The brief glimpse of a smile disappeared from his face, as he contemplated what he would do with some magic beans. He thought it might be better to just down the fuckin’ things and go to sleep. Have a magic night of sleep and a magic night of death; none of it really mattered anyway. Magic beans didn’t exist and he still didn’t have a plan.
“I guess if you want to forget about the past, you have to have a present.”
He finished up his burger and walked out of the McDonald’s, filled with grease and ambivalence. He filed past a newspaper box that held some counterculture rag that purported to be the alternative to the daily newspaper. It was free, so he snagged a copy. On the cover was a drag queen, complete with bad make-up and conspicuous Adam’s apple. He walked home in the comforting valley of the office buildings.
Chapter 8: Hot Pussy Pie
He got back to his apartment and slowly climbed the two flights of stairs that led up to his apartment. His muscles, legs and brains throbbed from the trials of the last two days. He leaned over the wrought iron railing of the first landing stairwell and looked down at the street. Rather than climb the last flight of stairs, he just sat there and watched the street below him. There was no Cap’n Skin & Bones and no toothless bums; just the sun baking the street and the swaying of the hanging willow branches. The hum of the city had died down for a second, one brief second, and he almost felt that everything was alright.
He watched the street for a few minutes more and then clomped his way up the last flight of stairs to his apartment. The key rattled in the lock and he stepped inside his apartment. It was still warm but not as warm as it was in the morning. It was dark inside because the sun had moved to the other side of the building. He walked inside and plopped down on his mattress. He leaned back with his arms behind his head and tried to go to sleep.
Thoughts ran through his head like a mob of angry children picking on an outcast, lashing out with sticks, spinning away, and laughing before they could be comprehended or stopped. Then came thoughts about her; her and the baby. Well, she hadn’t been a baby exactly, but that was how he thought of her. She hadn’t had time to grow up and become a child.
He sat up abruptly, not liking the sting or the direction of his thoughts. He grabbed his “independent” newspaper off of the recliner and began thumbing through it. The articles were your typical liberal articles. Joe-so-and-so has been misappropriating funds… blah, blah, blah. Residents are upset that a Wal-Mart will be coming to Southeast Portland. The Stanks are going to love that. Maybe Wal-Mart will bulldoze that shitty coffee shop and the creeps that sit out front stinking and being. There was a mind-blowing exposé on the intensifying violence of Portland’s youth. Apparently, a group of twenty kids had pulled a Stank off his bicycle and beat him to death. Maybe if they didn’t dress like nerds that wouldn’t be a problem. There’s a fine line between wearing unique clothing and putting on a "beat-me-up" costume.
The paper was littered with ads for everything; that was the curse of being “independent.” You had to sell your ass to every lowlife and scumbag company in the city. In the back of the paper, there were ads for “escorts,” High-priced hookers who would never say they were going to fuck you and charged an arm and a leg whether they did or not. One of his co-workers at the gas station in Scappoose, a guy named Clint, had ordered an escort once. He said she had come to the door in 30 minutes, just like a pizza; hot pussy pie.
He smiled thinking about the way Clint had said “hot pussy pie.” He had rocked up on his toes and arched his back, looking as if he was trying to push his dick as far away from himself as possible. Clint had said that the chick was average-looking at best and, in the end, all he got was what amounted to a hundred-dollar hand job.
He looked at the pictures for a while and decided that’s exactly what he needed; a piece of “hot pussy pie.” He wasn’t going to pay for it though. He could give himself a hundred-dollar hand job for free. It’s not like he had the money to throw around anyways. He had enough money for a couple of months rent and living, but living didn’t include paying some skank a hundred bucks to massage his junk.
He flipped through the paper looking at all the ads and remembering what it was like to chase after something that wasn’t within your power to just take. “Hot pussy pie” had to be given if it was going to be any good. He was mulling over all the techniques, all the little tricks and ploys he knew about for attaining a piece of pie when an ad jumped out at him. “Fetish Night at Beelzebub’s,” it said. It had a picture of a little devil poking a woman in the ass with a pitchfork. It was as good a place to start as any. He doubted that any of the women there would mind if he totally butchered his approach. That could be his fetish; trying to pick up women with bad pick up lines and gimmicks. He wasn’t confident of his skills. It had been a long time since he had tried to hook up with anyone, but at the very least, he might have some fun.
Chapter 9: Alien Signposts
The time had come. He had showered and cleaned himself up as well as he could. There wasn’t much he could do for the bruising on his face, but he still decided he looked better than most people. He didn’t know what to expect or even why he was doing what he was doing. He didn’t really care. It would be good to do something and forget about the problems, the things that hung over his head.
He stepped out of his lovely abode and sauntered down the street ready to face the rest of the night and the unknown. Just from looking at all of the events listed on the club’s ad, the place he was heading to was a real freakshow type of place. Beelzebub’s it was called and it seemed to cater to the darker side of the public, hence the name. It was on the west side of town, two blocks over from the Burnside Bridge. It was definitely in the right part of town if you wanted to see freaky people.
He had walked down Burnside on his way home from the rental office. In between the coffee shop and the McDonald’s he had somehow walked past the place without marking it. He probably hadn’t noticed it because of all the bums and lowlifes that had populated the street. It wasn’t the worst part of town, but it was close. It was the type of place that would make a person notice the lump that they called a wallet in their back pocket. Only he didn’t carry a wallet and had nothing to lose.
The summer heat had abated for the evening and the coolness on his skin was a great relief to the stifling air of his apartment. He walked down the street, enjoying the crisp night air and the splash of streetlight fluorescence. It was 10 o’clock on a Monday night and there was no sun, no traffic, and no bums in sight. This was how he had imagined it, his move to the city. He set off down the street enjoying the silence of his gait as it moved him down the evenly divided squares of concrete that made up the sidewalk. The trees hung over the sidewalk and abutted the buildings, making a kind of tunnel of darkness. He could see the streetlights splashing the pavement at the next intersection. He was reminded of all those life-after-death stories.
‘Go into the light,’ he thought to himself and laughed. He must look mad, a beat up face in jeans and a T-shirt laughing his way down the block. He stopped to admire the splotches of unintelligible graffiti emblazoned on the wall. It was green and he couldn’t quite make out the meaning of it. He liked the way it looked, especially the runs of paint that had dried in mid-drip, but he couldn’t figure out why anyone would take time to spray paint something that no one else could figure out. Maybe there was a secret society of taggers or gang members that could read taganese. He certainly wasn’t one of them.
He moved on, down and across the street, noticing the various splashes of black, green, and red that had been left on the city. Maybe they weren’t made by people at all. Maybe they were made by aliens as signposts. It made sense. An alien might travel thousands of light-years or whatever distance they used these days, find himself in a city, and wind up hopelessly, completely lost. That’s probably why he couldn’t read the damn things. Aliens had made them. It all made perfect sense.
His thoughts cascaded through the w
aterfall of his mind as the blocks passed away under his feet and the alien tags passed by his eyes. Soon, he found himself on Burnside. Even if someone had dropped him here on the street wearing a blindfold, he would probably still have been able to tell that it was Burnside. The shops here were decidedly skuzzy and all closed by 6:00, except for the ones that catered to the myriad of street people that populated the streets. These people weren’t punks or gangsters, they were 100% genuine street people. They weren’t there because they loved the streets, you could tell that by looking at them. They were there because they had no place else to go or they didn’t have the mind to make sense of what they were supposed to do. Some of them pushed around shopping carts full of possessions and others simply sat and stared at the ground, looking up occasionally, as if the world had suddenly changed on them. The ones pushing carts didn’t actually push them as much as they stood there looking confused, waiting for someone to take them home, maybe a lost lover or a family member that has been looking for them since they went missing. They were more than homeless, these people; they were people-less. He wasn’t afraid of them. He didn’t even feel sorry for them. He felt like an alien walking through an open air zoo full of humans that had been reduced to exhaustion and loneliness. For a second, he wished that he could teach these people to read the graffiti and maybe find a better place, a home. Regrettably, he didn’t know how to read the signs and he realized he wasn’t too far from being one of these creatures himself.
He put some purpose in his step and covered the last two blocks to Beelzebub’s in no time at all. It was all well and good to walk along pondering the mundanities of the world, but sooner or later you had to get living. He stood in front of Beelzebub’s in his power-stance eyeing the maw of the place. Painted flames ran up the side of the building and a burly bouncer stood with his arms folded, eyeing him from the corner of his eye. He was big, but he didn’t look like he could bounce much more than an empty beer mug off a dive bar’s table. He stood there wondering whether he wanted to go in, when a couple of leather-clad women strolled by and into Beelzebub’s without a look at the bouncer. His groin filled with desire and for a second he thought it had moved simply at the sight of the pasty skinned duo strolling arm-in-arm.
‘I guess the party’s already started,’ he thought as he steeled himself for a night full of fetish and probable embarrassment.
As he attempted to walk in, the bouncer put his hand in the middle of his chest, stopping him in his tracks. He looked into the man’s green-flecked brown eyes, waiting for an explanation. The bouncer looked at his face with green-flecked calculation before he spoke.
“Looks like you’ve been in some scrapes, fella. We don’t want no trouble in here. Are you going to be trouble?”
He looked the bouncer straight in the eye, hesitating and sending dark thoughts through the man’s hand on his chest, up his arm and into his brain. When the thoughts hit the man’s brain, he could feel an almost imperceptible recoil in the man’s hand.
“I’m not going to be any trouble, guy.” He went to move past the bouncer but he quickly stepped in front and gave him another shove to the chest; this one was much softer and had a tinge of respect behind it.
“I’m glad to hear it,” the bouncer stammered, “but, I want to make sure we’re clear. Just cuz’ those ladies dress like sluts, doesn’t mean you can go in there and treat them like sluts. I’ve seen your type before. They show up at the door expecting loose women and even looser rules. That ain’t the way it is, pal. Don’t do anything in there that is gonna make me have to talk to you again, cuz’ you ain’t gonna like the way I talk.”
The bouncer released his hold on him and he took a half a step forward before he wheeled around. His blood seethed and boiled inside his veins. He could feel it pulsing through the walls of his mouth. He felt like his body was filled with sharp clawed bugs that were trying to escape from his skin.
“You don’t have anything to worry about. That ain’t my style, so if I have to ‘talk’ to you again, it’s because you have a problem with me. And if I have to ‘talk’ to you, you’re going to earn the title of bouncer… because that’s exactly what will happen when your lifeless body hits the sidewalk.”
The bouncer was apparently stunned at his candor because he had no problem walking into Beelzebub’s. Soon he was inside the door and away from the bouncer’s green-flecked calculations.
He didn’t see as the bouncer called over one of his compatriots and pointed out the man in the T-shirt, blue jeans, and the bruised face.
Chapter 10: Grab the Bull by the Horns
He shoved his way through the crowd, the majority of which seemed to be hanging out by the entrance, creating the illusion that the place was more packed than it actually was. The inside of Beelzebub’s was not what he had expected. He was expecting a more dungeon-like atmosphere with lots of open space and rubber-girls performing scandalous skills while reclining in medieval torture devices. That’s not what it was at all.
The inside of the club was dingy and dark. There were only two sources of illumination; a string of red Christmas lights that ran all the way around the club and overhead blacklights that lit up the middle of the room. A bar ran along one side of the club and the rest of the place was open space, except for a stage at the end of the bar. Hot cigarette smoke and exhaled breath hovered in the air making it unbearably hot.
As he stood, surveying the landscape, people milled around. The majority of the people stood against the bar or near the entrance. The people were also unexpected. There were quite a few people dressed like he had imagined, leather outfits, whips, chains, and all the fixin’s; however, there were also quite a few people who seemed to be out of place, people like himself. The majority of the latter seemed to be composed of college students and quite a few Stanks. The Stanks' thick, black plastic eyeglasses glinted underneath the blacklights of Beelzebub’s. He wondered how many of them were here just to get a piece of “hot pussy pie.”
As he contemplated this, the two women who had entered just before he did walked by. The first girl was leading the other girl by a leash attached to a studded leather collar that hung loosely around the second girl’s neck. He eyed the second girl’s apple bottom as she walked by.
The “leader” was wearing a black vinyl dress that clung to her like a second skin and came down to the muscular part of her thigh. The dress zipped up in the front, or at least, it would have had she not had the zipper lowered to an almost scandalous level. He didn’t mind admiring the area between the hills of her breasts. The skin there glittered and would have glowed even if the blacklights hadn’t been there. She had copper red hair culled into an all-business ponytail, which bounced a little with each high-heeled step.
The first girl was stunning to look at but it was the second girl that he couldn’t take his eyes off of. She had black hair that looked almost purplish. Her face was made up to look pale, but on her abundance of exposed flesh he saw that she had a bit of natural color. She was wearing a more conservative outfit than the copper-haired girl, but that still wasn’t saying much. She wore a pair of vinyl pants that came up to her lower back and left a tiny portion of butt exposed. Even were that not exposed, he could still basically see what was going on underneath her clothes. Skin-tight vinyl pants had a way of doing that for a girl’s figure. She wore a purple and black leather corset that smashed her boobs together and showed off her figure to perfection. Her high cheekbones and cut jawline gave her serious no nonsense look.
The copper-haired girl led the second girl through the crowd as if she was showing off her prize possession. She walked like a woman who was used to getting what she wanted, her hips sauntering back and forth with each step. The girl on the leash followed almost adoringly, the shiny rubber of her pants reflected the blacklights off the curve of her ass. They marched up on stage and the music began.
It was some sort of industrial shit. It reminded him of an old Nine Inch Nails song because there was a sound that k
ept repeating in the music of someone squeezing the trigger of something that had compressed air, a kind of air-hiss every few seconds. He remembered a line from the song but not the actual name. He believed it said, “I want to fuck you like an animal.”
‘Yeah… that sounds about right,’ he thought to himself as he admired the two girls on stage. Apparently they were going to put on some type of show. The music thumped through the enclosed space like the inside of a factory. He supposed that’s why they called it industrial music.
The girls mounted the stage and the blacklights turned off as the stage lights clicked on. Purplish lights flooded the stage making the girls’ faces look even paler. He imagined that he could see the veins standing out in their faces. They began dancing and gyrating to the music. Their bodies moved in time to the impossible beat. He didn’t think that anyone could ever dance to this music, but here was living breathing proof that it was possible.
The copper-haired girl fixed her gaze on the crowd and tugged on the leash. The second girl fell on her knees in a manner that had been practiced so often it almost looked real. The girl on the leash crawled to the copper-haired girl and looked up at her adoringly. The copper-haired girl unzipped her dress so that everything was bare, even the part of her body where there should have been hair. Instead of hair, there was a tattoo of a bat dripping blood from its wings.
The tattoo would have been hard to see for most people, but somehow his body had migrated unconsciously to the front of the stage. His mind hadn’t registered the shoving or the indignant stares of the Stanks and leather-people as he made his way through the crowd. The only thing he could see were the two dark angels putting on their show in the flare of purple light.
Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale Page 3