Eloise Chagrin is a writer of erotic and explicit fiction.  Her first story, "Playing Doctor," first published on ThreePillows.com, appeared in Best of Best American Erotica 2008.  Eloise Chagrin's second work, a novella entitled, "The Prince," can be found in the STARbooks press anthology, "Pretty Boys and Roughnecks" edited by Mickey Erlach. She can only blame herself, scolding that she spends too much of her life fixated on emotional masochism. She currently lives in St. Louis.

The Rage of Bernice (January 20, 2010. Issue 13.)

No one called Bernice a beautiful woman anymore. At 42, her jowls drooped and the wrinkles between the caramel folds had a notch for every year of sag, every fleshy manipulation. In a year that was a lot of work for Bernice, grasping, pulling and screaming—more than most. Still, her eyes could take on a coy look and her rather large low-hanging breasts were well supported by the underwire in her bra. Saddlebags for sure, but a well-shaped ass.

“I have a well-shaped ass,” she thought as she wiggled it on her morning walk from the apartment of the unnamed man she had met at a bar the previous night. It was still early morning and she was still drunk.

The guy turned out to be a terrible lay, not even able to get it up enough to fuck her for five minutes last night, before falling asleep on her naked body. Oh, that infuriated her, and made her—he made her—dig her fingernails into his ass as hard as she could. It didn’t have the intended effect, however, as he grumbled something like “Fucking bitch,” and rolled over her.

“No,” she thought, she would not be that insignificant. Not if she could help it.

She moved down then, and took him in her mouth, helping him up with her hand. He didn’t get much harder, but moaned a little, so she worked, violent with enthusiasm.

“Come on asshole,” she thought, “we’re not done yet!”

But unexpectedly, the flaccid organ went off like a pop-gun, shooting a feeble few drops of disinterested fluid.

“God damn you, you small-dicked little piece of shit!” she screamed. “Don’t you know how to please a lady!”

She continued yelling the reprobations as she spat his meager elixir back in his face, but he didn’t even notice, just went to sleep—muck dripping from his forehead. She curled up in a ball of anger and dejection.

“I’ll have to seek vengeance,” she thought, “but in the morning.”

She drifted off in her usual drunken haze, angry, plotting.

She got her vengeance in the morning, but she wasn’t thinking of that now on the way home. Nor was she thinking about her childhood—she never thought of that. Her thoughts went more along the lines of “I have a well shaped ass. Why can’t I ever be loved? At least by a man who would love my ass but say that he loved me. At least to lie to me a little. They never even lie anymore. They used to lie about how they love me. You gotta be hard in a hard world, not like a little limp-dicked prick. God I hate soft dick! And men’s faces. I hate their big fat faces with ugly big noses and those nasty jaws, moving all the time, spitting a little as they make their stupid jokes and fake come-on lines. Bastards all look like animals—like barnyard animals. Fucking pigs—literally, pigs lying around in the dirt, their underwear perpetually stained (I’ve seen them all and all their underwear has shit stains and yellow urine marks). Why do you think that because you fart louder than me, you’re superior? Who the fuck plays a game like that other than pigs playing in their own feces? And motherfucker does your fart stink. Men must be made of shit. At least on the farm they castrate pigs. I wish I could castrate some of these big fat faggots that I fuck. Then I’d laugh. Just get rid of some useless hog meat on this earth. I’d be doing the world a favor and I’d be doing it with a well-shaped ass.”

Bernice smiled a little self-confident smile and strutted her stuff. The coffee smell on her fingers made her think of getting a little breakfast, which in turn made her remember that she just ran out of the essential antacids that would allow for an undertaking such as eating in the morning. Luckily, there was a drugstore just a block away and she was already walking in that direction. If it hadn’t been on her route, she knew that she wouldn’t have gone because she hated to change her course like some uncertain, wishy-washy tramp.

On the way, she reviewed how she woke up that morning, the man still snoring next to her, her anger having only compounded overnight. She thought about just how wrong that man was for her or any other woman (unless she had it coming to her). How a man like that deserved some lessons in life.

When she woke up that morning, the first thing she saw was the bottle of lotion on the nightstand, and didn’t need to think twice about what it meant. A man like that—a fat, ugly, smelly, stupid man, with lotion by the bed. It might as well have “masturbatory cock lubricant” written on it in permanent marker. She searched in her purse and found what she was looking for—nail polish remover. She took the bottle of lotion with her to the bathroom, squeezed out half the contents into the toilet, and refilled it with a mixture of the nail polish remover and his own toothpaste.

“Put that on your little dick, faggot,” she thought.

She walked into the kitchen and saw the package of coffee—pre-ground. Perfect she thought as she took out her pack of cigarettes and mixed the tobacco from four of them with the coffee. She used her hands because she was a good cook and her mom always taught her that good cooks use their hands. A smidge of tobacco here, a pinch of pubic hair there and voilà!

She heard him waking up and put everything away quickly.

Waltzing into the bedroom she crooned in a singsong voice, “Good morning sweetie.”

The look on his face—delayed recognition and immediate irritation.

“Oh yeah, you still here?” he asked. “Did you need me to call you a cab or something?”

“Well I was just hoping, honey, that you and I might finish a little of what we started last night…” she almost whispered, lasciviously, slow dancing up to the bed where he sat.

“Ahh…, you know, it’s already late and I have to get going with my day,” he said. “Besides, I’m all hung over.”

“Don’t you worry baby,” she whispered, “Momma gonna take care of you,” and she reached down for him again, fondling with full knowledge that this time she had the power of morning-wood on her side. She went down again, but this time, unlike last night, he participated, pulling her up off him and then back down again to the bed, mounting her. Though she never thought of her childhood, moments like these were nothing if they weren’t nostalgic.

As he penetrated her she moaned, “You’re so big...” and kept up that wail unceasingly while he rode her. He flipped her over, as she expected he would—men’s selfish desire transcending even the human need to look into each other’s eyes. Even when having sex with a woman they were too self-involved to notice—just masturbating really. Accustomed to that egotism, she had integrated it, made it a part of her lust.

He entered her. She moaned again, but this time, “Oh I’m such a bad girl aren’t I? Tell me what a dirty girl I am big man, you tell me what a whore I am.”

To which he replied without inflection, “You are a whore.”

“Yes say it!” she cried out. “Treat me like I deserve, slap my ass, slap it, slap it!”

He did as he was told, only to incite her to more demands, “Yeah, now fuck me in my ass, in my sweet ass. Look at it, don’t you like how it’s shaped? Punish my little ass hole like the slut that I am. I deserve this, don’t you want to hurt my little bitch ass? Teach me Pappi!”

He did everything that she said except for punching her in the back of her head with his right fist while his left pulled her hair back, his body pistoning in and out of her bowels. That he didn’t have in him, which she thought was typical of a bad lover, a weak man, a faggot. It’s what she needed to fake the multiple orgasms, and he just couldn’t deliver.

At the drugstore, the little man at the counter gave her a bored look and moderately welcoming nod.

A dutiful march straight to the antacid section, to reconnoiter—the pills found. She picked up three of the packages, placed them one atop the other, and made a careful inspection of the directions on the back, looking up every few seconds to survey the store.

The man at the counter picked his nose and read a foreign paper. With eyes fixed on him as if he was a slow moving pack-animal, she used a fingernail of her free hand to perforate the side of the little antacid box between the two that she held in her other hand. She thought of beautiful blue dolphins swimming with her in the ocean. When she looked beside her there was a man swimming with them. It was not just any man either, it was Jesus.

The mission successful, she broke through the package and quickly pocketed the pills, carefully replacing the now defunct package behind the other ones on the shelf. Swaggering confidently to the counter, she smiled at the man who reluctantly turned his eyes to her.

“May I help you?” he asked.

“You don’t want to help me,” she replied.

“I’m sorry ma’am, what I can do for you?” He had a thick accent, something with rolling “r”s that made her think of body odor and people copulating with donkeys.

“Oh you so the man huh? You want to help me? Ok big man, here’s how you can help me. Go find me some lube for my ass. I need ass lube too, make sure it’s for the ass. I don’t need none of your usual cock grease or warming lotion or nothin’ fancy. You see, my ass gets real real rough, you know, ‘cause this bitch likes to work that shit. Look at it,” she said as she turned around and rotated her rear end slowly, sensually. “You know you wanna hit that! Well get me a little gravy for that meat and I’ll think about it—know what I mean? If you wanna ride the dog sled, you gotta have some motherfuckin’ snow. Know what I’m saying Eskimo?”

But it became more and more clear to her that he didn’t. In fact, he had no idea what she was talking about.

“Fuck you then, greasy, you little brown faggot,” she said cordially.

“May I help?” was his reply, clearly not having understood. “Don’t understand. May I help you ma’am?”

“Ok, ok, you can help me. That over there, see, over there,” she said pointing to a humidifier on the top shelf behind the counter. “Yeah, give me that.”

The man hesitated, almost asserting by his pause that someone like her couldn’t possibly pay for a high priced item like that.

“Why you hesitatin’? Why you hesitate? Oh, you don’t think I can afford this? Well look at this. Feast your donkey eyes on this,” she said as she pulled wads of money out of her overstuffed handbag. “Yeah bitch, I got funds, I GOT the motherfuckin’ funds, so be quick about it. Snap snap,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Fetch dogboy, fetch.”

The little man may not have fully appreciated the spirit of her request, but he recognized money. He reached up and precariously balanced the large box with his fingertips until he was able to bring the whole thing clumsily to the counter. The tag said $70.

“Seventy dollar,” he said, looking at her challengingly.

“Oh that’s what it is, well here, take this bill,” she said handing him a crumpled hundred-dollar note. A second glance and he rang it up, taking her hundred and giving back change.

“You know what bitch, why don’t you keep that shit,” she said, crumpling the change up and throwing it at his face. “Because that is how I roll. And here is what I think of your goddamn humidifier.”

She ripped open the box that held the humidifier and threw the contents on the floor.

“Here’s what I think of you and your faggot shit!” she yelled, stomping with her high heels over the wrapped plastic parts strewn around the dirty tile-floor, as the shocked man looked on from behind the counter.

“This and this and this!” she yelled, now kicking and smashing parts with her boots. “Oh yeah, and this,” she said, straddling some of the plastic remains and pulling up her skirt.

She urinated a hot stream of angry yellow piss with a look of such satisfaction that one could have thought, been sure, that she was in love.

The little man cried, “No! No!” from behind the counter and ran around it, to her, without any clear idea of what he would do when he got there. Before he reached her, the damage was done and she was pulling down her skirt, content. Still he approached her, if only out of the momentum of his advance, stepping in her urine, which marked his gym shoes as he hovered uncertainly.

“I know you liked that, you sick fuck,” she said to him, reaching down and grabbing his crotch. He let out a gasp and a gurgle. She held on to his package for a second, looked into his bewildered and frightened eyes, and made a little grunting laugh.

“Yeah, you know you liked that,” she repeated, giving his confused crotch a few not-so-gentle squeezes. “Fuckin’ faggot, I’d rather fuck my brother than you.”

It might have been a hard life, but that morning, as she slammed the door on her way out, she was victorious.