Ghouljaw and Other Stories

by Clint Smith

  Max glanced around the group, who remained silent as the two young men stepped inside.

  A variety of different sorts of smoke and the steady thrum of music permeated the crowded house, which—despite abuse and neglect, and not unlike the other façades here in The Swamp—still had some hallmarks of its original nobility: hardwood floors, high ceilings, wood paneling, and lots of corridors and rooms.

  Max and Jerry shuffled through the maze of partiers, Jerry occasionally stopping to catch up with an acquaintance. Max recognized no one and was comfortably cavalier about his anonymity. Most people were milling around, grouped in small clusters. Many looked to have been partying for hours. A party in The Swamp, Max thought—like a frat party for Nascar fans. Eventually, Max and Jerry wound up in the kitchen.

  Winston Kolb was standing with his back against the refrigerator, in the middle of telling a joke or a story, gesticulating with a beer bottle. Several people smiled, stared, and laughed at Winston.

  Now, upon actually laying eyes on Winston Kolb, Max remembered this guy more clearly. They’d gone to the same high school together, Winston being two grades ahead of Max and Jerry. His senior year, Winston had not only been kicked off the football team but had been kicked out of school. As far as Max knew, the guy had never graduated. Max only heard stories after that, and Winston had apparently maintained his reputation as a brawler, a drunk, and all-around small-town asshole.

  Max and Jerry moved farther into the kitchen, and Winston became abruptly unconcerned with the group he’d been talking to when he spotted Jerry.

  “Holy shit, man,” said Winston, “you’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Winston gripped Jerry’s extended hand and pulled the boy in for a half-hug, before hooking his arm around Jerry’s neck in a good-natured half-nelson.

  “I didn’t think you were going to make it,” Winston said, grinning. Horse’s teeth, Max thought. A bully’s smile.

  After a moment, Winston, with Jerry still in a headlock, trained his attention on Max.

  “I didn’t know you were bringing somebody with you, Jerry.” Winston squinted and lifted his bottle, taking a long swig of beer and sloppily wiping his lips before speaking. “Do I know you?” he asked Max.

  Max started to speak but Jerry cut in. “This is my friend Max—he’s cool, man.”

  Jerry was saying something about the two having gone to the same school together when Winston interrupted, tightening his headlock on Jerry. “This guy looks like a fucking narc, Jerry. You a fucking narc, prettyboy?”

  Max’s nervous smirk began to fade. He shot a quick, twitchy glance at the other people in the now-silent kitchen. Music pounded the walls of the small space.

  Max’s stomach spasmed as he again paused on the notion of that tangled eel, struggling to squirm out of a ragged rent in his insides. Fuck this, Max thought—struck with the urge to turn and run. But Winston suddenly broke out in boot-stomping laughter. A few of Winston’s kitchen disciples chuckled, nervously mimicking their alpha male.

  “Aw, I’m just fucking with you, man,” Winston said, letting go of Jerry’s neck. “We all know Jerry’s the real narc.” More nervous laughter. “What did you say your name was?”

  Max blinked and tried to regain some casual composure. “Max . . . Max Kidwell.”

  Winston nodded, turned and opened the refrigerator door, withdrawing a beer and extending it. “All right, Max, Max Kidwell. Want a beer?”

  Max crossed the kitchen. “Yeah, I’d love one.” He closed his hand on the bottle, but Winston held firm.

  Winston’s face had again gone wooden. “What’s the magic word?”

  Several ugly thoughts snaked into Max’s mind. While he was several inches shorter and weighed comically less than the other guy, Max had the inebriated urge to attempt a joke himself—to say something about Winston’s horsey mouth or about his caveman brow or about the old rumor that he was a closet queer. “Please.”

  After a moment of staring Max down, Winston switched gears again, smiling and letting go of the beer bottle. “Shit, I’m just breaking your balls, man. Help yourself, prettyboy.”

  I intend to, asshole. “Thanks, man.”

  Jerry and Winston then began to catch up, their voices drowned out by music. After the two young men appeared to agree on something, Jerry began to follow Winston out of the kitchen but split away momentarily, stopping to talk to Max once more.

  “I’ve got to go chat with Winston and a few of his friends. Are you going to be okay by yourself for a while?” asked Jerry.

  Max was a little surprised he wasn’t invited to tag along. But aside from his recreational use, Max didn’t know much about drugs or drug deals. He didn’t know much about Jerry, for that matter. “Yeah, sure. I’ll just hang out.”

  Jerry nodded, lightly bopped Max on the shoulder with his fist, and followed Winston out of the kitchen.

  Max wandered around the party, moving from room to room and talking to strangers just long enough for them to offer him some of their dope. He’d take a few drags from their smoke, thank them and move to the next group. Max’s headache—a skullache, he thought—ebbed and flowed as he drifted down hallways and in and out of rooms. There were moments where the headache was more pronounced—moments where the pain, if he dwelt on it too much, became a solidly tangible thing, extending from his skull and spreading down his spine, along his ribcage and leading out to his limbs. It was a blackly numb thought-sensation, and Max felt as if his bones were being compromised, being replaced by some more malleable substance. He saw himself floating fluidly through the party—his arms and legs slipping and sliding with tentacle-smooth agility.

  In a flicker of semi-lucidity, it occurred to Max that he was overdoing it. Another fevery thought: I should have told Mom I was going with Jerry. If Jerry ditches me, I’m fucked. It’d be a hell of a walk to Amy’s apartment.

  He was on the way to the front porch to get some fresh air when he noticed the dark-haired girl over by the staircase.

  She was standing with her back against the banister, smoking a cigarette and talking to another girl who was seated on the landing near the bottom of the stairs. As soon as Max noticed her, he deviated his course slightly to get a better look. As he passed, the girl took a long, squinty drag from her cigarette, her eyes lingering on Max. She smirked slightly, exhaling a stream of smoke. Max glanced at the other girl sitting on the landing, her head down, hair hanging over her face, and she was intently using a pair of scissors to cut out pictures from a stack of magazines. Slivers and chunks of discarded paper were scattered around her.

  Max snaked through the crowd, aiming toward the kitchen; he crossed to the refrigerator and retrieved a beer. He considered the girl for a moment, the thought of her both sobering and intoxicating. But the sobriety was superficial, just a formal sort of clarity as his mind prepared his mouth to speak to her.

  Max estimated that she was roughly his own age, maybe a little older. Her olive skin and dark features, to Max, suggested a Mediterranean or Italian lineage—exotic was the word that drifted into his mind. Her black hair hung down just below her ears in a 40s-style bob. The girl was tall and thin—long, slender legs and arms. A physique Max often associated with both ballerinas and artsy snobs. But more than anything, what exhilarated and distracted Max was her uniqueness—her out-of-placeness. And once again, the black eel in Max’s stomach jerked, suddenly unknotting and twisting itself into a more comfortable position.

  Max took a long swig of beer, reached into the fridge to grab another bottle for the girl, and started walking back to the corridor.

  She was laughing at something when Max returned to the hallway.

  Max slowed as he walked by the staircase, angling his attention down toward the girl on the landing—her face obscured by a brown, rat-tangle of hair—who was still cutting pictures from the magazines. He smiled as he came to a stop, feigning interest in her project. She was using a glue stick to paste the photos into different arrangements on a
wide piece of posterboard. Max finally glanced up at the dark-haired girl, who regarded him with glittery, dark chocolate eyes.

  She took her back off the staircase’s railing and leaned in toward Max. “Do you like surrealism?” she asked.

  Max frowned, edging in on her a little closer. He could smell patchouli and cloves. “What did you say?”

  She spoke up over the music. “Do you like surrealist games?” she asked.

  Max nodded. “Yeah—absolutely.” He cleared his throat. “I knew lots of people who did collage projects in school.” The girl’s smile remained as it had, impassive and cruelly coquettish, and she nodded slowly, as if satisfied by the answer or by Max’s obvious ignorance.

  After a moment of silently scanning the hippie girl’s collage, Max leaned in again. “I’m Max.”

  “Gina,” the girl said, taking another methodic drag from her cigarette. The tips of her silky pinup-girl bangs teased her dark eyebrows.

  Max twisted the cap from the extra bottle of beer and offered it to Gina, who gripped it with her slender fingers, glancing at the label briefly. She said thanks by cocking her chin down and blinking slowly. She kept her glazy eyes on Max for a few seconds before speaking. “I haven’t seen you around before. How’d you hear about the party?”

  “Me and this other guy were invited—Winston Kolb invited us. You know Winston?”

  Glancing back and forth between the collage-girl and Max, she said, “Never heard of him.”

  Presently, the girl on the landing was carefully gluing a Humboldt squid over the face of a briefcase-toting businessman. Max paused on the animal’s gray-and-red mottled flesh, on the orbs of its yellow-ringed black eyes. The tentacles.

  Gina extinguished her cigarette on the banister. “That’s Nancy,” Gina said, gesturing toward the girl on the landing. “She’s rolling.”

  Oh, Max bobbed his head, hoping to mask his obliviousness.

  After a moment of scouring Max’s face with silky precision, Gina said, “You don’t know what that means, do you.”

  Max winced and shook his head. You got me: guilty.

  Gina didn’t seem surprised, but she didn’t seem any less interested. “She’s on Ecstasy.”

  Max lifted his chin in sudden understanding. “Oh. Cool.” The surrounding pulse of music filled the space between them.

  Gina leaned in again, slowly. “I’ve been watching you walk around by yourself.”

  Max made a yeah-it’s-tough-being-a-loner face. “I don’t mind. It’s a decent party.”

  Again, Gina moved closer to the side of Max’s face, her lips almost clipping his earlobe as she spoke. “Do you want to roll, Max?” He watched her pull away. Her eyes had gone to half-dreamy slits.

  She’s already on something. “Roll? With you?” he asked.

  Gina’s grin was mellow, content. She shrugged her shoulders, raising her eyebrows. “Maybe,” she said, then bit her lower lip. The music continued to pulse wildly, and now Gina’s shoulders were beginning to sway.

  Max took a chance. “Can we go somewhere quiet?”

  “Why,” Gina said—it wasn’t really a question.

  Max cleared his throat. “I just want to go somewhere more private. We can come back to the party after we get . . . going. Okay?”

  Gina’s body continued to sway side-to-side, in sync with the thrum of music. She nibbled her lower lip again and nodded, Okay, and took Max by the hand, leading him up the staircase. They stepped around Nancy and her scattered scraps of paper. Nancy—her face still hidden by her kelpy tangle of hair—began to giggle.

  Max peeled off Gina’s shirt as he edged her toward the bed. He was kissing her face, her ear lobe, her clavicle. Gina, breathing heavy and moaning in tiny bursts, shuffled backward, fumbling to unclasp her bra.

  The room was dark, save for a phosphorescent glow streaming in through an uncurtained window; light from a mercury-vapor streetlamp outside washed the room—the water-stained ceiling, the bare white walls—in a weak, bluish-green tint.

  After reaching the second floor, it had taken little time for them to find a vacant room. Gina had locked the door behind her and produced two round pills. She taunted Max for several minutes by holding out her hand, and as he reached out she pulled back. “Ah, ah,” she teased him. “You don’t think this ride’s for free, do you?” Max smirked. My move, he thought. He inched closer to Gina, whose stony-black eyes glistened in the dim light. He leaned in, pressing her up against an oblong-mirrored vanity and kissed her. After a moment, Gina pulled back just long enough to feed the pills to Max, who washed them down by polishing off his beer and dropping it to the hardwood floor. Max moved in on Gina again—on her lips, on her nape, on her chest—and she acquiesced with seasoned fluency.

  Now, as they neared the bed, Gina unclasped and slipped free from her bra—her breasts dropping and swaying loosely as she fingered the button and zipper on Max’s jeans.

  Gina suddenly pivoted, spinning Max around and shoving him back onto the bed. She crawled in on top of him, straddling him. At some point, Max produced a condom, allowing Gina to slip it on to him. For several sensual minutes, things proceeded the usual way.

  Lying beneath her, he watched Gina’s body arc and bounce over his—he cupped her breasts and in the anemic seafoam glow, watched her face contort with pleasure. The smell of her body was a mixture of smoke, peaches, and something acrid and mossy—like the mineral smell of cave water.

  With flashbulb brevity, Max contemplated his luck this evening and, with equal brevity, thought of Amy. Compelled to keeping that mental door locked, Max gripped Gina’s hips, savoring the sensation as they rotated with locomotive smoothness.

  Max’s world flickered. The room, for a moment, dimmed, and he was briefly pleased with the culmination of sensations. But this was different now—new. Max felt the dull twinge of his headache re-emerge and change into something insistent and serious. The long fissure of pain, which began as a distraction, quickly transformed into a blurring throb. Gina slipped Max out of her and dropped down to her side, rolling on her back and pulling him over on top of her. Gina moaned coarsely as she reinserted his sex, grasping his buttocks and roughly urging him to resume.

  And now—through the fog of alcohol, smoke, and Ecstasy—he actually felt something, faintly tectonic, shift along his left temple. This time the pain was assertive and so significant that his thrusting ceased for a moment. Gina opened her eyes, scowling. “What?” she hissed, her chest rising and falling as she spoke. “Why’d you stop?—you didn’t come, did you?”

  Max shook his head, resuming his steady, but weak, plunges into the musky nexus between Gina’s thighs. The room wobbled again, and Max blinked back the pulsing pain coursing across his skull. His stomach hurt, and he was again struck with the image of that livid inky eel, writhing as it squirmed in the black coral of his midsection—keen only on freeing itself from his insides.

  Max looked down at Gina, who was suddenly no longer a beautiful girl but an emaciated hag, whose wiry frightwig hair fell over the pillow in a seaweedy mass. Her saggy breasts hung loose on her chest, under which the shadowy ridges of her ribcage her visible. Max flinched but the gaunt thing pulled him closer. He shuddered and closed his eyes; but when he looked again, she was an attractive, exotic girl again. “Don’t stop,” she breathed, “keep fucking.”

  Max fell forward, his spine was quaking, losing its shape—he convulsed, feeling muscles and bones begin to tremble, as if his entire body had suddenly become blackly obedient to the resonance of some unseen tuning fork.

  The room was rippling, the gyrating shapes and shadows flickered and spun on all sides like an aquatic cyclorama. The electric ache was close to unbearable, and Max sank down on top of Gina, whose raspy moans turned into a boggy wheezing in his pain-lashed mind. Max made one last effort to right himself. Darkness closed in as something inside—something ink-smeared and slick—tore itself free.

  Max woke to the sound of screaming and applauding. Lying on h
is stomach—cold, naked—he pried his eyes open and was met with a pervasive of numbness. The ache in his head had not subsided but had dulled a bit, as if it had spread itself evenly through his body. The room had, mercifully, ceased its watery wobble.

  “I’d get the fuck out of here if I were you,” Gina said from somewhere in the room.

  Max jerked up toward the voice, instantly regretting the movement. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. She had the sheet from the bed wrapped around her abdomen and was sitting cross-legged on the waist-high vanity, her back pressed directly against the oblong mirror, creating the illusion of two girls sitting back-to-back, like spinal Siamese twins. Her face briefly glowed orange as she took an agitated drag from a cigarette, her eyes glittering with nocturnal listlessness. The shouting and pounding music from downstairs continued to rattle the floor.

  Max wanted to ask what had happened. Instead, Gina spoke through an exhalation of smoke. “The condom broke.”

  Max, momentarily paralyzed, hesitated before reaching down and searching his groin. His fingers stopped, sensing the damage. “Jesus . . . Christ,” he mumbled, quickly shedding the torn piece of latex and flinging it, like a diseased piece of skin, to the floor.

  Through the inexplicable numbness and restless soreness coursing through his body, Max, sickly galvanized, scrambled, as best he could from the bed, searching the floor for his clothes and shoes. He heard cheering. “What’s happening down there?” he asked hoarsely, tugging on his jeans.

  “Sounds like Winston’s pissed off about something.”

  Max, struggling to pry on his sneaker, stopped suddenly. “You know Winston?”

  Gina snorted—the ember of her cigarette glowed for a moment before she answered. “Yeah, I know Winston.”

  Max let that sink in. Everything in the room was at once crystallized and distorted. He found his flannel shirt and fumbled with the buttons. As he stood, he tripped and fell. Gina let loose a small chain of giggles. “Amateur,” she said and clicked her tongue. “Winston was right about you, prettyboy.”

  Wavering, Max got to his feet again, but now he was moving quick—panic propelling him forward. The light in the hallway stung his eyes with antiseptic starkness, and he teetered as he slid his hands along the wall, stumbling toward the stairs. The other girl, Nancy, who’d been at the bottom of the stairwell, was gone; but her collage still lay scattered on the landing.