Duet for the Devil

by T. Winter-Damon

  Shit. Those hands are shakin’ so bad they couldn’t even squeeze a trigger, much less sight a handgun. Or fumble with a junkie’s kit to fix…

  Satisfied with his perimeter scan, Frank unbuckles his safety belt & harness. Grasps the door handle. Pops the latch. Eases the car door open so as to avoid chipping his gunmetal-lacquered paint job on the junker of a truck parked beside him.

  “Keep an eye on things for me, Elijah. I’ll be back. Pronto.”

  Frank climbs from the contoured cockpit of the Stingray, unfolding his six-foot-two-inch, one-hundred-ninety-seven-pound frame. He stands erect. Closes the door firmly, No hint of a slam. No fumbling, no pussy footin’. Smooth moves, cool & assured…

  Frank dominates the narrow gap between his Vette & the ’71 Ford pickup. His Brooks Brothers suit is styled in Texas Oil Baron chic-desert tan, precisely tailored, but cut loosely to allow his still powerfully muscled ex-Tackle’s body ample room to flex freely when strenuous physical exertion is dictated by the dynamics of situation. Ample room to conceal the long blue barrel of his shoulder-holstered .44 Magnum “Dirty Harry Special” with its six Teflon-coated, chambered rounds.

  They call it “the most powerful handgun in the world.”

  Big man. Big gun.

  His choice of handguns is no accident: he’s a Harry Callahan fanatic, having seen each of those Eastwood classics at least a dozen times in his cross-country odysseys, the familiar, tough-guy scripts serving as a trusted point of reference in a world where the flash-in-the-pan fads of the “Me” generation & the sordid & the sleazy seem to have all-but corrupted the traditional values of “Truth, Justice & the American Way…”

  For a Midwestern farm boy raised on John Wayne’s two-fisted, six-gun-totin’ bijou exploits & the Red-White-&-Blue melodrama of Captain America & Superman comics, the honored veteran of a bloody war fought on their terms in the rot-infested jungles of Indochina, the need for heroes still exists…

  Frank stretches, working the minor kinks & cramps from his joints & muscles.

  His big right hand reaches up to his face. His huge thumb & index finger clasp the gold rims of his mirror-glazed aviator’s glasses, adjusting them precisely, pushing them up into place on the bridge of his rather large & slightly battered yet vaguely aristocratic nose—a nose betraying to the careful observer both a vestige of his Anglo-Saxon ancestry & the three breaks that the cartilaginous structure has sustained…

  Frank eyes the pair of bottle-sharing winos with a cold, analytical detachment as he saunters past them, reaches out, & pushes open the door to JACK’S.

  Most folks would say that no white boy in his right mind would stroll in there unescorted.

  But nobody’s around to warn him, &, anyway, Frank Hawkes is one baddass muthuhfuckin’ honkie…

  [ 25 ]

  Professor is curled knee-to-chest beneath soiled & tangled sheets on the army cot in the cluttered room he calls the “lab.” Saliva bubbles from his blue-tinged lips & his unruly nostril hairs flutter in the stale breeze from his rattling lungs.

  Pynchon bends over, puts his lips to the sleeping man’s ear & whispers: “Do assholes dream of chrome dildos … ?”

  “Um?” Professor’s eyelids twitch. His mouth sucks on his own spit.

  Pynchon flips the cot over & dumps him on the floor.

  “Hey…” Professor sits up & looks around the room like an awakened sleepwalker, trying to get his bearings.

  “Wake-up call for Professor Punk,” Pynchon says with a grin.

  “Christ. Not you.”

  Lighting a thin cigar, Pynchon exhales the thick smoke & says, “Erebos wants a full report.”

  “That’ll take time.” Professor stands, smoothing his rumpled clothes with his bony hands.

  “Your time is mortgaged to the hilt already. You are to give me a verbal report, followed by your usual bullshit written reports.”

  “Why did Erebos send you? You’re not even…”

  “A scientist?” Pynchon blows a stinking cloud of cigar smoke in Professor’s face. “I’m an expert on reading people & I have a photographic memory. If you lie to me, I’ll know it. & you’ll live just long enough to regret it. I’m a bloodhound on the trail of truth.”

  “Your innovative torture techniques are legend,” Professor remembers aloud, resignation in his voice.

  “Right. So have your morning fix & let’s get started with a full briefing.”

  “Is it morning?”

  “ It is for you.”

  While Professor washes up in the water closet, Pynchon surveys the high-tech hardware— state-of-the-art, compact & powerful. But nothing that could not be found on the black market if your money is the right color…

  “Before I can tell you anything,” says Professor, shambling out of the WC, his face dripping water, “I have to see your plastic.”

  “I’m not here to check for security leaks,” says Pynchon, pulling out what looks like a black credit card. “You know I can get what I want without this Mickey Mouse plastic.”

  “Just following procedure.” Professor takes the plastic & slots it into a mini-terminal disguised as an oil painting of a mermaid lolling seductively in the bluish moonlight washing across a bed of jagged, bone-white coral. The thin rectangle of black plastic disappears into the mermaid’s abdomen & a series of numbers appears on the screen of one of the six monitors in the room. “Okay. You’re cleared.”

  Pynchon sits on the corner of a redwood desk & sucks on his cigar.

  “How much background do you need?” asks Professor, taking his seat in front of the desk.

  “Start with the Blue Devil interface.”

  Professor nods, then launches into his monotone, recounting details of the most extraordinary experiment of his life. “As you no doubt know, Blue Devil (Li Di 9) was inadvertently formulated by myself & a colleague of mine, George Brittain, while we were pre-med students at UCLA. We were working with cadavers—”

  “I know all of that,” Pynchon interrupts. “Brittain schooled with you after serving His time in the Navy aboard the U.S.S. Lamprey, but disappeared suddenly—presumably after He tired of diddling corpses… Unless you have new information about Him, stop wasting my time & get to the initial interface.”

  “Short & sweet, then,” says Professor. “We found a suitable subject, shot him up with the Blue Devil, field-tested him on one of our girls, then put him under & implanted the microchip supplied by the Erebos wizzers. So we hooked him up, mainframed him & turned him loose.

  “All I had to do then was patch myself in, start the IV drip, & the computer homed in on him. We achieved Mindlink. I was in his head. In his body.” Excitement edges his voice. “I was in two fucking places at once. I was there when he went on his killing spree. I felt what he felt. The bloodlust was overpowering.”

  “You couldn’t control him?” Pynchon asks.

  “No, I had no influence at all. It was all I could do to unhook myself & stop the IV feed.” Professor rubs his temples with bony fingers. “A few minutes later everything went to Hell. Even though I was disconnected, I was suddenly slammed right back into his skull. His killing spree was just beginning. The incredible thing is, his mind—my mind—merged with the minds of his victims. You have any idea what that’s like? I can’t begin to describe it. At a certain point, there is no killer & no victim. There is only the act of killing & the moment of death. Death is like nothing you could ever imagine. It’s…” He falls silent, staring at his hands.

  Pynchon relights his cigar & says, “You’re holding something back—”

  “No, no, I…I’m not through. To tell you the truth, I’m scared shitless. Just before the psychic link to the killer broke itself off, he became aware of me, of my presence in his psyche. & he didn’t like it. I think he’s coming for me now. I’m to be his next victim.”

  “Sounds like drug-induced paranoia to me.”

  “No. I was in his mind, his soul. I know him. I know what he wants. He wants to kill me.”
>
  “So your great experiment went to shit.”

  “That’s a fucking understatement. Look, Pynchon, you can tell Lucy Nation & her Erebos drones I want out. They can get themselves another boy. I’m through—”

  “That’s not the way it works, pal. You’re not through till Erebos is through with you.”

  “Jesus Christ, man, that monster is going to rip me apart.”‘

  “You’re well-paid for the risks involved.” Pynchon smiles. “Oh, what dangerous games we play, eh, Professor? Things get a little hot & you’re ready to call it quits. I’m disappointed in you.”

  “Okay. I’ll pay you to take this guy out. Kill him before he kills me.”

  “Standard consulting rates—I’m an expert—”

  “How much? I’m willing to go ten grand if you’ll take him out—ASAP!”

  “Two K an hour. Plus expenses…obviously.”

  “Christ! I don’t want him fucking gold-plated—just DEAD!”

  Pynchon feigns professional anger: “You want a bargain—? Go hire yourself a coupla’ fuckin’ hophead gang spooks or some Gook kid with a Saturday Night Special that’s just as liable to blow his own fuckin’ face off as put down his target—”

  “Twenty grand. You eat the expenses. It’s a local hit. Piece a’ cake…” Professor tries to play it hard-to-get.

  But Pynchon can read the fear pheromones of his sweat & sense his pulse rate jagging on a sublim graph readout. Read him like a lie-detector remote… Only. With a far, far lower fail-factor…

  Pynchon runs a quick mental cost/benefit. Then answers: “I’ll tell you what, PP. For old times’ sake. I’ll do your boy for a flat twenty K. But don’t think this sets any precedent. Call it a BLUE LIGHT SPECIAL, ehhh?”

  Pynchon pauses for dramatic effect. Then adds: “Of course, that’s pending Erebos’ approval of the contract—I’m not sure Lucy will want this freak hit…”

  “Talk to her & get back to me—fast. If you can’t do it, I’ll find somebody who can.”

  “Don’t do anything rash. Or I might have to feed you to the big bad monster myself. Lucy Nation is not somebody you want to piss off—”

  “So I hear.” Beads of sweat glisten on Professor’s forehead.

  Pynchon offers his right hand.

  On reflex Professor extends his own.

  Pynchon’s firm handshake becomes a vice-grip, crushing the scientist’s knuckles. Pynchon sucks on his cigar so that its ember glows red hot, then he touches the fire to the back of Professor’s captive hand.

  “Let’s get on with the briefing,” Pynchon says. “This time, don’t leave anything out…”

  Professor goes to his knees, whimpering helplessly, smelling the seared-pork stink of his own burning flesh.

  [ 26 ]

  The Olds heads east. Past industrial complexes & the scaffolds & girders & cranes & hardhat crews of construction sites. Past the signatures of Progress. Trees leveled. Sod plundered & upturned & graded. Bulldozers. Cranes. Cement mixers. Rumbling. Creaking. Clattering. Groaning.

  Those insignificant anarchies of Nature tamed & transformed…

  The imperfect & irregular made uniform & answerable to the dictates of geometry. Asymmetries brought to the conformity of the angular & curvilinear…

  In the struggle of Man vs. Nature, the Thelemaic dictum remains: “Do what you will” is the whole of the Law…

  &, if there is one single catch-phrase that can encompass the credo by which Maldoror lives, then it is expressed in those four simple words. WORDS OF POWER. Godlike power. Demonic power. But simplicity is not Maldoror’s forte... He has studied the writings of Austin Osman Spare & of Michael Bertiaux & Kenneth Grant & Peter Carroll & The Circle of Chaos, & He has incorporated the unfettering insights of Chaos Magick with those of Heretical Gnosticism, traditional Ceremonial Magick & Satanism, & He knows that “MAN HAS WILLED MAN!” & He knows that “NO BELIEF IS VALID—YET EVERY BELIEF IS VALID!,” & He knows “NOTHING IS TRUE! EVERYTHING IS PERMISSIBLE!,” & He knows “MY DESIRES SHALL BECOME FLESH, MY DREAMS REALITY & NO FEAR SHALL ALTER IT ONE WHIT!,”…power without limits…Man freed to express his every thought & desire in action. Unchained from the strictures of taboo & moral conscience. Truly existing BEYOND GOOD & EVIL…de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom made manifest in flesh & bone & blood…

  A riptide of blood that has swept secretly across the face of America for just over thirty years. As yet unchecked. As yet, except for perhaps a handful of the enlightened, unlinked… By the majority perceived solely as random outbursts of chaotic mega-violence…

  The Blue Coral-waxed whiteness of the Olds gleams like a polished fragment of bone in the bloodfire of early September sunset…

  Maldoror & Snuff are both seated in the front. Mal’s eyes fixed on the highway ahead, scanning peripherally the rearview mirrors, the digital readout of the speedometer, carefully monitoring His speed, even though the car is set on Cruise Control.

  Julie slumps in the backseat, bored, lost in a waking dream of sexual ennui & frustrated lustmord, eager for the roar & the mind-devouring frenzied glitter-rush of MTV, or some “wet,” titillating event to make her rea1, once more…

  The radio is playing “Road to Nowhere” by the Talking Heads…

  The music turned down low, as Mal will suffer no distractions, yet it is the rare compromise that He makes to pacify Snuff’s road-raised Hellion of a daughter—­wayward offspring of a Twentieth-C highwayman & cutthroat. In most things, Mal prefers to bend & twist her headstrong wishes to “conform” to the erratic bizarreries of His own decidedly perverse aesthetic. The scars on the secret flesh of her young body bear testimony to His deeds of hardcore discipline. He prefers light opera to Rock. Gilbert & Sullivan to Metallica & Rage Against the Machine & Nine Inch Nails. He identifies with the Lord High Executioner of the Mikado. & He identifies with the philosophical aesthetics of King Diamond. & the overt dementia & barely concealed S&M of the darker groups’ leather-clad lyrics & psycho-sexual cattle prod-to-the-libido beat cannot help but fascinate & excite the slithering beté noir of His backbrain…

  & the Black Beast slithers forth from its slime-damp netherpit of sub-subconscious midnight. Hissing. Speaking in the mad, mindless babble of a thousand varied tongues…

  The Scarlet Whore of babblin’ babble-on; the tight-assed, smart-sassed, whip-lashed, hot-gashed, white-trashed, ultimate CUNT incarnate; the fever-thighed, wild-eyed, slime-legged SLUT of Babylon…

  Mal’s mind spewing its boogie-rap-mambo-jive of ssssiiiicccckkkk cccciiiittttyyyy sweeeettt sssuuugggarrrrr sssssseXXXyyyyy sublim serpent solicitations…

  “Gotta’ little house down by th’ roadside. It’s made outta’ rattlesnake hide. Gotta’ itty bitty chimney way up on top. Made outta’ human skulls…” the words of Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?” clatter clatter ping through the flip flop flipping maze of Mal’s pinball pinup pit of deepest deep blue Hell…

  A young girl stands by the side of the road.

  A hitchhiker.

  A real young juicy one.

  Long blonde hair.

  Thumb out.

  T-shirt: tight & straining.

  Titties: small, upthrust & firm.

  Faded denim cutoffs: tight. So tight they bulge at the seams threatening to split & spill the creamy white-pinkness of round jiggling juvenile flesh they so barely hide, so flauntingly reveal in flashes of split-second white-hot fishhook-in-the-skull intensity begging—yeah begging—to indulge those CRIMES OF PASSION restlessly slumbering in the snake pit mind of Maldoror…

  & Snuff. “Riding shotgun”: his mirrorshade-glazed eyes scanning the roadside for some new hot wet action…

  The White Line Fever sings through his buzzing brainpan searing pinpricks of slavering NEED…

  Snuff feels his groin tighten. Again. Stretching the taut fabric of his Levi’s tentpole-like with the fierceness of his rising lust…

  The soft, gently curving swell of the girl’s bottom, peeping from beneath the de
liberately-frayed edges of her “Daisy Duke” cutoffs, draws an appreciative whistle from his parched lips as the car slides past her in the gathering dusk. “I want a piece of that tight tail!” Snuff moans. “Hey, Mal, how ‘bout we give her a ride—?”

  But there is no need for the henchman to prompt his employer/fellow traveler-on-roads-of-sex-&-death— Mal is already goosing the brake pedal long before Snuff’s words are uttered, slowing the Olds gradually, easing it onto the pulloff lane of gently sloping shoulder.

  Mal slides the slushbox trannie into REVERSE & backs slowly down the pavement towards the lone girl on the roadside…

  [ 27 ]

  The clerk who rings up Frank’s purchase really doesn’t seem a half-bad sort. Quite pleasant. But he mentions he’s a temporary, just filling in for a few days…

  He asks Frank: “Didjasee dat wrassling match last night—de one wid ‘De Nature Boy’ Ric Flair, WHOOO!, vs. dat short dude wid de green mask & de bullwhip?”

  Frank shakes his head & lays down a twenty.

  “No…? Shame. Dat was one badddasssss fight, M’man…”

  Frank thanks him. Folds the bills he receives back into his snakeskin wallet. Drops the coins into his right front pocket. Then picks up his bag with the pack of Marlboros, the pre-wrapped roast beef sandwich, two chilled bottles of Budweiser, & a copy of the local newspaper, & exits.