excerpt from Typical Pigs
a novel by Stephen Ausherman

[Note: Typical Pigs won the Llumina American Writers Contest and was nominated for the Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel. It can be ordered from Amazon.com or your local bookstore.]

I feel teeth grinding against mine and a suction on my tongue strong enough to rip it out of my head.

I taste blood, but I'm not sure if it's mine.

My eyes snap open and I see it's Lizbeth on top of me. And that's when I realize I'm no longer dreaming.

I tear my face loose from hers and gasp: "Jesus, Lizbeth! What are you doing?"

"I was watching you sleep," she says between bites on my neck. "You looked like you were having a nightmare." She drags herself back, raking her teeth across my chest. "I decided to save you from it."

Lower still, now with her tongue in my hair and her voice muffled, she says, "I'll make it all better."

I feel saliva dripping like silk between my legs. Morning wood keeps me rigid against her chin. Maybe I'm still delirious with sleep or the dream, or perhaps I've gone temporarily insane, but for some reason, I suffer an impulse that seems much out of my character: I resist and push her away.

"Dear God," she moans. "Why is it that each time my heart is moved to virtuous action the most hideous punishments befall me?"

"A blowjob isn't exactly virtuous action. And what hideous punishment?"

She raises her head, glares at me. "Spurn my advances again and I shall seek refuge in a monastery and throw myself at the mercy of four depraved monks."

My mind clears with the familiarity of her words. "This is about that book, isn't it?"

A sad pout falls across her lips. She sighs. "Justine, c'est moi."

"Uh-huh. I see. So now you're Justine." She's too cute. Reminds me a little of the nights when Jolie came to my window, giggling as she climbed through, smelling up my room with Luv's Baby Soft and grape Bubble Yum.

Lizbeth flops over on her back and whimpers: "Bleed me, Comte de Gernande."

"Do you have any gum?" I ask.

"Call me Justine."

"Do you have any gum, Justine?"

She rakes her nails across my ribs. "What's my name?"

"Justine."

She straddles my chest and backhands my face. "What's my name?"

"Justine!"

She slides her hips over my stomach and stretches like a cat. "Tell me you want me."

"I want you, Justine." It feels weird calling her that and I'm afraid I might start laughing.

"Say it again," she demands.

"I want you, Justine."

"Again."

"I want you, Justine." Repetition melts away the strangeness of it all and soon I'm chanting--yelling, really--nothing but "I want Justine."

It's been years since I've read the works of the Marquis de Sade. I remember that Justine, a young woman of unswerving virtue, continually offered her kindest, most affectionate assistance only to be viciously exploited. Her cycles of abuse took on absurd proportions, and I remember wondering what sort of mental disorder would drive anyone to fall into the same traps again and again. Her motives were impossible to determine, I remember, because Sade never revealed or even attempted to describe what she was feeling.

As for the specifics of these psycho-pornographic episodes, my mind remains hazy. But one thing is certain: Lizbeth clearly has the storyline all fucked up. Her role in this fantasy is undefined. She moves from victim to villain with subtlety, but at the speed of thought. She skips around from scene to scene, always playing the unfortunate Justine, but elaborating with what can best be described as Justine's Revenge.

She has it orchestrated brilliantly and with total brutality. And what she lacks in continuity, she makes up for in her total transition into her character. Her change is fluid and convincing. Her eyes grow wide with helpless terror, then narrow and darken in an insidious glare. Likewise, her voice rises to that of an adolescent, or a woman suffering arrested development, then drops to a gravel and chainsaw growl, as deep as a man raised on bourbon and unfiltered cigarettes.

Her orgasms come quickly and frequently, each one kicking off a new scene, a new cycle. Mine remain elusive, impossible to reach due to a combination of morning wood, an overwhelming need to piss and, as the game progresses, an increasing loss of blood. The violence escalates beyond my control, and I find myself--or my character, rather, whoever that is--fighting back with anger and humiliation.

We tumble across the floor, knocking over a chair and a newspaper-rack bookcase. We break a lamp. She grasps a long ceramic shard and squeezes it in her palm. It appears as though she's able to squeeze the blood out of it, but the blood, of course, is hers, and she feeds it to me, stuffing the heel of her hand into my mouth and pressing against my upper jaw.

I tear the cord from the lamp. Wrap it around her neck. Roll her over and bind her wrists. Then I watch her strangle in her own resistance and try to determine how I would penetrate her next. Already all three holes are exhausted in the way they run like sores and I can only think of stabbing new ones in her.

That thought startles me. This is Lizbeth, the woman I've grown tremendously fond of, if not in love with. I'll admit that much by now. This bruised and bound body struggling on my floor is to be my wife. She looks like a dolphin caught in a tuna net. And now, I see, she's turning blue in the face.

In that moment of weakness, I cry out, "Lizbeth!"

Her voice comes back to me. "Justine, goddamn it!" Then it changes again: "Je m'appel Justine!"

"Justine," I repeat. "C'est bon. Et je suis le Pretre de Toussaint." I don't know where that came from or what it's supposed to mean. It just came out. I reach for a pair of scissors, pinch the flesh away from her ribs and start cutting. It chews through her skin more than cuts it, and a scream tears from her throat, a scream so loud it hardly seems possible that it's coming from her.

I yell back: "Silence, Justine!"

I lower the scissors and examine the rough V-shaped incision I've made. It's too small. I cut further. Again, she's screaming. And in the midst of it, I hear a crash and the splintering of wood. My door is exploding from its hinges. Hank is charging toward me. I stand and raise the bloodied scissors in defense. Without hesitation, he snatches them from my hand and cuts the cord from Lizbeth. He pulls off his shirt and presses it against the gash in her side, then gently rolls her on her back.

Her eyes show only whites, yet tears stream out as she sobs: "Oh thank God!" She draws herself close to Hank and presses her face into his chest. She cries harder. "He was raping me."

"I was not! She told me--"

If looks could kill, the one Hank gives me might result in a nasty infection. He says to her, "Hold tight. The police are on the way."

"The police? Hank, you don't understand what's going on here. Call off the cops and fuck off for a while, okay?" I don't think I sound too convincing, standing there naked and bleeding, clutching my dick and shaking my left leg to fight off an intense urge to piss.

Lizbeth moans, "Il y a quelque chose de tres grave qui m'arrive." She runs her tongue up Hank's chest.

I'm pointing at her. "See that? See?" As if he missed it. "She's playing a game. She thinks she's Justine. You're sitting there accusing me of rape, got the cops on the way, while she's sucking your goddamn nipple and acting like Justine."

And none of this would be happening if he hadn't brought that book to the house...