me like a pack mule that isn't moving up the canyon trail quickly enough. They beat my back. They dig their nails in, bite, wrench me one way and then the other. They straddle and pound and chomp. I'm bleeding from a dozen tiny wounds. This has nothing to do with me. After a while they begin to go at each other. It starts off mean and eventually becomes tempestuous. It would be a turn-on if it wasn't so predictable. They love themselves, and they're so much alike that they love each other, in a self-hatred kind of way. They're ravenous. I watch for a while. I participate when they let me. They command each other to do filthier and filthier acts. They demand I abuse them. I comply. I pulse. I grow charred. I can't degrade them deeply enough for their satisfaction. Prill is at the door, listening. He kicks at the knob twice but the lock holds. What did he expect? How could he not know? The girls devour me. I clamp my eyes shut and watch the shadows move on the other side of my burning red eyelids. I see Gary Lowers's eyeless face turning in the rain to look at me. He implores me to do something. I don't know what. There's no hope for justice or redemption anymore, he'll never rest, and neither will I. Maybe he just wants a grave, even a shallow one. I could go back and bury him, but what's the point? The dirt has rejected him. The kids will make fun of him just the same. I wuv my mommy. I love my mother too. I miss her more and more every day. My father calls her name out in the night. He slams his fists into the walls like he's beating her again, but she's finally beyond his reach. It's slowly killing him, not having her anymore. He sometimes stands in my bedroom doorway at dawn, but I'm always awake and ready. He wants me dead or he wants me to kill him. Maybe both. I know I'm capable. Gwen and Linda roll across the mattress. They're on the floor, they're on the desk. They're spread against the window. They muffle their cries with each other's flesh. Their nails groove the sill. Branches flail in the breeze, wanting to scratch the girls, wishing them to bleed more deeply. Gwen tumbles across the night stand and Linda pounces. I join her. The bitter taste of blood, tequila, pussy, and shit fills my head. At one point I tear strips from the sheets and use them to bind the girls. First one, while we work on her. Then the other. Until I stand above them, alone, rigid, in the darkness, all the light bulbs shattered. We see each others' eyes by moonlight. Their knotted gags are too tough to chew through. It's not so different from what happened to Lowers, in its own way. Sex transcends itself, a fusion of violence and sacrifice. I stand, waiting, my pulse in tune with theirs, with Ricky's. The walls throb with bass guitars and percussion. Snatches of lyrics catch my attention. I lean over the bed. Linda asked if I'd ever killed anyone. I hiss at her, 'Yes.' I do things to them with whatever I can find in the desk drawer, in the closet, under the bed, with my body. It's loud and merciless. By the time I cut them loose they're both sobbing, clinging to each other and quivering, sated, terrified and cowed, and I know I have to leave. The storm wants inside. Its force can't match my own. Rain on the window scrawls out my past and hints about the future. The glass trembles as if pecked by the beaks of crows. I imagine my father out there peeking in, wanting in. The girls lick the running blood from each other. They dress me before they dress themselves. They thank me.
7
Ricky's passed out on the couch, his bags of PCP about to fall out of his pocket, the Satanic Bible already having worked down between the cushions. I sit beside him and try to picture his dreams.
Lowers isn't in any of them. Lowers is already old news. Ricky's got other things on his mind, trying to keep on the move. From what I pick up from the chattering throng, the cops roust him night after night and force him to move along, park somewhere else. He drives around Cow Harbor Park looking for more friends, more victims. Just to shake the boredom he digs up ancient graves and plays among the bones. Everyone is always searching for a new, or very old, source of power. It's why he deals to children and idiots. It's why he beats up on masochists. It's why he starts fires with your hair.
I dip my hand into his pocket and steal the bags of PCP. It's what Ricky wants. He thinks he's caught a new fish. His eyes flash open and he focuses on me, but he doesn't move otherwise. I make sure he sees me putting the bags in my own front pocket. I wait for him to jump up. I wait for him to try to beat the shit out of me. He can't possibly do it, this rail-thin freak, but I wait. I grin at him. Our eyes lock. We wait. His vicious scrutiny tells me all I need to know about how this is going to play out.
He turns over slowly and his scheming expression shifts into pure psychosis, and then into something unreadable beyond insanity. I don't know what it means, but you're always proud to push the guy beside you to the next stage of his evolution.
He notices my wounds. The rug burns, scrapes, gouges, teeth marks. He whispers something I don't catch. I frown at him. He whispers it again. He says I smell like Gwen's asshole. He's not lying.
I page through his copy of
There are kids out there suddenly recalling years of repressed memories. They're claiming satanic cults forced them into slavery and sex rituals involving butchered newborns. If you believe the ten o'clock news, then just about every other church is being desecrated and being used for black masses. Anton LaVey alleges tearing a photo of Jayne Mansfield in half and causing her death by decapitation. Anton LaVey is a fraud who's done a lot of damage. Baphomet keeps a fixed gaze on us.
Ricky's jean jacket is stained with dried spatters of mud and blood. It's frayed at the collar and singed at the cuffs especially. Wherever he's got his blade stashed, it's well hidden. He's got on a black T-shirt and blue jeans and sneakers, just like me. He hasn't taken a shower in at least a week and he stinks like a sewer. He smells like Gwen's asshole too.
I offer the book back to Ricky and he tells me, 'Keep it.'
I say, 'No thanks.'
'I insist.'
'You can't.'
'What?'
'You can't insist upon someone who won't allow it. You can only insist upon someone who acquiesces. Like Gary.'
The name just makes Ricky's face twist more crazily. I wonder what the Acid King sees when he sees me. He grins a baboon grin. He refuses the book.
I stuff it back down between the cushions. I wait for him to try to put his hand on me. He doesn't. I know he wants to go for the blade. He just keeps staring, features contorting in a variety of ways. Sometimes I recognize the expression, sometimes I don't. His features contort so much that I wonder if the juice I drank was spiked with LSD. He almost seems to be melting.
He's puzzled by me, and he's got me curious. If he wasn't a crazed murderer, we might be on our way to a solid friendship here. He cocks his head one way and then the other. His eyes half-close. He bobs his chin in time with the music. The lead guitar is performing a painfully simplistic solo that's got the punks worked into a frenzy. They're playing air guitar. Ricky's fingers move like he's striking chords. Then he sinks back, relaxed. For a minute he sleeps. He snores heavily. The music is loud enough to bring the cops down on us, but they don't come. The neighbors don't call. They're afraid of kids.
Somebody puts in a new cassette. More weak metal. The lyrics are just as bad as before. The Devil is leading children through the forest. The Devil will return your love tenfold. God is dead. Paradise is a lie. The world is hell and that's so beautiful. The theater of the inquisition is open to all. Prepare for pain.
The girls try to dance but it's not the kind of rhythm you can really move to. They gyrate and sway in a sexless manner. The punks bang their heads. Long hair whips back and forth like the cat o' nine tails that tore Christ's back apart. Ricky puts his feet in my lap the same way that Linda did in the car. Maybe it's a sign of affection. Maybe he's trying to push buttons. He fails on either count. I wait him out. We're like that for a while. He breaks before me. He hops off the couch.
Maybe this is it. I watch for the blade. It doesn't appear. Ricky likes an audience, but only if he gets to lead them to the stage one by one. He laughs his mad monkeyboy laugh, his hair coiling into his eyes like serpents.
His face goes bleak. 'What's your name?' he asks.
I don't tell him. Names have power.
