Monsters Page 4

  There could be no turning back now.

  I tasted of the forbidden fruit, Adam's apple, and I had knowledge of good and evil. There could be no turning back now.

  To Please

  By Nicholas Alexander Hayes

  Near the town of... Well, it doesn't matter what town. Nothing speeds by faster than any small community unless you are stranded there. Some young men feel that their escape can be that of a refugee, unless they find meth. Recently a certain wrestling captain Buddy Shumaker ran away in search of freedom maybe from his rough and tumble father who had raised him alone, working twelve hours a day at the local hog farm. Or maybe from his secret boyfriend, Ryan, who had been fucking the gas station attendant with the brown mullet when Buddy was at away meets.

  But whatever the reasons, he only left a light green Post-It that said, "I'm gone. Later." We best avoid Shumaker's specific story since it and hundreds of others feed your own. So near a neighboring town you, a young man laced with thick angular scars but with a delicate face, upturned nose and a tight ass, lived.

  *** We are each bred to our own desires. Consider that the moth is not attracted to the flame but to the greater darkness it perceives behind the fire. But what could you, born from cold flesh, hemmed and patched from hundreds of other young men, mismatched and grotesque in most ways but pleasing to the eye (not to your own which have not been focusing lately), desire? Thousands of conflicting memories and needs from the original bodies -- a red bike leaned against the Git 'n' Go, a mother's spicy peanut sauce, the burn of hair bleach in your eyes --cancel each other. You are born anew each day. All part of Grandmother's plan.

  Waiting in black sleep for evening, a cool breeze blows from the window. You stretch, still reclined. Dozens of mothers have cradled the boys who you had been in thin and brawny, pale and tawny arms. Still waking fragments mingle briefly -- tits and asses giving weight to the mouths, cunts, pulsating assholes surrounding your dick. This recurring ephemera dissipates.

  Wearing raggedy underwear, you navigate the dark trailer. In the kitchen Grandmother, the orange light from her cigarette illuminating her wrinkles, grabs your arm and says, "Put some clothes on."

  She tears the bandage from your forearm, and stamps out her cigarette on your crusty stitches, saying, "You can break what you can fix." The pain, beyond simple hurt, traces through deep tissue, and puckers your rectum. She turns her back on you as you pick a pair of Wranglers from the detritus on the floor. She slathers her hands with Udder Cream, then yells across the trailer, "I'm getting some parts to fix your eyes. Pick tomatoes."

  If you do not, the feral dog under the trailer will eat the tomatoes, leaving only less than a mouthful of fruit to rot on the vine. No longer born, you were knit from former bodies -- runaways, orphans, kids who wouldn't finish their vegetables. You were to be the man who would take care of Grandmother, making sure she took her medicine, lifting her into bed, kissing her forehead and saying "Goodnight." But you fail her, being a perpetual child, the interminable youth.

  After turning on your Walkman, salvaged from a corpse rotting in the backfield, you fantasize about your own man, a slight stranger to lead you away from Grandmother. Before you were knit, your original selves were attracted to escape through the road, meth, and/or action -- male and female -- hopefully with a place they could crash, and a few bucks to steal. The fucking was only a secondary concern, being a fun way of opening wallets and doors. But when Grandmother stopped in her powder blue pick-up to give them a ride and maybe a meal, most thought a quick blow to her head, and her cash and pawnable keepsakes could be crammed into their knapsacks. But each underestimated her and became spare parts for you.

  You only have Grandmother, whom you loathe through love, knowing her craft frees you from solitude but this freedom is limited. The remains of your independent selves rot in the backfield. The smell wafts into your bedroom and permeates everything. No amount of Pepsodent or Listerine can make your mouth taste clean. Unknowingly, you also rot from within. Beaten, then patched, by the old woman, you have succumbed. Without her mending, your guts would liquefy and leak through your dry skin.

  You loathe her violence; many remember this as why your early selves left home. But as one these old selves cannot escape. Grandmother gave up on the strong man she desired. She keeps you patched out of responsibility and for the small errands you can run. She and you are alone. More so when she wanders to collect. You rarely go further than the store a mile down the road and only when she is gathering cans, wild flowers, and other young men, only after you straighten the trailer, tend the garden or whatever chore she has given you. You feel your voices urging you in hundreds of directions when you walk down the road. You prefer the grit of the earth, watering the tomatoes, as Nirvana pounds on the Walkman.

  Alone in the yellow light above the trailer, you pull rotten tomatoes and toss them at the shaggy dog who lives under the trailer. It cranes its head from behind the crumbling supports. You tear weeds, long and feathered, from around the bases of the tomatoes, and the rusted cages to which the vines cling. When you find a ripe one, you drop it into an old five-gallon ice cream bucket. Some the color of old jade need to ripen and you let them fall back into the plant. Still a few weeks of fresh tomatoes before the plants are exhausted and tilled back under the earth. You feel dirt under your nails. The natural sensation makes you feel singular again.

  The shape of words causes you to spin too fast and knock a cage to the ground.

  "Hey," it says again. New and warm. "I ran out of gas. Is there a station close?"

  You pause too long, before turning down the Walkman.

  "Just passing through, got a little lost."

  Silent. "Hey you listening? Hello?"

  Too many of your voices try to answer -- Help me. Fuck off. Wanna fuck? Bitch is nuts -- but you pare it to, "I'll take you."

  "Thanks."

  "What's that fucking smell?" he asks, turned slightly to the field.

  You shrug you shoulders and lead the stranger back to the highway. He can't keep up and rushes behind you, saying "Pretty wicked scars, man."

  The light is dim enough that all you skin tones match. "Accident," you explain.

  "Must get lonely out here."

  "Sure." "Any girls?"

  "No."

  "Friends?"

  You shake your head.

  "No boys?" You stall, stumble. Your inner voices quiet. You can't answer. The stranger catches up and slips his fingers down the small of your back, into your jeans. Now, you only remember being a virgin -- many of your former selves had fucked, been paid to fuck, and be fucked, but never in this reconstructed form. At least not that you remember.

  Grandmother often breaks the sutures and mends them with more young men. But her passions are only frustration. You wait by the dumpster as the stranger fills the gas can he has just bought. You walk back down the road together. Fireflies twinkle in the dark fields; a horsefly trails you, lands and crawls along the sutures, drinking the cloudy ichors. The stranger’s tongue stumbles, "I don't have to be anywhere yet and was wondering if you want to hang out."

  You bicker inside, finally saying, "Sure." He lays his arm on your shoulders and folds you to his chest, pressing your bodies together.

  Some voices say, He's cruising.

  Others, Faggot let go.

  But most are silent, enjoying contact, letting your body react; cheeks warming, dick hardening, mirroring that of the stranger.

  You lead him into the trailer, past the dog who is gnawing a femur pulled from the field. He puts the gas can down and sprawls across the couch. He motions to the space next to him. "So you got any thing to do?"

  You shrug. "You look pretty hot. Maybe you should take your pants off." He runs his hand over your chest, moist with sweat and ichors. His fingers slide over bits of tattoo (the key feathers of an eagle, a stripper's ass, countless morsels of barbed wire and Celtic knots) and the scars (a filigree of gossamer) of your prehistory. He uses the main
scars as a highway down your torso and helps pull the Wranglers over your ass. "You know there's nothing wrong with a little fun."

  He kisses your hip as his fingers plow into your ass. Your voices distract you. He forces you over to your stomach. Your thoughts turn to the skin of others punctured, raped with a Spyder knife. The images call you into violence. But paralyzed in this discourse, you appear a passive and willing recipient to the stranger's thick cock. He forces himself deep. The older pieces of bowel can not hold under the intensity of fucking. A perfect pain as a hymen made of deaths breaks. Tears burn across your eyes. You hear the dog rooting around the front door as the stranger withdraws and zips his pants. "I've got to go but maybe I'll see you around."

  You remain face down and reach for your headphones to zone out to "Heart Shaped Box".

  When a couple of songs end, you notice Grandmother is struggling with a corpse in a letter jacket reading Shumaker. She yells at you, but you can't hear the words over the music so you just drag the body to the couch. Grandmother pulls out her sewing kit and sits down. She trails her fingers through the stranger's semen, "Someone was here." She clucks her tongue and pulls your head to her lap, bringing the Spyder knife to your eye. She pries right then left out letting them dangle. The floor dances and spins as they jiggle in your breath. "You had spare parts here and you let them go."

  In the blackness without sight, a thousand pearls of individual egos fall backward. The squish of bodies separating. But the egos never fall away and after cutting the eyes off the stems, you feel Grandmother place the knife on her lap beside you. The needle pulls the thread and with new eyes you see the knife glinting and take it. Grandmother laughs.

  You stand and pull the jacket from the body. She loses control and giddy tears trickle down her face. "Go if you want to go," she says, wanting to be free of you, too.

  Reaching the door, you turn to say, "Goodnight."

  *** For days you wander. It is an infinity, searching for the material you need to live. You try picking up men at rest areas, planning to strangle or stab them for their parts. No one comes and you return to the back roads. You dwindle, rotting from within. Organs start to liquefy and leak out, staining the back of your Wranglers. Until one night, under a half-veiled moon, you see two men fuck in an El Camino parked in a field. You recognize the man on top, your stranger, with a mouthful of the bottom's mullet. Seeing his face, you know it is meat that can be used to fix your own and draw your knife.

  Startled, the stranger turns and looks you in the eyes, before saying, "Buddy?"

  Of Cats and Mice

  By Owen Wolfe The blood was rich as it poured down the back of his throat. Tendons stood out from pale ivory skin as a rush of pleasure gave way across his face. Deep, dark, wine-colored eyes, almost burgundy, looked up at the stars in a euphoric bliss. He looked down at the body in his arms, a boy who wasn't more than seventeen, eighteen, but now would be immortalized, a beautifully dead statue. Picking the boy up, he carried the body over to a huge dumpster, but didn't put it in, simply laid the boy near it. The body would be found and someone would alert the boy's family that their runaway had been found. It had been a mercy killing really. The boy would have died anyway; he didn't possess the ruthlessness of most runaways to survive. And to go back home was worse, the physical abuse itself would have killed him.

  Thorn looked down at his clothing, removing a minuscule piece of lint, straightening his dove grey military style jacket. He had some epaulets that he could have put on it, but it was fine as it was. Underneath, all he wore was leather straps across his chest. The magnificent tattoo of black raven wings spreading across his back could be seen clearly, the cut-away back of the jacket was a showcase for it. Thorn was rather vain when it came to his back. Flicking a lock of raven black hair over his shoulder he made his way out of the alley licking the last droplet of blood from his lips.

  * * * From across the street, pale eyes watched as the figure emerged from the alleyway. Full lips curved into a smile, noticing the boy that had been with the other man was now "missing". Kalt couldn't help wondering whether Thorn was still lackadaisical about disposing of bodies, whether he could glance into the alley and find the boy just left carelessly for anyone to stumble across.

  Such a poor role model, really... Levering himself away from the shadowed wall, he crossed the street, hands in the pockets of his coat as though just out for an evening stroll. His footsteps were almost silent, but he wasn't under any illusion that his quarry was unaware of being followed. That was part of the charm. The question when it finally came was lazy, conversational.

  "Are you still managing to convince yourself you're helping them somehow by taking their lives?" "Are you still following me around like a puppy?" Came the amused reply from a voice that sounded like a smoker's, deep, raspy, almost craggy. The hint of an accent, watered down by time, was there. Thorn looked over his shoulder at Kalt. "Don't you have anything else to do, youngling? Pester anyone else?"

  Kalt knew Thorn had said it to get a rise out of him, he debated whether to let Thorn see his reaction or not. "No, I don't. You should be honored. And you know what they say..." His smile was of mock deference. Hands still in his pockets, Kalt rocked back on his heels a little. "Follow a messy eater around, sooner or later you're bound to catch some crumbs."

  Low chuckles filled the night air around them as they continued to walk down the dark streets. "Oh be still my heart, you want my crumbs do you? What happened Kalt, slim pickings around? Need me to walk you through finding your own meals again?" In the blink of an eye, Thorn pivoted on his heel moving in close to Kalt, glittering eyes of sherry looking at him intently. "Or did you want something else?" Everything about Thorn's pose was suggestive. The cool night air slid against them, blowing softly through Thorn's short dark hair.

  "Besides, really, it was a mercy killing, that boy is, as they say, probably in a better place by now, not having to turn tricks or be abused any longer. He had thoughts of suicide running all over him. Now when he faces his god, he can do so with a clean conscience about the suicide." Thorn flashed a pearly smile as his hands slapped together in a mocking prayer pose.

  Lowering his head with another ineffectual little laugh, Kalt watched Thorn intently from beneath a fall of blonde hair. "Sounds to me like he isn't the one who needs to purge his conscience."

  "My conscience works just fine, youngling, it lets me sleep as deep as I like and take what I want without a second's notice. How is yours these days?" Smiling a little to himself, Kalt slinked around to stand before Thorn once more. "It doesn't get in the way. I was taught my conscience was a weakness." Another smile. "And I happen to put a lot of stock in my mentor, however foolish that might be of me."

  "You should put stock in your mentor. Just think, he helped keep you safe while you took a child's steps into the darkness. That alone would stand you in my debt I would think." A soft laugh escaped Kalt's lips. Expression almost one of mischievousness -- as if he'd ever been that innocent

  - he clasped his hands together thoughtfully, fingers just barely tapping at his lips. Contemplatively, he circled Thorn slowly, making no attempt to disguise the assessing glint in his eyes.

  One hand reached out, fingertips ghosting over the bare patch of skin on Thorn's back. Leaning closer, his voice was honey smooth against Thorn's ear, whisper as tender as a devoted lover's. "Looks like its slim pickings all 'round..."

  Thorn snorted softly. "Slim is the right word, if you're looking for my crumbs." Turning and walking once more, Thorn's long legs ate up the ground easily. Suddenly he stopped and looked back at Kalt. "Did you want crumbs, or did you want an appetizer all your own?"

  Following Thorn's gaze, Kalt saw pretty toys up ahead, two boys standing in line to get into a popular club. He shook his head a little and laughed, the sound clear and bright.

  "Ten minutes in your presence and you're having better luck than I have in ten days..." He sent Thorn a look that questioned silently whether the proposit
ion was a matter of co-operation or competition. "Of course I have better luck, I ooze charm and they can't resist me." Thorn flashed an almost endearing smile over his shoulder. "One for you and one for me, we can have fun with them before our meal, I'm in the mood to play cat and mouse." That same smile became very wicked, almost lascivious as it spread to Thorn's eyes.

  Kalt's laugh this time was a snort of not-quite disbelief. He knew very well about Thorn's "charm", but prided himself on not being quite as susceptible to it as the mice. And besides, who said teamwork and a little... friendly competition couldn't exist side by side?

  When he met Thorn's eyes, his smile lost all its casual nonchalance, becoming something darker, something more predatory. Something that -- if he'd been looking at anyone but Thorn -- would have screamed run!

  "Sounds like my kind of game..." A hint of a fang could be seen as Thorn looked at Kalt before moving toward his intended victim. "Good, I didn't want to seem so greedy, though I'd have kept both if need be. Which do you want, the little dark haired one? He's very pretty in his Goth clothing, or his friend with the dyed blue and pink hair? I wonder what his real hair color is?"

  Following a step or two behind Thorn, Kalt laughed softly, sent a glance at the back of Thorn's head, before turning his attention back to the quarry. "I'll take the friend. Always did have a thing for phonies..." That stopped Thorn in his tracks, suddenly laughing, truly laughing, "Ah, how I've missed your wit, Kalt! Though you'll have to tell me what color his hair really is!"

  That laugh almost drew a pleased purr from somewhere deep in Kalt's chest, something smugly satisfied that hadn't stirred in quite a while. He watched the two waiting outside the club, icy eyes narrowing in contemplation as his mouse made some gushing, loud remark to his friend. "If I haven't lost patience and shut him up before then, I'll gladly pass on the information."