Fearless Genre Warriors

by Steve Lockley

  ‘I won’t fuck you,’ she said to me. She turned to Derrick. ‘But I’ll fuck you if you want.’

  She turned around and went back into Mike’s bedroom, taking her shirt off on the way. Minutes later Mike and the two guys from Philly followed after. One of them had a giant burn that caked up on his head, the other a spotty beard with a mouth full of snaggle teeth and faded tattoos of names and dates that snaked obituaries up and down both of his arms. Mike’s wife hopped off the couch and followed after them like a needy puppy. The bedroom door was left open.

  The wine made me warm and fuzzy, uncaring. I told Derrick, ‘You can go if you want dude. It’s cool.’

  ‘Huh?’ he said, frowning. ‘Oh, I’m not really into Tracy.’

  ‘No? Saving your heart for someone else?’

  ‘Maybe I am,’ he said, giving me a sly smile. He walked towards one of the glass cases where a tarantula sat on a fake rock, waiting for another cricket to suck dry. ‘Come here… I want to show you something.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He looked up the stairwell towards the bedroom to see if anyone was coming back. The bed creaked under the weight of several bodies, but nothing more than a few moans tip toed down the stairs. He slid the top off the tarantula’s case.

  ‘Derrick,’ I hissed. ‘Don’t… I don’t like spiders.’

  ‘Shhh,’ he whispered back, digging his hand in. The tarantula stood up, a disembodied high five with hair and fangs. He grabbed a small piece of scrap wood and brushed the spider aside. It scuttled away and Derrick lifted the rock, pulling out a small baggie. Chunks of rubbery snot were inside. He broke off a piece and put the bag back under the rock.

  ‘Keeps people from getting into his stash,’ he explained. The tarantula resumed its perch. ‘Come on,’ he said, walking towards the backyard. When we reached the end of the yard, he took out a pipe and smacked old ashes out of it, placing the rubber in its place.

  ‘If that’s crack or something, I’m not really into—

  ‘It’s not crack,’ he said, running a lighter over it. Soon enough the substance became luminous, a freshly cracked glow stick.

  ‘Whoa,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s new,’ he said, watching the stuff turn bright green. ‘Mike calls it bright light. Heard another guy call it slug, not sure why though. It’s supposed to be like ecstasy, but kinda different. I haven’t tried it yet.’

  He took a hit and handed me the pipe.

  ‘I don’t know Derrick… my dad—’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘You know what that means right? You can pretty much do whatever you want and your dad will get you out of it.’

  The wine made me feel too lazy to argue and without a second thought I took the pipe and sucked in the smoke as he ran the lighter over the glowing substance. It was thick and tasted sweet and salty. He took the pipe back and made it glow brighter. We passed it back and forth until it was a small ball of gray ash.

  ‘Feel anything?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Not really. Maybe we should smoke more?’

  ‘Noooo. Mike would kill me if he knew I was smoking this stuff. It’s uber expensive.’ He lit two cigarettes and told me to smoke one to cover up the smell. We walked back inside and sat on the couch of the living room, blowing smoke on our clothes to mask the scent. Another high pitched moan came from the bedroom, skin slapping against skin. We both rolled our eyes.

  ‘Maybe it takes a while to kick in?’ I said.

  ‘Maybe. Try not to think about it.’

  ‘Okay.’ I took another sip of wine and laid my head back, the side of my leg brushing against his.

  ‘You’re a pretty cool kid, you know that?’ Derrick said to me.

  ‘Yeah?’ I said, looking at the ceiling.

  ‘Yeah. I think it’s pretty cool that we got paired up like we did. We probably would’ve never been friends if it wasn’t for that.’

  ‘It is kinda cool when you think about it,’ I said, smirking.

  The drug took hold.

  A flood of wet pleasure trickled over my lips, slithering down my throat and filling my stomach. Without touching myself I ejaculated with little tension and every inch of my body pulsed with pleasure, erasing all aches, pains, nervous feelings, all of it burned away by this orgasmic acid that coursed through my veins.

  The brush of his leg against mine brought about a second orgasm, one that shuddered throughout my body. I quickly edged and came again. I was a drop of spit in someone else’s wet dream, truly knowing the first moment of joy.

  ‘God…’ I shuddered.

  ‘I feel it now,’ Derrick said, slurring.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I feel like,’ I said, placing his hand on my leg. ‘I want everything to touch me and for everything to be touched.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hold me.’

  We held each other on the couch. At one point the man with the burned head and the man with snaggle teeth and faded tattoos came down the stairs holding Tracy between them. She was unclothed, grinning stupidly. A clear slime dripped between her legs. She kissed the air and glanced at us as she was taken away.

  I wasn’t afraid when I saw the two strangers carry Tracy away. All I could think was that I wanted her with us. I wanted Tracy’s head between my legs and Derrick’s tongue in my mouth. I wanted both of them inside of me.

  They left, slamming the door shut behind them.

  After that, I never saw Tracy again.

  At a Japanese restaurant in Center City, I spot an older man at the sushi bar with dyed hair and leathery skin. He sneaks off his wedding ring and we slowly merge together after making idle conversation six spots removed. After dinner he offers to pay my tab and tells me that he’s staying at a hotel down the street.

  ‘Would you be able to get me something?’ I ask.

  ‘Anything you like,’ he says, smiling bleached teeth.

  ‘Can you get me glow?’ I whisper.

  He shrugs and takes out his cell phone, calls someone he knows in the city. The guy is only good for coke but he knows someone else who can meet us. Ten minutes later we’re at a bar in Olde City and the old guy walks into the bathroom and comes out with his hand in his pocket. Back at the hotel, he starts to strip before I even get a chance to smoke the drugs.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘In my coat pocket,’ he says, popping off his shoes.

  ‘You want to smoke it right this second?’

  ‘Yeah, if it’s all the same.’ I rummage through his stuff and pocket the wedding ring. After finding the drugs, I smack the old ash out of my pipe and pack the new stuff in. It smolders under the yellow tongue of my lighter and after a few seconds it begins to glow like a palm of smashed up fireflies.

  ‘You know, I’ve never done that stuff before,’ the man says, already down to his boxers. Even his body hair is dyed black and without clothes his skin looks one size too big for his skeleton.

  ‘It can be pretty intense,’ I say. The glow becomes brighter as the old man starts kissing my neck. I ignore him and take a toke.

  ‘Isn’t it made out of bugs or something?’ he asks, nibbling my ear.

  ‘Kind of,’ I say, thinking of my father’s notebook.

  Unidentified species of gastropod. South American, only capable of surviving in warm climates. Ranges from 7-8 feet long, 200-300 pounds. Excretes a digestive enzyme to paralyze its prey, after which it then drinks the dissolved liquid. Defecates a highly concentrated form of MDMA.

  ‘If it’s shit, I’d like to know what it is they’re eating,’ he says.

  Cooks, also known as ‘feeders’, typically feed gastropods live animals (rats, birds). More concentrated forms seem to come from larger food sources (cats, dogs, pigs). Several cases of highly concentrated glow may be
related to missing persons cases (Watson, Sampson).

  ‘Yeah,’ is all I manage to say.

  He sits at the end of the bed and exhales green smoke. I take another hard toke and the smoke doesn’t burn anymore. He starts kissing me hard, jamming his tongue into my mouth. Unbuckling my pants, he starts kicking both of my shoes off with the sharp claw of his toe nails.

  The drugs hit.

  ‘Jesus,’ the old man says, twitching. He flops onto his back and lets go of me. ‘I just came.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, drooling a little. ‘It’s pretty intense, huh?’

  We both quiver several times as the echo of the first orgasm ripples through our bodies. Hours pass and the high starts to fade away. Even as I lay next to him, motionless, swimming in the flotsam of someone else’s wet dream, I know that I have found my key to this locked door I’ve been trying to open.

  The high fades and the old man is snoring next to me. I quietly sneak out of bed and grab the .38 from my bag.

  Pressing it against his eyes, he blinks, shifting it away. The lights click on and I pull the gun back several inches so he can see what it is that’s pointed at his face.

  ‘Wake up,’ I say, cocking the gun. ‘You need to take me to your dealer.’

  Derrick freaked out about Tracy missing. That same week, the two guys from Philly that were at Mike Bruno’s party kept parking their car outside of Josh’s garage where Derrick usually sold his drugs after school let out.

  ‘They just parked and stared at me dude. What if they did something to Tracy and they want me gone too?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. We were sitting on a stump by the train tracks, kicking rocks in to the forest. ‘Tracy’s crazy,’ I argued. ‘She probably just ran away to Philly and is sleeping with anyone that’ll get her stoned. I heard her say that a pretty girl is never homeless.’

  ‘Maybe we smoked their stuff and they noticed that some of it was missing. Do you think they’d notice? I only took a little.’ Sweat broke over his brow and he gave a nervous shake. ‘Jesus, I’d pay them for what I took.’

  ‘Hey,’ I said, putting my arm around him. He shrugged me off but I held him tighter and he gave in, resting his head on my shoulder. At school we never held hands or looked at each other twice, but the walk home on the train tracks was our time, the place where we were safe to be ourselves, to not quite know what we were. He looked up, pressed his cheek against mine. Lips slid across towards my lips, kissing them. I didn’t kiss back and he pulled away.

  ‘Was that weird?’ he asked.

  ‘I… I don’t know. I guess it’s okay.’

  ‘I’m really scared,’ he said, resting his head on my shoulder.

  ‘Me too.’ I rested my lips on the top of his head and kissed his hair. ‘It’ll be okay. Maybe we can go to my dad… if it gets really bad, you know? Maybe it’s my fault they’re watching you in the first place.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  I frowned, lifting my chin off the top of his head. ‘Well… you don’t really think that, do you? No one at the party knows that my dad works for the DEA, right?’

  Derrick spoke slowly, looking at nothing. ‘I might have told Mike.’

  I jumped up. ‘Why did you tell him?’ I whined.

  ‘I don’t know. I thought it was funny I guess. Getting the DEA’s son stoned. Ironic, right? Mike flipped about it, so I told him I was just kidding.’

  ‘Wow, that’s fucking hilarious,’ I said, walking away from him. A gunshot kicked some birds into the sky but I kept walking. Derrick called after.

  ‘Come on dude, I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just cloud talk, a bunch of bullshit.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself Derrick.’

  The next day, he didn’t show up for class.

  The old man calls in the order and there’s a scheduled drop at a club in Old City. He gives me all the cash he has on him and I tell him that if I ever see or hear from him again I’ll tell his wife everything. I keep the wedding ring as proof.

  The dealer says he’ll be in a tee shirt and jeans. He’s going to go up to the bar, order a club with lemon and lime and pay with one dollar bills. If any of these details don’t match, it’s not him. Around one in the morning, a clean cut guy in a black tee shirt and blue jeans walks up to the bar, orders a club with a lemon and a lime and pays the bartender in one dollar bills.

  He finishes and goes to the bathroom. I follow after. He’s surprised when I open the stall door.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m picking up.’

  He shakes his head. ‘No… you’re not the guy I talked to on the phone.’

  ‘If you don’t want to sell, I can just—’

  He rolls his eyes and starts digging into his pocket.

  ‘Nah, it’s whatever, but tell that guy that I don’t deal with anyone unless I talk to them first.’ He opens his palm, showing me the drugs.

  ‘Same stuff as last time?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, confused by the question. ‘Same stuff.’

  ‘Know where I can get a lot of it?’

  He smirks. ‘Listen…’

  I jam the .38 into his stomach and before he can even look down to see what it is, I cock it and my finger is sweating on the trigger. If he so much as burps, I’ll put a hole in him that’ll make him bleed so bad he’ll be dead before they get a chance to plug it.

  ‘Wait,’ he says, shaking. He’s clean cut, a suburban white kid slinging in the richer parts of Philly so no one really notices him. There’s so much sweat on his face, I can tell he’s never had a gun shoved into his stomach before.

  ‘Take me to your supplier,’ I say, pushing the gun deeper. ‘Or I’ll cripple you.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says, quivering. ‘I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t shoot me.’

  We drive into Port Richmond and park outside the dealer’s house. The kid calls and says there’s a problem and that he doesn’t feel safe talking about it over the phone. The dealer comes out and sits inside the car. He’s rough looking, a few tattoos on his hands and face. When he sits down and notices me, he sneers at the kid. I’ve got the .38 leveled where his lungs are, the mouth of the gun flush against the back seat of the car.

  He says, ‘Who the fuck is this—’

  I pull the trigger.

  The kid starts to scream and the dealer is moaning, spitting blood. He’s the type that’s been shot before so I cock the gun.

  ‘I’ve got five more bullets. The first one was to show you that the gun works and I don’t mind using it. Now if you don’t tell me who your supplier is, I’ll keep pulling the trigger until its empty.’

  ‘Fucking junkie,’ the dealer says, moaning in pain.

  ‘Next thing out of your mouth better be directions.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says, gritting his teeth. ‘Okay, okay. I’ll take you there.’

  The white kid is so nervous that he runs a couple of red lights and I smack him across the head with the gun and tell him to slow down or he’ll get us pulled over. A whisper of smoke drifts out of the front of the car where the first bullet exited.

  ‘I’m bleeding really bad,’ the dealer says, showing the first glimpse of fear.

  ‘Then we better get this over with so I can let you go.’

  We drive down Columbus Boulevard towards the shipping yards, passing the car impound and a dozen warehouses. The dealer tells the kid to turn left at the next road and park two blocks down the way. We pull up next to a large warehouse with boarded up windows but the front door is metal, locked, and it looks newer than the building itself.

  ‘It’s here,’ the dealer says, tired. ‘They make the stuff here.’

  ‘Can you get me in?’

  ‘No,’ the dealer says, taking out his phone. ‘I don’t have a key, but I can call them.’

  ‘Call them and say there’s
a problem and that you need to talk to them right now.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says, calling them. They pick up. ‘Yo. Nah man, it’s not that. Something’s up. I can’t talk about it over the phone. Can you come out? I’m out front.’ He pauses a second. ‘Cool.’

  ‘They’re coming out?’

  The dealer sighs. ‘Yeah… they’re—’

  I pull the trigger and his head explodes, his brains cherry pie smashed up over the dashboard. The white kid’s face is speckled with blood and he screams until the gun goes off again and his blood paints the windows a fresh coat of red.

  I get out of the car and wait by the door, hoping there’s only two of them. I don’t know where my fear is, where my pain and sadness are. All I have is the memory of Derrick’s dead body face down in the dirt.

  A car parked further down the street is the one I’ve spotted before, the one from my father’s notebook.

  ‘Small world,’ I say, joyless and unafraid. I think I might be smiling, but the drugs have made it so I can’t tell what my lips are doing.

  On the night that I left, I broke into my father’s office. The light was still on over his desk, pictures of the case spread out everywhere.

  There were other victims. Kids, teenagers, all of them with the back of their heads missing, their skulls melted and collapsed. There were sketches and diagrams of the worm. A small baggie held a sample of its molted skin, the same skin I found near Derrick’s body. Its mouth was lined with soft looking teeth, suckers, and an organ that excreted stomach acid while its mouth drank up the food it dissolved. A second sketch showed a metal table with straps, a series of vague lines pointing down to a bucket that sat below the foot of the table. The bucket was labeled with the words ‘raw glow’.

  All my father’s notes were scribbled in a small notebook he kept on the case. Places, names, slang. Glow is a sex drug, he wrote, a drug people would take in exchange for sex. It is similar to ecstasy, but more addictive than heroin.

  One of the cities he wrote down as a place of interest was Philadelphia.

  Warehouses, abandoned buildings, somewhere near the shipping yards. Feeders can process the stuff anywhere if need be (given the situation and an isolated location, as several cases have indicated) but a clean operation would need a climate controlled atmosphere to operate within on a consistent basis so the worm does not die.