Duet for the Devil

by T. Winter-Damon

  As Shaw glances back at Frank, an AK opens up on him from the left flank, dropping Doc Rock & Simmons the Cherry.

  “Doc’s hit!” someone shouts over the automatic weapon’s fire.

  Hardman chops the bamboo with the M-60 fire, taking out the first NVA.

  Frank fires at the muzzle flashes on their flank. Then he directs Zenno to drop a grenade behind the rocks which form cover for the NVA ambushers.

  Zenno calls his shot, “Eightballs, corner pocket,” then fires his M-79. With beautiful accuracy, the grenade whoomps behind the rocks & the ambush is over.

  “Yo, L-T, that was just a kiss on the cheek,” says Shaw. “Dinks just feeling us out. Best is yet to come.”

  Frank is on the radio, calling for Dust Off for the wounded & the dead. Doc Rock’s screams seem to fill the whole valley with the sound of human misery & death.

  “Cherry’s dead,” reports Zenno. “Doc’s hit bad.”

  “Shoot him up with morphine,” says Frank, once he has radioed for Medevac.

  Shaw jogs over to Frank. “L-T, ain’t no bird gonna come down in this shit,” he says, pointing up at the canopy of trees,

  “That’s why we’re getting the fuck out of this valley,” Frank says. “We’ll fall back to the LZ for Dust Off, then await further orders.”

  “Shit, you know what they’ll be. Back into this fuckin’ valley.”

  Frank nods grimly & lights a C-rat cigarette: Lucky Strike.

  An ass-tightening sound echoes through the valley—the concussion of a mortar launched from its tube.

  “Incoming!” “Incoming!”

  Frank drops & hugs the earth, covering his steel pot with his hands. The earth suddenly shakes with a deep rumble, & Frank is lifted off the ground, his ears stuffed with the sound of explosion, his left elbow wet & burning with a deep ache.

  When he opens his eyes, he sees the sleeve of his fatigues in shreds & covered with blood. His blood. He glances through the smoke & dust to where Shaw had been, & he sees the sight that will always haunt him­

  The whole right side of Shaw’s body has been turned into raw hamburger, his intestines strung out all the way down to his left jungle boot, & his face is a grinning skull with chunks of blackened flesh fused to white bone.

  “Shaw!” Frank yells, though he can’t hear himself yelling because he was deafened by the explosion. “You crazy fucking nigger! Get up, man! Fucking goldbrick, GET UP!”

  Then he starts crying, saying over & over: “I need you, man, I need you…”

  [ 67 ]

  THE DEATHLY BLUE LIGHT FLOODING FROM THE TV SCREEN TWITCHES LIKE A FEVERED PULSE:

  “You two are both very very lucky. Very fortunate. I have lifted you both from this human anthill teaming with the unwashed legions of the unknown. From the rat race. Little white lab mice destined for the greatest of experiments. To join in My becoming, My transformation… You are now to be counted among the chosen. You have been chosen to serve Me as My slaves in Paradi(c)e.” Mal tells His captives.

  “I have traveled The Road of the Beast for many years. I, who once was the student George Brittain. I, who once was known by My first nom de guerre of ‘Zodiac.’ I who have been ‘The Green River Killer’ & the “BTK Strangler” of Wichita—”

  Mal pauses. Chuckles to Himself at some secret joke.

  “—that is ‘bringing it all back home’ to the son of a bitch, isn’t it?”

  Mal is bending now, Heather’s corn-silk soft blonde hair clenched in both hands as He leans into her face, His eyes staring into hers. She aches to avert his gaze. But she cannot. His eyes betray His absolute, cold, calculating madness. They force her into near-hypnotic submission. They are the eyes of the serpent willing the little white bird with its thumping pulse its only mind to stillness…

  “Nothing in this world save Me can save you. Not those pathetic PIGS, those BLUE MEANIES with their pitiful tin stars & gumball lights & howling sirens. I have played them for the fools they are for the past three decades & more. For who is like unto the Beast? Who is able to make war with Him?” Mal taunts.

  “Pray to Me. Pray to the Maldoror. Pray to He who is so near to His hour of Becoming.”

  “Here is the wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the Beast: for it is the number of a man; & His number is six-hundred threescore & six—”

  “Mmmmgghhhhhffffffhhhh…” Truman tries to cover his ears, cocking the right side of his head against his shoulder like a roosting pigeon, cupping his free hand, his left, over his exposed ear—miming the monkey “hear no evil.”

  “Yes. They are ants. Pitiful crawling ants at My feet. Ants only who would make war with Me?” Mal transforms the final word into a question. “As the Zodiac, I all but told them who I was. But they were too stupid to grasp at My simple riddles, too stupid to understand that I was the CIPHER Killer & if they could see the real code, the hidden one beneath their big noses, ‘when they do crack it they will have Me’—”

  Mal’s face is twisted into a malevolent monster mask, a t’ao t’ieh, hovering above the helpless victim of his twisted lusts…

  THE BLUE LIGHT FROM THE TELEVISION WRITHES IN HIS DEVILISH EYES, DEVOID OF ANY HINT OR HOPE OF MERCY, ONLY THE LUST TO DOMINATE, TO VIOLATE, TO SAVOR THE SUFFERING OF THE LAMBS LED IN CADENCE TO A SYMPHONY OF BLUE TO THE MOMENT THE HOUR THE ETERNITY OF THEIR SLAUGHTER…

  [ 68 ]

  Frank opens his eyes & sees Shaw’s body on the floor of the motel room. The right side of Shaw’s body is ground meat. “Yo, L-T,” Shaw says, sitting up. “That was just a kiss on the cheek. Best is yet to come.” He reels in his slimy intestines, & tries to stuff them back into what’s left of his abdomen.

  “I’m not out of my fucking mind,” moans Frank, pressing his hands to his head.

  “No shit, man,” Shaw says, his skull shining through burned & rotting facial tissue. “A world of hurt.”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Frank tells him.

  “Yeah? What they gonna do, send me to Viet Nam?”

  “Jesus.”

  “The men send their regards, L-T. Say they sorry they can’t be here.”

  “The men?”

  “Fuckin’ A. Carver, Doc, Simmons, Zenno…”

  “Zenno didn’t die there,” says Frank. “He was only wounded.”

  “He’s dead now, bro. Devil’s Fuckin’ Valley, man. He’s one of us again. You will be too.”

  Frank looks down & realizes he is naked. He grabs the survival knife from the floor & holds the blade in Shaw’s ruined face. “Get the fuck outta here. You’re not Shaw.”

  “Easy, L-T. You wrapped too tight. What the fuck you gonna do? Shave my bones?”

  “Get out!” Frank jabs the blade into Shaw’s remaining eye. Vile liquid sprays his hand.

  “Devil’s Valley, man,” Shaw says with an odd laugh. “Back into the Fuckin’ Valley.”

  Frank blacks out with the dead man’s laughter buzzing in his ears.

  [ 69 ]

  “Let’s get to it,” says Pynchon, once he is plugged into the mainframe & the IV is plugged into his arm. “I’m going to show this psycho who’s boss.”

  Professor’s scrawny fingers tap dance over the keyboard. “I’m telling you, this guy is no pushover. He’s more powerful than he should be. It’s like he & Blue Devil potentiate—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Pynchon snarls. He is feeling the initial effects of Li Di 9: heightened awareness of all the senses, hyped edginess & irritability (these more pronounced in a man of Pynchon’s aggressive character), muscular tightness & an overall sensation of being coiled spring-like & ready to be shot into an alien world.

  “Light my cigar.”

  “You can’t smoke now. You won’t even be able to keep it in your mouth.”

  “Light the son of a bitch!” Pynchon clamps his cheroot securely in the corner of his mouth.

  Professor produces a scraped & dented Zippo. When he strikes the flint, Pynchon’s field of supercharged vision
explodes with blue light.

  The cigar tastes like rotted meat. Pynchon’s jaws clench & his teeth cut the cheroot in two. He tries to spit out the turd-like thing in his mouth. Fails. Then swallows it.

  The taste left in his mouth suddenly turns sweet, turns blue…

  “Okay, this is it,” Professor says in a faraway voice. He taps a plastic key. “Here you go—”

  Pynchon is cannonballed into deep blue space, hurled across a great river-like void, a shooting blue star/atom. A triggered memory of parachuting into enemy territory flashes by like a blue wind moving at the speed of light. Now he is falling, sinking into purple plasma, glowing with biochemical light & he feels the presence of the other. He is a presence within the other.

  ssssssssssssSlice is sleeping… dreaming… blue movie… naked girls overflowing his bed… body parts strewn in kaleidoscopic patterns of red & blue… a cartoon cunt snaps at him like an alligator… his erection laughs… belly laughs… ripples chiseled veins… demands a sacrifice of womanly flesh &… blood &… the wispy figure of a female spirit appears above him, watching him with cold cold eyes (?) holes (?)… out of reach… mocking him?… fuck her… can’t fuck a ghost… need flesh… blood… bone… something else here… now… what?… bad… bad feeling… doesn’t belong… who?… watching… violating… not Slicessssss

  Slice sits up in bed, awake & alert to danger.

  Nightmare?

  He has evolved to a perpetual borderline state in which it is difficult to distinguish dream from reality, flesh from light, yet he knows the danger is real.

  The other is here. It is not the one called “Professor.” No, this one is stronger…challenging.

  Professor looks at the EEG tracings, suppressing his anger over the fact that Erebos hadn’t seen fit to provide the EEG equipment until that asshole Pynchon got involved in the experiments. Pynchon must be diddling Lucy Nation, he decides.

  Then he sees Pynchon’s EEG tracings go wild, the little mechanical arms making frenzied markings on the rolling graph.

  He glances at Pynchon.

  Pynchon’s eyes flutter behind their lids, remaining shut. His body jerks against the stretcher, jumping a good two inches off the thin mattress, then banging down hard.

  “What the fuck?” Professor snaps.

  Nothing in any of the previous Blue Devil experiments has prepared him for this: Pynchon’s entire body dances violently on the stretcher, his limbs & head pounding an arhythmic drum cadence for almost a full minute.

  During the preliminary briefing, Pynchon denied epilepsy, so why the fuck is he having a grand mal seizure?

  He’s supposed to be taming the Beast called “Slice,” not fucking dying on this goddamn stretcher: Oh shit. Lucy Nation will have my balls for breakfast if Pynchon bites it.

  Professor watches in horror as Pynchon chews his protruding tongue ’til it looks like a bloody sausage.

  The convulsions become more violent, & Professor struggles to hold Pynchon’s body on the stretcher.

  The back of Pynchon’s hand pops Professor’s mouth, splitting his lower lip. Ignoring the pleasant taste of his own blood, he yanks the IV needle from Pynchon’s arm, then jerks the jack out of the dermal patch at the base of his thrashing skull.

  The convulsions cease, but Pynchon’s eyeballs are rolling around like marbles behind closed lids.

  Savoring his psychic victory over the would-be invader, Slice proceeds to rape & pillage the mind & memory of Pynchon, the Erebos agent & assassin. What a stroke of luck. Slice gets a boner as he sucks up the valid data from Pynchon’s brain sponge. His volcanic hardon almost blows when he flashes on the vivid image of Lucy Nation, & he can smell her squishy fishmeat & taste her corrupt political power. She is the Mermaid, Female Principle Incarnate, & he is the Serpent…

  Slice suddenly snaps to the immensity of possibilities provided by the spoils of Pynchon’s knowledge & connections to the vast network of the international underground power structures. His art-for-art’s-sake mutilations seem like small potatoes, blood spuds, compared to this whole new blue world opening up at his fucking feet. He shoots his wad, fucking the whole world as he visualizes Blue Doom on a global scale.

  Professor snatches up the phone & punches 911, seeing no choice but to send for an ambulance.

  Pynchon suddenly opens his eyes & sits up on the rumpled sheet of the stretcher. “Jesus, man, are you all right?” Professor stammers. “I thought you were in a fucking coma.”

  Pynchon licks blood from his lips with his badly-chewed tongue.

  “Heth noth fu wif vu, asth ho.”

  “What?” Professor tries to make sense of what Pynchon has said. He’s not through with you, asshole?

  Pynchon stands up, grabs the back of Professor’s head with both hands, & jerks his head downward & shoots his own knee up so that Professor’s face & Pynchon’s knee meet in a bone-shattering smash-up.

  His glasses snap in two at the bridge & the left lens cuts the cornea of his left eye. Professor slumps to the floor & sinks into a state of semi-consciousness as Pynchon walks out the door.

  [ 70 ]

  Snuff carries his battered daughter as far as the rear service entry, leaving her in the shadowed doorway just beyond Room Fourteen.

  He checks the courtyard for activity. There is a young couple over by the poolside. But they’re not watching what’s going on, they’re making out, hot & heavy, & they could give a shit less what the fuck he’s up to…

  He strolls to the door. Casually. Knocks three times: short, brisk raps. Waits a moment. Then repeats the signal.

  Mal raps once on the interior of the door.

  “Snuff,” the man outside identifies himself.

  The door opens just wide enough to admit him.

  He emerges several minutes later with a wet, soapy washrag concealed in his right hip pocket & a plain khaki shift concealed inside his jacket. Snuff wanders back into the shadows. Wipes the splattered, sticky blood off Julie’s face & legs & arms. She slips the shift on over her bloodstained halter top & shorts.

  “It’s like this—” Snuff explains to Mal. Recounting everything that’s happened since he found his daughter in the alley. In careful detail. Mal listens as Julie fills Him in on the events leading up to her assault, as well as the rape itself.

  When she has finished, Mal queries father & daughter both, eliciting a wealth of minutiae they had previously forgotten to mention.

  “You stupid little bitch,” Mal says, His voice never rising above a perfectly-modulated monotone, “you’ve jeopardized us all through your inexcusable carelessness—” His open hand lashes out suddenly, striking the young girl a vicious slap to the cheek­—

  Wwwwwwhhhappppppppp!

  Backhanding her. Her head whips sideways with the force of His blow. But she doesn’t even whimper. She knows better.

  Wwwwwwhhhappppppppp! Again.

  “& you didn’t bring Me the duct tape I fucking asked you for­—

  Wwwwwwhhhappppppppp!

  “You stupid little cunt—”

  “Heh! Mal, she didn’t fuckin’ mean no harm. It wasn’t even her fault— She couldn’t help it!” Snuff protests.

  “Not her fault, eh?” Mal says. “Not her fault?”

  His surgical-gloved hand clasps Julie by her long, black cascade of hair, tugging upwards, dragging her from her feet into the air, her scalp shrieking with agony, her scream of protest choked off before it can escape her lips, her face held suspended mere inches from His own. His breath is hot, stale, acidic on her skin & in her nostrils. She can smell the musk of Heather’s pussy & the coppery reek of blood heavy on His breath. The dark pits of murderous fury that are His eyes glare into her own, terrorizing her to deceptive calmness—deadly & hypnotic as a diamondback rattler psyching a sparrow to total stillness while its venom-dripping jaws gape ready for the lightning strike that swallows whole & kills…

  “You fail to follow the route you planned—”

  “I. I thought—” Jul
ie manages to whimper.

  “You. Thought…?” Mal questions, His voice still dangerously restrained. “What? That you would forget all of those cautions I have labored so hard to train you to follow as second nature?”

  “There were people fighting—”

  “Julie, Julie, why do I even bother with you?” Mal whispers.

  Her body jerks rigid with her panic. She forces her intended protest into silence. She has seen this mood in Him & she knows that one wrong word or move & He will kill her.

  More terrible than any rage is the utter, disarming gentleness, the tender, consoling tone of pity that His normally expressionless monotone now betrays: “You fail to bring Me everything I tell you to purchase? You fail to follow an established plan? You attract these niggers? You fail to notice when they trail you? You carelessly discard evidence that can tie you to their deaths: not just one piece, no, oh no, you leave the pigs an empty needle packet covered with your fingerprints, with the very needles it contained impaling some dead darkie’s eyeballs, & a blister card that held razor blades, also covered with your fingerprints, in some alley with four bodies…?”

  The young girl’s body hangs deadweight by her taut-stretched hair. Her feet dangle nearly a half-a-foot above the carpeting.

  “Julie, Julie, & I suppose the packets both had price tags on them? With the name of this drugstore where they were purchased? & the clerks will remember you? Oh, Julie, perhaps I should simply put you down…? Is that what I must do to keep you from leading us all to ruin…?”