Autumn in the Abyss

by John Claude Smith

  Lemmy pulled the car past her into the Lucky grocery store parking lot. I know I looked hard at her when we passed by, so obvious what she was doing. The brakes squealed as we stopped and the car felt hot, like death and sex and more death just waiting to be distributed.

  “Well, Shakespeare, I think your eloquent description is a prime example of what Mr. Liu is looking for, so I’ll—”

  “No, I’ll get her. I’ll… do her. I’ll give Mr. Liu everything he wants, and more.”

  “What the fuck, you gonna get your hands dirty, eh?”

  Without looking at him, and with no malice: “Fuck you. I’ve killed before. Just because you get most of that out of the way don’t mean I won’t do it again. Like now.”

  “Don’t scrunch your scrotum, pal. She’s yours.”

  I was love-struck, but my love was dangerous. Everything about this damaged bitch had my balls tingling and my cock starting to strain in my jeans.

  I leaned out the passenger side window, waved her over. She was still looking at me; I saw an impression of a smile caress her lips, not really taking hold. God damn, this was too easy— and I wanted her. Something in me really wanted to destroy her, break her into a thousand little pieces.

  Sure, I wanted to fuck her as well, but that look, those eyes, that “special something” that Mr. Liu would really enjoy lurked in those eyes.

  She walked briskly toward the car. That smile etched on her face took hold, but it was different now. Her broken teacup countenance was still present, but there was something amiss in that smile.

  As she got close to the car, her stride grew strong. Something in me grew uneasy, angry, confused. I still wanted her, but something rang hard in my ears.

  “You are the one who will teach me of love,” she said, left hand soft against my cheek. I turned away, toward Lemmy, who had a Cheshire Cat grin on his face. She put her right hand on my other cheek and pulled me to her again, so I could see her up close, take in her flawed beauty.

  “You are the one who will love me forever, yes?” Not really a question, more a statement, but I answered her in the appropriate manner.

  “Yeah, I love you long time, baby.”

  Lemmy laughed, Elvis too.

  I grinned, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  She seemed satisfied with the response.

  “Switch,” I said, signaling Elvis to ride shotgun while I romanced Broken Teacup in the backseat. I took her hand and pulled her into our love nest.

  “You want to know about love? I’ll show you all about love.”

  I kissed her hard, her mouth seeming surprised as if she’d never been kissed before. I normally wouldn’t kiss them, but this one— it seemed like the right thing to do. And I wanted to.

  I was all out of kilter.

  We drove toward a house Elvis had borrowed for the occasion from another fan, a guy on vacation; fifteen minutes max and we were there. The whole time I had kissed her and she had seemed to grow more comfortable with the idea as she caught on, kissing me back. She tasted like she’d eaten dust for days, but she tongue wrestled with enthusiasm so I didn’t mind much.

  “This place smells rank, dude,” Lemmy said, stating the obvious.

  The smell was moldy. I couldn’t imagine anybody living there.

  “Didn’t smell this bad earlier when I fixed up the basement with the stuff you wanted,” Elvis said, nostrils flaring and face crinkling in disgust.

  Broken Teacup didn’t seem to notice or care. What she did do was keep pulling my face to hers, so insistent.

  Desperation had nothing on her.

  “You will show me more of love, yes?”

  “You talk funny, no?” Lemmy teased her as we headed for a door leading to the basement.

  She tilted her head in a queer way and looked at him with a trace of something I’d call hate, yet it was like it was unborn, this hate, as if she didn’t know how to convey it.

  I sure was picking up a lot of weird vibes from her.

  “This way,” Elvis said, leading us toward the back of the house. The furniture looked ratty and worn, yet it still seemed like nobody had been there for quite some time.

  “How long has your buddy been on vacation?”

  Elvis ignored Lemmy’s query and unlocked a door. Wooden planks creaked as we stepped downstairs into darkness.

  “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” After waving his hand around, Elvis found a string and pulled it. One dim bulb semi-lit the room.

  “You will love me here?” Broken Teacup asked.

  “Apparently I will.” The room was done up right. One bed, leather straps to bind her and the glimmering suggestion of metallic implements in the shadows along the wall, promising many hours of fun.

  She grabbed my arm and pulled me to her, forcefully kissing me. “I like this,” she said, and I knew she was a goner for good. If she didn’t pick up on what was happening here, it would only make taking her that much more satisfying. She may be hot, but her idiosyncrasies and general naïveté would make me nauseated if she hung around for too long.

  One day here should do the trick.

  The camera sat on a tripod in the corner next to the barely perceptible shiny stuff meant for cutting and tearing; severing. Elvis fidgeted with it, and I heard the low hum of its operation.

  We’d planned this all out. I knew my part now that I was the ringleader; Lemmy and Elvis awaited my command.

  The bed and straps were empty but soon they would be filled.

  “You ready, boys?” I rubbed my hands together then unsnapped my jeans.

  “It’s time I showed you all about love, Broken Teacup.”

  Lemmy snorted. “Broken Teacup, Christ, Bobby, that’s rich.”

  Elvis grabbed her left arm.

  She turned to him and said, “No.” The word slid kind of funny out of her lips, and all of a sudden, Elvis shriveled up, shrinking on the spot into a hairless rodent-like thing, except the eyes were huge, and hanging by tendrils. He… it… he scrabbled in circles at her feet, unable to break the cycle because both eyes hung slack to one side, weighing him down.

  “Fuck!” Lemmy kneeled down and pulled the knife from his boot, raising up with it underhanded, going for her stomach.

  Broken Teacup put her palm up like a cop directing traffic.

  Lemmy froze before some invisible force flung him to the mattress. The straps came alive and wrapped tight around his arms and legs. He let out a yell, almost my name, but then the sound corkscrewed into his torso, and his arms seemed to crackle and fizz, morphing into a bunch of large cockroaches. The legs followed suit. His head sagged like a punctured balloon, but his face took the down escalator into the pit of his torso where a bunch of cocks and assholes materialized all over the mass of mutating flesh. His clothing had turned brittle and flaked away. This thing, Lemmy, Christ, the cockroaches all had cocks like barbed razors and took to humping every orifice on his body. And there were plenty of them. Holding themselves steady, the cockroaches grasped his many cocks as they pummeled his many bleeding assholes. He was ejaculating in both pleasure and agony and the whole thing made me turn away and throw up.

  I felt like I was spewing lava, yet I didn’t want it to stop. I wanted to burn away the obscenities I had just witnessed, and which still screamed, filling my ears with the shock of confusion, agony, and physical degeneration. My mind couldn’t conceive of changes of this magnitude. Was Lemmy still able to breathe and sense it all?

  “His soul is very disgusting,” Broken Teacup said.

  “What the fuck are you talking about? What the fuck are you?” I cowered below her, knees grinding the concrete floor as I shimmied away.

  “You will show me love now… yes?”

  I looked in her eyes and that scarred innocence shone through.

  Then something more shook the foundation of my sanity. The shadows to my right roiled and groaned.

  Broken Teacup looked toward the screaming thing that was Lemmy and sai
d, “Shhhhh.” She turned back to me, not to the shadows.

  The sudden hush ached in my ears. A moment later the vacuum seeped away and I could hear my harsh, quickened breath.

  I watched as the shadows dilated and a man leaned out of them without actually leaving their embrace, nattily attired as always.

  “Mr. Liu?”

  “As you can tell, Mr. Rickart…”

  He leaned back and I could no longer see him. Silence muted every sound, as if my head were dipped in mud. I had a moment to somehow think of my usual response to being called, Mr. Rickart: Mr. Rickart’s my daddy, motherfucker. My name’s Bobby, don’t you forget it. But he realized this was not the place for idiotic responses.

  No way.

  He leaned forward again; I heard static dancing in his voice, like guitar feedback tuned down low as he continued.

  “…you are in a most precarious situation.”

  He hung there, as if he had adjusted to the space he occupied; it was now his space, here in this bleak basement hell.

  “I am here to clean up the mess, Mr. Rickart. We humans are so messy and that is not acceptable. There are others who do not appreciate it. But there are also others who find deep fascination with us humans.”

  Something started to hiss on both sides of Mr. Liu.

  “Just a moment, please,” he said, his head nodding left and right, acknowledging that which hissed in the darkness beside him.

  The hissing grew in volume. It sounded obstinate, insistent.

  Mr. Liu’s head dipped ever so slightly. I got the impression that, despite appearances, he was not the one running the show.

  “Very well,” he said, leaning back into the shadows.

  A brutal cacophony erupted. It brought incinerator heat with it as it surrounded me. Layer upon amplified layer struggled for dominance. Some sounds I knew: the dull crack of a pipe breaking bone; the gagging protest of the cock-filled throat; the meaty rhythmic drone of genitalia in full on fuck mode. Other sounds made sense within this din, and somehow I knew them as well: the joyous diseased blossom that blooms in the heart of those whose hunger can only be sated with suffering; the slow gnawing mastication of mental decay; the abysmal ache of emptiness that was the lonely heart.

  The need for love, to know it and to understand it.

  The sounds had purpose, as if they were alive and felt, wanted— needed. But I also understood that these perceptions were peripheral, because they were only reflections of those who occupied this room. Those I knew— Lemmy, Elvis and me— as well as Broken Teacup, and that which abandoned the shadows—the giants—are part of the noise.

  As these thoughts assaulted me with the sheer ferocity of their decibel straining impressions, two headless giants marched with determination out of the shadows, their girth devouring the room. Each of their bodies was chiseled muscle. Each arm was tattooed with intricate designs. Dragon’s heads snapped and spat fire as they came alive at the fists.

  One of the giants approached Elvis. The dragon of its right fist snatched him up and tossed him into the excavated bone and viscera bound cage that was its belly. Its neck stump tilted back, opened as a volcano, and black goo pulsed out over its broad shoulders and down its sculpted mass.

  The other giant did the same with Lemmy. The black goo poured out of the stump, as if it experienced immense pleasure from the attainment of Lemmy.

  Lemmy mouthed a soundless protest, eyes wide, yet vacant: nobody’s home. Insanity was the stranger who wandered in the dark halls now.

  As the giants backed into the shadows, the din was quieted by a muffled snick, as if a lock had sealed the cages shut.

  Silence again, except in my throbbing skull.

  Broken Teacup hadn’t taken her eyes off me since silencing Lemmy, despite the commotion.

  A moment later, Mr. Liu leaned out of the shadows again. A trickle of sweat ran along his cheek.

  “You have an opportunity, Mr. Rickart. As you can see by the previous few minutes’ demonstration, this is an opportunity you are not wise to ignore.”

  “What the fuck is going on?” I was still on my knees, crying now, my fear a palpable presence in the room.

  Mr. Liu sighed. “As bad a soul as you are and what it can do to you…”

  He nodded toward Broken Teacup, the woman standing above me; the woman who was obviously not a woman.

  “Complying with this request is your only opportunity to… redeem yourself, or, at least, avoid the fate bestowed on your cohorts.”

  He nodded to the shadows.

  I knew that I was a bad person, or at least a messed up person who had chosen a path that led me here. I wanted nothing to do with revealing that which was my soul.

  “Why me?” I sobbed, trying to quiet my tears, snuffing them out as best as possible.

  “I chose you because no matter how bad or misdirected a person is, some people are salvageable. I’m not saying you are one of those, Mr. Rickart, but maybe it is possible that you can attain a kind of dignity amidst the chaos, within what is left of your existence. It wants to learn something you might not even have the slightest idea about,” he said, eyes darting in the direction of Broken Teacup, “but since you are a human, and my role is to assist in its goals while keeping the universe in balance, I will grant you this one opportunity to get it right in your life.

  “The path to wisdom is paved with the carcasses of experience… and you have so much more to experience, Mr. Rickart.”

  Broken Teacup surprisingly turned to Mr. Liu and asked, “I thought the path to knowledge was paved with the carcasses of experience, yes?” She seemed distracted by semantics: wisdom, knowledge— what difference did it make?

  Mr. Liu confirmed my suspicions with his next statement and the slim smile curling at the corner of his lips that accompanied it.

  “All paths are paved with the carcasses of experience.”

  The words sent a chill through my already wracked body and mind. This experience, one to change the path of my life.

  “Do you understand what I am saying, Mr. Rickart?”

  I couldn’t speak, my mind reeling, my thoughts bumper car crashing in my head.

  Broken Teacup turned to me then, both hands on my moist cheeks and said, “You will show me love now.”

  I understood this was my opportunity.

  I saw black gulfs glisten like polished slate in her eyes.

  Maybe there was something salvageable; maybe there was something for me to learn as well.

  “Yes,” I said, as my voice cracked. “Yes, I will show you love.”

  She smiled and her fleshy disguise started to melt.

  It did not matter what it revealed. I had only one option. I would show it love.

  I would have to learn how, if I didn’t want to end up like the others.

  La mia immortalità

  “Why don’t you speak to me?” Samuel yelled, as the hammer smashed into the marble with a dull thump. He let the hammer drop out of his moist fingers. He released the chisel from his straining grip as well. As the dead weight of the hammer clunked onto the concrete floor, the tinny intonations of the chisel echoed weakly, a call and response wrought in frustration.

  He wandered to a window, its panes sweating with condensation. The dreary, late summer chill outside unable to chip away at the heat inside the studio, or his veins.

  “I thought you’d be well into the heart of this one by now, Sam.” Claire’s firm, polished glass timbres filtered into his ears, out of the blue— more so, the gray black overcast— not even knocking.

  Samuel sighed, the weight of it all a burden Atlas would fail in lifting.

  At forty-five years old, Samuel Nisi was a successful artist, first as a photographer, and then with oil paintings, old school by today’s deluge of digital dregs, and embraced by a world stepping back to appreciate genuine artistry. Yet the fickle aspect of his desire for everlasting fame— in spite of his quality work with skills apparent yet not harnessed to maximum results— kep
t him searching for something more, something to really leave his imprint on the world.

  He found his way to a studio near Rome, Italy— to be near the masters, his only true Gods, Michelangelo and Bernini. The solitude was necessary for more reasons than would seem obvious. His aspirations had grown cunning. He would attain his goals at any cost, which had cost him friends, colleagues, personal relationships— not that they mattered to him. Anything that got in the way of his life’s purpose, as whittled to spear sharp intensity as the years tolled, was easily discarded.

  Seven years ago he’d taken up sculpting. The sculptures he created combined the power and majesty of mythical gods, goddesses and monsters with dirt-under-the-fingernails modern sensibilities. He had a love of those who lived by tooth, nail, and brass knuckles. The wealth of critical applause he garnered validated his personal artistic progression, but for Samuel, it was not enough. All art came easy to him, yet no art satisfied his lust for immortality. Sure, some of the sculptures may last forever, but none struck him as extraordinary. He still felt emotionally distanced from them, as if something, some scrap of magic, was missing— which irked him to no end.

  Hence, he found his latest commission especially intriguing.

  He was desperately in need of inspiration that took him beyond the norm, beyond anything he’d ever conceived. As if answering his wishes, the letter had come to him via the post, not even electronically, as most communication was conducted nowadays.

  A new client by the name of Mr. Liu had requested a decidedly atypical commission, one whose ambiguity intrigued Samuel. It was simple, direct, the essence relayed in measured lines, as if Mr. Liu was a man of few words, yet knew exactly what he wanted… yet what he wanted, because of the vagueness of the details, inspired. Mr. Liu would send Samuel a large block of marble, “the rarest Carrara marble,” he’d said, and it would be up to Samuel to “find whatever strange, lost soul was buried within the marble. Find what lives and breathes there and to bring it to the surface.” That was all, no specifics, yet the money Mr. Liu was willing to spend, as well as how it touched a nerve within Samuel— more so, because of the latter— moved this to the top of his “to-do” list.