have area codes embedded in your skin."

"Pay attention, Jackie. I"m offering you a prime bust here. As we speak, there"s a group of perverts running a train on a dead guy with gonads the size of a Thanksgiving turkey."

"Let me guess. Is it a b.u.t.terball?"

"They have to be stopped. Would you want some loonies digging you up and poking your cooter after you"ve been laid to eternal rest?"

"s.e.x with a corpse, disgusting as it is, isn"t a crime, Harry. Didn"t you read b.l.o.o.d.y Mary by JA Konrath? There was a character in there, did the same thing."

"I listened to part of the audiobook. The author thinks he"s funny, but he"s not."

"It"s a he? I thought a woman wrote those books."

I tried to make my voice sound soothing, a tough trick because I had screamed myself raw.

"Jackie, partner, be a good cop and send a team over to the cemetery. You"ll get brownie points from the Captain, a little TV spotlight, and the satisfaction knowing that you got a bunch of lunatic perverts off the street."

"What do I charge them with, McGlade? Public indecency? You want me to waste manpower on a minor misdemeanor?"

"Aggravated s.e.xual a.s.sault. Trust me. It was aggravating."

"Who"s going to press charges? The cadaver? You want to bring a corpse to trial? The cross examination would be riveting, I bet."

I clenched my fist. "Dammit, Jackie! I was violated in ways you can"t even begin to understand. I"ll never be the same. My s.e.x life might very well be ruined, and I won"t be able to ever watch basketball on TV again. And I love basketball. If you don"t arrest these a.s.sholes I"m going to go on a killing spree and when they bring me in I"ll tell them you could have stopped it just by doing your job."

She sighed big, but I knew I"d won. "Cut the melodrama, McGlade. I"ll send a few uniforms over to check it out."

"If you arrest a creepy old caretaker guy, call me. I"m going to impale him on his mop and make him clean all the floors in Union Station."

"I got extra tickets to the Bulls game tomorrow. Want them?"

"You can really be a mean b.i.t.c.h sometimes, Jackie."

I hung up, ordered another tequila, drank it, ordered another, drank it, then called a taxi to take me back to my condo to really start drinking.

My plan had been to drink so much I didn"t dream. And when I peeled my eyes open, I thought it worked. I couldn"t remember a single nocturnal image, let alone any nightmares.

Then I realized I was lying naked on the kitchen floor, straddling a head of lettuce.

"Oh h.e.l.l no."

Like any freaked-out person, I needed answers. So I searched Google, using the terms "post dramatic stress disorder s.e.x with corpses and giant t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es" which linked me to a bunch of unhelpful p.o.r.n sites. I dutifully surfed them anyway, but there were no answers there.

Then I went to eBay, and I was still the top bidder on everything. Lousy eb.a.s.t.a.r.ds. I decided I just wouldn"t pay if I won, but then I"d get negative feedback, and negative feedback was permanent. I"m proud of my 99.4% positive score. My only bad mark came from some jerk who didn"t read the whole product description, only the header. I sold him a mint Babe Ruth baseball card for $260. The card had some tears and a few bends, but I"d stapled some mint leaves to it. Which I mentioned, in two point font, at the bottom of the listing. Some guys can"t take a joke.

Next I checked my email, where I discovered I"d won the Irish lottery, inherited eighty million dollars from an unknown relative, and was asked to shuffle funds into my bank account from the President of Rwanda. They all got my standard response: enthusiastic replies with an attachment supposedly containing my routing number. The attachment really contained an email bomb, which once opened would bombard their computers with tens of thousands of naked pictures of actress Bea Arthur. I called it the Maude Virus.

I had a bit of a hangover, my a.s.s still hurt from where I"d fallen on my keys, and I was hungry. But the only food I had in the condo was that head of lettuce, which I wasn"t going to eat even if I were starving to death, so I changed into a slightly less dirty suit and hit the corner convenience store for an overpriced cup of joe, a dose of Advil, and a prepackaged cheese Danish.

It was a gorgeous Chicago day, the sun shining, the lakesh.o.r.e breeze blowing, the pigeons singing their lovely song. I leaned against the storefront window and called my client.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Is this Maxine Drawbridge?"

"It"s Norma Cauldridge."

I rubbed my nose. "Hi, Maxine. It"s Harry McGlade. I need more money."

"Did you find something out, Mr. McGlade?"

"I did. And it"s ugly. Real ugly. Plus, I was gravely injured during my surveillance." I smiled at my unintentional pun, which was actually intentional. "I"m not going near him again without more cash."

"I"ve already paid you twelve hundred dollars."

My nose still itched, so I scratched it. On the inside.

"I want double that. Think of it as an investment. When the lawyers see the dirt I"ve got on old Roy, you"ll take the freak for every dime he has."

I removed my finger, noted something gray and waxy stuck to the end. I"d been picking my nose for years, and this was the strangest booger I"d ever seen.

"Who"s Roy?"

"Whatever the h.e.l.l his name is."

I took a closer look. Sniffed. It smelled familiar.

"Do you have pictures?"

"I will. Send the money to my PayPal account. My email is... oh G.o.d..."

The odor was rotten meat and formaldehyde. Somehow, while I was in the coffin, I"d gotten a hunk of dead flesh up my nose. Dead flesh covered in boogers. And a nose hair.

I leaned over and puked up the coffee, Danish, and Advil. Eighteen bucks and change, shot to h.e.l.l.

"Mr. McGlade? Are you there?"

I wiped a toe through the puke, looking for the Advil. They were probably still good. Instead, I saw something that made me want to quit eating forever.

Part of a human ear.

I got closer, sure it had to be some coincidentally-shaped chunk of chewed Danish.

No, it was an ear. The upper, cartilagey part. I often nibbled women"s ears when we were fooling around. I must have got caught up in the role-playing and bitten off a hunk.

"Mr. McGlade?"

"Scratch that. I want triple."

"That"s outrageous."

"Lady, I went to third base with a dead guy last night, all because of your husband. Pay me, or find some other schmuck to do your dirty work."

"You did what with a dead guy?"

"Don"t believe me? You want to talk to him?"

I held my cell phone over the ear. Then I realized I was acting a bit hysterical. Maybe I was still asleep, and this was just a dream.