Harmen Steenwijck’s Vanitas Still-Life (c. 1640)

Death Fetish

The ad was simple. “YOUNG WOMAN IN SEARCH OF ORGASM THAT WILL KILL HER. MUST BE WILLING TO FUCK (HARD) AND ON END UNTIL DEATH. NOT REQUIRED THAT YOU DIE. ONLY INQUIRE IF SERIOUS, NO TIMEWASTERS.” 

No picture attached but the location was the Lower East Side (of course), and not far from where I sometimes get off the train. Someone will respond, it’s not difficult to find men here nor women for that matter that will fuck you. New York is a big place with many people all working out their own issues with one another. There’s something beautiful about it except when it isn’t so beautiful. This isn’t messy, though, this is straightforward and contractual. I realize now that I have been going about it all the wrong way. I had been searching for the perfect orgasm in a mix of strangers not sharing my intention. They just wanted to get off, rightfully so. Me? I wanted to experience something bigger than life, life-shattering, ending in fact. It started simple as just fucking, yet I started feeling empty. I started noticing every cock, pussy, dildo just didn’t fill the hole. It hit me the hole could no longer be filled with fucking, but I love fucking. It’s my favorite thing to do, and there’s nothing I’d rather do than fuck my way into the grave. Fucking hundreds of people didn’t do it. No one could go the total distance. One guy got close, fucked me near exhaustion over several days, yet even he eventually chose to go back to his job, instead of finishing the job!

It’s been an hour and there’s twenty responses, more than I could have ever imagined. There’s so much interest in fucking me to death! I once posted that I had left a couch (free) outside for pickup and no one picked it up for a week! I guess it’s just a different market. Most of the responses seem to be from men, only one woman, and a few without gender included. That’s okay, I don’t discriminate. I wonder if it’s possible to organize an orgy with the responses? A whole group of people having their way with me until I’m gone. I do discriminate against people who seem too pushy about their own death fetish. I’d prefer someone who is focused on my needs. The best response seems to be from a man named Simon.

“hi. my name is simon, i am twenty-nine and have time on my hands to help you. i have been told i am a good fuck and i don’t really believe in limits, so i am willing to do whatever to please. to be a part of the final pleasure would mean the world to me.”

“Hi Simon. I am responding to you because I enjoy ‘the final pleasure,’ I think you might understand. Are you available tomorrow?” 

“yes. send me the address. i definitely understand.” 

“176 Delancey St, APT 5E, New York, NY 10002. Come at 2 p.m.” 

It shouldn’t be this easy, but it is. Sometimes life is just like that, maybe things are turning around for me. Maybe it isn't too late after all. No, I shouldn’t let the excitement over the date override my death drive. That wouldn’t be fair to it, to the truth, my truth. The truth that life has become intolerable. I am not dramatic—every single day takes the giantest toll on my soul. There’s no existence that will feel steady and even. I guffaw when people talk of “balance and calm.” I’ve never known such a thing. Every morning is more devastating, a greater disappointment to my hopes that something will be something else, I will be someone else. 

In fucking a stranger to death there is no continuation of the plot, simply a moment with someone to end all moments, and no possible further anguish or heart-stabbing remorse over past vulnerability: true freedom in another. 

I wake up at 6 a.m. to help with the exhaustion process. I walk a few miles as the city wakes up, stores lifting their metal bars and letting in customers, restaurants setting up their outdoor tables, and children holding hands with their parents walking to school. I stand on Houston Street and watch the traffic lights change colors. Different suits, olive and satin jackets, and hoodies all walk across the crosswalk at their turn, one suit yells at a taxi (halted) attempting to turn. The suit’s hands frantically wave, one fist pounding on the yellow hood. I decide to stop watching this crosswalk because it’s noon, I should head back and prepare. 

My apartment is rather bare, but I don’t think Simon will mind. There are some books, a computer that also functions as a television, a Lazy-Boy recliner, and a bed in the back. I only have one set of silverware, a plate, a bowl, a cup, and one mug. I am a minimalist because I don’t believe in leaving much behind. That always seemed crueler to me, to leave more behind for everyone else. I’ve been slowly giving away items I didn’t want to just put out on the street. No one seems to wonder why I’m giving away things. People love gifts, many don’t ask why they’re receiving it. It’s easy enough to clear out an apartment when you’re determined. 

Simon will arrive soon. He will ring the buzzer, come upstairs, and then I will die. The birds are singing currently, but I hope they’re silent when he arrives. I only want them to sing for me, a final symphony of music to send me off. Certain things are precious and lonely experiences. There is a crescendo that can only be available to me, otherwise it is simply noise. BRRRRING. Simon is here.

I press the button not knowing what to expect. He could be tall or short, wide or narrow. Hopefully not weak, as required by the ad. There was no exchange of pictures. He doesn’t know what he’s getting either but I haven’t been met with complaints before. If anything, people like me so much that it contradicts my desires. People don’t want what they love to die, because then the objective is no longer obtainable. 

A knock. Steady, stern, aware. Not more than necessary, not bludgeoning the door with demands yet caressing it with confidence. I walk softly to the door, so as to not give away details about me through the sound of my typically heavy hitting feet. The doorknob is cold yet burns my hand. I open with all the strength I have. Simon is slightly taller than me, but not by much (preferable) and has broad shoulders. I don’t really care about shoulders typically, but I don’t mind a broad-shouldered man killing me. 

He walks in with his own heavy hitting feet. It feels significant that we both seem to lack awareness of how we land. 

“Hi, really beautiful day for it, huh?” 

He is politely taking off his tan shoes while not looking at me. He could have been asking the corner if it was a great day to fuck and die. This also feels significant in its own way; he is already avoiding my face, knowing what is to come. I respect this. 

“Yeah, it’s a beautiful day for it. I have a bed, and a Lazy-Boy. I don’t know what you prefer.” 

“I don’t think it matters. It all ends up the same way.” 

He cracks his knuckles, closes his eyes, and breathes deeply. He seems at prayer. 

“Are you praying?” 

“Yes.”

His hands are firm on my shoulders as he rams me, holding me still to his liking (how I like it). I don’t know how it happened but here we are fucking over the fire escape, my hands grasping the railing and my head hovering over the cement courtyard. The air is thick with trash, the smell hovering from below, and the sky with pollution. I gulp air with every pump but it doesn’t change my heart’s carburetion. Can Simon hear the rhythm of my chest?

He doesn’t seem to notice as he throws me out of the window and onto the bed. The duvet has green stripes and a pillowy nature. As my body crashes onto the blanket, it jumps up and around me, covering me. Simon barely says anything, barely looks at me, yet he pulls my feet out from under the cover to where he can fill me again. I grab at the mattress but pointlessly, I don’t want to fight or run away. 

“Simon?” 

“Yes?” 

“You’re not tired, are you?” 

“No. I can keep going for a long time.” 

“I need it.” 

“I know.” 

My face smears against the sheet, tears pool. 

It’s going to really happen. I can’t control the sobbing but Simon doesn’t seem to mind since he continues to look away from me. He steps away from me and points to the hardwood floor. I get on my knees in front of him, I pray in my own way. His cock is a knife cutting down my throat. I feel emboldened by my capacity to take. My eyes sting and drool forms, spilling out onto my face and neck. Soon if I can’t breathe maybe it will finally come, in this delicious horrific way. I don’t expect it to be this, though, it’s far too predictable for Simon, who has already shown an industrious and creative sexual appetite. 

There is something sexual in waiting for what is to come, but I suppose I’ve been waiting for this my whole life. A longform edging. I hope my body immaterializes. I used to imagine that as a child, my whole frame and all its lines disappearing into the atmosphere around me. I remember the day I realized it wouldn’t happen, I returned from my middle school to home and stayed in bed all day. At midnight, I opened the window and yelled at the moon. 

He pulls his cock out of my windpipe; a disgustingly long trail of drool follows and lands in a line on the floor, connecting us. I look up and realize he’s speaking despite the only noise being a crescendo of birds. He must be unaware otherwise his mouth would be shut, I must be aware otherwise I’d hear him. “Simon?” The birds continue, his mouth seems to form my name but all I can hear is Tristan und Isolde’s “Liebestod” from Wagner’s symphonic dedication to fallen lovers. I suppose it doesn’t matter what he says anyway, or what I say for that matter. We are together not to share words but to end them. I am tired of words, all they have done to me.

Since communication seems implausible, the only answer is to speak in the language with no words: fucking. There will never be a time it fails me. The future is nothing, I have made it that way. I don’t believe in an afterlife, and I guess I won’t be able to report back for all those who are curious. Simon has moved me into the kitchen, bare and tiled. My few items are put away, there’s nothing to knock over. The whole of me is rammed forward, if I were to live I’d certainly bruise my ribs. In an ideal world, my ribs would break right now.

Between the notes of Wagner and the crystal bird symphony, Simon’s grunts suddenly become evident. At first whimpers of a possible sound, very soon a percussion of guttural reveal. I had forgotten he has a deep voice, or maybe it is only his situation that enables the impression. There’s something precious in the noise, as if I have been seeking this exact addition to the daily musicality of life. A sound that I would have followed in a subway car, a crowded DMV, a morgue. Instead it has found me here in this apartment in my very last moments; Simon cannot possibly know what it means to me. It’s not even worth trying to tell him because it will only result in the sound’s completion. Not unlike most things, once stated aloud it would utterly transform its very nature. In the same way if we were both to survive, the impression left upon one another would alter every inch of our perceptions of the other.

I am starting to chafe. I expected this. It’s happened before but won’t happen again. On my back on the kitchen tile I am suddenly rushed with every place I’ll never walk again. Faces that may have been lost to time are in front of me, some don’t even seem to be of anyone yet instead an assimilated collaboration of memories to form new faces. The eyes of my mother, the nose of my father, the mouth of my second grade teacher Mrs. Phillips, all coming towards me begging me to try again. I don’t believe in trying at things that one continuously fails, and sure I have continued to stay alive but I have failed (miserably) to enjoy it.

Simon’s knees are hard against the tile, bruising actively in front of me. The dedication is attractive. I wonder what he does for a living? His hands are soft yet he’s muscular. Maybe he has an office job yet a gym obsession. That’s not that unusual, quite usual.

“Simon, what do you do?” 

The birds sing as if to answer that certain information should remain beyond my grasp. It occurs to me that the reason occupations don’t actually matter is because we all die, and most of us fuck. What someone “does” is simply a distraction from who they are, a powerful mirage against the truth, that people are most themselves naked or at the very end. 

His hands grip my arms, hurting me, as he pulls me on top of him with his ass firmly on the ground. His cock isn’t small but it isn’t painful. It’s perfect. He’s probably the type of man who isn’t even aware he has a big cock, but I lack the ability to ask him. He fucks like someone who might know, but his inability to look at me has continued. His eyes follow the room around, and he seems unphased by my ability to answer. He pushes me off of him onto the floor; standing with a confident demeanor he grabs my glass and breaks it on the tile. He grabs a shard and squats above me, staring at the glass in the light. It shines. He says something—I can tell it is something, but again his tongue can only produce the impossible to comprehend. 

I reach for the shard, my fingers grasping the glass edges and the soft of Simon’s hands. I squeeze, a smile forming as blood spills down my wrist. “Fuck me.” Simon smiles. I let go of my grasp revealing a small yet effusive cut. Pulling me off the tile, he hauls me onto the hardwood of the living room. I have never felt more like a rag doll waiting for my stitching to break and fluff to ooze. There’s red on the ground; the host in me immediately wants to grab a paper napkin and clean it until it occurs to me that it’s my blood, and there will be more of it. In movement Simon pushes his foot onto my chest, staring down at me. There is no smile, but a glare, a deep hatred. What did I do to deserve such a vile look? He is holding back his weight, but I don’t expect he will forever. The knife cuts his hand and he barely takes note. He screams, the birds louder than ever before, and yet whatever reveal of his inner feelings lie there remains lost to me. The foot drags down onto and under my cunt, his big toe holding the tension of an unreleased kick. The birds roar as he drops the shard, a jet airplane crashes as the edge dives directly into my thigh. Simon pulls it out without remorse, I gasp. 

I have never seen a leg have such similarity to a river. I feel I finally grasp what it means to be of the Earth. It feels like it has been hours since I heard the sound of Simon’s grunts, instead I have become trapped in the migration patterns of the Australian Bell-Miner bird, a twinkling of bells with every movement of my body or his. He fucks me on the ground as my leg gushes, a pool of blood under me forming a marital bed. He doesn’t smile now; instead, the features of his face convey a deep regret mixed with hatred and rage, yet an underlying desperation to please. Please kill me, Simon, do it. I know you can hear me, Simon. Simon hasn’t cum and he doesn’t seem preoccupied with it, instead pulling himself out and grabbing the shard (briefly cuckolded, lying nearby on the floor). He says something that feels full of malice, possibly full of begging that cannot be heard by me. All I hear are the forests, the nests full of baby birds begging for a beginning. 

“Do it, Simon.” 

The shard is cold on my skin, rubbed against my bush and tender gut. As he moves down, the sharpest touch slices open a part of my thigh, the river forms a bay. Simon is crying yet won’t look at me. If anything, he seems fixated in a surgical sense. He is just doing what must be done. Maybe he’s a doctor. He rotates the glass upwards, my pussy lips holding on against its edges. The pink of my cunt smushes under what previously had been a drinking glass. Oh god, I’m choking. I can’t breathe. The glass has found a home inside me. What sound does glass make when it cums? Simon’s tears pool onto my stomach, never more beautiful than this moment. I can barely feel anything at all, I am barely anything at all. My smile numbs my face, cheeks full, hot, red, I feel everything. I have never seen so much blood, I have never seen

Erin Taylor is a writer currently living in Los Angeles. They're the author of the poetry book Bimboland, along with various e-books and the chap OOOO. They edited the Observer's arts section for some time and now write poems and screenplays in the sun.