By Bizarre Hands (10 page)

Tucking the revolver into the waistband of his pants, Dennis picked up Chum and tenderly placed him on the desk chair, half-curled. He tried to poke the dog's tongue back into his mouth, but that didn't work. He patted Chum on the head, said, "There, now."

Dennis went around and stood in front of Morley and looked at him, as if memorizing the moment.

At his back the Dobermans rattled the door.

"We can make a deal," Morley said. "I can give you a lot of money, and you can go away. We'll call it even."

Dennis unfastened Morley's pants, pulled them down to his knees. He pulled the underwear down. He went around and got the spray can out of Morley's coat and came back.

"This isn't sporting, Dennis. At least I gave you a fighting chance."

"I'm not a sport," Dennis said.

He sprayed Morley's testicles with the chemical. When he finished he tossed the canister aside, walked over to the door and listened to the Dobermans scuttling on the other side.

"Dennis!"

Dennis took hold of the doorknob.

"Screw you then," Morley said. "I'm not afraid. I won't scream. I won't give you the pleasure."

"You didn't even love her," Dennis said, and opened the door.

The Dobermans went straight for the stench of the spray, straight for Morley's testicles.

Dennis walked calmly out the back way, closed the glass
door.
And as he limped down the drive, making for the gate, he began to laugh.

Morley had lied. He did too scream. In fact, he was still screaming.

I
T
ELL
Y
OU
I
T's
L
OVE

For Lew Shiner

The beautiful woman had no eyes, just sparkles of light where they should have been—or so it seemed in the candlelight. Her lips, so warm and inviting, so wickedly wild and suggestive of strange pleasures, held yet a hint of disaster, as if they might be fat red things skillfully molded from dried blood.

"Hit me," she said.

That is my earliest memory of her; a doll for my beating, a doll for my love.

I laid it on her with that black silk whip, slapping it across her shoulders and back, listening to the whisper of it as it rode down, delighting in the flat pretty sound of it striking her flesh.

She did not bleed, which was a disappointment. The whip was too soft, too flexible, too difficult to strike hard with.

"Hurt me," she said softly. I went to where she kneeled. Her arms were outstretched, crucifixion style, and bound to the walls on either side with strong silk cord the color and texture of the whip in my hand.

I slapped her. "Like it?" I asked. She nodded and I slapped her again . . . and again. A one-two rhythm, slow and melodic, time and again.

"Like it?" I repeated, and she moaned, "Yeah, oh yeah."

Later, after she was untied and had tidied up the blood from her lips and nose, we made brutal love; me with my thumbs bending the flesh of her throat, she with her nails
66
entrenched
in my back. She said to me when we were finished, "Let's do someone."

That's how we got started. Thinking back now, once again I say I'm glad for fate; glad for Gloria; glad for the memory of the crying sounds, the dripping blood and the long sharp knives that murmured through flesh like a lover's whisper cutting the dark.

Yeah, I like to think back to when I walked hands in pockets down the dark wharves in search of that special place where there were said to be special women with special pleasures for a special man like me.

I walked on until I met a sailor leaning up against a wall smoking a cigarette, and he says when I ask about the place, "Oh, yeah, I like that sort of pleasure myself. Two blocks down, turn right, there between the warehouses, down the far end. You'll see the light." And he pointed and I walked on, faster.

Finding it, paying for it, meeting Gloria was the goal of my dreams. I was more than a customer to that sassy, dark mamma with the sparkler eyes. I was the link to fit her link. We made two strong, solid bonds in a strange cosmic chain. You could feel the energy flowing through us; feel the iron of our wills. Ours was a mating made happily in hell.

So time went by and I hated the days and lived for the nights when I whipped her, slapped her, scratched her, and she did the same to me. Then one night she said, "It's not enough. Just not enough anymore. Your blood is sweet and your pain is fine, but I want to see death like you see a movie, taste it like licorice, smell it like flowers, touch it like cold, hard stone."

I laughed, saying, "I draw the line at dying for you." I took her by the throat, fastened my grip until her breathing was a whistle and her eyes protruded like bloated corpse bellies.

"That's not what I mean," she managed. And then came the statement that brings us back to what started it all, "Let's do someone."

I laughed and let her go.

"
You know what I mean?" she said. "You know what I'm saying."

"I know what you said. I know what you mean." I smiled. "I know very well."

"You've done it before, haven't you?"

"Once," I said, "in a shipyard, not that long ago."

"Tell me about it. God, tell me about it."

"It was dark and I had come off ship after six months out, a long six months with the men, the ship and the sea. So I'm walking down this dark alley, enjoying the night like I do, looking for a place with the dark ways, our kind of ways, baby, and I came upon this old wino lying in a doorway, cuddling a bottle to his face as if it were a lady's loving hand."

"What did you do?"

"I kicked him," I said, and Gloria's smile was a beauty to behold.

"Go on," she said.

"God, how I kicked him. Kicked him in the face until there was no nose, no lips, no eyes. Only red mush dangling from shrapneled bone; looked like a melon that had been dropped from on high, down into a mass of broken white pottery chips. I touched his face and tasted it with my tongue and my lips."

"Ohh," she sighed, and her eyes half-closed. "Did he scream?"

"Once. Only once. I kicked him too hard, too fast, too soon. I hammered his head with the toes of my shoes, hammered until my cuffs were wet and sticking to my ankles."

"Oh God," she said, clinging to me, "let's do it, let's do it."

We did. First time was a drizzly night and we caught an old woman out. She was a lot of fun until we got the knives out and then she went quick. There was that crippled kid next, lured him from the theater downtown, and how we did that was a stroke of genius. You'll find his wheelchair not far from where you found the van and the other stuff.

But no matter. You know what we did, about the kinds
of
tools we had, about how we hung that crippled kid on that meat hook in my van until the flies clustered around the doors thick as grapes.

And of course there was the little girl. It was a brilliant idea of Gloria's to get the kid's tricycle into the act. The things she did with those spokes. Ah, but that woman was a connoisseur of pain.

There were two others, each quite fine, but not as nice as the last. Then came the night Gloria looked at me and said, "It's not enough. Just won't do."

I smiled. "No way, baby. I still won't die for you."

"No," she gasped, and took my arm. "You miss my drift. It's the pain I need, not just the watching. I can't live through them, can't feel it in me. Don't you see, it would be the ultimate."

I looked at her, wondering did I have it right.

"Do you love me?"

"I do," I said.

"To know that I would spend the last of my life with you, that my last memories would be the pleasure of your face, the feelings of pain, the excitement, the thrill, the terror."

Then I understood, and understood good. Right there in the car I grabbed her, took her by the throat and cracked her head up against the windshield, pressed her back, choked, released, choked, made it linger. By this time I was quite a pro. She coughed, choked, smiled. Her eyes swung from fear to love. God it was wonderful and beautiful and the finest experience we had ever shared.

When she finally lay still there in the seat, I was trembling, happier than I had ever been. Gloria looked fine, her eyes rolled up, her lips stretched in a rictus smile.

I kept her like that at my place for days, kept her in my bed until the neighbors started to complain about the smell.

I've been talking to this guy and he's got some ideas. Says he thinks I'm one of the future generation, and the fact of that scares him all to hell. A social mutation, he says. Man's primitive nature at the height of the primal scream.

Dog
shit, we're all the same, so don't look at me like I'm some kind of freak. What does he do come Monday night? He's watching the football game, or the races or boxing matches, waiting for a car to overturn or for some guy to be carried out of the ring with nothing but mush left for brains. Oh yeah, he and I are similar, quite alike. You see, it's in us all. A low pitch melody not often heard, but there just the same. In me it peaks and thuds, like drums and brass and strings. Don't fear it. Let it go. Give it the beat and amplify. I tell you it's love of the finest kind.

So I've said my piece and I'll just add this: when they fasten my arms and ankles down and tighten the cap, I hope I feel the pain and delight in it before my brain sizzles to bacon, and may I smell the frying of my very own flesh . . .

L
ETTER
F
ROM THE
S
OUTH,
T
wo
M
OONS
W
EST OF
N
ACOGDOCHES

For Mignon Glass

Dear Hawk:

Your letter stating that you can't believe I'm not a Baptist, due to the fact that my morals and yours are so similar, astonishes me. How can you think only Baptists are good people and lead happy lives? You've known me longer than that, even if most of our contact has been through letters and phone calls.

Well, I might ask you the same in reverse. How can you accept such a silly pagan religion? And if you must consider a religion, why not look back to your heritage, instead of taking on a Hebrew mythology.

And how in the world can you believe being a Baptist makes you happier than others?

I'm quite happy, thank you. I mean I have my ups and downs, but from your cards and letters, our occasional phone calls, so do you. Don't we all?

In answering your question about why I don't believe more fully, I might add that I've been a student, if not a scholar, of religions all my life, and I find nothing to recommend the Baptist over any other religion, no matter what the origin. Only the Aztec and their nasty custom of human sacrifice could be worse, and I'll tell you, though it's off the subject, I think the old Chief of this country is crazy as hell to sell them the makings for a nuclear reactor. I don't care what sort of diplomatic gesture it was
meant
to be. Those heart-cutters get up here on us and it's the last pow-wow, buddy. With just sticks and stones, practically, they ran the Spaniards off, so I sure don't want to see them with the ability to make the big shitty boom machine, if you know what I mean. They're tougher than us, I admit it. I say let's let our technology be our muscle, and not let those mean pyramid builders have an equalizer, because with their attitude about war and sacrifice, they're going to be a whole hell of a lot more equal than we are.

But that's off the point, as usual.

On to why I'm not a Baptist. Well, first off, let's keep this simple. Consult history text if you don't believe me, though that won't keep you from twisting them around to suit you, or from picking just those that say what you want them to say (I remember our argument before on the civil war with the Japs, and I've got to add, though I shouldn't bring it up again, how you can side at all with those bastards after what they've done to our people on the West Coast is beyond me), so perhaps my asking you to examine historical text isn't sound advice on my part, and you're sure to take it as an insult.

But history does show, Hawk, that John the Baptist was not the only religious nut running around at this time, and it was only fate that gave him the honor (a dubious one in my book) of becoming the "Messiah." I mean a dramatic death like decapitation and having the head put on a silver (Does the text actually say silver? I can't remember and am too lazy to check.) platter, and then the fact that the execution was performed at the bidding of a dance hall floozy of the time, and the head presented to her as a gift, does have a certain element of showboating, and that's just the sort of thing people latch onto. High drama.

It always occurs to me that Jesus of Nazareth, mentioned briefly in your so-called "Holy Book," and I believe he was a cousin or something to John if memory serves me, was as likely a candidate for martyrdom as John. Except for fate, he might well have been the one your congregation worships.

He, however, in spite of his many similarities to John, had the misfortune to suffer less than a martyr's death. He was
hit
and killed by a runaway donkey cart and knocked up on the curbing with his, how was it put in the book . . . ? Can't remember, but something like "with his flanks exposed." Words to that effect.

I believe it was Jesus's inglorious death, more than anything else, that jockeyed him to a lowly position in the race toward Messiahism (did I make that word up?). He certainly had all the goods John did. Nice fanaticism, pie in the sky, promises of an afterlife, etc. But it seems to be in our natures to prefer bloody, dramatic demises such as decapitation to a relatively minor death by runaway donkey cart, the latter casualty being all the more jinxed by the fact that he ended up draped over some curb with his ass exposed, his little deep, brown eye winking at the world.

If we were more open-minded, a religion might have formed where Jesus was worshipped, and instead of the little bleeding head on a platter medallions many of your congregation wear, they might be adorning themselves with little buttocks with donkey cart tracks across them.