Flowers in a Dumpster

by Mark Allan Gunnells

  I’m not the winner of five Golden Cock Awards for nothing.

  Hey, a little patience, please. All this is relevant, trust me. Now with each film I really tried to push myself, to come up with something more mind-blowing than the last. Take Black Holes for instance. It’s not just an interracial orgy set on a space station. I mean, it is that but there’s more to it. It also explores issues of race and stereotyping, as well as the results of prolonged isolation. Real deep shit, you better believe it. And Backdoor Justice, with its storyline of an Average Joe who gets revenge on the guys who gang-raped his daughter by tracking them down one by one and ass-raping them? That film takes a long, hard look at vigilantism in this country. No pun intended.

  So I’m sure you can see it was important to keep coming up with something bigger and better, to constantly top myself. So when I hit on the idea for The Devil’s Pitchfork, I knew I had a real winner on my hands. The subject matter would be controversial which was sure to get the film lots of attention, and I figured it would be a perfect vehicle for Dirk.

  Well, I guess at this point I should back up and tell you about me and Dirk.

  He was the star of my films for the last three years, true, but he was also my lover. I met him when he was eighteen, new to the city and working as a waiter for a catering company while trying to make something happen with his acting. He’d only been at it for a couple of months, but he seemed depressed that all he’d gotten so far was a two-line part on some soap. Like the perfect cliché, he’d stepped off the bus expecting to find someone standing there ready to hand him bug bushels full of fortune and fame.

  He’d moved into my building, down the hall from me. A real fleabag of a place. I noticed him right away. That dark hair and strong jawline, the slender body and bubble butt. He had a twinkle in his eye that a wordsmith, such as myself, can only describe as devilish. Dirk made my mouth water, I can tell you that. I introduced myself, offered to show him around the city, told him I was in the film business without getting into specifics. Just enough to get him interested.

  We started spending a lot of time together, and I admit I was laying it on thick. I mean, in my line of work I got plenty of action, tasty young boys willing to do almost anything for a screen test or audition. But I hungered for Dirk in a way that I hadn’t experienced in a while. Him playing hard to get made me want him all the more.

  When I finally admitted that I made gay porn for a living, there was disgust, but excitement at the same time. He asked me lots of questions, so I offered to show him one of my films so he could see firsthand what I did. Dirk was reluctant, or at least acted like he was, but agreed nonetheless. We had a little private screening in my apartment. Needless to say, it had the desired effect. Got him all hot and bothered, which is how I finally got him into bed.

  Where I was shocked to find out Dirk was a virgin. A guy as hot as all that and still untouched . . . It was like rooting around in shit and finding a gold nugget. I showed him the ropes, though. You can take that to the bank.

  Dirk was awkward and shy about things in the beginning, but before long he was sucking like a pro. And that ass . . . that sweet, tight ass! If there’s a heaven, it ain’t in the clouds but buried deep in Dirk Vandercock’s ass.

  First time I brought up the idea of him starring in one of my films, he refused. After all, he had plans of being a serious actor. The next Vin Diesel. I shit you not, he actually said that. I figured I could bide my time, and after only three more months of not booking a single gig, not even a dog food commercial, he caved. That’s when I gave him his name, Dirk Vandercock. Got a real ring to it, wouldn’t you say? His real name was just so bland and forgettable. I’m not sure I even remember what it was anymore.

  First film we did together was called The Fuck-It List, about a young man who discovers he has a terminal illness and decides to go out fucking up a storm. Dirk had a touching death scene at the end while a gang of strapping young men did a circle jerk over his body. It was a huge hit. Dirk became an instant gay porn sensation.

  About that same time, Dirk and I moved in together, getting a nicer apartment in a better part of town. Financially it made sense, but I also wanted to keep him all to myself.

  He was mine, I found him and I wasn’t planning to share him.

  I know what you’re thinking. Wasn’t I jealous with him fucking all those hot guys in the films? Hell no, that was business, nothing personal. Besides, I got to hand-pick all his co-stars, remember? If he seemed to enjoy himself a little too much with a certain actor, I made sure they didn’t work together anymore. When the cameras were off, though, he belonged to me and me alone. He seemed okay with that.

  After all, I had taken him under my wing when he was new to the city and painfully naïve, I taught him the art of fucking, and I gave him not only a job but a career. Dirk showed his gratitude in a variety of pleasurable and increasingly inventive ways.

  Things went on like that for about three years, give or take. We made one hit movie after another. In our personal life, Dirk was completely devoted to me. I ain’t exaggerating when I say it was damn near perfect.

  Then came The Devil’s Pitchfork.

  I curse the day I ever came up with the idea for that film.

  I’d recently watched The Exorcist on late-night cable, and I got to thinking how cool it would be to incorporate Satanism and the occult and animalistic fucking all into one story. It would piss off the Christian types more than gay porn normally did. Over the years I’d learned that pissing off Christians was a sure-fire way to make some money.

  While writing the script, I did a lot of online research into satanic rites and rituals, and found this one ritual for supposedly inviting a demon into someone’s body. I instantly knew I wanted to use it in the film, because from a cinematic point of view, the scene would be breathtaking with all the candles, the pentagram, and the chanting. Plus, having Dirk chained down to an altar would be the perfect segue into a hardcore bondage scene.

  So we started shooting, and everything was peachy up until the ritual sequence. We shot the scene and things seemed to go perfectly, but afterward Dirk complained that he didn’t feel well. He did look a bit pale, and he was throwing up. I’m not a tyrant or anything, so I let him have a whole day off before we finished up the movie. It was released, and as predicted there was quite an uproar over it. The Devil’s Pitchfork quickly became our most downloaded production to date.

  But something still wasn’t right with Dirk. It wasn’t anything obvious, not at first. He simply seemed . . . different. At home, there was coldness and distance. There were times when I caught him looking at me, not with the adoration I was used to, but with what I thought might be contempt. I shook it off, figuring it was my imagination.

  And then we stopped fucking. Or more to the point, Dirk stopped. All of a sudden he was always tired or had a stomach ache or some other lame excuse. Finally I put my foot down and told him he owed it to me after all I’d done for him. That worked. He let me fuck him. Dirk just didn’t participate. He just laid there like a blow-up doll or something, his expression almost bored. He didn’t even get hard.

  After that, he began to go out without me, staying out late, coming home smelling like strange cologne and cigarettes. When I confronted him, he’d get angry, tell me I didn’t own him and he didn’t have to account for his whereabouts every second of the day.

  These kinds of arguments became commonplace and soon escalated. He told me I was smothering him, that he needed some space, a life apart from me and the movies we made. Said he wanted to start auditioning for legitimate films again. As if the work we’d been doing was shit, you know? He was slipping away from me, becoming a stranger, and it seemed like it happened overnight.

  Then I went out of town to receive my fifth Golden Cock for The Devil’s Pitchfork, ironically enough. Dirk said he had an important audition and couldn’t go with me. I was supposed to be gone three days, but after two days of not getting any calls from Dirk, I cut the t
rip short and went back to the city.

  I walked into the apartment to find Dirk having a threesome on the living room sofa.

  Not even with two guys, one guy and a chick. Dirk was fucking her while he sucked the other guy off. It was disgusting.

  I went ballistic, sent those two hetero freaks packing without even giving them time to put on all their clothes. Dirk just sat on the sofa, bare-ass naked, looking not the least put out. He smiled up at me. Not even a smile, more a smirk. I yelled. The longer he stayed silent and detached, the louder I yelled.

  Finally I wore myself out and collapsed on the other end of the sofa. Dirk looked at me for a minute then spoke for the first time since I’d gotten home. He told me he was leaving.

  I told him he couldn’t leave me. I’d created him for Christ’s sake. Everything he had, I had given to him. If not for me, Dirk Vandercock wouldn’t even exist. He was mine.

  Dirk said he belonged to no man and that he didn’t know why he’d allowed me to keep him prisoner for so many years. That’s what he said, that I’d ‘kept him a prisoner’. He told me he was finally breaking free, and he didn’t give two fucks if I liked it or not.

  He left me there in the living room to pack. At that point, I was too stunned to really react. I mean, this wasn’t the Dirk I had known and loved all these years, this wasn’t him at all.

  Then I realized it wasn’t Dirk.

  Insane as it seemed even to me, I suddenly knew what had happened, why Dirk had changed so drastically in such a short period of time. He wasn’t himself anymore, he was something else entirely. Something dark and evil.

  The ritual in the film had been real, and it had worked. I had allowed a demon to take possession of Dirk’s soul when we were filming The Devil’s Pitchfork. What else could it be? It would explain why he’d become so cruel and vicious and ungrateful. I had opened a doorway to Hell. The sweet, devoted man I’d molded into a star was no more, He’d been replaced by a wicked imposter.

  Maybe, though, it wasn’t too late to get Dirk back.

  I didn’t have an iota of doubt, which is how I knew it was the right course of action. Conviction is always a sure sign of righteousness. I went into the bedroom where Dirk was at the closet, pulling out the expensive clothes I’d bought him and tossing them into the suitcase I’d also bought. I picked up one of the four—soon to be joined by a fifth—golden phallic statues sitting on a table by the doorway, and used it to bash Dirk in the back of the head. He was down but not out. I had to hit him two more times before he lost consciousness.

  I dragged him across the room, tied him to the bed and stuffed a pair of red silk boxer shorts in his mouth, putting duct tape over that. Then I got online and did a little research on exorcisms.

  Turns out, there’s a hell of a lot of conflicting information on the subject. There seems to be no one accepted method of casting a demon out of someone, so I decided I’d try them all. Holy water, which isn’t as easy to come by as Buffy would have you believe, didn’t work. Neither did bleeding, burning, or the ever-popular gospel recitation. Nothing seemed to work. Dirk thrashed around on the bed like . . . well, like he was possessed. When I took his gag out, I endured the foul curses he spit my way. Exactly like Linda Blair, only minus the projectile vomiting and head spin. Luckily my neighbors were used to hearing shouting and obscenities from our apartment.

  Finally, not knowing what else to do, I decided I’d try to starve the demon out of him. I left him tied and gagged for nearly a week without food, occasionally removing the gag to let him suck water through a straw. The thrashing gradually became weaker until it practically stopped altogether. His body, which had once inspired such desire in me, seemed to be shriveling up. His skin took on an ashen look. His eyes glazed over like smudged glass.

  The last time I took his gag out, he told me in a hoarse croak that he hated me and he would make me suffer if it was the last thing he ever did. And that’s when I knew. Dirk was gone for good. There was no getting him back.

  That left me with only one option.

  The butcher knife left a clean cut across his throat.

  It was easier than I’d thought it would be, because I knew I was probably setting his soul free with this one selfless act.

  And that’s what happened. Honest to God, hand me a Bible and I’ll swear on it. I ain’t making excuses or nothing. I’m telling it like it is. If you want to hold it against me then so be it, but I know I did what had to be done.

  What killed Dirk was possession, plain and simple.

  THE LOCKED TOWER

  Alec Stevenson pulled into a space in the school’s small visitor’s parking lot and cut the Cadillac’s engine. He sat there, staring out the window at the campus. Several years had passed since he’d been to his alma mater, Limestone College, but he marveled at how few superficial changes had occurred. There were, of course, little differences—the old wrought-iron sign at the main entrance was replaced by one that looked like a tall brick wall, the driveway had been repaved, a few of the buildings renovated—but for the most part it looked like it had fifteen years ago, when Alec had been a student.

  Making sure he had his cell phone with him so he could take a few digital photos, Alec stepped out of the car. The clear sky promised a bright afternoon. The activity on-campus was minimal, which was the reason he’d chosen to come so late on a Friday afternoon.

  He started across the quad, past the library and the auditorium, making a direct line for Winnie Davis Hall.

  In Alec’s day, Winnie Davis had been in sorry shape, closed off to students. Alec, however, had been inside once. On a dare during his sophomore year, he’d broken through one of the ground level windows and crawled through, taking a tour of the first two floors. He didn’t risk going any higher because the floorboards bowed dangerously under his weight. Each step felt like it could send him plummeting to the basement. The whole place smelled of mildew and rot. When he stood in the rotunda, staring straight up to the tower, he’d seen the skeletal framework of a skylight that would normally have separated the tower from the rest of the building, only there was no glass.

  Of course, those days were in the past. Alec recently read on the Limestone website that a massive restoration project for Winnie Davis, costing millions of dollars and lasting many years, had been completed. Apparently the building now boasted such state-of-the-art amenities as an elevator, a flat-screen television mounted to the walls of each classroom, and even automated shades that would lower themselves over the windows at the push of a button. From the outside, Winnie Davis still looked the same, gothic and a bit like a miniature cathedral, but from what he’d read the inside was new and modern.

  This was why Alec returned to Limestone after so long.

  Winnie Davis Hall had lingered in the back of his mind ever since that dare all those years ago, but reading about its recent renovation brought the memories to the foreground. Inspiration seized him by the balls. As always he had no choice but to follow where it led.

  Alec stood before Winnie Davis for a moment, on the newly paved courtyard, appreciating her refurbished beauty. The buildings at Limestone were truly magnificent, both architecturally and historically. Many of them dated back to the early 1900s, some even earlier. That was why so many were on the National Registry of Historical Places. But Alec had eyes for only Winnie Davis Hall.

  He climbed the stone steps that led to the double doors, feeling weird about entering this way. He still identified the place as off limits. Once he stepped inside the entryway, he knew this wasn’t the Winnie Davis of his past. Fresh paint, hardwood floors buffed to a shine, marble busts of historical figures housed in alcoves behind Plexiglas—the building had gotten a serious facelift. To either side of him staircases twisted their way to the top floor. Alec stepped to the circular railing of the rotunda. Since the main doors of the building opened onto the second floor, he could look down to the ground level below. Nothing to see but a wooden table with a vase of flowers centered on it. He cran
ed his neck and looked straight up, into the tower. Only he could no longer see all the way into the tower. The skylight had been fitted with opaque glass, and a stunning chandelier hung down for at least two stories. Quite an impressive sight. Alec held up his cell phone and took a picture of it.

  He was interested to see what else Winnie Davis had to offer, but the grand tour would have to wait. He’d come here specifically to see the tower and he wanted to get up there right away.

  He started up the stairs, his footsteps echoing throughout the quiet building. He paused on the fourth floor, the last one before the tower. The skylight overhead reminded him of a scene from Titanic, although he doubted water would break through the glass and sink the building. He would file away that surreal image for later, along with the rest of the random sights and sounds, snatches of dialogue and dream fragments. All tools of his trade.

  Off the fourth floor rotunda was a narrow staircase, blocked off with a velvet rope. He assumed it led to the tower. Without giving it much thought, he unclipped one end of the rope and headed up the stairs. Halfway up, Alec noticed a trap door, which opened onto the tower, bolted with a massive padlock.

  Alec stopped and stared at the padlock, frowning at the sight. Why would the school lock up the tower? Was it being used for storage? Regardless, Alec knew he had to get up there. He would have to find the right person to—

  “Excuse me, do you need some help?”

  Alec started at the sound of the voice, nearly losing his balance. Putting a hand against the wall to steady himself, he looked down at an older gentleman with glasses standing in the doorway of an office. Alec recognized the face immediately.

  “Dr. Rob,” he said, making his way down the stairs.

  The older man frowned quizzically. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”