The Skunge

by Barr, Jeff

  Ten nights after the return from Nasana, he stood in front of the mirror, staring. He had lost too much weight; he had never been bulky, but now each bone and muscle stood out in stark relief. Veins coiled and bunched along his arms and the lines of his torso. He ran his hands over his stomach, tracing the edges of his abdominal muscles with his fingers, hardly feeling the ragged nails, bitten to the quick. He rarely ate, yet was never hungry.

  His boyfriend Nick would have loved Christian like this—he had always had a thing for the thin young twinks, the younger and skinnier the better.

  He prodded at his belly, wincing at a spot of pain. He traced his fingers over a lump just under his sternum. It felt spongy, then hard, then spongy again. He prodded, feeling it give an inch before springing back. Something pushed out from under the skin of his back, and he whirled to stare over his shoulder at the mirror. Another bump, pointed like an accusing finger, arose and subsided. He turned back to face the mirror, eyes wide with shock, brow sheened with sweat. Another long, protruding bump, like a leech, extended outward from the flesh of his belly. Then, when the movement dipped lower, panic bubbled up his throat. He dropped his towel. One of his testicles lumped and bulged with movement, like a sac filled with worms. As he watched, it grew to three times its size, pulsing and throbbing. He whimpered. Terror sweat ran down his neck. He reached down with trembling fingers, and just before he touched himself, a bolt of screaming pain ripped through his stomach.

  Something was inside his stomach. He felt it moving, shifting, and growing. He shook his head at his reflection, at the strange bulges and agonizing coiling. His stomach tore open with a sound like thick wet cloth. Long, weeping gashes opened like red mouths, and in the churned red meat of his gut, pale shapes wriggled like enormous worms. No, not worms: fingers. Fingers green with rot and tipped with long, cracked nails painted orange and black. He drew in breath to scream, and could pull no air into his lungs. Which was odd; he could see his lungs past the fingers, and they looked as pink and firm as a pair of good lamb chops. Katrina's hands tore free with a final, horrible squelch. They began tearing gobbets of bloody meat from his chest. Blood spattered the mirror in idiot scrawls. Her face pushed close to the surface, and she bared her broken teeth at him through his own rent flesh. Green and yellow fluids spattered her face, painting her blackened teeth with glaring color. The bathroom echoed with the squish of meat and the splatter of blood. She began to emerge from him, like a blood-engorged moth from a cocoon of flesh. He threw his head from side-to-side, the tendons standing out like steel cables in his neck, his fingernails peeling back against the porcelain of the sink. His body jerked and spasmed, thrown from side to side by her struggles as she clawed her way out of his body. He screamed soundlessly as she heaved her way out of him, twisting in his gut like a worm in an apple. She turned, and reached for his face with grave-raddled fingers.

  He awoke on the floor of the bathroom, the tile cold and dry against his naked flesh. No blood, no murdered girl. Nothing but his rasping breath.

  His phone buzzed, and he reached for it with shaking fingers. A text message. Even though the number was an unknown, Christian could practically hear Skin's cold, grinning voice. Let's talk about ur movie career, funboy.

  They met at a generic franchise coffee-shop downtown. Like many others in Wichita, it was a well-known hook-up spot for local gay men. The place was full of well-muscled, shorn-haired young men and burly, bearded dudes in tight t-shirts and cargo pants. Skin stood out—too hungry, too desperate, too dirty. He sneered at the looks he received and ordered nothing, only kicked up his mud-caked boots on the nearest settee and eyed anyone who came too close.

  Christian purchased a Chai, nodding at a few of the other men, and sat down with Skin. He leaned close so he wouldn't be overheard; the chemical stink baking off of Skin turned his stomach. He pushed away his tea. If anything, Skin looked skinnier and more lunatic than he did at Tunguska.

  "Where is it?" Christian kept his voice pitched low. "Tell me you brought it."

  "Of course," Skin said. He flicked dirty fingers at their surroundings. "A nice place? Very clean, very bright, very safe for you." Skin sucked his teeth, eyeing Christian's cashmere sweater, the jeans glimmering with expensive thread. He cocked his head at Christian's unshaven face and uncombed hair. The younger man's skin, normally lustrous with health, hung from his bones. "You look like dog-shit, my friend. Old dog-shit. Not sleeping well?" He smiled like a vulture. "And tell me: what have you brought for me?"

  Christian took a deep breath. "Here's your goddamn money." Christian gestured to the leather messenger bag beside him.

  "Such a good boy. What a wonderful wife you'll make one day."

  "Fuck you."

  Skin slid a plastic case across the table. "And for you." He smiled, displaying teeth etched with decay. A cold sore next to his mouth split and oozed pus.

  Christian opened the case and stared at the disk inside. "What the fuck is this?" Christian looked around, checking to see if anyone had heard. His pulse jumped in this throat like a live wire. "This was not the deal," he hissed. "The deal was the camera, all the memory cards, and any copies. Everything. Not a DVD."

  Skin leaned back, watching Christian under half-lidded eyes."I changed my mind. Maybe I want more than just your money."

  Christian rubbed at his forehead, like he felt a headache forming there. "What are you talking about? I brought your money: give me my things. Now!" His voice was rising again. No one looked, but they very carefully did not look.

  "Shh, shh, little girl," Skin said, rolling his eyes, mocking Christian's fear. "I have a deal for you."

  "If that video gets out, it won't just be me in jail, it'll be you, too."

  "Of course. And you know that someone like you will last maybe…" he leaned forward to pick a bit of fluff from Christian's sweater. "A few days. A few long, painful days." He took a swig from Christian's coffee, and belched resoundingly. "But! All is not lost, my friend. Like I said, a deal."

  "Good." Christian swallowed around a lump in his throat. He felt sweat jeweling his forehead. "Now what do you want?"

  Skin smiled his cadaverous smile and leaned in close. "I want to become you."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Christian's apartment smelled, and Skin wrinkled his nose in disgust. The place was a mess, and there was a disgusting, sewer-like smell, like a clogged toilet.

  "Jesus, what is that stink?" He said. He tracked muddy boots over the entryway runner, glaring around. Filthy dishes moldered in the sink, and flies buzzed around a mound of trash bags. "I thought you queers were supposed to be neat and tidy."

  "My boyfriend is out," Christian said. He fiddled in the kitchen, rattling drawers and slamming cabinets. Even in the few days since their last meeting, Christian had deteriorated further; he looked like a walking corpse.

  Skin made himself comfortable on the sofa. He used the toe of his motorcycle boot to pry open a takeout box, and grimaced at the maggots squirming in the leftover food.

  "It's time to clean up, man." Skin lit a cigarette. The stinking air of the apartment was perfectly still, as if no one had lived here for weeks. Christian came out of the kitchen, walking stiffly, uncomfortable with Skin in his home.

  "Let's get this done," he said. He set a beer in front of Skin and drank from his own, grimacing as he sat down.

  "Looks like you hurt your ass. Did you get it pounded too hard?"

  "Just tell me what you want." Christian picked sullenly at the label on his beer bottle.

  "I know that Mik arranged for you to go to California. He planned for you to take the video, the contracts, all of that shit."

  Christian shook his head. "No. He meant to, but he didn't have time. And of course, I haven't seen him since—" he cleared his throat, "since that day. I don't have that stuff. I don't even have the plane ticket he promised me."

  Skin stared at him a long moment, then smiled and lit another cigarette off of the first. "I don't believe you. You've
never worked with Mik before, right?"

  "I met him through some friends—"

  "I've worked with him plenty. Mik doesn't leave things undone. He never would have set up that shoot unless he had everything lined up." Skin began ticking off points with his fingers, cigarette ashes falling like dandruff. "He wouldn't risk mail or courier, or online where hackers could intercept it and release it for free. So I know he had his plans set. He wouldn't go himself—he has a record there. He wouldn't ask me, because—" He gestured to himself, the leather jacket, the shaved head, the neck tattoos. "So that leaves you. He doesn't trust anyone else not to sell it out from under him. We're the only ones with any investment. So, I don't believe you."

  "I can't help you with that."

  Skin reached under his jacket, and pulled out the big gold gun. He held it on his lap like a poisonous pet snake. "You will help me." He leaned forward, his empty eyes boring into Christian's. "You only want the movie to destroy it, and you only want to go to Cali to escape what we—what you and I and Mik—did. I will take the film to California and get rich. We look enough alike. I can grow out my hair, dye it, cover my tattoos, take some of your clothes, and no one will question me. You can either help me, or you can die. No matter what, I am going to do this, so all you can do is hurt yourself." He tapped the gun with one blunt finger. "Now, which way would you like?"

  Christian was as still as a painting. Skin marveled at his resolve. Was one dead bitch worth the risk of a bullet in his pretty mouth? There was nothing keeping them from going on with their lives. The only loose end was Mik; if he ever decided to come back, that could cause a problem. And of course, the matter of the girl's family. Surely, someone had been looking since she wandered away with Mik the crocodile. But none of that was his concern; he would be far away and forgotten by then, living in paradise. He would have a pool, and swim every day under the warm California sun.

  Christian's eyes stayed fixed on the gun, a bead of sweat forming at his hairline. He looked pale and shaky and sick. Despite that, Skin was beginning to believe that Christian might hold out on him. That would be a shame; Skin would have to shoot him. He had been looking forward to tipping off the pigs as soon as he got off the plane at LAX.

  While he waited for Christian to decide, he daydreamed about living in California; fucking those gorgeous blond girls, eating burgers every meal, and living like a gangster. He'd heard the drugs there would blow the roof off of your skull, and he was looking forward to that a great deal. His head swam with anticipation.

  Christian emitted a broken sigh, like a man contemplating a long uphill journey, and rose to his feet. At that moment, Skin knew he had won. The little pansy was on his way to fetch the papers, Skin would have the movie—he'd have to borrow or steal bus fare but after that—then the world would be his. It was, after all, the American dream. He wanted to laugh out loud. He rose to his feet, and had to reach back to steady himself on the couch—suddenly, he was having trouble standing. His brain and body seemed to have stopped communicating. Christian brought something from behind his back. Skin squinted, unable to focus, but finally, he made out the shape. A meat tenderizer. And then it was whistling toward him, the studded steel head looming in his vision. A burst of black, filled with shooting red sparks, and then nothing.

  He came to with his lungs burning. He choked and coughed, trying to catch his breath. His body felt sunburnt, both inside and out. His sinuses burned, and he thought he could feel a trickle of blood seeping from his right nostril.

  Christian stood in the doorway, looking down at him. There was something different about the boy—some new, elusive knowledge in his eyes. Christian held the big gold gun trained at Skin's face. His arm didn't shake in the least.

  Skin shook his head. "You drugged me, you fucking candy-ass." It was a feeling he knew well enough—he snorted heroin or crushed Oxy whenever he couldn't score enough meth to stay high. Meth, uppers, downers, heroin; Skin was an equal-opportunity junkie.

  Christian said nothing.

  "Heh, I admit it, you got the drop on me, man," Skin said, his voice sandpapered. "But, no big deal. In fact, forget about what I said before, OK? We can work something else out. Just get me out of here, and…and…" He finally looked around himself. The bathroom. He was sitting in an antique claw-foot bathtub, in a foot of greenish-yellow liquid and—

  "Fuck. Fuck. Hey, get me out of here, man!" Half-submerged in the sludge at the bottom of the tub was a dead man. Skin was sitting on an eviscerated corpse. The smell of the decomposing body, which had seeped into the apartment, suddenly filled his lungs. The man's ribcage had been ripped open, and something was growing there. It had sprouted from the glistening nest of bones, and spread itself over the man's face and down his arms. Skin's thoughts ran together, turning to mush, trying to translate what he saw into something he could understand. "What is this?"

  Christian smiled like a sphinx. "You don't know it yet because you're too much of a psycho to notice the difference, but we brought something back with us from that little town. The girl, she cursed us." He waved the gun, and Skin's eyes followed the unblinking eye of the barrel like a shooting star. "Look at what it made me do. It made me kill my friend. My lover."

  Funny, Skin thought, that for a queer boy, he sounded as passionless and devoid of empathy as the hardest street thug. Maybe he had misjudged the kid—and now, he was paying for that lapse. The burning in his nostrils and lungs was getting worse, caused by whatever caustic shit Christian had dumped over the body; the yellow sludge had already begun eating away at his Operation Ivy t-shirt.

  Christian continued. "And, knowing what a street rat you are, you've hidden that movie away. You wouldn't trust anyone other than yourself. So I can guess it won't be showing up any time soon. And even if it did, I'll be in California. Mik did buy me a ticket—first class. When I get to LA, I'll throw in a pebble in the ocean for you."

  "Hey, shit man, let's talk about this." Even as he spoke, the world began draining away like water down a pipe. The drugs and the fumes were working on him, swallowing his consciousness in a rising tide. While he was groping for something to say, some deal to cut, he passed out, his head falling back into the fruiting body of Nick's corpse.

  Christian smiled, a mercenary gesture that failed to touch his eyes. He removed the clip for the gun and dropped the empty weapon on the floor. He carefully tacked up the sound-proofing foam he had purchased, rearranged Skin's limp form, and boarded up the bathroom so no one could get in—or out. He whistled while he packed his bags, gathered his papers, and left.

  The stealthy sound of something slopping around in the tub awoke Skin this time. His skin was on fire with the fumes, his eyes burned, and he coughed so hard that huge black spots speckled his vision. Within seconds he came to two realizations: one, his right hand was now shackled to a corpse. Two, the corpse was moving. Or, at least, something was moving; the toxic sludge of Christian's decomposing lover shifted and bubbled. He pulled on the handcuffs, and the body stirred again. The eyes were open and staring, and as he watched, the mouth opened slowly, forced from within. He started to scream.

  The neighbors heard nothing.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Christian had been in California a week, and already he hated it. The tanned good looks, the quick, oily speech, the bland west coast accents. The people here in San Fernando Valley were as beautiful and uncaring as mayflies. Everyone was either blond and tan or dyed-black, artfully disheveled, and as pale as a rain cloud—perhaps, he thought, to make up for the lack of any in the sky. Unless you counted the sickly orange smog that painted the Porn Valley sky, the skies were blue and blameless every single day. He missed Kansas, and he knew he would never be back.

  He sat and smoked, playing idle pocket pool through his shorts, thinking about the night before. He was having trouble remembering just what he had done, out there on the decadent streets of Los Angeles. It had left him sexually sated, but something about it nagged at him. Even with the two Viagra
he'd popped a half-hour ago, he knew he was going to have trouble getting wood today. His stomach growled, and he wondered idly when he had last eaten.

  Finally the director, Monty, arrived. People started hustling, shaking off the languorous California afternoon mood. The director gathered the two starlets and wandered over to Christian.

  "Hey, guy, how's it goin'. This little blond honey is Sugar. And that one," he pointed to the black-haired one, "is Jynx Spin. Go ahead and get to know each other."

  "Hey." The brunette, who looked more like fifteen than eighteen, didn't look up from her phone. Her nails were long, squared off, and tipped with hot pink rhinestones. Christian's eyes followed them as they danced over the phone's tiny keyboard. Monty wandered away, beating his tablet computer against his thigh and shouting about the lighting set up. The director's mustache carried a fine dusting of leftover cocaine, and Christian could not drag his eyes away from the way each flake caught the sun and sparkled: blue and red and pink and gold—the colors of California.

  Christian turned to Sugar and a bolt of panic shot through him. For a moment he thought the girl was Katrina, back from the land of the dead. Blond hair hanging over her shoulders, long legs. The memory of Katrina as she gasped out her last bloody breaths welled up out of his mind like groundwater. Katrina's eyes, the churned horror of her face, the tears tracking down her skin, the blood dripping. All of it appeared as a ghostly overexposure laid overtop Sugar's face.

  Then she turned to face him, and her dollar-green eyes bored into his.

  Christian pushed the lingering images of Katrina away and stood. "Name's Christian. Nice to meet you." They shook hands bloodlessly.

  "Sugar," she said. "Good to meet you." There was something curious and bold in her eyes that made Christian want to look away,

  The director strode back into the room, rubbing at his nose and sniffling. "OK people, let's go! T-minus ten minutes to magic hour, let's make it count and get out of here on time!"