Ben Osczhio

Benjamin Osczhio suffered from a multitude of burdens. First, there was his wife, Katrinka, a mammoth harridan who had never lost an opportunity to belittle him throughout their 16 years of marriage. Then there was his job at the delicatessen. It paid only $220 a week, and his rent was $350 a month, and what with inflation and Katrinka's appetite, he was gradually getting into serious debt. Katrinka had offered to return to work--she had been a cashier at the delicatessen when he met her 17 years ago--but he liked being the sole breadwinner. It was the only thing in his life that gave him a sense of superiority over her. Besides, Katrinka didn't really want to work. She much preferred spending her days padding around their four-room apartment in her furry pink house slippers, eating herself into exhaustion. To make matters worse, old man Epstein, whose family had operated the delicatessen for 32 years, had decided to close the business and retire to Florida. "Too many holdups. The neighborhood's gone bad," he (continued on page 146) Ben Osczhio (continued from page 143) told Ben. So, very shortly, Ben would be out of a job at the age of 48, qualified to do nothing more than slice ham, dish out potato salad and write prices on bags. Living in a $350-a-month apartment with a wife who consumed $15 a week in white bread alone (not to mention ten bucks' worth of peanut-butter cups), he was a man in trouble.

But great though those miseries were, none was so great as his primary, fundamental, never-ending woe. He had a tiny penis. Not just small. Tiny. So tiny that Katrinka, to mock him when he refused to meet her frequent demands that he steal food from the deli for her, would take an unshelled peanut to their bed that night and masturbate with it, whispering, "See? If you were only this big, you could make me happy, Benjamin."

Of course, he'd tried everything to make it bigger. He bought his first "guaranteed" lotion from a fortuneteller when he was 17. Since then, he'd tried innumerable powders and salves, electric stimulators, vacuum pumps and a horrible little contraption he nicknamed The Rack. Along the way, he had managed to stretch it from one half inch to five eighths of an inch, and several times nearly lost it altogether. He hated it. "A little nubbin of a nubbin," Katrinka called it when he hid the butter from her. She liked to eat a pound of butter, softened and mashed with sugar, while watching television.

His penis, what there was of it, was the bane of his existence. He'd been too shy to get very far with girls in high school, and even through early manhood, he rarely let a woman see him undressed. Most often, he induced his dates to let him pleasure them by means other than intercourse while he surreptitiously played with himself. It was very unsatisfactory.

Then he met Katrinka. She wasn't so fat then, weighing only about 180. And when he discovered that she loved dildos and vibrators (she confessed this while drunk one night as they sat in the tavern down the block from the deli), he figured she was as good a match as he'd ever find, so he proposed. For the first three years, they'd had a good time. He bought several expensive, large, soft-inside, hard-outside strap-on dildos and even one that vibrated. He loved the feeling of power the huge dildos gave him as he thrust between Katrinka's massive jiggling thighs.

But, inevitably, technology becomes boring. The novelty wore off. Katrinka began whining that she wanted a real prick, a mammoth organ as big as her favorite dildo, the vibrating, multistudded Black Mambo. She began buying Playgirl. She began eating. She lost interest in sex with him.

So for the past 13 years, Benjamin had resorted to prostitutes. Over the years, he'd had several favorites: women who were convincing at moaning and screaming the things he paid them to say, like, "Oh, God, you're splitting me apart!" and "Jesus, I feel like I'm fucking a stallion!"

However, there were several problems connected with that habit. One was his dread of venereal disease. Another was the cost, a serious strain on his perpetually overstrained budget. The worst part, however, was the grief Katrinka gave him whenever she suspected that he'd been "dipping his pea in some whore's pudding," as she put it. For, although she'd lost interest in him sexually, she was nonetheless violently jealous. Once, one of his "girls" had called him at home and Katrinka went on a rampage, wrecking the apartment and beating him soundly about the head and shoulders with a cotto salami.

So it was on a particular Tuesday morning that Benjamin Osczhio didn't go to work but, instead, went to a downtown sporting-goods outlet to purchase a gun with which to blow his brains out. As he approached the store, a cold chill swept over him. I'm actually about to take my life, he thought, because my penis is too small. That's ridiculous. It was so ridiculous that he couldn't go through with it. He sat down on a sidewalk bench, buried his head in his hands and wept. People passed by, but Ben didn't notice. Nobody cares, he thought, for a man with a tiny penis. Then he prayed. And his prayer went something like this: "Dear Whoever it is out there, I'll do anything for a larger penis. I'll serve my fellow man, be honest and upright all of my life, go to church, never tell a lie. But, please, give me just three inches. Three inches, it's all I ask." For a moment, he was transfixed in concentration. Then, with a sigh, he opened his eyes and felt his crotch. It was still the same. He sighed again. He glanced down at the bench and spied an odd little leaflet lying there. It said, "Are you too small to satisfy your woman? See Dr. Brazil and discover how big a man you can be." There was a paragraph referring to Dr. Brazil's mastery of South American occult mysteries, and a phone number. Nothing about devices, gadgets, potions or lotions. It was the strangest penis-extender advertisement he'd ever seen. Taking it as an answer from Whomever, he promptly made a phone call.

•

Dr. Brazil was a tiny brown man with penetrating black eyes and thick eyebrows that merged over his nose. He smelled strange, Ben thought, kind of like library paste. He sat Ben down in his tiny shuttered office and asked about Ben's problem.

"I have a little penis."

"How little?" asked the doctor.

"Very little."

"And you would like a large one?"

"Yes, sir."

"How large?"

"As big as they come. So to speak. Heh." The doctor didn't smile.

He was as small as a child. He stood and walked across the room to a file cabinet. Ben noticed that he walked with a limp. When the doctor returned to his desk, he said, "You probably notice that I walk with a limp." Ben nodded. "Do you have any idea why?" Ben shook his head. "Because I have to strap it to my leg."

Ben blinked. "What?" he asked.

The doctor stood up, promptly unfastened his trousers and let them fall to the floor. He was telling the truth. It was covered in a long Argyle knee sock, but Ben estimated its dimensions to be nine inches around, 18 inches long. The doctor pulled up his pants and sat behind his desk as if nothing had happened. Ben was speechless.

"Once, mine measured only half an inch," the doctor smiled, showing small, white teeth. "But that was before I discovered Mbigoné."

"What's Mbigoné?" Ben asked.

"Mbigoné, my friend, is not a what. It is a who. He is the ancient Indian god of seduction and deceit. To those who worship him and make sacrifice to him, he grants godlike sexual organs."

Ben stood and headed for the door. "I've heard a lot of crap in my life," he said, "but that's the worst. If you think I'm going to pay you for some kind of magic potion, forget it. I tried that when I was seventeen."

He was opening the door when Brazil called out, "Before you go, look at this!" Something in the little man's voice compelled Ben to turn around. The doctor was holding a photograph. "Come, look at this," he urged. "It was me before I learned the secret of Mbigoné."

Against his will, Ben strode over (continued on page 164) Ben Osczhio (continued from page 146) and snatched the faded snapshot. It was Brazil around the age of 20, standing on a beach, holding a basket of fish. He was nude. His penis was barely visible. The doctor stood close and whispered in his ear, "I know how you feel, you see? I would not torture and tease and cheat a man who is suffering as I suffered for many years. I only want to help you. Come. Sit down."

Still staring at the photograph, Ben sat down again as the little man opened a drawer behind his desk. When Ben looked up, there was a small wooden carved figure before him. "This," said Brazil, "is a statue of Mbigoné, carved by one of the few South American sorcerers qualified to invoke the power of the ancient Indian gods. Look at him."

Ben took the little figure cautiously. It was heavy for such a small piece of wood. The carving was delicate and precise. It was the figure of a gnarled hunchback with heavy eyebrows, sharp, small, pointed teeth and clawlike hands. Ben noticed that the hump on his back was odd: It was perfectly circular and it had ripples in it, hills and valleys, so to speak. "How, uh ..." he started, then stopped.

"How does it work?" Brazil supplied for him.

Ben nodded.

"Well, the ancient gods lived on worship and sacrifice. To put it another way, they needed the nourishment of human worship to live. That is still true today. If you believe in Mbigoné and make sacrifice to him, it nourishes him. He repays you."

"How do I make the sacrifice?"

"Well, for five hundred dollars, I can impart that information."

"Five hundred bucks? Jeez, that's all I have in my checking account."

"That's all you'll need."

"Will you accept a check?" Already, he'd thought about the problems of paying the rent, explaining the empty checking account to Katrinka and the ensuing argument. And he'd discarded those worries as inconsequential compared with having a penis he could strap to his leg.

"Of course. If it bounces, the magic won't work."

"It won't bounce," said Ben, writing it out.

"Fine. Thanks," the little brown man said when Ben handed him the check.

"Now, here's what you do...."

•

It was a rather messy ritual. So messy, in fact, that Ben used his Master Charge (already over the credit line) not only to purchase the necessary ingredients but also to rent a cheap room in which to perform the rite. It wasn't easy getting a live macaw, a stray dog, a rhesus monkey, three small lizards, a bushel of chili peppers and a six-gallon pot past the desk at the Bidy Bed Motel, but he managed.

Two hours later, the room smelled of monkey piss, blood and birdshit, and Ben was throwing up in the toilet. His penis was exactly the same size, and he was out 500 bucks. He threw up again.

When he got home, Katrinka was furious. She'd called the deli and discovered that he hadn't gone to work. She suspected that he'd gone to "dip his pea" again, and let him know in no uncertain terms that she'd tolerate none of his fooling around on her. Before he had a chance to remove his coat, she snatched the checkbook out of his back pocket and thumbed through it. When she found the balance, she shrieked. "What the hell have you spent our money on?" she screamed. "You rotten little bastard!" She began swinging at him. For a woman who weighed upwards of 300 pounds, she was quick and threw a solid left hook. The second one felled him. She stood over him in her bathrobe, her elephantine breasts swaying from her exertion. "Who is this Dr. Brazil? What did you pay him for? Do you have some kind of venereal disease, you little wart?"

He shook his head.

"You didn't pay some con man to make your penis grow, did you?"

He blushed and stammered. She kicked him. "You did, didn't you, you pathetic wretch?"

"N-n-n-no, dear," he whispered, knowing that she could see in his eyes that he was lying. She kicked him again. But he didn't notice. Because the most wonderful thing was happening. The minute he lied to her, he felt his penis growing. It was ... it was actually getting bigger! He jumped up, bounced off Katrinka, ran around her and into the bathroom, where he frantically tugged down his pants. When he pulled down his shorts, tears welled from his eyes. He fell to the floor, sobbing with gratitude. It was at least six inches long. He opened his eyes and stared at it. He pinched himself. He splashed cold water on his face from the toilet bowl. He wasn't dreaming. It was six inches long. He jumped up and grabbed a toothbrush. He put one end at the juncture of his crotch and laid it against his penis. He knew the toothbrush had to be at least six inches, and he was about half an inch longer than the toothbrush. His heart was pounding and tears welled from his eyes again. Katrinka was slamming the door so hard that the glass on the sink was rattling. He pulled his pants back up and composed himself. He decided that he would be damned if she benefited from his new endowment. After all the years of belittlement, she hardly deserved to be the first to christen his gift from Mbigoné. He had better fish to fry.

Suddenly, the door flew open and knocked him into the toilet bowl. The shock of the cold water soaking through his clothes infuriated him. Just as Katrinka grabbed for his throat to throttle him, he unleashed a straight right that caught her by surprise over the temple. She dropped like an immense blob of taffy falling from a spoon.

With the help of vanilla extract rubbed under his nose, he spent the night at the motel room, since he'd paid for it. In the morning, he went to work a new man, his mind set on seducing Lottie, the redheaded waitress he'd lusted after for months but had always been too shy to approach. He began working on her right away. A little innuendo here, a pat there. They exchanged good-natured jibes all day and the sexual tension between them culminated in his asking her out for a drink after the deli closed. With no questions about his wife, she took him up on it, commenting as they left, "I've never seen you so confident and relaxed, Ben. What's come over you? You act like you just came into a real wad."

Of course, it was a long night, and the best of his life. He put a couple of bottles and another motel room on the Master Charge. He didn't get home until four in the morning, still slightly drunk and smelling of Lottie's loud perfume. Katrinka had overdosed on baked potatoes and sour cream. She sat in a chair, slumped over the kitchen table, her head resting on her cellulite-padded arms. Seventeen hollowed-out potato skins sat in a serving platter covered with congealed butter. Four empty cartons of sour cream were on the floor. She held a fifth in her hand. He figured there was no point in sleeping, since he'd have to be at work in a few hours, so he decided to shower and drink some coffee till dawn. As he put the coffeepot on, Katrinka awoke with a groan.

"Oohh. Shit," she mumbled, "no butter left." She focused her eyes and saw him beside the stove. Ordinarily, he would have been frightened of her. Now he felt only contempt bordering on pity as she pushed herself to her feet, trying to stare him down as she rose.

"Bastard. Skinny little bastard. Been putting up with you too long, you little piece of a man. Nobody hits me. Nobody." With that, she picked up a serving platter and flung it at him, but he ducked and she fell down, slipping on a bit of spilled sour cream. As she hit the floor, he stepped over her and went to take his shower. She tried to push herself up but couldn't. He heard her puffing and scuffling with the furniture, but he didn't go to help her.

"Come help me, Benjamin!" she screamed. "I can't get up, you bastard!"

"Tough. Go on a diet," he yelled back.

Then she burst into tears. For some reason, he felt guilty. She had never cried in the entire 16 years of their marriage. He went back to the kitchen and looked at her. She wore only her nightgown, which had slid up to her enormous buttocks. She lay on her stomach, her entire body shaking with her sobs.

"Are you just going to let me lie here?" she said, sniffling.

He said nothing. He was wondering how he had ever let himself get hooked up with such an awful-looking woman. Boy, was she fat.

"Benjamin," she said, wiping her face and nose with the end of her nightgown, "where were you last night? Were you seeing some woman? Were you spending money we don't have to boost your pitiful little ego one more time?"

His first impulse was to say, "Yes, and I had the greatest lay of my life with a woman who weighs one third of what you weigh," but he didn't. She looked so pitiful lying there, and he now felt so superior to her, that telling her the truth would be a cheap shot. So he lied. "I was looking for a night job. Night watchman's job. Wanted to try to make it up to you, spending all our money." It wasn't a very convincing lie. It certainly didn't convince her, he could tell. But of far greater importance was the fact that he could feel it growing again. Again he ran to the bathroom, locked the door and pulled his pants down. It was still getting longer. As he watched it, it went from seven to eight, eight to nine, nine to ten, ten to eleven and, "Holy Moly," he whispered. It was a foot-long whopper.

He heard Katrinka crawl into the bedroom, shut the door and lock it. He waited a few moments, then went to the bedroom door. "I'm going to work, dear. I may not be home until late."

There was silence. "Do you mind if I come home late?" he asked. Again, there was silence. He had a feeling that she wouldn't care if he never came home. And he wasn't sure he wanted to.

As he walked to the bus stop, he couldn't help putting his hand into his pocket and giving it a little squeeze now and then. God, it was big. And thick. He began to think: A man with a 12-and-a-half-inch prick shouldn't have to work in a delicatessen. I could be a porn-movie star. That was it. He knew what he had to do. First, call one of his hooker friends who'd acted in a couple of porn flicks and ask her if she could connect him with someone in the business. No, on second thought, he said to himself, I think I'll go see her personally and try this big baby out for size. He chuckled at his bad joke.

He stopped to call in sick at the deli. They wouldn't like him being out two days in one week, but he had had a nearly perfect work record for 17 years, and he knew the old man wouldn't fire him.

"Hello, Mr. Epstein?"

"Yes, Ben. Are you coming in today?"

"Well, no, sir."

"What's the matter? You sick? Look here, Ben, I don't know if we can handle the business today if you're not here. It's Thursday. First Lottie came in late looking like she spent the night in a clothes drier, and now you call in sick. Tell me the truth, Ben. Are you really sick or are you just hung over? If you're just hung over, you can tell me. You can take a few hours and come in late; I won't mind."

"Mr. Epstein, I really am sick. I feel lousy. I'm not hung over."

"You're just hung up, right?"

He didn't want to say it, he knew he shouldn't have, but he couldn't resist. "Let's just say I'm hung, Mr. Epstein."

"Well, let's just say you're hanging yourself with this job, Ben, if you aren't in here tomorrow morning. You don't sound sick to me. Goodbye."

Epstein hung up, but Ben didn't really notice. His attention was focused on his groin, where he felt a familiar stirring. It was growing again. It was creeping down his leg, soft and warm like blood pudding. He didn't dare look while standing in a public phone booth. Besides, he didn't need to. He'd let Vicki, his favorite hooker, look at it when he got to her place. He called her.

"Hello?" She sounded sleepy. He must have awakened her.

"Vicki? It's Ben. I'd like to come over if you aren't busy."

"Oh, Ben. You know I don't like to work in the morning. Can't you wait until tonight?"

"I just want to talk to you. Can you spare a few minutes? Just a few minutes? I want to show you something."

"What? A present?"

"You might say."

She yawned. "Well, you know me. Never one to turn down a present. Come on over, big man." She always called him big man. He paid her to, but she never failed to say it as though she meant it. Now, he thought, as he stepped onto the bus headed east, she can say it and mean it without being paid to say it. Sitting on the bus, he noticed that a young man with a crewcut and a leather jacket was eying him intensely. Well, not really him. His thigh. He looked down. It was sitting on top of his thigh, appearing as if he were carrying a piece of garden hose under his pants. Realizing why the young man was staring at him, he stood up quickly and went to the back of the bus.

As soon as he entered Vicki's apartment, he dropped his pants.

"Holy shit!" she exclaimed, and he loved it. She grabbed it, stretched it out, squeezed it all the way up to his balls. "Jeeeezus, will you look at that?" she whispered in awe-struck tones. "Now, that's a dick."

"Have you ever had one this big?"

She shook her head and pulled him onto the bed. "No, but I'm going to. Take it easy, big boy. I've been around, but I've never been around nothing like this." A moment later, she was screaming, "You're splitting me open!" and she wasn't lying.

Afterward, he told her the story of Brazil and revealed his hope of becoming a porno star.

"Well, you've certainly got the equipment," she said, but added, "You're lucky it didn't get much bigger. It's already too big for some women, let me tell you. If it was two inches bigger than that, it would probably scare even me, and I had a pimp once who had fourteen inches, so I'm kind of used to big ones. And let me tell you, another six inches and you can forget coming back to me. I don't think any woman in her right mind would let you get something that big inside her." She made a few phone calls, and Ben left her place with appointments to see two local porn-film makers.

By the end of the day, he had $400 in advances against his fees for appearing in two porn movies that would be filmed the following week. The last guy who interviewed him gave him hope for a long career. "With that tool, baby," the fellow said, "you'll never have to make an honest living as long as I'm in this business. I've had a few black guys with cocks nearly that big, but that's kind of threatening to white customers, you know? But a salami like that on a white guy is inspiring, you know? Really inspiring. You're lucky it isn't any bigger, it would be gross, you know what I mean? I couldn't use you. Besides, I don't think I could get a woman to fuck you. You're just big enough, you know? Just big enough to be inspiring."

That night, he got a room in another motel, took a bottle of Scotch with him and stretched out on the bed to look at (continued on page 168) Ben Osczhio (continued from page 166) television and think. Suddenly, he had a terrifying thought that made him sit up, turn off the television and start pacing the floor. It got bigger every time he lied. Why was that? He remembered Brazil saying something about Mbigoné's being the god of seduction and deceit. That was the tie-in. Whenever he was deceitful, Mbigoné gave him another six inches. However, Vicki and the porn producer's warnings also remained with him: If it grew much bigger, he wouldn't be able to find any woman who'd be willing to take it on.

As the full realization of his predicament dawned on him, he sat down and slapped his knee. "Ouch!" he yelled, having whomped his member. When the pain subsided, he thought, I'll never be able to tell a lie again. Each lie gets me six inches. That could get real embarrassing after a while. More embarrassing than a tiny penis. At least a tiny penis is hidden. What do you do to hide a three-footer? The more he thought about it, the more worried he became. He wasn't a dishonest man by nature, but, like most people, he told half-truths and little white lies now and then. But he couldn't anymore. Never. If he was to remain 18 inches long, he would have to be as truthful as a saint. And a saint he was not. He thought about the 1001 situations in which something, someone, could trip him up and induce him to tell a lie before he thought about what he was saying. The people on the street with the tags on tag day. "I already have a tag at the office," he used to say. No more. His mother calling from New Jersey to ask if he liked the wool pajamas she sent him for his birthday. He would ordinarily say he loved them, but that was a lie. He would have to hurt her feelings. The only way out of the predicament, he realized, was never to speak again. But when he thought about the myriad inconveniences it would create, he became more dejected than ever. He'd never be able to get through the rest of his life without speaking. And if he spoke, he knew the moment would inevitably come when he would lie. And there he'd be with 24 inches and no hope of making love to a woman again. What would he do? How could he satisfy himself? Then a thought occurred to him that made him burst into laughter, the howling laughter of a man half mad. He could rent a horse! Get Vicki to make a cassette recording saying, "I feel like I'm being fucked by a horse," and play it while ... but where do you keep a horse in New York? And what if I lie again? Elephants? Sneaking into the zoo at night ... what if ... whales?

As those thoughts swirled in his head, he gradually grew sleepy and dozed off. While sleeping, he had a horrible dream. He dreamed that his penis was getting longer and longer, that he couldn't stop it. It crawled down his pants leg and into his sock, then started bulging out of his sock, bending along the shaft so that it looked like he had a bow in his pants. Then the head popped out of his sock and began creeping along the street like a gigantic pink python wearing a purple derby, twisting this way and that, crawling into gratings and slithering off the curb. In his dream, he was trying to roll it up, pull it up, tuck it in, before people on the street noticed it. Then people started stepping on it in crowded elevators. Cars rolled over it. It was now nearly 14 feet long and growing. It got slammed in doors. Dogs and rats tried to take bites out of it. Women screamed, police were running after him. He ran and ran and finally hid in an alley, where, by chance, he found a discarded knapsack. He rolled his penis up like a fire hose, stuck it in the knapsack and put the knapsack over his back. He was on his way home when he happened to glance at his reflection in a department-store window. He was not himself. He was bent, gnarled, with sharp teeth and bushy eyebrows. He was Mbigoné. And suddenly he realized what Mbigoné's strange rippled hump was: It was his penis, rolled up on his back. Ben awoke shaking and sweating. He had to see Brazil. He didn't want a telephone pole. All he'd wanted was a lousy three inches.

Although it was nearly midnight when Ben arrived at Brazil's office, Brazil was there. As if he'd been expecting Ben.

"Come in. Sit down," said the little brown man with a faint smile playing across his lips. Ben noticed for the first time how sharp the little man's teeth were, how much he resembled the statue of Mbigoné.

Once seated in front of the doctor's desk, Ben blurted out his fears.

"So is there any way I can make it just stay the way it is?"

"Well, unless you speak the truth, not really," said the doctor, and Ben's heart sank.

"But I can't be sure I'll never lie again. And if I lie too much, I'll become a freak. I don't want to be a freak, doctor. I just wanted to have a big penis."

"And you have one," said the doctor. "However, since you seem so distraught by this, I confess that there is one solution to your problem, but it's a rather unpleasant one, I'm afraid."

"Tell me," said Ben. "I'll try anything, as long it doesn't kill me."

"Well," said Brazil, "there's another ancient god, or, rather, I should say goddess, who shrinks things if properly worshiped."

"How do I get on her good side?"

The doctor reached into his desk drawer and pulled out another small carving. "First, you ought to meet her. She's called Lacavérna." The figure he set on the table was carved of ivory. It was of an extremely fat, little naked woman straddling a tall toadstool. The crown of the toadstool was hidden between her legs. She looked as if she were going to take the whole thing, which was almost as tall as she was, into her roly-poly body. The expression on her face was that of unbridled lust.

"Lacavérna can shrink anything. She was thought to be the goddess in charge of making people shrink as they grew older. The natives still worship her for cancer cures. It's said that she can shrink tumors if properly entreated."

"Well, how do I entreat her?"

"Does the thought of human sacrifice frighten you?"

"Uh, no," Ben said. But he lied. And as he said it, he felt the dreaded reaction occurring along his thigh. "Oh, shit," he moaned, "it's going to two feet."

Dr. Brazil merely nodded and placed the little ivory figure in Ben's hand. "For another five hundred," he said, "I'll tell you how to shrink it back to its regular size. That is, if you're willing to conduct the sacrifice. Are you sure you want it back to its original half inch?"

"Yes, I'm sure," said Ben. But he wasn't sure. And because he wasn't sure, it began growing again. It was now dangling against his shin. "Yes, I'm sure," he said, and this time he meant it.

"OK," said Brazil. "This is what's required. The ritual itself is very simple. No blood, no animals. All that's necessary is that you say certain words over the body of a woman you've just fucked to death."

"Huh?" said Ben.

"Fucked to death," said Brazil. "Is there anyone you can think of offhand that you wouldn't mind fucking to death?"

Ben thought a while, then replied, "Yes. My wife. She's the coldest, cruelest, most ugly, fat, abominable human being on earth. She's such a pig that she doesn't deserve the pleasure of being fucked to death, but I'll do it to her, anyway. If there's anything that'll shut her up for once and for all, that'd be it."

"Fine. Take the statue. Once you've invoked the power of Lacavérna, you'll never be able to reverse the process. You'll be a half inch for the rest of your life."

"Five eighths," Ben corrected.

"Beg your pardon. Five eighths."

"But I don't have five hundred dollars right now. I have about three hundred and fifty in cash."

"That'll do," Brazil said. "I'm leaving town for a while. I need some spending cash for my trip."

"Where are you going? How'll I reach you?"

"No need. Besides, you won't be able to reach me. Where I go, no white person knows. I go back to get more enchanted statues from my homeland. A place in the mountains. You wouldn't ever find it, even if you tried."

"Well, OK. You're sure this'll work?"

Brazil nodded and stretched out his palm. Ben gave him the money and took the little fat lady.

When he opened the door to his apartment, the lights were off. He sniffed a few times to determine what Katrinka had been eating. Usually, he recognized it right away: cheezets, pizza, peanut butter, raw cake batter, whatever. But this time there was no smell of food. Only the faintest smell of something sweet. He couldn't put his finger on it. He hung his coat in the closet and then realized that he was smelling perfume. Katrinka never wore perfume. The closest she got to wearing perfume was when she was eating five-pound bags of cinnamon drops. But it was perfume he smelled.

"Katrinka?"

"I'm in the bedroom, Ben." Her voice was unexpectedly gentle, almost girlish. And she never called him Ben. Always Benjamin and sometimes Benjy. He went to the bedroom. She was under the covers, just her head sticking out. She'd put on make-up. It was a bit garish, but nonetheless she looked like a different person. She had never worn make-up before, even at the deli. But more than that, her cheeks were rosy. Not with rouge but with blood. Her cheeks were usually pasty white.

"Katrinka?"

"Come here, Ben. I want to talk to you. I want to tell you something."

He walked to the bed and sat down. Her behavior was so different, so--so feminine. He almost forgot that he had to kill her.

"Ben," she said, sighing deeply and looking at him tenderly, "I did a lot of thinking today. A lot." She sat up and put her hands on his cheeks. The sheet fell away. She had oiled her body. It still wasn't a pretty sight, but at least her skin didn't look sallow and dry. She pressed her fingers to his lips. "Today, when you left, I realized that I don't care how big your penis is. All I care about is that I don't want you to leave me. Do you understand?"

His head was swimming. Was this the same woman who, only that morning, had tried to skull him with a turkey platter? The same woman who possessed a left hook comparable to Joe Frazier's? The same woman who could eat seven pounds of marshmallows at one sitting, then spend five hours with a 14-inch vibrating dildo?

She lay back and tried to cover her breasts, but it was impossible, as each one was approximately as long as the top half of a fire hydrant. He pushed her hands away. "I want to suck them, feel them," he said roughly, in a way he'd never spoken to her before. She blushed and wiggled and jiggled. He ran his hands over the soft folds of her body and she spread her legs for him.

"I don't know what you're trying to do, Katrinka," he said. "I don't know what you're up to. But whatever this act is, I'm going to reward you for being such a good actress. I'm going to give you something you've always wanted."

"You've given me all I need already, Ben," she said.

"But I haven't given you what you wanted. Tonight you're going to get it." With that, he stood up and unbuckled his pants. "Watch closely, Katrinka." He paused a moment, then let his pants fall and stepped out of them.

She turned several colors. He'd heard of people doing that, but he'd never actually seen it. At first, her face turned stark white, then pale bluish. Then the color returned and went from pink to a bright-red flush, then bluish again as beads of sweat began breaking out over her upper lip. She was breathing heavily.

"What ... is ... that, Ben?" She could barely speak.

"That, Katrinka, is my penis." Now, in this moment, he reveled in it. He fancied keeping it forever, bringing it out for her maybe once a year to let her drool over it. Sublime torture. But he cast those thoughts out of his mind and recalled his dream. Recalled what it would be like to live as a freak. Recalled all the humiliation he had suffered from her all those years.

"Could ... could I touch it? Is it real?" She reached out and he grabbed her hand and guided it first to his crotch where it began, then down, down, down. All the way down.

"Ben? This is your penis? I mean ... I mean, this is really your penis?"

"It's not a loan from somebody else, if that's what you're asking."

"Oh, no, no," she laughed, "it is yours. It's obviously yours. It looks just like it did before, the same bumps and wrinkles and everything. But bigger. Oh, it's yours, Ben. How did you get it?" She couldn't help running her hands back and forth along its shaft. It couldn't help responding.

"Do you really care how I got it?"

"Oh, Ben, no. I mean yes. I mean yes, but later. Oh, come here." She was pulling it, kissing it. It was coming up, straightening out, throbbing, rising. The head was getting to be the size of a grade-A Florida grapefruit. The thought that no woman would ever be able to get it into her mouth gave him a twinge of regret, but then he reminded himself that it wasn't going to stay this large. He was going to have one good last fuck with it, then do the ritual with the statuette in his coat pocket and go back to five eighths of an inch. He pulled away from her to remove his shirt and socks. His shirt was no problem, but when he bent over to yank off his socks, his turgid member hit him in the nose. Finally, he stood before her nude. Her gleaming body seemed larger than ever to him. It spread across the bed in great waves of flesh, and every inch of that flesh was blushing with desire.

"Are you ready?" he asked, just to tease her. She couldn't speak. She just nodded her head and spread her legs as wide as she could. Her thighs parted like the pink sea and he dove in, all the way in. He hoped he'd give her a heart attack or rupture something on the first thrust, but, to his amazement, she closed around him like a glove. He couldn't imagine where she was putting it. He began hammering away. It started to feel wonderful. He found himself hammering less and thrusting more. There was something about her immensity that fit his own perfectly. And, try as he might, he couldn't exhaust her. He had been sure that so much exertion would give her a heart attack. But she heaved and moaned and heaved and moaned and although she said "I'm dying" several times, she didn't. And he suddenly thought, I'll have to do it tomorrow night, instead.

It had never been so satisfying. That's what amazed and confused him. In fact, later, as he looked at her lying beside him, sleeping like a warm, gargantuan pink beanbag, he couldn't help feeling a wave of affection for her. Damn if she hadn't taken him all in and made him like it. He pulled the covers over her and patted her behind. She murmured and cooed in her sleep.

He walked to the bathroom to pee, then realized his erection still hadn't fully subsided. He stood three feet from the toilet, pointing the head down, waiting, when he remembered the little statue in his coat pocket. Suddenly, he felt the piss coming. It emerged with the force of a hose. He remembered how he'd always been afraid to get into pissing contests with other boys when he was a kid. Now he smiled, knowing he could probably piss half a block after a quart of beer.

He went to the closet and reached into his coat. His fingers closed over the little ivory statue of Lacavérna. He pulled it out and looked at it. She was kind of cute for a fatty, he thought. He loved the bawdy expression on her face. He sat down in the living room, sighed, patted Lacavérna fondly and thought, Well, little lady, I guess I've got my work cut out for me if I'm ever to shrink this fella. He shook his penis. He hated to admit it, but the longer he had it, the more he liked it. He resolved to reverse the process the following morning, before he fooled himself into thinking he could keep it and never lie. He would have to fuck Katrinka to death.

But as he went to the bedroom, a thought kept nagging at him. How she could take it all in. She was only 5'7" at most, and her upper body couldn't be longer than three feet, all the way up to the top of her head. And his penis was a good two and a half feet long and ten inches around. How could she have taken him all in without a rupture, nothing?

He crept into the bedroom and looked at her again. Usually, she snored like a door buzzer every four seconds. But tonight she wasn't snoring. The smell of her perfume lingered in the air.

The perfume. That was it. He went back outside the bedroom and smelled the statue of Lacavérna. It definitely smelled of the same perfume Katrinka was wearing. He'd never smelled anything like it before. He hadn't noticed how it smelled in Brazil's office, but now he was almost positive. To be sure, he went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, which was nearly empty. He set the statue inside, then washed his hands and arms in the sink. When he was sure he didn't smell of the perfume from Katrinka's body, he removed it from the refrigerator and sniffed it again. It was the same perfume Katrinka wore. He was positive.

He was also confused. Staring at the statue in the glow of the refrigerator light, he noticed how very much Lacavérna's body resembled Katrinka's, how very much her face looked as Katrinka's had when she climaxed. He closed the refrigerator and went back to the bedroom, resolved to ask Katrinka, when they woke up, what kind of perfume she was wearing. He looked around the room for a place to hide the statue and decided on the corner of the closet shelf, behind a pile of old sweaters. As he slipped it under the sweaters, his fingers touched something small and hard. He pulled it out. It was a statue, just like his. A fat little ivory lady squealing in ecstasy as she spread her thighs over a giant toadstool. It was the goddess Lacavérna.

And then he realized that he had gotten what he wanted and that Katrinka had gotten what she wanted. God bless Brazil, whoever he is, thought Ben, as he crawled under the sheets and huddled next to the soothing warmth of his wife's body.*

"'Mbigoné is the ancient god of seduction. To those who worship him, he grants godlike sexual organs.'"

"The minute he lied to her, he felt his penis growing. It was actually getting bigger!"

*The reader may be interested to know that Ben and Katrinka lived happily ever after and that, from that night on, he was known to all as Honest Ben Osczhio.