by James Maxey
Only, as an even darker shadow fell across the charcoal that had once been the hardwood of his living room floor, he realized that this was no longer a private moment.
“I’m sorry about Nubile,” said She-Devil. “Also . . . well . . . you know.”
“She’ll be back,” he whispered, through a voice wet with tears. “John, too.”
“I understand it’s hard to let go,” said She-Devil. The outline of her wings and horns were sharply defined as they stretched out before him.
“She’s not dead,” he said, shaking his head. “We thought she was dead when she was shot. But she was alive, even if her mind was gone. Now her body’s gone. You’ve played this game long enough. No body, no death. That’s how I know Atomahawk will be back, with a story of how he got shunted into another dimension, or backward in time, or whatever. We never stay dead.”
She-Devil’s shadow horns shook slowly.
“Eric, there’s a time when hope is healthy, and a point where it’s just a form of self-torture.”
Retaliator nodded. “I know a thing or two about torture. There’s a pain you can create with despair. And there’s a deeper, darker, more desperate pain you can fuel with hope.”
Black ash swirled in the chill breeze.
“Things look bleak now,” said She-Devil. “You paid a high price. But you won. You finally stopped Prime Mover. He’s in hell now. Find comfort in that, if you can.”
“You know a lot about hell,” said Retaliator.
She-Devil’s shadow shrugged. He didn’t have the strength to turn his head to face her.
“So you know the myth of Sisyphus.”
She-Devil said nothing.
“Condemned to eternally push a rock up a hill. Every time he reaches the top, the stone rolls right back to the bottom.”
“I’ve heard the myth,” she said.
“We go out every week and fight bad guys and save the world,” said Retaliator. “We die. They die. We all come back. We thwart their plans and lock them in prison cells and two months later they’re standing on the Eiffel Tower waving around the latest and greatest doomsday ray, shouting demands. It never ends. It never ends. We get the rock to the top of the hill, and have to watch it roll back to the bottom.”
“You’re understandably depressed, Eric. You’ve lost your wife and home. You’ve lost your best friend. And now the police are hunting Retaliator for the murder of Atomahawk. But you’ll bounce back. You’ll make it to the top of the hill again. You always do. Maybe this time, the rock will stay put.”
Eric rolled his mask into a cylinder and worried it back and forth in his fists. He swallowed his tears, then said, “You told us that you’d been tasked by Satan to find the most wicked men who ever lived and punish them.”
She-Devil’s shadow froze.
His voice dropped to a near whisper as he asked the question that terrified him most. “Is this . . . is this hell? Am I Sisyphus? Is this how you’ve chosen to punish me?”
He turned to see her face.
She was no longer there.
He dropped his mask, as tears streamed down his cheeks. His hands shook as he unsnapped the pouch on the front of his belt. The pouch held an antique, ivory-handled derringer that had belonged to his great-grandfather. Atomahawk had teased him about keeping it in his belt along all his high tech toys and gizmos. If he had to carry a gun, certainly Retaliator could have afforded something with a bit more heft.
But it doesn’t require that much force to drive a lead slug through the roof of one’s mouth. The steel barrel was cold as ice against his lips, and brought forth the most exquisite and horrifying sense of déjà vu.
He wondered, when this all began again, if he would remember pulling the trigger.
Perhaps the Snail
Devi stood by the giant steel doors that led to the rear parking lot and the band busses. She waited in the sweltering backstage darkness, describing the pre-concert action by phone to her friend Martha. The doors swung open.
“Oh my God,” Devi said. “I see him. He’s coming up the stairs now. I gotta go.”
Martha’s reply was cut short as Devi flipped the phone shut and stuffed it back into her purse. She could see him! Light that had touched Dirk Sinister of the Four Horsemen was even now caressing her retinas and she wondered for a moment if her impending faint would catch his attention or just freak him out.
She clenched her fists and inhaled. She would not faint. That was all there was to it. She’d won the radio contest and had every right to be backstage, basking in Dirk’s glow, and she was even due an introduction, once that hag DJ Rosie got out of the toilet.
Dirk loomed exactly as tall as Devi had imagined him to be, as tall as God, and twice as beautiful. He wore a white tuxedo and had his back turned to her, showing off his second face, which yawned and rolled its eyes.
She’d begged her dad to lend her the money for a second face, but he was just an utter bastard about such things. Now, standing in Dirk’s presence, she felt glad she hadn’t had the implant. It might have looked too derivative, even desperate. No, she would meet Dirk the way God had made her, plus a few accessories, like her “fuck-me-now” silver blouse and her “I-won’t-resist” zipper-skirt. She’d changed her hair color about nine times in as many days but had finally settled on a neon blue that matched her panties and Martha had assured her that her make-up made her look like a complete slut.
At last Rosie showed up again. Rosie had always sounded cool on the radio but in person she was like, thirty or something, with a nose three times too big for her face.
“Excited?” Rosie asked for about the ninth time that night.
“Bored,” Devi said, despite her fluttering heart. “Wasn’t this supposed to get started five hours ago?”
“I think they had some trouble with the moshers,” Rosie said. “One of them chewed off his arm trying to escape.”
“There’s no pleasing some people,” Devi said. Moshers would line up for days to get into the pit, and now that it was time to put the chains on they’d try to break free? Devi suspected that she was perhaps the last sane, intelligent person on the planet, with the exception of Dirk.
His songs made it clear that he understood her plight. The first time she’d heard “You Fucking Morons” on the radio, her world became a little less lonely. When she’d downloaded the album, she discovered that “YFM” was only a little sliver of polished glass on a necklace of true gems. Why did radio stations never play the good songs, ones like “Die God Die” or “Snail Love?”
Especially “Snail Love,” her favorite, though it was hard to make out the words and the Horsemen never published lyrics. To her it sounded like Dirk sang, “Perhaps the snail’s an Arab tugged into the boys that ride the whirl,” but Martha thought the song said, “Perhaps this nail’s a scab torn into the voice inside the world.” Lyric sites offered a dozen other variants. Whatever the words, they were beautiful. She’d spent countless sleepless nights with the song blaring in her headphones, puzzling it out, piecing it together, decoding Dirk’s secret message. The day she solved it, the day she finally knew and understood the words, her life would change forever. She would be wise.
And now the world’s only other intelligent person was walking toward her. He was carrying the snail! The heart and soul of the Horsemen sound! Then he yelled something like, “Whoo I’m in love!” and she felt very lightheaded and weak but fainting was not on the agenda.
“Where are my gloves?” he shouted again, now just an arm’s length away, though he hadn’t bothered to look at her yet.
A short bald guy ran up behind Dirk, yelling, “Got ’em!”
“Dirk,” Rosie said. “This is Devi Donaldson, the Riot 93.5 concert VIP.”
“Oh, God,” Devi blurted out. “I’m your biggest fan!”
Her stomach twisted and lurched when she heard her voice. She sounded so juvenile, so gah gah gah.
Dirk just stared at her.
“You want I should hol
d your snail while you glove up?” the short guy asked.
“Sure, Benny,” Dirk said, handing him the snail.
He had spoken. In her presence, in her face practically. So close that tiny particles of his breath aroma could lock like microscopic jigsaw pieces into soft moist tissues in her nose if she inhaled, but she couldn’t. She just watched as he pulled those white silk gloves over his long slender fingers and tried not to look at his eyes, which were still fixed on her.
“Devi, huh?” he said. “You’ll do. Meet me after the show. Benny will let you into my trailer.”
Okay, so the fact that she was hearing these words meant that she had, indeed, fainted, and was right now missing her chance to meet Dirk Sinister. The best she could hope for at this point was that she wasn’t drooling.
“Dirk,” Rosie said. “My boss will probably not be cool with that. We don’t need another lawsuit.”
“Bennie,” said Dirk. “Pay this person to shut up and go away.”
“Hah!” said Rosie, as if suddenly getting the joke.
Bennie pulled a thick roll of hundred dollar bills from his back pocket.
“Jesus,” said Rosie.
“Get yourself a nose job or something,” said Benny.
Rosie took the money, then turned to Devi, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
Devi nodded. This whole thing was happening on some higher level now, something above and beyond a dream, beyond insanity, a sort of hypersanity where her inner will reshaped reality. Of course she would be with Dirk Sinister after the show. Rumor had it he was a total sex maniac who would probably force himself on her and subject her to unspeakable depravities. With any luck.
Rosie walked away and so did Dirk. Devi trembled.
“You can watch from the wings,” Benny said. “I’ll come get you when it’s time. Dirk will want you in the trailer ready to go.”
“I need to sit down now,” Devi said, and so she did, landing on her ass with a solid thud. The cement floor beneath her felt warm and slick. She fanned the front of her blouse in and out to cool herself. Her whole body was as wet as if she’d stepped out of a shower.
“You need some water? A beer, maybe?” asked Benny.
“Sure.”
Benny disappeared for a while and she watched all the other people milling about, dozens of roadies and techies and hangers-on. Amidst it all she caught a glimpse of Roger the Hammer Fiend mounting his horse, which meant the concert was finally ready to start.
The lights went out as Benny handed her a bottle of water. There was a roar in her head, but also outside her head. The cheers of the audience sounded like the surf of some distant, invisible ocean. She rubbed the cool bottle across her forehead.
Light flooded the stage.
Johnny Rage, the lead motorcyclist, kicked his motor into a low bass drone. Roger the Hammer Fiend pranced his horse to the edge of the stage, the spotlights gleaming on his stainless steel armor. He raised his silver hammer. The crowd roared louder than ever, louder even than the amplified wailing of the chained moshers in the symphony pit.
Dirk Sinister walked on stage. The crowd howled until the walls trembled, until it seemed as if the terrible pressure of their voices would topple the arena walls and rend the earth asunder.
Dirk stepped to the microphone and held out the snail. The snail, the size of a lemon, with a gleaming white shell and moist, vivid-pink flesh, undulated on the video monitors overhead.
The motorcycle backfired. The horse leapt into the air. Dirk lowered the snail onto the microphone.
And then there was noise. The motorcycle accelerated to a treble scream. Roger the Hammer Fiend and his horse landed in the symphony pit, and began to trample and smash the moshers, who wailed their haunting music into his hammer. And above it all was the feedback from the microphone as the snail slid slowly over its surface.
Dirk lowered his lips to the microphone and shouted some lyrics, but by this point Devi had her hands over her ears from the pain. She couldn’t tell what he was saying, and without the words it was difficult to identify the song. She had to admit, to her shame, that her father was right about one thing. Melody-wise, all Horsemen songs sounded alike.
Still, he was wonderful to watch, even if she couldn’t understand him. Dirk was a gorgeous man, with his lean, long body and those dark-as-space eyes. And Lord help her, his mouth was like the mouth of Jesus, a wholly divine mouth, a mouth from which sprung great truths and secrets, a mouth powerful enough to create her world, her tiny happy secret world. Very soon, she would find out how that mouth felt. Very soon, she would find out how it tasted.
Any faintness left her. She felt completely in control now, the last intelligent woman on the planet. This was her reality, and she had plans. She was going to fuck Dirk Sinister so completely he would never forget her, never forgive her. She would do for him what he had done for her, which was destroy any hope of ever having a good night’s sleep due to the longing, the need, the desire.
She rubbed the water bottle across her forehead again. The backstage air felt thick and radiant, like sunshine even here in the shadows. She worried briefly about how sweaty she’d grown. But Dirk would be wet, too, after the show. She watched him dancing franticly in the spotlight, beads of light spraying from his faces as he jerked from pose to pose. She ran her hand down her neck, so drenched. She imagined it was his warm hand that touched her. She groaned, inaudible over the din of music. She let her hand trace along her breast, slowly, slipping ever lower, along her bare midriff. She pulled up her skirt. She felt the heat of her crotch with her fingertips long before she touched the soaked cloth of her panties. She felt dizzy and drunk as she ran her fingers along the soft folds of skin beneath the cloth. With a dreamy sigh, she pulled her hand away and took a drink of water. It was so unsatisfying. Her thirst would only be slaked when she drank from Dirk’s body.
She lost track of the time, drifting deeper into her fantasies, until someone knelt down next to her. She jerked the hem of her skirt down with a start. It was Benny. She could barely see him in the darkness, and hearing him was out of the question, but he seemed to want her to follow him.
They exited through a metal door into the cool, damp night. From the smell of the air, a thunderstorm had passed recently. The noise level dropped considerably as the door closed behind them. Her ears felt numb and useless. She couldn’t hear her footsteps on the steel stairs. A convoy of motor homes waited in the parking lot. Benny led her to a large black one and unlocked the door.
She stepped into Dirk’s lair and her head swam. A huge terrarium sat in the center of the room, filled with large snails crawling over rich green foliage. It looked a scene transported straight from the center of a rain forest, and the room smelled like she imagined the jungle would smell, musky and humid, with touches of exotic spice. Flowers twined through the room, in strange shapes and colors, gleaming beneath ultraviolet grow lamps. At the rear of the room was a couch, and across from that a huge bed, covered with animal skins.
“Martha will never believe this,” she said. Her voice sounded very far away.
“Okay kid, here are the rules,” Benny said, barely audible. “One, don’t talk.”
“Don’t talk?” she said, stretching her jaw from side to side to make her ears pop.
“Jesus, you must be thick,” Benny said. “You want to make it with Dirk?”
She nodded.
“Don’t talk. If there’s anything important to be said, Dirk will say it. Rule two, don’t touch him.”
She wrinkled her brow in confusion.
“Yeah, yeah, he’ll be touching you. But don’t touch him. Dirk doesn’t go for aggressive. Basically, just take what he gives you. And for God’s sake, no moaning. Understand?”
Devi wondered if this was a joke. Benny was certainly making Dirk sound like some kind of weird pervert. Could this night go any better?
“Understand?” Benny asked, sounding miffed.
She nodded.<
br />
“Good,” said Benny. “Take off your clothes and I’ll get you prepared.”
“Ew,” she said.
“You’re talking,” Benny said.
“You are not going to ‘get me prepared.’ You think I’m stupid?”
“Sure,” said Benny. “But don’t take it personal.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, Dirk’s the one you want, remember? Jesus, I gotta explain everything? Now listen, I’m serious about this preparation bit. Dirk wants you in a particular pose. He’s going to have guests.”
“Guests?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just take off your clothes. You got maybe ten minutes before the set’s over.”
“Tell me more about these preparations.”
“Basically, you take off your clothes, kneel on the bed, I put a tray on your back, some wine, some glasses, and you hold real still for the next hour or so.”
“You’re joking.”
“I don’t get paid for comedy,” Benny said.
Devi took a deep breath. Time was running out. Maybe Benny was a pervert, maybe Dirk was. One possibility grossed her out, but the other was unquestionably arousing. She nodded, then unzipped her skirt.
“Going for it, huh?” said Benny. “Let’s have a little refresher. Two rules. Don’t talk. Don’t touch. Oh, wait, rule three. Don’t look at him. Any questions?”
“One,” said Devi.
“Holy shit, is this too complex for you?”
“I get the rules,” she said. “But, since you hang out with the band, I was wondering if, um, you might know the words to ‘Snail Love?’”
He did. So he told her.
Later, on her hands and knees, a cold silver tray balanced on her back, she realized that she liked her version of the lyrics better.
As Benny opened the door to leave, the sounds of explosions could be heard.
“Final number,” he grunted. “Almost show time, kid.”
The door closed behind him. Show time. She’d planned to give her ultimate performance tonight. She just hadn’t counted on being cast as furniture. But, if she had to be a table for someone, at least she would be Dirk’s table, if just for one night.