Free Doomsday Warrior 18 - American Dream Machine by Ryder Stacy

stench—of human excrement and vegetable decay—like the sewers of Paris! What the hell was going on?
    Kimetta started back from the bathroom. At least she looked about the same. Beautiful, long, and full. “Kimetta?” he asked, “where are we? What’s going on? Am I dreaming?”
    She laughed and said, “Wow! You really tied one on last night didn’t you? Where the hell do you think we are? We’re in your stinking home, that’s where we are!”
    She picked up an old dowdy housecoat and slipped it on, buttoning the one button that was still loosely clinging to the moth-eaten cloth. “Come on,” she said, “let’s finish off that bottle of rotgut for breakfast.”
    Rockson sat up, trying to pull himself together. Kimetta sat on the side of the bed and lifted a bottle of something purple called Rumple Town off the wooden floor. She placed it to her lips and drank down a slug, then, half choking, passed it to Rockson.
    “I must be hallucinating,” he mumbled, pushing the bottle away. “There’s no other explanation. Where’s my penthouse overlooking Central Park? Where’s my great furniture?”
    Kimetta nearly fell over laughing, and when she recovered she said, “Good God, loverboy, you can be really funny sometimes, I swear! You snap out of it now. And get your act together. This is your damned little shack, right smack in the middle of an overheated Venusian swamp!”
    “Venusian? You mean I’m on the planet Venus?”
    “You got it pal,” Kimetta sneered. “This is your life, buddy. You asked for it, you know. You’re the one that wanted to come here and ‘find your fortune’ and all that. And you dragged me along. But you ain’t gonna live off of me no more. You’re gonna work from now on pal. No more freeloading. That’s what the new dictator said. That’s what the law is now!” She took the bottle up again and drained it, letting some wine or whatever it was slip down her chin. Then Kimetta slipped on an old pair of beige slippers and headed for the door.
    “Where are you going?”
    “To get some more wine, you shitface. That is, if the bastard will still advance a bottle based upon us paying him next week.”
    “I—I don’t understand what’s going on,” Rockson said. “Kimetta, can you come back here,” he pleaded, “I’m having trouble this morning . . . Can you tell me where my poached eggs are?”
    “Poached eggs? Oh brother, you really are out of it aren’t you?” She came back, but only to stand over him and sneer. “Now listen buster, it’s one thing to be a failure, a bum, a no good exploiter of women, but it’s another thing to be bonkers. I won’t stay with no creepy flip-out, you know. If the captain’s left the bridge, I’m outta here.”
    Rockson got mad now. How could she talk to him like this? He was a millionaire playboy! “Well,” he huffed, throwing aside the dirty sheets and striding over to the closet where his wardrobe of suits should have been—only this closet looked kind of small—“you can very well leave me if you want! There are a hundred women dying to be here with me.” He opened the closet and saw just one checkered sport coat, and a pair of soiled chino pants on a hook.
    “Ha!” she laughed. “Maybe you were something back in the old days, but now you’re a bum. No one else will have you, you freeloader! So you want me to leave you, heh? Well, when you pay me back for all the sex, for all the money you ‘borrowed,’ then I’ll leave, and not until then! You think that you can just use me and then tell me to leave? Well, here on Venus there’s laws about stuff like that! Sexual relations are sacred, buster. The man that has me has an obligation.”
    “I made no promises—” he started to say.
    Kimetta stamped her bare feet. “You led me on! Well, I see I did right to report you! I hope they hang people like you. You—you destroyed my reputation.”
    Rockson’s head swam. None of this was right. Something in the champagne