Duet for the Devil

by T. Winter-Damon

  SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

  “Then why the makeup?”

  USE YOUR BRAIN, POND SCUM. YOU DON’T WANT TO BE RECOGNIZED AS YOU’RE BRINGING DOWN AN EMPIRE. THESE BIG BOYS ARE PROS & THEY WILL SWAT BACK IF THEY SEE THE FLY THAT BITES THEM. WE CAN’T GIVE THEM A TARGET. FROM HERE OUT, IT’S HIT & RUN. YOU’RE ABOUT TO BECOME THE ULTIMATE URBAN GUERRILLA.

  Slice’s face cracks into a leering grin, causing the latex makeup on his face to form odd wrinkles & lumps so that he looks like a man who has been stung by a hundred wasps. “I can remember now. All of it. The whole program.” What he remembers is the late Pynchon’s knowledge of the international power structure, the interconnected underground factions, the vast networks of the Shadow Bosses who run the world, the political gangsters who hide the whole humming machine from Mr./Ms. John/Jane Q. Citizen with media mirrors & smoke. Slice knows his destiny lies in throwing a monkey wrench into the hulking machine by making precise hits, from the White House to the palaces of the Colombian drug Kingpins. He is the hard-cyber saboteur…

  He will conjure forth the Snakepit of Chaos & loose it upon the multinational machine ’til it runs amok, triggering economic & political havoc all over this fucking anthill-world of existence. Then he & his companion will sit back & watch the power structure devour itself, like the Worldsnake locked in perpetual rectal-cranial inversion. After Armageddon, Slice will reveal the New Flesh & he will be the Dark Savior to the New World of Unleashed Serpents.

  A sudden thought intrudes. A key perhaps unburied. Long-forgotten delvings into Jungian metaphysics bob surfaceward (no doubt some bullshit hype implanted by that assfuck Dr. Howard, that baggy-eyed quack, that retard reject Moe-of-Three-Stooges-clone, who played all those verbal cat-&-mouse mindgames; that only scratched the surface of my mind’s seething Black Hole core, right? RIGHT?). In a tidal gush like pure-crystal rush, Slice asks: “Who the FUCK are you anyhow? The Unknown Man, my Shadow-Self? Or maybe some diesel-dyke deviant of Anima, the Dark Side of Primal Womb Personified, yeah, the Lilith, the Female Death Demon, the One ‘Who Follows After the Shadow…?’”

  GETTING IN A BIT DEEP, NOW, AREN’T WE, DR. HECKLE- &-JEKYLL FAUSTUS…? OR IS IT MR. HYDE-THE-WEENIE…? GONNA START THAT PSYCHO-LOGIC-AL FLIMFLAM, NOW, OKAY, YOU THINK…?­—

  I’LL FUCK YOUR MIND ’TIL IT BLEEDS, YOU PATHETIC POETICK PERVERT! I’LL POP THE FUCKING CHERRY OF YOUR MIND’S CORE, YOU FAGGOT-DANCIN’ PANTY-PRANCIN’ NIHILISTIC NANCY BOY—I’LL EFFACE THAT TIGHT LITTLE ERASER SPACE INSIDE YOUR BRAIN CASE, & I’LL MAKE YOU BEG FOR IT…HARDER… DEEPER… FASTER…

  WANNA PLAY SOME GUESSIN’ GAMES, WANNA DIDDLE OUT SOME LITTLE RIDDLES, MR. EX XXX BARD OF BONERS…?

  “AB EO, QUOD NIGRAM CAUDAM HABET ABSTINE, TERRESTRIUM ENIM DEORUM EST…”

  NEED A TRANSLATOR FOR THAT, MUCKJUMP…?

  OKAY: “KEEP YOUR HANDS FROM THAT WHICH HAS A BLACK TAIL, FOR IT BELONGS TO THE GODS OF THE EARTH…”

  SO, LET THAT BE A WARNING TO YOU, EHHH…? YOU BEEN TRUCKIN’ ’ROUND WID DAT BLACK TAIL AGAIN, AIN’T YA, BRO…?

  YEAH? HOW ’BOUT THIS ONE…?:

  “FILI, EXTRAHE A RADIO SUAM UMBRAM: ACCIPE ERGO QUARTAM PARTEM SUI, HOC EST, UNAM PARTEM DE FERMENTO ET TRES PARTES DE CORPORE IMPERFECTO…”

  DIG THE GIG, PIGSHIT? OKAY? OKAY: “SON, EXTRACT FROM THE RAY ITS SHADOW: THEN TAKE A FOURTH PART OF IT, I.E., ONE PART OF THE FERMENT & THREE PARTS OF THE BODY…”

  & I AM WHAT I AM, OLIVE OYL, & I AM THE FIRST PART & I AM THE FOURTH PART & ALL THAT TRIPE HYPE… FOLLOWIN’ ME SO FAR?:

  “FUNDAMENTUM ART IS EST SOL ET E IUS UMBRA…”

  CAPISHE, YOU COCKY LITTLE COCKSUCK…?

  “THE BASIS OF THE ART IS THE SUN & ITS SHADOW…”

  PERFECTLY CLEAR, QUEER…?

  OR LIKE MY OLD PAL RAYMUNDUS (SASSY LITTLE NOM D’ ARTS NOIR, HUH…?) USED TO RAP: “TAKE OF THE BODY THAT IS MOST SIMPLE & ROUND, & DO NOT TAKE OF THE TRIANGLE OR QUADRANGLE BUT OF THE ROUND, FOR THE ROUND IS NEARER TO SIMPLICITY THAN THE TRIANGLE. HENCE IT IS TO BE NOTED THAT A SIMPLE BODY HAS NO CORNERS, FOR IT IS THE FIRST & THE LAST AMONG THE PLANETS, LIKE THE SUN AMONG THE STARS…”

  YOU KNOW, DIPSTICK, LIKE “ROUND ROUND GETTAROUND I GETTA ROUND,” & THAT ALL THAT PSEUDO-BEACHBOY BULLSHIT, RIGHT?

  ALL JUST CRYSTAL CLEAR, NOW, RIGHT, MR, REDRUM RECTUM…? JUST SIMPLE HOKE-US POKE-US LUST-T’-CROAK-US ROSE-OF-THE-WORLD STUFF, HUH, MR. WIZARD O’ THE LIZARD…?

  “TIS RUST ALONE THAT GIVES THE COIN ITS WORTH!: THALES…”

  YEAH, DEEP SIX SICK SIX STUFF, POWDERPUFF…

  OR LET’S TAKE THE ROSARIUM: “OUR GOLD IS NOT THE COMMON GOLD, BUT THOU HAST INQUIRED CONCERNING THE GREENNESS (THE VIRIDITAS, THE AZOTH…), DEEMING THE BRONZE TO BE THE LEPROUS BODY ON ACCOUNT OF THE GREENNESS IT HATH UPON IT. THEREFORE I SAY UNTO THEE THAT WHATEVER IS PERFECT IN THE BRONZE IS THE GREEN ONLY, BUT THAT GREENNESS IS STRAIGHTAWAY CHANGED BY OUR MAGISTERY INTO OUR MOST TRUE GOLD…” ONLY THE GREEN IS BLUE, RIGHT, MR. 2-B-OR-NOT-2-B…? JUST BLOOD-SIMPLE-SAMPLE AS OL’ MOM’S SLICE O’ THAT CHERRY HAIR-PIE, O GREAT BARD O’ BLOODY BLEEDIN’ BONERS…?

  I MADE YOU THE NEW GOD OF THE NEW FLESH. QUITE A MINDJUMP FROM A PATHETIC PERVERT X-POET POSTURIN’ FOR PUSSY, SOME FUCKED UP MERCHANT SEMEN JUS’ ROLLED OFF A TRAMP STEAMER ON HIS SEA LEGS, AS YET UNBURDENED BY THE WEIGHT OF HISTORY, JUS’ LOOKIN’ T’ GET SKAGGED, SHAGGED, & DOUBLE-BAGGED BEFORE YOU WENT SNIFFIN’ FOR SNUFF FOR SOME TIGHT YOUNG GASH T’ SLASH SOME SUGAR ‘N’ SPICE T’ SLICE REAL NICE SOME QUIFF T’ STIFF WITH YOUR SLITHERIN’ SHIV… & NEXT THING YOU KNOW, POP! BLUE FIREWORKS, GIDGET THE MENTAL MIDGET GOES BLUE DIABLO, I MAKE YOU THE FUCKIN’ ULTIMATE UBERMENSCH, A GOD O’ DEATH, BOY…?

  I’M ALONG FOR THE LONG RIDE, SON/SUN, & THIS IS THE DARK SIDE CALLIN’, AS IN “BREAKER BREAKER,” GOT IT…? & YOU BETTER ANSWER WHEN THE HADES’ HOTLINE’S BUZZIN’ BLUE…

  SO, THINK YOU WANNA TRY RAPPIN’ OR UNWRAPPIN’ ’BOUT SHADOW SPOOKS & PRIME-EVIL WOMBS­-IN-ROOMS-IN-TOMBS & ALL THAT DEAD-BEAT PSYCHO-LOGIC? FINE, JUNG MAN, JUS’ FINE. BUT YOU WANNA TRY FUCKIN’ WITH MY HEAD, BABYCAKES, I’M GONNA FUCK OFF IN YOURS… & KATY BAR THE DOOR ’CAUSE, WHORE, YOU KNOW THE FUCKIN’ SCORE—KINDA LIKE THAT OL’ ZOMBIES’ TUNE, I ‘CUM AROUND HERE, JUS’ ’BOUT MIDNIGHT,’ & YOU BEST BELIEVE & GRIEVE, MEAT-SLEEVE, I CUM LIKE A FUCKIN’ GODDAMN HELLBOUND CYCLONE…

  [ 246 ]

  “Yeah, Big Man, & I’ve known Iowa farmboys, too, they prefer to call the act, ‘cornholing,’ but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why when you’ve got all those hot-assed little farmgirls bending over just begging for it out behind the woodshed… & if they can’t find some farmhand’s cock or a neighborboy’s boner to satisfy that itching, then they use the cobs on each other as backdoor dildos…”

  Frank stares down at the glistening rosebud.

  “If you wanna fuck me, Big Man, it’s up the bottomhole or not at all, capishe…

  “Come to Little Babycakes Missie… Cum to Hotassed Little Lois… Cum to Missy Lynn, Daddy Dear, Cum to me… Cum on me… Cum in me—I’m so fucking tight & OOOHHHhhhh, HOW I WANT YOU IN ME, DADDY—”

  & Lord Asmodeus stands at the foot of the bed, his vision a flickering of cold blue flame… holding forth the Sceptre of His Dominion, his monstrous, majestic phallus, stroking the sinuously writhing serpent of smooth glistening blue scales & Evil greedy eyes like chunks of living sapphire with an outthrust tongue flickering to the rhythms of the flame, stroking it in lewd tribute to Hawkes’ submission to his darkest nightmare cravings— Something deep inside Frank’s soul dies, & something else is born, something that slithers like the Serpent, something that knows no moral restraint, no bonds or boundaries of Reason, something beyond all inhibition…

  She moans as Frank’s fury spills from its long suppression, boiling beyond all hope of control, driving him to sheer sadistic, brutal rape, as he plunges deep into her superheated depths.

  Once more she assumes the role of blackmailed wayward teenager. One last feigned protest of ravished innocence to titillate her tw
isted fantasies: “Ooooohhh, NO! pleassssse, Mister! NO! I’ve never had a man stick his thing in me back there before—it’s in the wrong place… It HURTS!… so GOOD!”

  The room flickers blue.

  Frank looks up for a moment & thinks he’s hallucinating: the mirror swarms black with a thousand milling flies, the window’s light darkens as millions gather on the pane beyond the curtains, their buzzing filling his head with a deafening roar of Hell unleashed…

  “&, I did it MY way…” Cherry whispers, mimicking the familiar tune. Then her giggles fill the room in shards of mirth like crystal shattering…

  [ 247 ]

  The voice in Slice’s brain grants him one grand & glorious GMOS (Golden Moment Of Silence…), then renews its sledgehammer skull-assault anew:

  NOW, WHAT’RE GONNA DO NEXT, BRAINRAPE?

  “Uhhh, flag a taxi, head for the airport & buy ourself a ticket to Washington, D.C., right…?”

  NO! YOU’RE NOT, CHICKENLICKIN’. YOU EVER GO THROUGH AN AIRPORT SEC-CHECK…? I MEAN, HERE YOU ARE ALL STINKIN’ FROM THAT LITTLE BEAUTY-TREATMENT WHERE YOU DRENCHED YOURSELF IN WHORE’S BLOOD LIKE SOME KINDA POST-MODERNIST BEOWULF BATHIN’ IN THE BLOOD O’ THE DRAGON & ALL THAT, BUT THE ONLY THING DRAGGIN’ WAS YOUR WAGGIN’ WANG & THAT PUTA’S 5-BUCKS-A-THROW FAT ASS THAT YOU HACKED-UP & WHACKED-UP PIECE-MEAL…

  & NOW YOU’RE GONNA GO WALTZIN’ THROUGH THOSE MET-DET SCANNERS WITH THAT FUCKIN’ BLOODY BOOTKNIFE STRAPPED TO YOUR ANKLE & TELL ALL THEM NICE FOLKS IN THE UNIFORMS YOU JUS’ BROUGHT IT ALONG ’CAUSE YOU NEEDED SOMETHIN’ TO PICK YOUR TEETH WITH AFTER YOU CHOW DOWN ON THAT DEEELICIOUS AIRLINE CUISINE, OR MAYBE YOU WERE JUS’ GONNA FIX YOURSELF SOME HOME-COOKED STEWARDESS STEW, FRESHLY SLICED-‘N’- DICED & BUTCHERED IN THE COCK-PIT, DUMBSHIT…?

  SERVICE! SERVICE! O QUICKSILVER MESSENGER BOY!

  & HIGH O’ THE HIGH & LOW O’ THE LOW, MR. TWO-FACE, MR. SONG SANG BLEU, OH GRACIOUS GREAT & GRATING AU GRATIN OF PRIMA MATERIA ET LAPIS PHILOSOPHORUM!

  NOW HERE’S THE GRAND SLAM, LIKE WHAM-BAM & THANK YOU, MAM, SPRING-HEELED JACK-HORNY WHO-HAS-NO-CORNERS-LEFT-TO-HIDE/HYDE BUT HAS BECOME THE APOCALYPTIC ROUND-ROUND-GETTA-ROUND OF ROUND-HEELED & WELL-HEELED & FLAT-FOOTED EXTERMINATION…

  MY PRECIOUS LITTLE PET, O SERVUS/CERVUS FUGITIVUS…

  [ 248 ]

  The insistent phone on the bedside table is a raucous jangle that seems enough to fray nerves like weather-rotted high-tension cables or to wake the dead…

  It is enough, barely enough, to drag Frank Hawkes surfaceward through a Noctecs-&-Jack-Daniels’ fogbank, up at last to beach on the sweat-soaked sheets, his groin aching with the expended fury of his tempestuous encounter with the redheaded siren, his mind still awash with the ebb/flow/ebb of bizarre, distorted images, dredged up by the maelstrom of her body’s rhythms & her so-kinky mindgames from that Unfathomable Mental Mindanao Rift where Primal Chaos lies long-buried-&-forgotten beneath the crushing weight of that dark ooze of repressed desires…

  & secret shame. Memories of young lives ruined by the madness of that Evil night…

  He opens his eyes. It is night. Or he is blind. He rolls over. Fumbles with his right hand. Flicks on the lamp. Drags the receiver from its cradle. He tries to lift it to his ear, but his hands feel immense & uncontrollable, part of someone or something else—as if his hands were not hands at all but great, furry paws whose claws are bloody bayonets & whose camouflaged coat is one with the slow spin of Night Sky— One with his tongue—thick with the feline tastes of musk & flesh— & with the stale human bitterness of sour mash & Chloral Hydrate­—

  Frank glimpses over his shoulder for an instant. His pores gush ice-chill sweat. He lets out a groan of pure terror.

  “WHAT THE HELL?” he bellows. Next to him on the bed lies a mangled corpse, what remains of its naked back exposed to him— all the way down to bared spine & raw musculature.

  Cherry … ? No. It is male.

  The corpse lifts its shattered skull & stares at him.

  “Hey, Frank, you look like you seen a ghost, bro!” Shaw chuckles. “Takes real guts just hangin’ out all night & day bangin’ your balls off with some twitchy bimbo when your buddies need you, Man!” His charred fingers fondle the spilled loops of intestine as if they were a rosary.

  “FRANK! FRANK! YOU OKAY?” the voice in the phone shouts.

  Shaw vanishes. But there is blood on the sheets.

  “FRANK!”: finally the voice registers: Clarence Carter, not the long-dead Shaw…

  “Oh, Oh. yeah, sorry, Clarence!” Frank mumbles. “A dream, just a dream is all…”

  “WHOA! Some goddamned dream, Frank— sounds more like an Elm Street-style nightmare to me!”

  Even as Frank stares at the drying blood soaking the sheets, the first-perceived vision of a broad, irregular pool of darkness seems to dissolve away around the edges (…as a mirage vanishes…as an inkblot’s randomness resolves itself into some suggestive pattern: upon closer inspection…), yet not converging but defining itself as separate elements of a greater puzzle. A vaguely heart-shaped patch at approximately groin level. Higher up, twin bullseyes. Two distinct trails of intertwining nail marks: one slender, tapering, clawlike; the other huge, brutal, blunt-edged, pawlike.

  “Uhhhhh, hold on just a sec, okay, Clarence?” Hawkes asks even as he pauses, staring down at his loosely-balled fists, palms-up, the short, carefully manicured nails are blood-crusted along the thin, once-white lines. Sharp pain intrudes through the killer fog of booze & prescription drugs & through the breaker-roll of headache. The harsh throbbing of his chest is now matched by raw welts gouged deep into his back, criss-crossing testimony to Cherry’s own frenzy. Tiny pinpoint droplets of blood seep from the pores of the bullet-bruise & cling to the coarse hairs, matting them: stigmata of his sins-of-the-flesh so recently indulged.

  He sits up, draws down the sheet, & lets out a low groan at the sight of his flaccid, dangling penis: it, too, raw & bruised, caked with crusts of commingled blood & semen.

  Four flies crawl in the heart-shaped pool of tarry sludge, feeding on this Hellish manna. Their wings glisten iridescent Payne’s Grey & ultramarine & cerulean & turquoise, lined with veins of ebon, like minute slabs of brittle black mica.

  In contrast to the patch of dark, sticky, scabrous rust, the soiled sheet surrounding it seems soft & unreal & elegantly understated as grey velvet…

  “FRANK! FRANK! You losin’ it or somethin’, Man?” the phone squawks.

  “No. No. Sorry. Just a bit…woozy is all—” Frank lies.

  He emits a strangled gasp­—

  On the indentation where his weight had lain, he would swear, is scrawled in blood-graffiti:

  A lopsided cross-&-circle signature…

  But it is only his feverish imagination, just chance patternings traced by the haematic pinpoints trickling from his injured chest, not the warning of some ghostly visitation, he assures himself.

  [ 249 ]

  Slice’s mental mentor, like some Daedalus of the Darkside, has sent the Servus Fugitivus, his/her soul-black son/sun, skyward on fragile wings.

  But unlike the son of the sculptor, Slice rides the nightwind currents, not the fevered slipstream that melted flight feathers loose from waxy pinions. & he is drawn, not toward the flaming shield of Sol Invictus, but toward the chill, broad-bladed sickle-sliver of left-handed Mater Luna, ebbing slowly from the Full into Her Death Phase…

  A Harley hog boosted from beside a biker crashpad yields the wheels to carry him out beyond the city. Out where his inner voice, tapping the well of dead Pynchon’s memories, guides him. To an isolated strand among the omnipresent palms & mangroves, a place used as a landing strip for ultralights, those powered one-man-wings that dot the daylight sky above a seaside too flat for the launching of hanggliders.

  Nearby his objective, Slice follows a drainage runoff until he reaches a shallow, stagnant lagoon where he unceremoniously deep-sixes some outlaw one-percenter’s pride beneath the scum-green waters.

  Then he creep
ie-crawls to the edge of the clearing, & curls up among the shadowed boles as a jungle cat may wait hour-upon-hour until the sun begins to set & his predatory instincts signal that the stalking time has come… Until the herd has thinned & the last of the prey have grown careless in their urge to sate themselves but a little longer, uncontested on the choicest grazings yet remaining… The bulk of the trailered vans & four-wheel-drives depart, carrying their rainbow-hued flock of now-pinioned flyers homeward to backyard roosts in the scattered outskirts of Dade-Miami territory. The Beast of the New Flesh waits until one last lone droning ultralighter remains, greedy to savor the open azure sky as it deepens into cobalt & to reap the pleasure of the still-warm & fragrant sea breeze.

  The pilot at last dips wings earthward & slowly gyres in ever-tighter circles ’til the triple tires roll down the hard-packed runway & skid to a stop in a flurry of swirling sand. As he busies himself with readying the craft for transport, Slice sidles up behind this incautious cretin all but wearing a sign on his bent back reading “VICTIM.” The bootknife whispers from its sheath, its wielder willing his quarry’s brain to freeze in submission, the stalker’s free hand clutching a hank of hair, tugging back fiercely, baring taut throat to the slithering blade. There is a choked cry, the flesh-sound of tendons & trachea severing, a muffled gurgling of air & blood evacuating through the new grinning of ragged lips of skin. Then silence…

  The Beast of the New Flesh has wings. Night wings to carry him northward to Washington, D.C., to begin the killing season that shall usher in the New Age of Loosed Serpents… The anti-christ is flying the fiendish skies, on his way to his destiny…