Gun Sex

by Pearce Hansen

Obviously homeless, he’d thought at the time, careful to avoid eye contact as he led Sherry past her to the back of the crowd. Sherry had seemed oblivious to the woman, and still did – but the back of Frank’s neck prickles continuously as he watches the concert.

  Something about this woman behind them gives him the willies, even more than the guilty nervousness he usually feels around her panhandling brethren. He keeps stealing glances over his shoulder at her as the concert plays on and on, but she doesn’t move from where she slumps against the cracked wall, clutching her swollen stomach and mumbling louder and louder.

  Maybe she’s sick, Frank thinks as he turns away from her to face the stage again. Better not to get involved.

  Two uniformed cops are trolling the edges of the audience, and Frank is relieved to see them descend on the woman, one of them talking into his walkie-talkie as they close in on her. He turns to watch the encounter, startled to realize just how apprehensive this seemingly harmless woman’s presence has made him.

  One of the cops bends over her and says something, and she replies, but Frank is too far away to make any of it out. Something makes her look up at Frank then, her eyes huge in her haggard, sweating face (perhaps she feels the pressure of his burning gaze).

  For the first time, their eyes meet: shock of emptiness! Frank feels like he’s falling into her eyes, down a well into bottomless darkness, forever, until – Sherry touches his arm and he jumps. He shakes all over like a wet dog, trying to get rid of the clammy feeling curdling inside him.

  Sherry’s hand grips Frank’s arm and stares up into his face, eyes wide.

  “What is it?” she quavers, frightened by his descent into trance.

  “I don’t know. Something . . . Something . . ." Frank hears a shout, and looks up to see the woman stumbling away from the cops through the entrance into the ruins.

  The two cops trot confidently after her, and the lightless maw of the entrance engulfs them all.

  “We’ve got to leave, now,” Frank blurts to Sherry as he takes her elbow and starts hurrying her away from this suddenly unbearable place.

  Behind them, a whooping howl escapes from the within the bowels of the ruins, and – a sound, a huge wet rippling PLOP, like no sound he’s ever heard before. It’s loud enough that the musicians on stage stop playing in mid-chord, and most of the crowd turns around curiously. Frank finds he has no desire to see whatever it was that made that hideous noise.

  One cop bursts from the entrance as if vomited forth, hat missing, brandishing his pistol. There is no sign of his partner or the homeless woman. His shirt is torn and his eyes are wild, his previous arrogant self-assurance absent from his gaze as he levels his gun at the audience and screams “Down! Everybody down!”

  A woman in the crowd shrieks as most of the audience flattens to ground in unthinking obedience, whether to his badge or his gun – a few on the far edges run away, but many concert-goers still mill around in confusion, uncertain whether to comply or flee. Sherry and Frank are closest to the cop, and Frank pushes Sherry down and hunches over her protectively, his heart pounding fit to burst.

  The cop seems to focus on Frank and Sherry in particular, and he staggers toward them, lurching unsteadily from step to step as he aims his pistol at them as they cower on the ground. His eyes are glassy, but his gun doesn’t waver as he stops to hover directly over them, aiming down – Frank finds he can look straight up the black hole of the barrel. He imagines he can see the nose of the bullet aimed right at his head.

  “Are you one too?” the cop demands in a harsh voice. Frank looks up at him blankly, not comprehending. “Are you one too?”

  Frank shakes his head from side to side vigorously, not trusting himself to speak. What happened in there? his mind screams. Sherry trembles beneath him.

  Up close like this, the cop looks awful: he’s bloating up even as Frank watches, his skin stretching tight like an over-inflated balloon. The cop’s eyes fill with some horrified realization, and he dangles the forgotten pistol at his side. The top button on his shirt pops off, and flies several yards to land on the grass.

  “It’s me,” the cop moans in despair. “It’s inside of ME!”

  Then he bursts like an exploding puffball. Frank can see the rags of his shocked face peeling back away in popped balloon shreds as a mass of black tendrils boils from within him, making the same liquid PLOP that had come from the ruins before.

  An overwhelming stench of corruption spreads to fill the air as the tendrils radiate out, seeking new flesh with inescapable speed; there is no time for Frank and Sherry to even rise. Frank can hear shouts of horror and dismay as most of the crowd is caught at once by the spreading fan of rootlets, hungry for human soil.

  Two of the wire-thin tentacles wriggle beneath him to stab into Sherry. One tip slaps against his chest, then burrows greedily between his ribs and inside him – Frank is immediately paralyzed, but he can still feel everything that is happening to him.

  The pain is incredible: his eyes screw tightly shut against it as the tentacle begins spurting something into his body, something ice-cold and foul. He can hear Sherry and the others screaming in fear and agony, and he screams with them as he’s filled, seemingly to overflowing. The screams of the massed prey rise in a chorus, higher and higher to an unbearable crescendo, and then – merciful oblivion.

  Frank comes back to consciousness on a rain-slick back street, one he doesn’t recognize. It is night, and the wet buildings gleam under the streetlights. He has no idea how he got here, or even how much time has passed since he passed out.

  He doesn’t see Sherry anywhere. Wrenching pangs of grief and loneliness threaten to overwhelm him. Then the first alien thoughts begin scuttling across the back of his mind, and Frank realizes he is not alone in his body.

  Without willing it, Frank begins walking unsteadily toward the distant sounds of traffic, like a clumsy puppet. He is no more than a vessel, a vehicle for whatever was implanted within him – he’s merely along for the ride.

  Whatever is inside him – it is stirring, and asserting control of his body. He can feel it sloshing and stirring within the hollow container he has become. He wonders how it is that he’s still alive.

  Ahead he sees the bright lights of a main boulevard, and a small crowd waiting at a bus stop. He’s starting to swell. There’s not much time left.

  His driven body lurches toward the crowd, and into the light. The bus stop patrons can see Frank clearly for the first time. Several of them gasp in alarm as they see the expression of alien lust that contorts his unwilling face.

  In this final excitement, an image spills into Frank’s brain from the mind of the master who steers him: Sherry and all the others, spreading out through the streets and allies and houses of city after city like a parasitic growth, sharing their gift with new groups, who share it with others, who share it with others . . .

  The Old Ones awaken! a voice gibbers silently, a voice not his own. It is the end of everything. Tears course down Frank’s cheeks, and he spreads his arms as he stumbles the last few steps to his waiting lovers.

  The Day He Raised (the first chapter of STREET RAISED)

  When he raised from prison Speedy left in his stocking feet.

  Item by item, the C.O. managing Speedy’s release made Speedy return his state issue clothing, starting with his blue chambray shirt. Speedy stood bare-chested in front of the shatterproof plexiglas window separating him from the guard, watching in practiced patience as the screw tallied each returned item on the checklist. The screw kept licking his lips throughout the process, squinting at the clipboard as if taxed to his mental limits by the exercise.

  The Man read out, “One pair, dungarees.”

  Speedy shucked his prison issue trous. He folded and pushed the denim pants across the narrow counter through the horizontal slot in the plexiglas window, then stood naked except for his boxers and socks.

  There wasn’t any guard out here in the egress room with Speedy, so it wasn’t m
ace pepper spray or the riot stick that kept him in line as he waited to hit the bricks. He was only one door away from freedom, seconds really, and the Man knew Speedy wasn’t about to blow it now. The accuracy of the Man’s smug condescension was an irritant, and so was the necessity to submit and truckle this one last time.

  The penal officer (whose name was Wysocki, not that it mattered) looked at Speedy’s face for the first and last time, still squinting as if myopic. Maybe this turnkey wasn’t the mental deficient he appeared but was instead just nearsighted, and simultaneously too vain to wear glasses but too cheap to buy contacts.

  In quick succession Wysocki pushed out a heat-sealed plastic bag containing all the (legal) property Speedy had on him when he was popped: an open envelope containing his paltry gate release money; and a hanger-topped mesh bag filled with the civilian clothing Speedy was wearing at the time of his initial arrest. The mesh bag was the same kind public swimming pools supplied for bathers to store their street clothes in.

  “Sign the receipt.” Wysocki pushed a copy of Speedy’s release inventory through the slot.

  Speedy scribbled his John Hancock on the line before looking to all he had in the way of worldly possessions. He hauled out his Dickies trousers and stood stork-like to don the pants one leg at a time. Next he took out his tie-dye tee-shirt, slipped it on. He pulled out his baggy surplus field jacket from the mesh bag, but stopped short as he realized there was no footwear inside.

  Wysocki watched Speedy staring into the shoeless mesh bag and smiled.

  “You were arrested with no shoes, you transferred here with no shoes, you leave with no shoes,” Wysocki explained.

  “Maybe I need to talk to the watch commander – this is bogus and you know it.” Speedy kept his tone reasonable. He even considered pasting an unashamed puissant smile on his face like they were two old chums joking around. But he wouldn’t knuckle under here even enough to lubricate and expedite his release from the Big House.

  Wysocki was enjoying his power; a little ghost of a smirk haunted his lips as if making up for the step-n-fetchit grin Speedy refused to wear.

  “Sure,” Wysocki said. “Let’s just file your Form 602. Let’s stick you back in lockup and I’ll set up an appointment for you to talk with the Skipper – when I get around to it, and when he has time to see you.”

  A wave of loathing rippled through Speedy. He could offer to buy back his prison issue kicks with some of his gate money, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that either. He’d rather leave shoeless.

  What would Wysocki say if Speedy told him what all the inmates knew? That whenever Wysocki was on duty getting fatter and fatter on pogie-bait junk-food while stroking off to confiscated skin-mags between performing cavity searches on mace-sprayed convicts, Wysocki’s equally doughy wife was banging every other guard in the prison – and even some of the released cons.

  The knowledge made Speedy smile as sincerely as Wysocki was. Speedy let the contempt he felt for this little tin puke shine forth from his eyes without concealment for a foolish second.

  The dangerous moment passed and his face returned to its usual bland, almost placid neutrality. Wysocki appeared confused as he hid there feeling safe behind his plexiglas shield.

  He aimed a scowl at Speedy until finally either deciding he hadn’t really seen the look he thought he’d gotten from this convict, or that it wasn’t worth the effort of getting off his pimply ass to do something about it.

  Speedy tore open the heat-sealed plastic bag, pocketed his foldie knife and his wallet (which he put his meager gate money into) and tossed the trash into the garbage can. He faced what he’d refused to as much as glance at since entering this room: the electrico-magnetically locked door to outside.

  There was an industrial buzzing that would have been obnoxious under any other circumstances, followed by the weighty clunk of the gate door’s locking mechanism disengaging.

  “Hey convict,” Wysocki called. Wysocki’s gaze dropped to Speedy’s stocking feet then leapt back up to stare him hungrily in the eye.

  “Walk a mile in my shoes,” Wysocki crooned.

  Speedy suspected that singing lessons wouldn’t do Wysocki much good.

  The floor’s asbestos tiles were chilly through Speedy’s socks as he headed toward the entrance. He briefly considered paying a visit to Wysocki’s woman on his way out of town.

  “Not even with your dick, Wysocki,” Speedy said out loud as his hand hit the door. Even with as high a sperm count as he had to be lugging around right now, he shuddered at the very thought.

  “What?” asked the Screw.

  But Speedy was already beyond Wysocki’s grasp, on his way out the sally port and into the World.

  The town serving the prison was on the Northern California Coast. Unsurprisingly, it was raining. The wet streets all led, as if inevitably, to Highway 101: the artery Speedy had to follow south to get home to the San Francisco Bay Area.

  Speedy’s field jacket easily shrugged off the rain. But as it was winter the mist-slick sidewalks were ice cold, and the wet soaked Speedy’s socks into frigid sodden masses inside of a block. Every hundred feet or so he had to stop and tug up the waterlogged pieces of increasingly tattered fabric. But as clammy as his ragged hosiery felt now, he knew his tootsies would really suffer once the socks were completely gone.

  He passed a rescue mission, hymns in cracked voices spilling out to irritate him: “This is my story, this is my song,” howled forth from inside there in a cacophony as desperate as any at the dog pound.

  Speedy’s lipless mouth quirked in a rare light hearted moment for him: having a good idea just what kind of stories the soggy old boozers in there had to tell, he would have been semi-interested to hear just what they felt they had to sing about.

  There were shoes in there with those singing voices; food and a cot too – but the price of admission was insurmountably high. Still, as he considered his current shoeless state he wondered if it was possible to have too much pride.

  When Speedy reached State Highway 101 he found a bus-stop shelter kiosk and stepped in out of the rain. He plopped his narrow ass down on the bench to consider his paucity of assets; his lack of options for effective action.

  Now that he wasn’t sharking forward he inspected his feet, tugging off the wet, holey socks to inspect the fish-belly white soles of his feet as if in self-triage. His feet were already blistering and he decided clinically that he needed footwear, bad.

  Across the street he saw a thrift store. He stood and threaded his way through the desultory flow of traffic to look in the display window, which was filled with a depressing array of dingy cast-offs. He couldn’t see anyone on duty in there, which was very appealing.

  Speedy went inside. The warmth of the thrift store was a shock after the cold rain outside and he shivered in paradoxical response as he scanned the dim interior for any eye witnesses.

  “Can I help you?” he heard from his elbow, and he had to squeeze down on his instinctive impulse to spin that way in reflex. Instead he turned as if casually, to minimize any body language that might startle a potential mark to flight.

  She reminded him of a drowned cat, this tiny wrinkled old woman holding a white cane and not even coming up to his shoulder, with glazed sightless eyes looking through him making him suddenly unsure as to whether or not he was even there.

  Speedy looked away from the old blind lady at the till, which waited unattended and undefended for him back in the depths of the store. It was an old beater of a mechanical cash register, one of those antique indestructible NCRs.

  The imagined loot inside the till was almost maddening in his present impoverished state. It would be stupid to pass up this opportunity. His gate money was a joke; he barely had enough for cancer sticks and a couple of artery-clogging fast-food meals. Speedy needed to get paid fast, and scoring before he’d even left town would be a pleasant slap in the face to the Man.

  But when he looked back down at her she was smiling, and he fo
und himself smiling in reply as if against his will. Her and her store weren’t prey; this wasn’t a situation Speedy needed to own nor was he willing to dominate it.

  He even imagined bragging about it later to an imaginary group of admiring cohorts: ‘Yeah, I sure punked that old bitch up north, man.’ Sure.

  “No thanks ma’am,” he mumbled, taking a resigned step toward the door and the cold wet out-of-doors. Speedy’s sodden socks squelched on the floor as he headed toward his open-ended impromptu camping trip.

  “Wait,” she said, cocking her blind head at the soggy sound of his shoelessness. “Follow me.”

  Speedy trailed her in wary puzzlement as she walked along an aisle flanked by mothball-smelling coats long out of style. She was so sure of her step here in her thrift store domain she didn’t even bother to use her cane.

  When she stopped, it was in front of a bin filled to the brim with a variety of footwear: sandals and slippers, sneakers and cowboy boots, all sizes and styles.

  “Pick a pair,” the blind woman said.

  Midway down in the heap Speedy could see some well-worn vibram-soled black combat boots, the same kind he’d always worn before going down.

  He hesitated. “I ain’t got enough to pay for them ma’am.”

  “That’s all right. You know, I’ve often thought they should make better provision for you boys when you get released.”

  Speedy let out with an embarrassed chuckle at this blind old lady’s perceptiveness. Or was she just making a lucky guess? “Maybe some of us don’t deserve no better.”

  “Nobody deserves to suffer,” she said without a smile. “Now pick a pair.”

  Speedy snaked out the combat boots and lifted one foot to compare sole sizes. He grunted at the approximate match and then sat on the linoleum floor to pull them on and lace them up snug. They were steel-toed, and they fit even over his raggedy waterlogged socks. Speedy stood, his wet tortured feet pressing against the confines of the inside of the boots as he wriggled his toes.