Evil Companions

by D. M. Perkins

  She was wearing one of those teenager’s pointed bras, with padding, and it split her T-shirt high and firm. I took the material of the T-shirt in my fingers, and dug until I had the bra in my fingers, and then pulled it until the snap in the back broke, and the T-shirt ripped. She didn’t make a sound, but her face got as red as a twelve-year-old’s. What kind of fantasy was I destroying, or creating, in her dull, juvenile mind? The Levi’s were like a second skin, but I peeled them from her with relish, scratching her thighs several times with my long fingernails.

  When she was nude (her body was so dirty her skin was the color of an overripe banana) I plunged my nose in her armpit to inhale the smell of youth—acrid, sweaty, with a slight smell of semen—and then picked her up, dirt and all, and carried her to the kitchen table. The enamel was cold, and gave her gooseflesh, but she stretched herself out as if she were on the examining table. The bright light directly overhead illuminated every part of her body. The pores, the blackheads, the bumps, the hairs around her penny-brown nipples pointed up at me angrily. The scene was all too solemn: Despite the grunts from the bedroom, the slurpings from Paulette and the Charmer (who was licking his snake while Paulette was swallowing his cock), it was quiet and grim.

  Lady Jane was squirming on the cold table, and I had an impulse I hadn’t had since I was her age: I began to tickle her in the ribs. She responded very quickly with a snicker, and my fingers went to her armpits. It became a definite, high-pitched laugh, which began to build, like a soprano going up the scale. When I hit soft grooves where her legs joined her body, and dug into gristle beneath the skin there, she became hysterical, screaming and shouting with laughter:

  “Stop! Oh stop stop stop! Please! Ha ha ha!”

  Stony-faced, I kept it up. She thrashed around on the table like a beached fish, rocking it and banging her feet on it so hysterically that a damn broke inside her and she let loose a flood of urine all over the table. I dodged it and stood beside her, watching.

  She was red all over and still whooping with tired laughter and hysterical giggles when I grabbed her ankles and pulled her toward my waiting horn. She was tight, but I slid right in on a wave of urine and buttery juices. I started whipping it up, and then changed my mind: “You’re supposed to be a sheep,” I said to her, and flipped her over on her thin belly. She didn’t mind the change of course or channel, and I stuck her again, standing up, holding her legs on my shoulders, shaking her until she jumped the fence: “Baa Baa Baa ...”

  Chapter Nine

  ___________________ Smoke of the Assassins

  The three of them took over our small apartment and made a garage of it. It began to reek of oil and semen. The second day they were there the Deathhead moved his Yamaha into the apartment and tethered it to the coffee table in the living room. Paulette and Anne had their hooks in the Vipers, and the Vipers had a place to stay and beer to drink. Despite the Charmer’s threat, I was grudgingly tolerated, because I was so weird—as one of them said: “Man, he’s so strange he scares me.”

  I hung around in the corners and played with Lady Jane. I made putty of her, and then changed her face every day. Idly, as I watched television. I think another reason I was tolerated was that I took care of Lady Jane, took her off their hands, that is. For some reason they didn’t want to just dump her. I didn’t know why until Jane told me late one night when the others were snoring, beer rumbling in their bellies, that the Deathhead was her brother.

  “He was in my pants when I was thirteen.”

  “What about now?”

  “Now he hates me.”

  I looked at the Deathhead with a new respect after that.

  “Give me your hand,” I said.

  She gave it to me, palm up. I sank my teeth in the soft flesh between thumb and finger, and licked the scarlet drop of blood that oozed from the wound. “That hurt! Why’d you do that?” she whimpered.

  “I wanted to taste your blood. Simple as that.” I sounded like Dracula, and felt like Aleister Crowley, but I had formed a conviction that only blood and the juices of the genitals could tell me anything about a person. Her blood was not bitter, or salty, merely dull, dull as she was. I spat it out.

  We were sitting on the sofa. The television was on, but we weren’t watching. The Deathhead walked in and drew up a chair so close we were sitting knee to knee. Lady Jane drew as far away from him as she could go, nursing her hand.

  “I got to talk to you, weirdo. Stay still. You’re always moving around. Stay still.” He was jerking his head so badly I felt like holding it for him.

  “Yeah? I’ve stayed out of your way.”

  “That’s just it. I want to get something across to you.”

  “What?”

  “You got to stay away from Jane.” His knees pressed so tightly against mine an ant with a message could have walked safely from his leg to mine in no time. There were little red spots in his cheeks, the first time I had seen any color there at all. I felt reckless, maybe because I was getting crazier, but probably because I had faith in Anne’s black magic.

  I yelled. I yelled so loud he jumped and fell backward out of his chair. “DON’T MESS WITH MY HEAD, MOTHERFUCKER!”

  Then I rapidly crawled over to Lady Jane and put my head between her legs. I closed my eyes and waited for a karate chop on the back of the neck, or a chair to be broken over my head. I waited two or three minutes, and when no punishment was forthcoming, I sat up and looked at big brother. He was still on the floor, looking at me with his mouth hanging open.

  “You’re crazy. Crazy. Just leave me alone. Jane can do what she wants to do.” He went into the bedroom and left us alone. Jane laughed. “That’s the first time anybody’s ever backed him down,” she said. I felt like Sir Galahad now, and went with that feeling for a while. I recovered as soon as Paulette came in with the Charmer.

  “We went up to Times Square and dug the freaks up there. Anne split.”

  “Where’s my man?” the Charmer asked.

  “He sneaked off to the bathroom.”

  “Shit. He’s been spending all his time in there. He let that Anne bitch put a spell on him.” I didn’t feel like talking, so I started digging out the dirt from my belly button. We all sat around and stared at each other until Paulette brought out some hash, and we sat smoking it. A half-hour of silent smoking brought us to the usual numb high. There is very little hostility produced by it, contrary to what I had heard about it being the smoke of the assassins. It smoothed us all out. I even looked at the Charmer with a new fondness—or, if that sounds a little sudden—interest. He was so black, and his features were so sharp, it was like studying an African carving.

  Out of the blue I asked him: “Do you know voodoo?” He nodded his head sagely, as if I had found a key to him.

  “Yeah, man. See this snake? Got it from Africa. Best place in the world for rites.”

  I didn’t know anything about it, but all of a sudden I found the subject fascinating. I was swinging on the rag tail of a March kite:

  “You ever used it?” The girls got closer, as fascinated as I was with the subject. The Charmer’s ego was hooked. He continued:

  “Man! You insult me. I have used this stuff I know for years! I am a past master.” His diction got much clearer when he was high.

  “Can you raise the dead?” I asked. My eye had fallen on the remains of the trick. We had put him in a chair by the door, as something to throw our coats on.

  “Well, I never tried that,” he said, a little nervously. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead, making a headband of crystals.

  “Can you or can you not?” I pressed.

  He considered it, looking a little worried, but not wanting to be shown up by a crazy white man. A non-Viper.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I could do it. But you don’t have anybody dead anyway.” He said the last with a relieved flourish, which I was happy to destroy.

  “We always keep a body around somewhere. What do you think that is over in the corner?” H
e took a long—a long look—and did a double take. The he staggered over to the body and pinched its nose. Some dirt fell out, and he jumped back.

  “He’s a flower pot!” Paulette and I broke up at that, and he had to watch us giggle our insides up, helplessly.

  “Whoo!” I said. “Make him bloom.” The poor guy was thumbing his snake as if it were a watch chain, looking for an answer to the mystery. I wasn’t about to hand it to him. I let him stand and think about it for a while, before pressing him again.

  “Well? How about it?” I said, and then we giggled some more. He sighed, and tried to regroup his forces.

  “O.K. Guess I can give it a try. All I got to say is that you people run a very strange place here.”

  With my help we both laid the stiff out on the floor. It wasn’t easy; we had to step on his knees and listen to the bones crack, and then do the same with his arms, because they had to lie straight out, cross-fashion. Then he decided that the body would have to be stripped and washed, and the women were put to that. It was a grisly business, requiring extra light, which we supplied with candles. The Charmer prepared himself by stripping down to his dirty underwear, oiling his body with margarine, putting on necklaces and bracelets, and in general turning himself into a West African witch doctor, twentieth-century Viper-style. When he was ready, he ordered us to strip ourselves, and then we knelt around the body. The candles had been placed at each extremity. The wax from the candles dripped onto the stiff’s hands and feet.

  He began to beat on a drum he had improvised from an old coffee tin. He was totally absorbed in what he was doing—chanting some kind of hocus-pocus I couldn’t make out, banging on his drum—so absorbed that his dead marble eye seemed to swing around in its socket. He was sweating, despite the grease that saturated his pores. We all puffed a little more on the hash pipe as he chanted, until we were ready to see the ghosts and demons dancing a macabre jig.

  “Say something in English,” I asked, wanting to hear what all this was about.

  “Ruin it in English,” he said, and went on in his dialect. He was obviously working himself into a condition of intensity bordering on hysteria. It was fascinating to watch, but hard on the knees, considering how long he was at it. Then he sprang up and began to do a dance, which consisted of hopping around the stiff and us on one foot and then the other. In one hand appeared a knife, an old army commando knife, heavy with brass and balanced for killing. When he was at the climax of his dance, he leaped upon the stiff and plunged the knife into its heart, twisting it. He plunged it in again and again through the dry, gray skin, until the rib cage was a mass of dry holes, through which the rotten insides could be seen. He feel back exhausted after this performance.

  “So you killed him again. I said raise him.”

  “Just wait,” he answered, panting.

  So we sat down more and waited, but nothing happened. The Charmer was obviously getting desperate, and the candles were almost out.

  “Something’s got to happen before those candles go,” he told us. “I know. Paulette, squat on top of him with your pussy in his face. That would bring anyone back to life.” Paulette straddled him, and brought her crotch right down to the tip of his nose. We waited and then Lady Jane yelled: “His dick! Look at it!” Sure enough, the mark’s staff was rising back to life, and pointing like a dousing wand.

  The Charmer started chuckling triumphantly. “It worked—what’d I tell you? It worked. Son-of-a-bitch.” Paulette looked startled at first, but then she moved right down to it, and impaled herself. “Hard as a rock,” she grunted, as she began moving. I was still wide-eyed but ready to accept anything. The Charmer grabbed Lady Jane and pulled her to the stiff’s head. “Let him tongue you a little. He will.” Sure enough, after Jane had gotten herself in a position, out came the mark’s tongue and drilled right into her hole. She was crying from fear, but the Charmer held her still.

  I began to get hard from all this corpse-fucking myself. I could tell that the Charmer felt the same way, because he was jerking his loins in sympathy with Paulette. I had to get into the action myself. Paulette’s mouth was not in use, so standing between the mark’s legs I fitted myself in through her clenched teeth. The mark was giving her such a good fuck, it was hard going, but it was worth it. The Charmer tried to follow my example with Lady Jane, but he got discouraged with her tears, and stood there frustrated, wondering how to get in on things. The idea he came up with might have been acceptable at another time, but I wasn’t up to being buggered right then. I kicked backward when I felt his tool ram against my buttocks, and he cursed.

  “Fuck this, man. I got an idea.” I saw the knife flash into the mark’s side, and then he was making a hole there. He ran into the bathroom for some Vaseline, and came back with his cock stuck in it. When he pulled it out it was caked with the stuff, a shiny black rod he positioned and then pushed into the hole he had made in the corpse’s side. Now none of us was left out of the ceremony, which was guaranteed to raise anyone from the dead.

  We lay around afterward, the sun trickling through the blinds like drops of gold, and talked about what a good idea using the mark as a sexual pincushion had been. The corpse was still lying on the floor, his rigor-mortised cock straight up in the air like a standard. Lady Jane ran off to the bathroom to chuck up the sweets she had stolen from it. The hash had not worn off, but it had moved up to another level.

  Paulette was glowing. “I want to keep him around. That was the best piece of ass I’ve ever had. He’s my wooden soldier-man.”

  “This bitch’s too much,” the Charmer giggled.

  “What’s that called, what we just did?” Paulette asked.

  “Necrophilia,” I told her, still high from the smoke. I recommended it: “Yes, I think we should keep him around. He cheers me up.”

  Chapter Ten

  ___________________ The Werewolf

  That’s the way things went. They came to accept me, but only because I had frightened them. I played on them—at least the two males—and enjoyed myself tremendously. I had grown afraid to leave the house except at night, like a werewolf. The time was coming when I would be one....

  One morning I awoke with jangling nerves to the telephone jangle. I staggered into the front room and gingerly brought the receiver to my ear. I had never liked telephones, believing their magic to be stronger than any I had in my possession. It was the telephone company; the phone was being turned off because Anne hadn’t paid the bill in three months. The woman tried to tell me about Anne’s calls to the Virgin Islands, to Europe, but I hung up. One less machine to think about.

  The apartment was unusually quiet. The bike was gone from the living room. On the back of the front door was a note for me in lipstick:

  WE WENT DOWN THE HIGHWAY

  BACK SOON FOR MORE THRILLS

  So I was left by myself, ten o’clock of a hot spring morning. I felt elated at the thought of all that space to myself. They’d be back soon enough, but in the meantime I’d enjoy the solitude.

  I spent the day watching television. Sitting in the nude with some bush to smoke to make the screen do my things, it became an enjoyable experience. During the soap operas I especially relished the tears that flowed on the women’s faces, as they faced problem after problem. When the urge came over me, I’d take my stiff dick and rub it over their faces, through the glass on the screen. I’ll bet they went home caressing their cheeks.

  By the time it got dark, I was no longer sane, and I had grown fangs. I had taken to going out only at night because my looks caused the P.R. kids to stone me in the daytime.

  I went out wrapped in a cape I had made from black felt, scrunched up around my neck to conceal my madman’s beard. All the stores—the little bodegas and hippie shops—were already closed, their iron gates down. But what I wanted to buy wasn’t something you could put an iron gate around. I walked two blocks, watching out for those slow-moving sharks, the Ninth Precinct cruisers. I don’t think I would have been recognized, but
I didn’t want those apes to know anything about me. A group of kids were standing on the corner setting fire to a trash basket. I went up and stood on the periphery of the group until one of them decided to acknowledge me.

  “Hey, take a look at this beatnik.” They gathered around me, about five of them—ten or eleven years old they must have been. “You need a shave, man. Aren’t you ashamed to be walking around like that?” the same one asked.

  “It’s just a way of dressing,” I answered, keeping my cool.

  “No one should be allowed to dress like that,” another one said. He was a goodlooking kid with a baseball in his hand. He had on one of those Police Athletic League caps you see in New York, a white short-sleeved shirt, and chinos. His face was brown, with hidden shadows in the delicate lines around his mouth, and his teeth were gleaming white. I turned to concentrate on him.

  “Maybe it’s just a fake. Have you thought about that? Maybe I’m just wearing a mask.”

  “You look like somebody whupped you with a ugly stick,” another one said, and they all giggled. I could tell they were all getting a little jittery about me.

  “If you’re wearing a mask, you should take it off,” my little charmer said to me.

  “What’s the matter, you don’t like werewolves?” I asked kiddingly, but they weren’t familiar with the word.

  “What’s that?” he asked, curious.

  “The werewolf,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder, “goes out at night to eat children.” That scared the rest of them off, but not him. They started backing away.

  “Come on, Angel, let’s go to the club.” I kept my hand on his shoulder, and he didn’t back away.