Scott Nicholson Library Vol 1

by Scott Nicholson

  “Jack the Ripper,” Beth had said when I picked her up. She bought me a white carnation to put in my lapel.

  Hell, I was the Ripper. Or rather, I had been. The Insider had walked those dark foggy Whitechapel streets in 1888. The newspapers had theorized the killer must have been a surgeon, so skilled were the eviscerations. It was a skill that was the result of thousands of years of practice. Or so the Insider said.

  Beth had found a plush velvet dress, royal purple with a laced bodice and frilly neckline. Her breasts strained to pop free, and more than one Frankenstein monster dipped his heavy forehead for a closer look at the pretty flesh. Her golden-brown hair was pulled up into a tower, showing off the enticing slope of her neck. She was the perfect harlot, delectable and trashy, utterly disposable.

  She leaned against me, squeezed by the crowd. I felt the heat of her breasts even through our layered clothes. The carnation gave off sweetness as its petals were crushed.

  “Oil be yer lady for two bob ten,” she said in a bad Cockney accent.

  “Oil not rip yer too bloody bloody,” I said back.

  The band, billed as The Half-Watts, was cranking out a syncopated version of “All Along the Watchtower.” Aliens and pumpkinheads swayed drunkenly. The singer kept switching his impersonations between Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix during the few lyrics he could remember, while the frizzy-haired lead guitarist was all diddle and no bop. The junkie-faced drummer sweated behind his kit, raising his arms high, making up in show what he lacked in technique.

  Xandria’s glistening black muscles flexed as she pounded her fat strings. The whiteface made her look frightening, like a veldt goddess come to demand retribution for Colonial crimes. Beth yelled at her but Xandria’s eyes were fixed on her bass strings.

  “I think I’ll have a beer,” Little Hitler shouted over the music.

  Beth’s mouth opened in feigned shock. “I thought you were too pure for that.”

  “I’m the Ripper, not Richard. And the Ripper’s thirsty.”

  “Would you get me another while you’re at it?”

  “Sure. If I can fight my way to the keg.” I left Beth and pushed past a guy dressed as a beer can. He had Princess Leia pressed against a wall, trying to kiss her, but she was in a galaxy far, far away. Her wide pupils stared at the sagging ceiling tiles.

  The keg was on a tiny back porch that had once been screened in, but the wire mesh was more holes than screen. The air smelled of sweat and piss and reefer.

  A boy of about fourteen was pumping the keg, a goofy grin plastered across his face. He was wearing an oversized diaper and nothing else. “Hit you up, man?”

  “Sure. I need two.”

  As he filled the plastic cups, he said, “Cool costume. What are you supposed to be, an undertaker or something?”

  “Just another ordinary killer,” I said.

  “Heavy duty. Is that knife real?” he asked, pointing at the prop tucked in my belt.

  “Sure.” Confession was good for the soul, especially when nobody believed you.

  “Cool,” he said, and filled his face with beer foam.

  When I got back to the living room, Beth was gone. I looked for her, spilling beer on my rented jacket as the dancers bumped my elbows. I reached the far side of the room just as the band finished its first set. Beth’s roommate Monique was in the hallway smoking a cigarette.

  “Richard,” she said. “How ya doing?”

  Her pale face glowed. She looked like she’d gotten an early start on the beer. Rosy spots of pleasure colored her cheeks. She was dressed in ragged black, a green wart attached to her nose, a pointy hat on her head.

  “Which witch is which?” Mister Milktoast asked.

  “Just the plain old ‘wicked’ variety.”

  “You seen Beth?” I asked, but Loverboy was looking, looking, looking.

  “I think she went upstairs,” Monique said, tilting her head in that direction. “Party room.”

  Bookworm pursed my lips as his heart turned savage flips, wishing her were in a Jane Austen novel instead.

  “Listen, Richard,” she said, putting a hand on my arm before I walked away. “I’ve got to tell you something.”

  “What?” I said. Mister Milktoast was sending off warning flares but Loverboy shoved him into his closet.

  Monique’s face grew serious, her features becoming even darker than usual. “You seem like a nice guy, Richard. I’d hate to see you get hurt.”

  Hurt? Richard Allen Coldiron, feel pain? You’ve got to be kidding. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I mean, maybe it’s not my place to say,” she said, as I watched her beautiful lips form the words. “And I love Beth to death, I really do. She’s a really pleasant person at heart, but she’s totally faithless.”

  Pleasant. Fucking pleasant. I drank from one of the beers, half at one gulp. My hand trembled, making frog-eye foam.

  “It’s nothing against you, Richard. She’s been that way since I’ve known her, and we’ve roomed together for four years. I’ve seen them come and go. Literally.”

  I finished the beer and started on the other one. The two Vikings staggered past, with Baby Louie in tow. Over in the corner, a Tin Man was feeling up Princess Leia. He might as well have been seducing a log.

  “She told me she was a player,” I said.

  “Well, she is honest. But never true.”

  “What about Ted? Does he care?”

  “He’s just a number. He’s in and out faster than a door-to-door coke dealer.”

  Both cups were empty now, and I looked across the room, searching the crowd for Beth’s sweet oval face. The singer with the Edward Scissorhands hair was sitting on a speaker, nodding to the imagined beat. It was as if he didn’t exist when the band was offstage. I watched him a full thirty seconds before I saw him blink.

  “What do you care?” Little Hitler asked Monique, wanting to add the word “bitch,” but I stifled him.

  “You probably think I’m a bitch. I just thought...I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to do you a favor.”

  I wondered if she was jealous. The Insider said that all humans had their games, everybody played, everybody followed their own rules. But if she was jealous, that meant Loverboy’s instinct was dead-on. She was lying to get what she wanted.

  “Listen,” I said, leaning toward her so I could whisper. But what I was really doing was letting Loverboy sniff the clean ocean of her neck. “I could use another beer. Want to join me?”

  Monique smiled. “I’m on my sixth or seventh. But, hey, the night is young, right?”

  “Is it kosher for a witch to hang with a Ripper?”

  “You might think I’m weird. I mean, I hope you think I’m weird. But I really am a witch.”

  “A real witch?”

  “Yeah. A Wiccan. Earth worshipper, pagan, sort of a roll-your-own brand. This is a religious holiday.”

  “Are you casting a spell on me?” Loverboy asked, already forgetting Beth. But I couldn’t.

  Monique’s eyes sparkled, a diamond glint on onyx. “We believe in white magic. Whatever we give, we believe it comes back three times.”

  “Give me an orgasm and lucky you,” Loverboy said.

  She giggled, and her sleek dress shimmered around her long frame. We filled our cups at the keg. I now understood what Father liked about alcohol, the same dulling ether that Mother discovered. If I drank enough, if I numbed my brain, then there would be nothing for the Insider to probe and poke and sting. He’d be cheated of my feelings. Plus I might have a blackout and miss an important chunk of my own autobiography, which I could fill in as I wished later.

  Monique saw someone she knew and got into a sloppy conversation. I excused myself and slipped up the stairs. The party was getting its second wind. It was a giant beast ready to rise and prowl the darkness, flexing its legs and jaws for a twilight hunt, a dragon anxious to slay errant knights.

  Xandria perched at the top of the stairs. She put a Virginia Slim in her mouth
and one of her bookends stepped from the shadows to light it. “If it ain’t the average white boy,” she said with a playful sneer. “What’s up?”

  “Hi. I like your bass playing.”

  She shrugged, straining the leather straps that girded her chest. Loverboy watched her breasts rise. Mister Milktoast eyed the bookend, appalled at the mauve fingernail polish.

  “Just another skin, Richard,” Xandria said. “It helps to have a few extra personalities. Makes life interesting.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  The singer yelled at Xandria from the foot of the stairs, telling her it was time for the next set.

  “Jimmy ain’t finished yet,” she yelled back at him. She drew on her cigarette and exhaled, and the smoke joined the blue-gray layer that wafted at eye-level.

  “Have you seen Beth?” I asked.

  Xandria gave me a cold look. Then she jerked her head toward a door at the end of the hall. “Door Number Three.”

  The guitarist for the Half-Watts started strumming “Wild Horses” as the singer did a country-Cockney accent on the vocals. I walked down the hall with the same slow-motion rhythm of the song, like Jim Morrison’s pseudo-autobiographical killer in “The End.” Fuck Jim Morrison and his fake autobiography. You won’t find me floating dead in a bathtub or getting called “The Lizard King.”

  The crack under the door was dark. I knocked lightly.

  Little Hitler tumbled and twittered. He tried the handle. It was locked.

  Bookworm put my ear to the door.

  Moans.

  Little Hitler hoped they were moans of pain. But Loverboy knew better.

  Rusty bedsprings, in the rhythm of babymaking.

  Gasps came from the other side of the door.

  A whimper, a name.

  Beth’s voice, husked with passion.

  I wanted a dollar’s worth of candy. I hurried away.

  Drowning. Reaching the point where I knew I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, but the surface was too far away.

  Xandria shrugged as I passed. “What can you say? She likes drummers.”

  The Insider came out of the back room of the Bone House, where he’d been busy typing. This was even better than the crap he was making up.

  You still love the bitch, Richard. I know. I OWN your damned heart. Here’s a plate of shit. Eat.

  I stumbled down the stairs, knocking a dryer hose off a guy who was dressed as a robot. He cussed me, but I barely heard him.

  Monique was waiting by the keg. She had refilled her cup and was starting to wobble a little. She didn’t notice that my face had gone rigid. Stoned in the stone house, boned in the Bone House. Unscrewed.

  “Where you been?” she asked.

  “Talking to an old friend,” I said.

  “Did you find Beth?”

  “You didn’t tell me she likes drummers.”

  “Figured you’d better find out for yourself, before you got any . . . ideas.” Monique swayed and leaned against me. She felt good in Loverboy’s arms. I took her cup and drained it all down. The Coldiron Curse tasted sweet and bitter and made it easier to be nobody.

  “Feel like a ritual?” Loverboy asked.

  “A ritual?”

  Loverboy kissed her, quick and cruel. “Or would you rather ride my broomstick?” he whispered.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I reach to stroke your curly hair, so soft and stark against the pillow. The moonlight spills into the room like an ogling eye, making sharp and jagged shadows. Richard’s top hat is on the cluttered desk and your witch’s dress hangs limply over the back of a chair, like a shadow whose air has escaped.

  You look at me with open eyes, deep eyes, eyes that run across distant moors. I lean close and feel the warm breath from your nostrils. You don’t flinch. Trust is such a foolish thing. Will you never learn?

  Our lips touch. Sensations swarm. The edges of awareness cackle with electricity. Tiny hairs stand on the back of this human neck.

  Time slows, nearly stopping. Each second stretches with too much information. The butterfly flicker of your eyelashes, the moist flutter of your tongue, the gentle swish of your hair on the smooth skin of your shoulders, all drowning me. I can feel the cells of your body as they divide and slough off. I am alert, alive beyond life, dead beyond death.

  “You’ve bewitched me,” I say, parting my mouth from the honey of your lips.

  “Shut up and kiss me,” you say, your voice hoarse with illicit passion and a gallon of beer.

  A sledgehammer pounds my chest, working the molten iron of my heart. Outside, a breeze plays against the window screen and the curtains whisper in the music of autumn. It is a dirge, a death-rattle of wind chimes and oak leaves as clouds sneak past the moon. They call this the end of October.

  A taste like old pennies lingers where your tongue has been. My arousal strains, seeks, takes a separate life.

  “Hold on a second,” you say, and my heart suspends, explores its stopping, and then continues its headlong rush.

  You light a candle. The first match goes out before it reaches the wick, as if some sinister gale has summoned itself from under the bed. An acrid thread of gray sulfur trails across the milky moonlight. The second match flares and the candle catches and flickers crazily, the flame hopping like a forever-damned ballet dancer on a stage of hot coals.

  Outside, the night rain falls. Each drop plays a minute part in a grand percussion symphony. Small, sharp pellets ping off the mailbox while fat globs plop softly on the asphalt. Drops patter on the wooden porch rail, and others slither weakly into the grass with a muted hiss. A drum roll of water rumbles across the gutter while the downspout carries off the finished notes with a discordant tinkle. Occasional distant thunder anchors the bass end by adding timpani to the score.

  I gently lean you back on the bed. The pillows have fallen to one side and lie there like an old married couple. Your pupils are large and dark, two deep wells. A twin reflection of the candle floats in the still waters. Beneath the surface, your memories, dreams, and secrets swim. I must draw them out, pump them forward, make them mine.

  Little Hitler drinks the heartbreak, Loverboy tastes the fruit, Mister Milktoast sizes you up for a brown hat.

  Bookworm pens a flowery passage. Richard rides the roller coaster. And I...

  I simply need. It’s always the first time. It’s always this way, the borrowing and taking of life, the stealing of light, the swallowing of the juicy pain.

  It’s as near to being human as I ever wish to get.

  But don’t take it personally. Because I’m not a person. And this is the way the universe has always been, a bright bang and then collapse into darkness. Dream me alive, Richard. Build me with your words. Make me.

  My hand trails down your flat pale belly. Dark hairs curl around the edge of your panties. Your breathing is fast and shallow, and I feel your pulse race through the swell of your breast beneath my hand. Your heart is sprinting against time, a race in which there can be only one winner.

  I reach beside the bed, to my coat lying on the floor. Your hands are at my waist, then lower. My mouth has found yours again, and I feel the urgency of your desire as our tongues thrust and parry softly. You pull me toward the forge of your body. I go for your center, the nursery of stars, your steaming galaxy.

  My right hand touches cold hard steel while my left finds liquid fire.

  I raise the blade and the sudden movement feeds a gust of oxygen to the candle. The burst of light becomes the flashbulb for the photograph that Richard’s eyes are taking:

  ...the gorgeous plateau of your flesh, a territory waiting to be mapped.

  ...your eyebrows arching, making a question mark of your face.

  ...your lips, parted in unspoken confusion.

  ...your chest, tensing to draw air for a scream that will never sound.

  ...your eyes...

  ...your eyes remain two deep wells, but now the waters ripple. Now the surface is disturbed as your secrets swim
. Now the fear roils underneath, a leviathan awakened from long slumber. Now your black monsters break the water, pouring forth in torrents from the depths of your eyes.

  Now I can feed. Now I can eat the light.

  “Monique,” Richard moans, helpless, pathetic, taking control of his own mouth. “I’m sorry.”

  I shut him up and bring the knife down swiftly, with an unforgiving arm, with Little Hitler’s viciousness, with Loverboy’s passion, with Bookworm’s fascination, with Mister Milktoast’s petulance.

  Richard delivers you unto me.

  In a flash of bright silver, the blade strikes home, a violent explorer in the valleys of your skin. Your arms lift in futility, almost in supplication, embracing the coming pain as if it is an old lover.

  The oldest lover.

  The knife is in your chest and a brilliant geyser of crimson erupts, and too soon it is over. Your light is mine.

  Your eyes fix on the ceiling and the ripples in the two deep wells dwindle and fade, their waters now forever calm.

  I can’t resist. “Was it good for you?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “You walrus hurt the one you love,” Mister Milktoast said. “And then bury Paul. Goo goo ka joob.”

  My head throbbed as a thick black sludge pounded through my veins. I just wanted to rest my head on my pillow and sleep until my flesh rotted off the bone. I wasn’t in the mood for Mister Milktoast’s wit, and I was worried about the Insider’s purple prose, which virtually guaranteed we’d never sell the book.

  “Big time fuck-up, Tricky Dick,” Loverboy said. “You didn’t even get a little pop tart first.”

  “Knock it off, you guys,” Bookworm said. “It wasn’t Richard’s fault.”

  “There you go again, sticking up for that useless bootlicker,” Little Hitler. “It was just like old times from where I was sitting. Father was just a warm-up act. And that Shelley slut, she deserved it if anybody ever did.”

  The sun stabbed, spitting fire through the window. Sunday morning. A holy, quiet time. Starlings chirruped on high power lines outside as November crept in on cold bare feet.