The Beast That Was Max

by Gerard Houarner

  Something wrenched free inside Max. The trickle of foreign thoughts and emotions stopped. Max nearly let go of the sagging Rithisak. Where once he and the Beast had been more than enough to fill him, it seemed to Max that they were alone in vast and silent cavern. The Beast, oblivious in the heat of its passion, pressed for more blood.

  Farewell, an echo of Mani whispered to one of them, any of them, none of them. A final breeze of her thoughts passed through Max, like a dying exhalation. He caught the hunger of beisac spirits, and loneliness, and terror of abandonment. Their passage resonated within him, made his flesh crawl. And he caught a last word, pray, and an image, a ghostly woman and child, taken too soon from life, filled with hatred for the living. He recoiled from the image even as the thought passed.

  On the floor, Mani's shoulders sagged. The fetus fell from her hands, landed wetly on the floor. Her eyes closed. A rattling escaped her lungs.

  Cold darkness blanked Max's vision for a moment. The sparse shadow self nestled in him disintegrated into a brief twinge of anxiety, and the burden of their bond dissipated, leaving a hollow still warm from her presence.

  Rithisak screeched, Mani's death propelling the sorcerer into new realms of torment. Anguish carved a carnival of terrible expressions on Rithisak's face. Max watched, the Beast consumed. When the physical pain of his absent eyes regained ascendancy in the hierarchy of suffering, Max threw Rithisak to the floor. He grabbed an antique bayonet from a stack of edged weapons on a shelf, carved Rithisak's chest open with savage thrusts and manic rips backed by his body weight, and pushed his hand into the gash he made in the sorcerer's torso.

  The Beast devoured atrocity, drinking deeply from its excess, as Max straddled Rithisak and rode his desperate convulsions. Max found Rithisak's heart, tore it out, ate it.

  When Max was finished with the meat, and had moved past gnawing at bones, chewing on gristle and tendons, lapping at blood, and thrusting his cock into empty eye sockets of his enemy, Rithisak was a withered bag of skin between Max and the floor, emptier than the corpses he had brought back to serve him. The Beast lay sated in the kennel of Max's mind.

  Max rolled off the body. Stared at Mani.

  The Nowhere House embraced them. Max thought he might never leave the moment, never escape the walls of the tomb he had created for his enemy, and for the woman he had been made responsible to protect. He wondered what would happen if he smashed the Nowhere House case. Would he be trapped forever in a space between worlds, a time between moments? With the Beast quiet, his body exhausted, his mind raw, Max did not think his entombment was a bad fate.

  A shadow moved. A strand of Mani's hair fell away from her face. The tiny head on the nearly translucent fetus jerked.

  Above Mani, the air wavered like a desert horizon in midday heat. Max crawled away from Mani's body. The shimmering air brightened, leaching color from the red bulbs, hurting Max's eyes. A gust of cold air blew over Max, and through the emptiness left inside him in Mani's wake.

  A woman appeared, transparent, hovering over Mani, an infant at her feet. Her hair was long, as were her nails, and her mouth opened into a feral grin. The face was vaguely Asian, obscured as if a filtered lens or warped window separated the woman from the rest of existence. The baby dripped blood from its eyes and ears. Both glared at Max. The Beast stirred, stimulated by the apparition.

  The gust returned, strengthened, until wind whipped through the floor with sudden hurricane intensity, sending shelving and racks crashing to the floor, launching papers, plastic, nails, and knives into the air. Laughter reminiscent of what Max had heard downstairs, chasing Rithisak's decoy, joined the wind's howl.

  Max curled himself into a ball, covered his head. "Mani," he shouted, and again, with all the force he could raise, stretching the word so that it was as long and plaintive as the wind, he shouted, "Mani!"

  The wind died away. A brief shower of objects clattered back to earth. The woman and child looked away from Max, then faded. Vanished.

  Leaving Max alone, again.

  Spent and ravaged, he slipped into a sleep without dreams.

  When he woke, he thought at first that everything he remembered happening was a dream. The remains on and around him brought reality into focus. Max sat up, tried to shake out the detritus of a waking nightmare. As he sorted through memories, separating his own from Mani's and whatever else had taken root in his mind, he paused at the horror that had coalesced over Mani's body. Like a scavenger digging up a grave, the memory dragged another piece of the past out of him: the woman haunting the foot of the stairs. More tumbled into the light of consciousness: the faces of women he had killed in the service of his appetite. They surrounded him, smiles turning into rictus grins, soft eyes hardening into stones of petrified terror.

  He had already slaughtered the undead. He wondered what it would be like to kill again what he had killed and consumed.

  The Beast released a contemptuous snarl. Memories fled.

  Max showered, dressed in the clothes Omari left for him. Soap, water, and fresh clothes could not touch the raw wounds left by Mani's passage through him. The Beast seemed small in the space carved out of him by all that had happened. Max's own appetites revolted him, as if the shape of Mani's former presence corrupted his self-perception. The taste of blood and flesh soured in his mouth. His balls throbbed, his cock felt like a shriveled root exposed too long to the sun. Worms of doubt and guilt squirmed in the turned earth of memory, exposing bits and pieces of the undigested past. His body ached. Sadness suffocated his mind, crushed his chest, decayed in his gut.

  He quelled his flaring temper over the strange feelings, telling himself and the Beast they would soon be gone.

  As he started climbing down the ladder to the lower floors, he surveyed the wreckage left behind. The stench of bodies perfumed the air. Roaches and rats darted from the walls, eager to sample the new feast laid out for them. Flies buzzed. He smiled at the bloody mystery his superiors would discover when the Nowhere House machinery turned itself off. Whom could they debrief? It was the kind of joke Lee would appreciate, and Max regretted not being able to tell him about it.

  Or even remember that the trick had been played.

  At the door to the Nowhere House, Max decided he needed a vacation. A restless new hunger rumbled beneath his sadness, though he could not put a name to it. He needed a change, though he did not want to change himself. Perhaps if he took the twins away, if they explored new places and appetites together, the world might be cast in fresh colors, and new tastes might be found to satisfy him, and the Beast within.

  He opened the door. The city lay restless under night's cover, muttering and squirming in a nightmare's grip. Streetlamps glowed like distant, fuzzy candles through the Nowhere House shielding. Confident the taste for new adventure would stay with him, though he could never recall its genesis, Max stepped through the doorway.

  The world spun around Max's head, his stomach lurched, and for a moment he forgot who he was, and where, and why. He landed on concrete, scraping his cheek and palms. When he got up, he did not know where he was, or why he was unarmed. The Beast, startled by the sudden loss of balance, cried out in protest. Max judged by its sluggishness that he had recently feasted, though he could not recall stalking prey. His body's condition told him he had just finished a serious piece of work for his employers, though his target and the assignment's difficulties were out of his reach. Light-headed, almost giddy, Max had a feeling it was better that he not remember. The Beast curled itself around forgetfulness like a pup at a teat.

  He dug into his pockets looking for car keys, wondering at the false identity he had picked requiring the cut and make of clothes he wore. He found a piece of paper on which he had apparently written two words: GO HOME.

  Max crumpled up the piece of paper and tossed it away. He took off along the street, checking doorways and rooftops and cars for signs of ambush, but finally trusting himself not to leave himself in obvious danger without more detailed in
structions. He did avoid the patrol cars cruising through the neighborhood, in case he had something to do with the heightened police presence.

  The elevated highway and street names oriented him. Knowing he was in the Bronx, he worked his way past police checkpoints and patrols, taking alleys, rooftops, sewers, and utility conduits. While searching for an unguarded subway station, he found a phone and called the twins to check on them, and see if he had left himself a message with them as to what had happened and what he was supposed to do. Alioune answered the phone.

  "Where have you been?" she demanded, then passed the phone to her sister before he had a chance to answer.

  "I don't know," he said to dead air.

  "Are you all right, Tonton?" Kueur asked as she picked up the line, her tone gentler but, like Alioune's, stressed by worry.

  Max vomited. His stomach's rebellion surprised him, as did the mix of undigested morsels of flesh and food he regurgitated. He hated wasting prey, even if it proved too corrupt to nourish him. Especially, among other things, an enemy's heart, as he judged by the meat on the sidewalk and his reaction to it.

  Alioune continued when he came back on the phone. "We heard what happened in the Bronx. It's on the news.”

  “What happened in the Bronx?"

  "Well, it sounded like you. Did you take care of our package?"

  "What package?"

  Kueur sighed dramatically into the phone. "Tonton B`eb`ete, why don't you come by.... We have a fresh pot of palava and mint tea."

  "I never called you tonight?"

  "Non, Tonton, you did not."

  "I think I'll go home. I'm very tired for some reason.”

  “Will we see you soon?"

  The music of her voice raised his mood. The Beast rose, happy to bask in her attention. A police siren blared nearby.

  "Yes, Kueur. I'll see you soon."

  "Good. Maybe we can get away. It's been so long since we went on a vacation, even if it's only for a weekend." Max hung up. The idea did not sound bad.

  He wondered what they would hunt together.

  Part Two

  The Beast That Was Max

  Chapter One

  "No," Alioune replied. She met Max's gaze without flinching, letting her sweetly seductive African-French accent take the edge from her denial. "We do not want her. Not now. Not like this. Not from you."

  "But you said you were interested in her," Max protested. "I brought her just for you. I haven't touched her. Not a bit."

  The four of them sat in silence for a few moments. Nicole, sandwiched between the twins Alioune and Kueur on the couch, stared out the ten-foot window behind Max. The crimson sunset warming his back and suffusing the vast loft with the red of a fresh wound also colored her pale face and tinted her blond hair. But her eyes were as dull as the waters of the Hudson River twenty stories below. As empty as the expressions on the twins.

  Max held his hands out in a pleading gesture. "Is it because she's sedated? The drug will wear off in a few hours. Put her in the Box," he said, with a nod to the open door leading to the soundproofed room next to the twins' bedchamber. "When she comes to, she won't remember where she is or how she got here. She'll have no idea what's going on. We can play any game we want with her. I have other drugs, mixtures. From the rain forests. The sea. To heighten the experience for everyone. In the meantime, we can sit, have dinner, relax. We haven't talked about Paris in a long time. We can reminisce. You can tell me about Dakar again, and Morocco, and what you did to the crew of the freighter that brought you to—"

  "Tonton B`eb`ete," Kueur said, putting her elbows on her knees as she leaned forward.

  Max's heart jumped at the old name; at the play of muscles under Kueur's smooth, golden brown skin; at the flash of affection in her voice. He remembered long ago feeling their weight as he bounced them one on each thigh during his visits to Lyc`ee. Remembered the heat of their bodies as they snuggled up against him, and the heat of their lips when they kissed him. Sweetly, innocently. Not a hint of forbidden passion. Not a stirring of hunger for illicit pleasure. That had always been for others. Never for their Uncle Beast.

  More than ever, Max, and the Beast that was his hunger, wanted them. Needed them. And the special thing they did between them that he saw only in the eyes of their lovers, before they disappeared.

  There was nothing in the world left for him to taste, except for his beloved twins. He tottered on the edge of a precipice, emotions and appetites giving way under him, drawing him closer to falling over the edge into unknown territory.

  "Tonton B`eb`ete," Kueur called again, waving her long finger to catch his attention. "It is very thoughtful of you to bring her. We are grateful for your kindness. But, Tonton, what you are doing is wrong. We're sorry, but we cannot accept your gift."

  "You're afraid your friends will wonder about her disappearance. Think of our flirtation at the Carlisle party. Investigate. Discover my hand, my tracks, and trace her back here." Max shook his head. He paced back and forth in front of the sofa on which the three women sat. "I may be old, but I haven't lost my skills. Do you remember how I took you by surprise that first time, in the Bois? No one, not even the gypsies, ever caught you like that. I was the one who showed you the lure-and-trap trick. Who do you still call for your disposal needs, if not your old Tonton? Do you think I can no longer run with my little adopted nieces? Trust me, please."

  "Why do you do this?" Alioune asked. She sat back, long legs crossed, hands in her lap. Her almond-shaped eyes bored into Max from someplace far away. Farther away than where the twins' Senegalese father and Vietnamese mother had been born.

  Words caught in Max's throat. He became aware of standing with his mouth open and turned to look out the window, and close his mouth with dignity.

  "If we wanted Nicole, we would seduce her ourselves," Alioune continued. "She is your payment, no? For what, our bodies? Is that all that drives you? Lust? Appetite?"

  Max turned back to face them. "No. No, my babies. I do this out of love for you. To please you. To deepen the bond that's kept us together all these years."

  Kueur stood. She came to Max, gripped his shoulder. Her musk scent, spiced with curry from the lamb she'd had for dinner, made his heart beat faster, his stomach churn. Warmth flushed through his groin. "Tonton, you will destroy what we already have if you insist on pushing this woman on us."

  "Do you want me to send her away. Is that it?" Max brushed past Kueur, eager to escape her smell. He grabbed Nicole's arm and pulled her up. Alioune's scent, rich and exotic and exciting like her sister's, enveloped him and he hesitated, stared at the woman still sitting on the sofa. Like a wild animal caught between two hunters, he glanced back and forth between the twins. Wanting them. Aching to turn, snarling and raging, and take them. Use them. Throw them away.

  But he was their Tonton B`eb`ete.

  He could not bring himself to tear away the seductively cut silk robes draping their lean, wiry models' bodies. He dared not taste the salty dampness of their private darkness, or feel the strength of their bodies struggling against his. The warm, electric texture of their skin, the shock of their touch, were snapshot memories he shivered at the dream of exploring any further.

  They were his only family. They did not share blood, or flesh, or appetites. But the spirit of the predator lived in them. Spoke to him. Ever since that first time in the Bois de Boulogne, when he'd seen what they did, what they were, he'd felt the bond of kinship. And in their way, the twins felt the bond, as well. They'd followed him after his visits to the Lyc`ee, where he'd put them to learn what he could not teach. They'd seen him satisfy the Beast that was his hunger for sensation, for stimulation of mind and body and soul. They knew exactly why they called him their Uncle Beast.

  They loved him. As much as they had, and could, ever love anyone. And he loved them, as well. Alioune and Kueur. His solitary treasures. The shadows of his spirit. His reflections caught and shaped by some kind of magic mirror, better than him, closer to perfe
ction. He could not, would not take them. He would sooner kill himself.

  The depth of his passion surprised him. The Beast complained, unaccustomed to Max's drifting attention. The terrain of his inner life had suffered transformation since he recently found himself in the Bronx, surviving what his employers told him was a custodial assignment that had ended in a massacre. Frustrated by the new territory of himself, rage shot through him.

  He slapped Nicole's face. The woman's body jerked. He let her go, and she took a few stumbling steps back.

  "Go home," he commanded. "Sleep. Forget everything. You have been ill, feverish. This has been a nightmare. You will return to your life, and tell no one of your foolish dreams."

  Nicole straightened, turned, walked unsteadily to the vestibule leading to the building's elevator. When the automatic doors had shut and the locks clicked back into place, Max turned to Alioune.

  "There. Happy? I offer to give you something precious, and what do you do with it? Throw it away. Unless. . .." Rage dissipated, leaving a terrifying emptiness not even the Beast or a murderous riot of violence could fulfill. Stunned, he looked to Kueur, who had drifted to the window and was staring at the sun sinking into New Jersey.

  A premonition chilled him, rattled the Beast. "Unless things have changed? And you didn't want to tell me? Something has happened, a disease, an accident, and you can no longer—"

  "We have not changed," Kueur said. "But you have."

  "Well, and what's wrong with that? What's wrong with giving instead of taking? It's all I've ever done. I could've easily taken that woman for myself. Consumed her. Feasted on the pleasures she had to give, on her blood, on her flesh. But no. I made her a gift to you. To show my love."

  "We know you love us," said Alioune. "In your way. You don't need to drag home your kill like a cat to show your feeling for us. Unless something in you has changed. Unless you want something more than what we have always given each other."