pervert’s alphabet soup. The standard definition?
“Cyesolagnia: a particular paraphilic symptom of sexual fetishism which involves the urgent erotic obsession with pregnant women.”
Heyton, indeed, had it bad. Never a wife, and scarcely ever a girlfriend. For him, sexual release was impossible without these arcane and decidedly abnormal trimmings.
They had to be pregnant...
And there were never many. The typical red-light district seemed to sport only one or two pregnant prostitutes per hundred—low odds for sure, but that only made the successes more gratifying. But, yes—
They had to be pregnant.
When he introspected, he always deduced, I’m not a bad person. It’s not like I’m snatching children or picking up little boys, for God’s sake. I’m not raping women at gunpoint, I’m not robbing banks or murdering people. All I’m doing is picking up a few pregnant hookers for a mutual proposition. What’s the harm? No one gets hurt...
Hence, his rationale, which was all he had to keep from feeling wholly aberrant. Pickings were always slim, and his trek often ended in frustrating failure, but then there was always that inexplicable edge of excitement, that at any moment a suitable woman would turn a corner or step from an alley and be standing there for him, that one shining needle in this haystack of human detritus.
The sky was black now, pressing down on the sodium haze. Right after another u-turn, his heart jumped when he spotted the proper outline in the distance.
Finally!
The wan figure moved down the street, burdened by the tell-tale swollen belly.
Please...
Then his heart dropped like a stone.
She was pregnant, all right, by eight months it looked like. But... Damn!
This one was simply too far gone, a stick-figure with greasy tendrils of hair and legs smudged flinty with dirt. The stained t-shirt ballooned as she waddled onward; her pregnancy must comprise a third of her total body weight. Giant soul-dead eyes snagged his gaze as he passed, then the parched lips over crooked teeth mouthed “Blowjob?” Another inhabitant of the bottom of the barrel. She likely hadn’t washed in weeks and was probably rife with HIV, abscessed track-marks, and lice.
What a disappointment.
“Oh, well...”
It was getting late—he had his presentation tomorrow. Better get back to the motel... A night’s failure always had at least one consolation: another pathetic release of his own accord, abetted by one of his magazines: READY TO DROP, NATAL ATTRACTION, and his current favorite, BUNS IN THE OVEN. Heyton could take his pick.
He slowed at a stop light, then almost shouted when his cell phone blared. Jesus! “Hello?”
The shrill voice was Blocher’s. “Heyton, holy shit, I can’t even sleep I’m so torqued up about tomorrow!”
“Relax, sir. I think it’ll go well.”
“I tried calling the room we booked you at the con center but they said you never checked in.”
Heyton rarely ever stayed in those rooms; they existed too far away from his need. So he lied: “Oh, yeah, Mr. Blocher, but after flying over from Dallas, I was so dog-tired, I just checked into the first motel I could find.”
“Fine, fine, well—shit. Get plenty of sleep. How early you gotta get up?”
“It’ll be no rush, sir. I’ll get to the con center at two. My presentation’s at three.” Heyton could see Blocher sitting in his den with his hair sticking up, wringing his hands.
A nervous chuckle. “It’s all riding on you, Heyton. You’re going to have chiefs and teckies from three or four dozen Florida departments sitting in tomorrow—the fuckin’ U.S. Marshals might even be there.”
“Relax, sir,” Heytoned repeated, amused.
“Shit, Heyton. What I say earlier? I’ll quadruple your salary? Fuck it—if you sell the IAP system to a bunch of Florida PD’s—I’ll...what’s five times, Heyton? Quintriple?”
“Quintuple, I think, sir.”
“Yeah! That’s what I’m saying! You sell Florida, Heyton,
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