Shifters

by Lee, Edward

  But the joke was on Marlon. Few days later, they wake up under the Nickerson Street overpass, and he’s got some big pusser on his dick, the size of a walnut. “Told ya so,” T.J. said. “Itches,” Marlon replied. “Just like my asshole.”

  Marlon had been in the Nam. Mostly peed himself and fired his 16 over his head during a fire fight. Said he got captured by VC, got the shit tortured out of him. Had something all fucked up with his skin, his chest, legs, under his neck—like hundreds of little holes, and T.J. figured it had something to do with the torture. No reason not to believe it ’cos—shit—anyone fucked up enough to do the shit Marlon did had to have had a reason. Willy was another story, though. Kinda quiet, happy to sit by himself with his crack or his Mickey’s. Said something once about an aunt or a foster home or something but that was it.

  No point crying over spilt Mickey’s, T.J. reasoned. The past was the past. So, they’d all got themselves bung-holed one way or another. Only made sense to make up for it now.

  Willy sat against the lectern post, picking at his foot and sniffing his fingers. “Hurry up and have your butt-fuck,” Craze said, his razor gleaming. “I wanna do me some carving.”

  “Shit, T.J., I gotta puke,” Willy complained.

  “Then puke, Willy Boy. It’s a free country, and you’re a citizen.”

  “Uh, yeah. You’re right.” Willy leaned over right there and—errrrrrp!—let his belly rip right about where the priest would’ve stood when reading the lessons. He picked through the vomit, fascinated by the bits of undigested peppers from the macaroni salad they’d ripped off from Safeway. “Why waste ’em?” He began to eat the bits, clipping each one with what remained of his front teeth.

  That’s my boy.

  T.J. sighed an overwhelming satisfaction. The beautiful night sky showing through the plank gaps, the cool breeze, the whole world open to them. Life was good, and T.J. felt blooming in gratitude when he looked down at his flock.

  Marlon was just about to pull the geek’s pants down, when—

  CLANK!

  —they heard the lock bust and the chain fall.

  Then the front doors creaked open and the woman walked in.

  (iii)

  I’d been following him all the way from the bridge. Something about him. I could smell his heart—a sad heart but a true one. I could smell his brain.

  I knew he wouldn’t suffice, I knew that in a glance. I saw honest passions and grand designs. Tainted in sorrow yet too true to his core.

  Then I saw the others.

  (iv)

  T.J. stared at the woman who’d entered the emptied nave; in fact, they all stared. Their crusted mouths hung open at the incredulity, their black-rot teeth glistening in their grins. Shit, she had no idea what she was in for. Right here, in the abandoned church? Who cared how she broke the door chains—they’d been rusted for years, probably gave way with a quick tug.

  Marlon’s diseased cock stuck out, his hands frozen above their previous task. “Hell with this fella,” he guttered.

  “Yeah,” Craze said, rising to his feet. His carpet razor glinted like a gem fragment.

  “The more, the merrier,” T.J. said.

  He couldn’t believe what happened next. The crazy bitch just walked right up to him and said, “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  Pretty? Shit! This chick was a piece of work. Dressed like a whore in the tight jeans and top. Chilly as it was tonight, you’d think she was nuts but that was fine with T.J. and the boys. That cold air perked her big tits right up, nipples sticking out like to poke you in the eye. Couldn’t see much of her face, though, the way her breath turned to steam every time she exhaled.

  I don’t give a shit about her face…

  “Yeah, you’s real fine, hon,” Craze said.

  “Real fine!” Willy added, unceremoniously rubbing his joint through his pants and anxiously tapping his rotten foot. But it was T.J. who made the move, reached out and grabbed her shiny red hair and hauled her the fuck down.

  What—

  T.J. had her about squashed flat against the dirt-caked floor; his hips dry-humping her as grimy hands struggled to get his Stone Electric overalls off. She didn’t resist at all—this was gonna be way too easy.

  “Come on boys,” T.J. said. “Time to get this train rollin’.”

  “Yeah,” Marlon guffawed. “All aboard!”

  They raped her for hours, taking breaks between the variety of positions. A tough chick, too. After Craze’s first turn he beat the shit out of her good and got to choking her so hard T.J. had to stop him. “Can’t be killin’ this dish, Craze. Gotta make her last, you know? Fun for the whole night.”

  Now Marlon was plumbing her good, the biggest of them. Each thrust of the pus-bulbed penis made a sound like Willy scarfing macaroni salad.

  “I wanna cut her a little,” Craze excitedly asserted himself. “’Kay?”

  “Sure, but just a little.”

  T.J. sat back in attendance, amid garbage, hitting off another bottle of ‘Bird while Willy hit off his crack pipe. “Get me hard faster, the rock,” he pointed out, sucking the hot gas into his lungs. The light neatly tinted the scene. Cozy, T.J. thought. But—

  Yeah. One tough chick. She didn’t make a sound when Craze started nicking her with the razor, and he knew she wasn’t dead because just then her legs went up and wrapped around Marlon’s hairy back.

  She’s…digging this, T.J. realized. We’re raping the shit out of her and she’s—

  “More,” she breathed under Marlon. “Harder…” Then huge, glittering eyes gazed desperately to Craze. “Cut me more.”

  Fuck, T.J. thought. She must be from L.A.

  The long, curvy body flinched under Marlon’s reeking weight when Craze put the razor to her skin. A long moan fell out of her mouth—Craze cut right through her nipple-tip. T.J. nodded—this was wild, and seeing her flinch like that put some more spark in his meat. He pulled it back out, all seven unwashed inches, and pulled his balls out too. Then he lay down. “Got a lollipop for ya. Get on over here and start sucking.”

  Her eyes looked hot at the command. Marlon pulled out, let her up, then she was crawling forward, that beautiful firm white ass wriggling high in the air. Chuckles echoed round the damp, open space of the wasted church. Where faithful congregations once prayed, T.J.’s congregation rocked. She slithered over him, a real pro, real whore material. Probably started out on her daddy ‘bout when she was four. She sucked the entirety of T.J.’s foul cock while Marlon kneed up from behind and parked his—herpes and all—right into her rectum. Holy shit, T.J.’s brained stewed. This was primo head; she was sucking on it like a straw in a milkshake, and didn’t seem to give a hoot that it hadn’t been washed since his last shower at the shelter which was, like, last February. This debasement excited him further—he nearly came—so he pushed her head off. “Suck them dirty balls a bit. Got some critters in there for ya.” This second command was obeyed without hesitation. That hot, deft mouth tongued the filthy scrotum, roving through mites and crusts of old sperm. Then she sucked one ball into her mouth, expelled it, sucked in the other, alternating.

  Yeah, this was damn fine action…

  Craze jerked himself with one hand while the other hand drew red lines down her back with the razor. Talk about three on one! In a moment, Marlon pulled out and came on her back, his hand getting shitty as he wrung the last drops. Then he smeared it all around over the profusion of blood from the razor cuts. T.J. felt about ready to have his when—

  A voice—her voice?—dripped into his head. Give me your tired, your homeless, and your poor…

  “The fuck?”

  Come to me all ye who travail and are heavy laden…and I will refresh thee…

  T.J. could only lurch when her teeth clipped off his right testis; he couldn’t scream. He didn’t seem to be able to hear either, as if the ruined church sucked up all sound. But somehow, in fragments of jerking ill-lit horror…he could see.

  He could see her che
wing it, crunching down as if on a persimmon.

  Good, so good. Sustenance! But…you must be hungry too, and you all shall eat…

  Her throat gulped; she swallowed and smiled. Then her head lowered to the opened scrotum, sucked out the remaining testicle.

  Strong meat belongeth to them that are poor.

  The face rose again, then lowered to T.J.’s lips, as if to give him a kiss. His mouth opened against his will, and then the raw testicle was slipped through her lips and into T.J.’s.

  The ball felt hot on his tongue. His eyes wouldn’t close, and it was no wonder. For it was not the carnal red-haired woman who knelt naked before him now.

  “Tommy!”

  It was the gas-bloated corpse of his mother.

  “Be a good boy and eat all your food. There are people starving in the world, you know.”

  T.J. did as his mother requested. He began to eat—

  ««—»»

  —was the first to react, he whipped out his butterfly-knife, his herpetic genitals still dangling, and lunged at this crazy bitch who’d just bitten off T.J.’s nuts. Marlon moved quickly enough that she’d have no way to avoid the thrust. This bitch is gonna die right here, right now.

  Only—

  She was gone, she was gone and someone else was in the nave. He blinked and tried to reconcile what he saw. Standing in front of him was Captain Choi, that same skinny smile and slit eyes, the shiny angled face. Marlon lay not in the church now but tied down naked to a table in the open quad of Camp 6-H, about 20 clicks west of Hue. Yeah, yeah, now he remembered. Bravo 2/37 had been ambushed; half the 2nd Platoon got chopped, and the other half…brought here.

  Choi’s North Vietnam Regular uniform looked crisp-starched, fine red piping lining the collar.

  “I’ll tell ya anything ya wanna know, I swear to God,” Marlon sang like a canary.

  Choi did not respond. He up-ended a box over Marlon’s chest, and then he could feel them.

  Hundreds of them.

  He didn’t know what they were just then, but he’d find out a little later when the 3rd ACR and 1st Air Cav busted this shit house open on an extraction raid.

  They were blood chiggers from the Red River. Charlie liked to use them a lot; they dug deep and laid eggs, like shitloads of eggs for each bug. They’d heard all about these things.

  “JESUS CHRIST, WIPE ’EM OFF!” Marlon pleaded. “I TOLD YA, I’LL TELL YA ANYTHING!”

  But Captain Choi only tilted his head, and spoke in his refined accent, “There is nothing I want you to tell me, Private.”

  Then he up-ended another box over Marlon’s groin.

  At once, they began to burrow. They began to dig—deep into the soil of Marlon’s flesh. Screaming, he felt them crawling around beneath his skin, deeper, deeper, ever searching for a suitable nesting place. They dug for hours as Marlon lay clenching in this scintillating agony until—

  Choi freed Marlon’s hands from their constraints and lay a riffling knife on his sheened chest.

  Marlon knew what he had to do…

  Yeah!

  He grabbed that knife and began to dig them out—

  ««—»»

  —woman had disappeared, and so had the church. Craze blinked, confused. No, he wasn’t in the church—he knew where he was. Back there. The Clifton Perkins Pavilion at the Crownsville State Hospital. And the same two techs who always fucked with him—Matthews and Johnson—were snapping on the canvas bednet just like they had when he was a kid—

  “My! You’re a big boy now!”

  Craze puked himself when he looked up and saw Nurse Havleck, those devil eyes in the freckled face, her cap, dress, and stockings so white they glowed.

  “Never got to juice you right…but now I can.”

  Matthew’s hand crammed the rubber block in his mouth; Johnson chuckled as he smeared the redux paste on his temples. Then Nurse Havleck’s elegant finger snapped on the WARM UP switch on the Somatics, Inc. Thymatron Series electro-convulsant therapy unit. The machine made a sound like a Polaroid recharging, a nearly subaural whine. A silver knob read STIMULUS DURATION; Nurse Havleck turned it to MAX. Johnson placed the headset over Craze’s temples, plugged the line cord into the jack.

  “Let’s cook his brain for awhile,” the nurse suggested. “Then we’ll use this uretal-probe I swiped from upstairs and do his cock.”

  The rubber plug blocked Craze’s screams, but he could still see, his eyes shock wide as they watched the nurse’s pretty finger touch the TREAT button and—

  CLICK—

  —“Aunt” Velma in the foster home. No, she wasn’t really his aunt, that’s just what she called herself. She loomed before Willy, a large woman in a floral-print dress, a huge hand the size of a small ham grabbed him by the jaw forcing his mouth open. In horror he saw the other hand contained a small jar of Jean-Paul’s Extra Hot Louisiana Red Sauce. The smell of unwashed underarms and cheap perfume almost gagged him as she brought the jar of hot sauce to his mouth.

  “Boy you’ve been sinnin’ agin, an’ we gots to burn that devil right outta you; drink this up an burn out that devil!” she thundered as she poured the concoction down his throat and released him to fall on the floor gasping and spitting. Blinded, Willy couldn’t even offer any resistance as he felt his pants being tugged down to his ankles, he knew what was coming next, and now there wouldn’t be anyone around to stop her and take him to the hospital.

  “Now we’ll burn out that devil for sure,” he heard her say, as the hot iron pressed into the small of his back, “this time we’ll do the job right and burn ’im out for sure; we gots all night,” she crooned as the iron burned into his buttocks for the first of many times. Even over the stink of scorched flesh he could smell her cheap perfume.

  But much worse was the sizzle…

  (v)

  They died quickly, two of them I didn’t even have to touch, their fears took them, what they thought was real. The other two I tore to pieces; I’m such a bitch, I was hungry and excited, I just couldn’t help myself. They were sinners, they just wanted to cause pain; but then am I really that different from them? I could have terrified them and left them huddled in the darkness with their fear; I could’ve, but I didn’t, I ripped and tore and covered myself with their blood, I rolled in their offal as I ate their hearts and livers, then I touched myself until I came… I wasn’t always like this, I remember when I met him, back in Eire a long, long time ago. He said that he would show me what was real, what was true, that he’d make me an angel and that I’d live forever; just like him.

  He didn’t tell me the whole truth. I think I will live forever, but I don’t think I’m an angel. He said I was Sciftan, that we owned the world and could take what we wanted. I asked him about love and he told me I must prove my love for him by my obedience, that only by total obedience could I show him that my love was true.

  I wonder about the man, though, the poet. I took him home, made him forget. I didn’t want him to wake up to the leavings of what I’d done. He seems very much like me. A poet, yes. He can feel things as deeply as I can.

  I think he wants to love like I do.

  Yes, I think that he might be like me, and that’s what I’m afraid of.

  That means he’s part of it too.

  THIRTEEN

  Effusion

  (i)

  “You’re shitting me, Jill!”

  Brock looked at Cordesman as though he’d walked in with his pants down. “Come on, Captain. Can’t you read?”

  Cordesman pushed his hair out of his eyes, an instinct by now. Jill Brock pointed to the well-placed signs. NO SMOKING IN MORGUE SUITE. COMBUSTIBLE COMPOUNDS.

  Cordesman nearly mourned when he crushed the fresh Camel out under his shoe sole. Beyond Brock’s anteroom, he noticed sights so familiar he scarcely reacted. There were no neat metal drawers in this morgue—he’d never seen drawers in any morgue—but instead metal “deposition” platforms, i.e. tables. On each table was a Parke-Davis cadaver bag. He’d seen
this, literally, a thousand times. The only vision that gave a hitch to his gut was one bag in particular.

  It was tiny: a baby.

  “Fusiformal match?” he dared question her expertise.

  “That’s correct, Captain. I didn’t make it up for fun.”

  “Sixteen all in 64s with case numbers that began a week ago?”

  “Yes. You guys want a Coke or something?”

  “None for me, thanks,” Kerr said.

  “Well I could sure use some caffeine,” Cordesman admitted.

  Brock flicked a pasty hand. “The fridge.”

  Cordesman passed the main lab counter, a periodic chart and an anatomical chart. And a coy bumper sticker stuck to the wall: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES, BUT THEY CAN STILL GIVE YOU AIDS. WASH YOUR HANDS AFTER ALL CONTACT WITH THE DEAD!