Futile Efforts

by Piccirilli, Tom

  Of course, a moment happens (and quickly passes, so quickly passes) when what stands in for reality in the rest of the universe knocks hard at the door, and then knocks it down and, hell, there we are!

  No one does the great, narcissistic mind fuck better than Tom Piccirilli. Know why? Because he finds all of us—the dweebs, the nerds, the assholes and the go-getters, the philosophers, poets and pug owners—endlessly fascinating. (Hmmm…somewhere in that little list is Pic himself!) And also because Pic is one of the best writers (genre or otherwise) in…existence.

  Read. Enjoy. Read again. Get real!

  --T.M. Wright, author of THE EYES OF THE CARP, COLD HOUSE, and BONE SOUP

  With Eyes Averted

  Church is at a party and has no idea who's throwing it or how he got there.

  Okay, so—

  The Satanists are on the couch, holding court to a neo-gothic bunch sitting on the floor wearing leather, white pancake mix, black lipstick, and contact lenses to make them look like androgynous movie vampires. Only the most alienated can form such a tight and conformed clique. If you try to say hello they'll chop you to pieces, they've got razors under their tongues. Many of them are tattooed with spider-webs, twining roses, ravens on their necks and wrists. Church can't help himself and begins to drift over. He's got a thing for girls who look dead.

  Wands of eucalyptus incense add a sweet and cloying perfume to the place. The Satanist leaders are a transgender couple who've gone under the knife a number of times each. There's a certain simplicity to their passions when you get down to it. Church can't remember who started out as what or how many times they've gone back and forth, but he still recognizes Asriel and Mova. They're in full witchy-poo regalia tonight: ebony robes, headgear with little plastic horns, and about twelve pounds of silver jewelry clanging around their necks. Pentacles, sun wheels, pendants with Latin phrases scrawled backwards on their broad faces.

  If they knew anything about the black arts they'd realize that true occultists don't give any respect to Christianity, not even by inverting crosses or spitting on the wafer. You give credence to that which you directly oppose.

  Sure, all right.

  The kids are in awe, alert, listening raptly. A fawn-colored pug is lying in the foyer on its side, eyes open but snoring loudly. The curve of its pudgy belly quivers with each breath, and the dog eyes Church suspiciously. Out in the den, a television blares in Cantonese.

  The dead chicks pay no attention, and Church feels humbled by their indifference. Sometimes you can get shot down before they even glance at you. It's the kind of thing that makes you want to join the Foreign Legion.

  He roams and finds a group of drunk frat boys staring at the widescreen television, watching the DVD of a Shaw Brothers martial arts film. Church recognizes Chen Kwan Tai and Gordon Liu flinging themselves about doing first rate wire fu, but he can't recall the title of the flick.

  One of the guys—burly in a gray college sweatshirt with the sleeves torn off, crushed corn chips sticking to his wet neck—looks up and says to Church, "Someone's looking for you."

  "You sure they wanted me?"

  "Yeah."

  "How do you know?"

  "What?"

  "I've never met you. How do you know me?"

  "You're the weirdo who's been standing in the corner all night."

  Their dialogue ends as if a guillotine's come down. A tension packs and occupies the room but Church isn't sure where it's coming from, who it's directed towards.

  He's got to stop drinking when he's on his meds, it leaves him open to these kinds of stupid situations.

  The plastic bottle remains in his pocket but the pills are gone. Has he been handing them out again? He does that sometimes when he's bored. Gives them to children in the park, telling them the pink candy capsules will make them lighter than air…which they do. Boys and girls lifting off out of their tiny sneakers, flying around and waving goodbye to their parents. Funny as hell to watch folks screaming and sprinting over the lawns as the chubby tots loop above the treetops.

  Did he feed them to the dog? He looks over at Pugsy Malone, who watches him carefully.

  The pug's lips curl into a sneer. A rough voice issues forth and says, "Hey, see the cute ankles on that hot little patootie over there? No, the other one, the redhead in the micro-skirt? She's got these three inch heels on? I'm making a move on that right now. Watch me go."

  Yes, he fed them to the dog.

  Church has to quit doing things like that.

  Malone clambers to his feet and snuffles his way over to the redheaded girl, who glances at the dog and breaks into a luscious laughter. She leans over and makes a baby face at him, says, "Oh look! He's so ugly he's absolutely adorable."

  Malone freezes in shock like somebody's just threatened to have him neutered. A whine breaks from his throat—it's the same noise Church makes whenever a woman turns him down on the dance floor. Malone blinks and cocks his head, snarls savagely and lunges for the girl's throat.

  Thank Christ it's a pug and he's got no real snout, just this blunt mouth with tiny ineffective teeth, slobbering against her cleavage. Sort of a turn-on, in that disgusting under-the-counter bestiality porno sort of way. She shrieks and flings her drink in the air, and her two friends start waving their hands about their faces, helplessly prancing in circles.

  With a sigh, Church rushes over, grabs the dog in mid-air, and waltzes him out of the room.

  Asriel and Mova are in the middle of chanting. "…here there be forces beyond the kith of men…" Sounds about right. The Goth kids are damn near quivering with excitement, nerve-wracked and waiting for dark magic to crash through the roof and swallow their commonplace lives. Hellspawn generals wear velvet blouses, you know. They speak with aristocratic accents, have long curly locks. They'd never hurt you.

  They can sense the bowels of hell opening up just for them. They think it might be fun to fuck on a grave and have skeletal hands come out of the ground and drag them down into the mud. As if somehow death might actually make them better than everybody else.

  We all need a dream.

  If any of them actually saw the inside of the ICU ward they'd shit themselves and run for Mama's apron. Cancer victims coughing up their own lungs. The humming, beeping, ticking, and endless buzzing of machines that breathed for the ill and the elderly. Checking out the brain scans that graphed your thoughts and lack of conscience, the gray tumors that chewed their way through the raw egg of your brain. Cysts that crawled down the sterile hallways looking for a chest cavity to call home.

  "Put me down," Malone says.

  "Don't bite the ladies, Pugsy. You'll get us both in trouble."

  "Screw off, man, I used to have an even, stable temperament until you sent me on this trip."

  Church makes it out the front door carrying the dog and realizes the party is being held way beyond his usual channels. There's nothing but forest around, and only now he notices that the place is an upscale log home, nothing but glass and lights and natural wood. A 14-point rack of antlers has been nailed over the immense front bay window. Church stares down the winding gravel driveway that twists and vanishes into undergrowth and darkness.

  "Damn it," he whispers, trying to keep the mewling out of his voice. "Now where the hell am I?"

  The moon slices through a wedge of adjacent hills, and he sees the silver outline of a small lake nearby. A storm brews in the air, and with the electrical pulse gradually growing stronger he allows himself to be lured away. Sooty clouds roil against the mercurial moonlight, tussling in the night sky.

  He checks his watch and finds it's gone. The normally pale flesh of his wrist is as browned as the rest of his arm.

  Clearly he's been off for a while.

  This is something new anyhow. He's never been away quite this long before, however long it's been. Church tries to swallow down the agitation that's creeping up in him, but he can't get rid of it.

  There's a heaviness in his chest. He always thought tha
t when he finally went over the big edge there'd be a magnificent sensation of relief. Maybe he's just not all the way out of his head yet.

  "I asked you to put me down," Malone says.

  "Sorry."

  He drops the pug and watches it saunter down the driveway, pissing on vines and clumps of leaves. Church turns and looks back through the bay window and sees Asriel and Mova slitting open their palms and letting their blood drip into an ornate goblet.

  The cup appears ancient, as if it's sat in the dining halls of hoary kings—from back when witches perched on the hearth brewing potions and, you know, fucking around with Macbeth. Midget skulls encircle the base, and the handle is embellished and crafted from metal bodies twining together. Diminutive faces contort in agony and perverse pleasure. Cripes. Amazing what you can pick up on eBay for twenty bucks plus shipping.

  The knife they use in the ritual is a dagger rimmed with fake jewels. Glass opals, emeralds, and rubies reflect the vapid expressions of the adoring Gothers who can't wait to get their lips on the goblet. This might even be more revolting than the farm animal antics porn.

  As the blade is passed around, the kids' eyes ignite with the dream of alchemy, as if this is the only way to find God, any god at all. They each poke their palms and ooh and aah as a drop or two wells and spills into the cup.

  One leather-deather is done up in silk and satin, with a well-groomed devil's van dyke, wearing fake fangs he's had specially made by his dentist. He's about to burst into tears because he can't bring himself to cut his own skin.

  Mova moves to him, rubs his back, speaks calming words the way any good Satanist should. The tiny plastic horns on Mova's head are a little crooked so that one juts at eight o'clock, the other at eleven.

  Lucifer Jr. is still struggling to puncture his flesh. He's one of the old school oths, pushing forty with threads of white working through his widow's peak, and he's never gone near a tattoo shop or piercing parlor. The tears plummet down his cheeks and hang in the waxed, properly curled ends of his mustache. His collar is dark with sweat and dusted with salt.

  The dead kids are caught up in the moment. With rapid-fire breaths they await the drawing of blood. A few lick their lips, getting up the guts to drink. You've got to give it to them, they're certainly honest in their passion. That counts for something. Church grimaces thinking about the swill of inherent disease in the goblet. The recessed genes, flakes of black nail polish, the STDs, the genetic pre-disposition towards gloss and lace.

  Malone rears up, is barely able to get his chin over the sill, takes in the scene and says, "These are some seriously fucked up people."

  Church nods.

  "She's calling you."

  "What?"

  "Over there. In the water."

  "Oh Christ. Who is it?"

  "Go on."

  Moving with a more resolute purpose than he's perhaps ever felt before in his life, Church wafts down to the shore of the lake, where a beautiful woman swims.

  Well now.

  She is luminescent, luxurious, star white, and nude in her complete splashing madness. Insanity can't hide behind a disguise to someone who can smell it. She sways her arms and kicks out, arching through her own ripples and waves.

  Exotica. Maybe this is only a dream made real by the force of his own will—it's happened like that on occasion. You can find what you're looking for if you're hunting for the right thing. Usually he's not, which is what brings him to parties like this.

  She is as full of sexuality as he is stuffed with carefully folded and compressed layers of fear.

  Here we go.

  She glows in the lake with a healthy, enormously erotic energy. It weaves and braids around her like the glistening coils of blonde hair. Fog rises from the water and wraps itself around her throat—once, twice, spiraling tighter—as the gust of her breath parts it, gently swirls and takes it in, eases it across her beautiful chest and blows it back into the twilight.

  "Were you looking for me?" he asks.

  "Yes," she tells him.

  "Why?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "Sure."

  Of course it does. This is when you tend to hit the wall, when you pretend that such things don't actually carry weight. Church snags the inside of his cheek with his teeth. She senses his resistance and coos, "I want you."

  He tries not to say Ohboy with that frantic excited lilt, but he can't help himself. He can so rarely help himself these days.

  "Ohboy."

  "What do you need?" she asks.

  It's a big question, even more mammoth for him than most folks. How do you put your desires into words on a night like this?…you have to figure out your need, maybe that's where the problem is.

  Somehow, Church knows, he went off the rails in a slow but steady progression from the time he was about four.

  "Do you need to make love to me?" she asks, kicking back in a savage sweep so the lake water bubbles and boils around her. She keeps her legs open for a moment, showing him the glory of her goodies.

  "That would be nice," he tells her, aroused and feeling the standard dirtiness fill his mind, the chilling sweat prickling his scalp. There's a dock twenty yards away, and he imagines himself rushing towards it, taking off his clothes as he moves with sudden and complete grace, flinging his sneakers into the woods, catching the rhythm as he touches the first board, then running faster and slicing into the air in a power dive that takes him into the dark.

  Until he rises from the murky depths to meet her on the lake's surface, clouds of mist in her hair.

  But it's already going bad. Church has a pretty good intuition when it comes to naked gorgeous women in the water who want to make love to his pudgy ass.

  Something is amiss. Ohboy.

  He glances at the dock again and sees a black blur of subtle motion beside it. He takes a step towards it, and the girl, back-lit with moonlight fire, harshly whispers, "No, don't go over there. Stay with me."

  "Huh?"

  "Please, I want you to stay here with me."

  Jesus, now she's pleading?

  There are times when you call down the wrath of fate by not looking just a little farther to the left. Or taking the time to check under the bed for the dwarf holding a scythe, waiting to cut you down at the ankles. Or looking in the closet to see if her crazed lesbian lover is in there with a garrote. Or investigating the slight reflection near the dock, the odd suggestion of circling movement. Just for not averting your eyes.

  Church frowns down at the girl again, knowing he draws these kinds of troubles to himself.

  She grins and aims her nipples at him like blow darts. It doesn't take much to ruin a perfectly wonderful fantasy. He slips off and carefully makes his way over the rocks and weeds to the dock, wondering how it could've gone so wrong so quickly. In some strange fashion he always asks for too much.

  The corpse in scuba gear spins in a slow eddy. One flipper glides along the surface tension of the water, moving back and forth as though the diver were still alive. The guy's rubber suit is torn in places, great jagged rips as if a shark has mauled him. The girl begins to languidly swim closer, giggling as the fog swells and lolls. She clicks her teeth loudly, repeatedly. Church tries to hold back a scream but can only half restrain himself. A wounded goat's bleat escapes him.

  "I want you," she tells him.

  "Why me?"

  "I need you, honey bunch."

  "Uh huh."

  "Get in here! Swim with me!"

  "Play with your friend some more, he won't complain."

  "Come back," she insists. "I want to bear your children. Hundreds of them. Thousands!"

  "Ohboy!"

  Church scrambles up the path towards the cabin, groaning and grunting, tasting blood and wondering if he's actually dying somewhere, gut-shot, dreaming all of this. He's been in jail before but he can't recall for what. Did he used to rumble and knock assholes through plate glass windows? Did he ever rob banks?

  As usual, he's screwed
up what should have been simple. A wrong turn in the woods and now he's lost, wandering through the brush and having the shit scratched out of him by cat-claw briars. There's a light in the distance.

  A pyre has been lit against what they used to call a coven tree.

  It has to rise from the direct center of the covenstead, that area where witches draw their power, the place where natural earth energy emanates from and is at its strongest. The bonfire roars and consumes kindling, ladder-back chairs, old kitchen cabinets, torn mattresses, the widescreen TV, grandma's old steamer trunk, they're really tearing the place apart.

  You can guess at what comes next. Church catches another powerful whiff of blood. They're out there with the redheaded girl that Malone was making a move on. She's being bound to the coven tree with yellow nylon rope. He recognizes it as the sort of line you tie to the back of a boat for water-skiing.

  She's screaming and thrashing but Lucifer Jr. and the others have a good grip on her and she flails uselessly, the micro-skirt rearing to show off her thong. Lucifer Jr. squawks and throws his arm over his eyes like she's flashed him a crucifix. Church is oddly aroused by the whole display. The frat boys stand around drunkenly gawking, holding their beer cans tight to their bellies and giggling quietly to one another.

  Church may not be a hero, and he's almost certainly out of his mind, but he doesn't suffer from inertia. With a cool flood of adrenaline coursing through his temples, he bursts out of the woods and rushes forward without any idea of what he's going to do next.

  This is why you shouldn't draw your spirituality from Jackie Chan movies, unless you're willing to pay the price.

  The burning girl shouts at him, "Here, take it! Take it!"

  "Take what?"

  "The money!"

  "What money?"

  "Take it and go, please don't hurt us!"

  "Me? I'm not hurting you."

  He sees that his watch is back on his wrist and knows that things are about to get bad. He's either coming back into himself now or he's going even farther out. Which is it going to be? Which does he want it to be?

  Church blinks and abruptly he's standing in the middle of a bank, staring into the faces of terrified tellers.