A Small Room on the
11th Floor

by Efrem Emerson

There was a riot in the street 11 floors below the window. Angry Negroes were battling enraged whites. Bodies were strewn about...some injured, some dead. Screams filled the air.

Billy Apollo was oblivious to it all. He stood there holding the Polaroid camera and looking down at the woman. She was propped up on the mattress somewhat awkwardly, naked and staring off over his left shoulder. Her eyes were glazed.

I can smell her from here!

A pair of white, spiked-heeled shoes, her only accoutrement, adorned her feet. Her back was curved into the angle of the bed and the wall, her head lolled to the right, her legs were spread wide. Her reddish-brown pubic hair had been allowed to grow wild and bushy, a thick triangular tuft of fur from which her moist inner pinkness glistened.

It’s getting stronger!

The skinny orange cat stared up at Billy through hateful yellow eyes. It looked desperate, he thought, and why wouldn’t it? It had been locked up in this room for God knew how long, and with nothing to eat but cheap processed cat food...and that only sparingly. He pondered kicking the life out of it but refrained, then turned his attention back to the woman.

"You have a magnificent cunt," he said, an intense smile covering his chubby moon face, "and I want to take pictures of it. Mementos, actually, of our time together. The world needs to know."

The woman said nothing.

Billy aimed the camera at her crotch and depressed the red button. A tense whirring sound filled the small room, along with a bright flash, and a white square of paper slid out of a thin slit on the camera’s front. He stepped over to the right, bent down closer to the vagina, and again depressed the red button. Another white square of paper pushed its way out, displacing the previous one and causing it to fall to the floor.

"Spread your legs wider," he said calmly. When she didn’t respond, he forced her legs further apart with his hands.

I smell you, woman!

The noise from the riot below got louder, with an occasional scream rising above and floating over the layered cacophony. It began to rain.

The woman remained motionless, silent. Billy stood back up, stretched, then kneeled at the foot of the filthy mattress and placed the lens within a foot of the woman’s vagina. The aroma was almost overpowering. He smiled, noticing her feces-tinged anus, hoping it would turn up in the picture. He pressed the red button. Another white square slid free.

He changed positions often, depressing the red button time after time. When there was no more film, he reloaded the camera and continued. The floor was soon covered with Polaroid photographs of the woman’s vagina, all taken from various angles. He gathered them up and examined them one at a time. He looked pleased. High above, narrow rays of a weak and impotent sun forced their way through the dark gray clouds, a tiny streak of brightness assaulting the rain.

"Mighty kings are ruled by this, did you know that?" he said, scrutinizing one of the photographs briefly. He then smiled wider and sailed it out the open window. It spun around and out, a white flash in the cold gray light, then arced downward toward the turbulent street below. The turbulent Negro street.

Loud muffled screams now came from out in the hallway...angry feet slammed against the cheap carpet. The woman moaned.

"We’ll meet under this Negro sun," Billy whispered, a thin sheen of cool sweat appearing on his brow, "when the river empties itself into our fused togetherness, like a tight dream demon weeping. We’ll touch under this Negro sun and become a thing unclassified in the Book of Life. A blank page, water-damaged but happy!"

The screams from the hallway intensified, blending harmoniously with the screams from the streets below, and the walls and floors of the building began to vibrate from the beatings of mighty angry fists.

"A feast of flesh!" Billy grinned, now tossing photo after photo out the window and watching them spin rapidly downward. "It’s all I have to give, you black bastards! It’s all I have to give!"