Deep Cuts

by Angel Leigh McCoy

  No sounds, though, came from the long alley. But if one were to linger, one might start to hear little things: the rustling of Styrofoam blown about by a careless wind; or the mewling, perhaps, of cats in heat; the scampering of vomit-eating rats; and maybe a subtle, subliminal warning of: Abandon all hope, all ye muthus that would enter.

  ◙

  He lay limp over the top of an old crate, a rusty nail from the semi-rotted box imbedded painfully in his stomach. Some of his shattered teeth were visible to him on the ground, eerily easy to see in the faint light, looking like the hand-thrown toss of some shaman’s bones, enthusiastically prognosticating even more pain to come.

  He didn’t expect any rescue, knew in fact there would be none.

  There never was. Not for him.

  Never for him.

  What did amaze was how aware he could be. One would think, that with his unique nervous system, with his one-of-a-kind neuro-set of synapses, that he wouldn’t feel what was being done. Unfortunately, one would be wrong. He felt it all.

  True, he kept a certain sense of distance, but just enough for him to function, a kind of omni-awareness that couldn’t be described. Sufficient to say, nothing escaped his notice: not the crying children of Borneo and not the piece of scum masturbating as he watched the show.

  His show.

  “Don’t quit,” a young curly-haired man called from where he leaned against a brick wall. “Make him squeal…make him fuckin’ beg and squeal.”

  “I don’t think this piece-of-shit can talk,” an Italian-looking greasy-haired youth called back. “Hell, I’m getting’ tired of workin’ the bastard.” He glanced at the broken, wickedly-pointed broom-handle in his hand, threw it down, then started massaging his aching forearm, all the while watching the body-slimed piece of wood as it rolled into a goopy pile of oily-looking water.

  Then, with a disgusted look on his face, and with an award-winning amount of boisterous hawking, he spat out a sizeable blob of phlegm onto the broken man’s back.

  Curly nodded in approval at his friend’s display of contempt. Then an idea hit, one fostered by anger and the throbbing bulge in his pants.

  “Fucking piece of garbage. Hold his goddamned head up. He looks thirsty.”

  “Got it, meego,” Greasy answered. Reaching down, he seized the toy’s hair and snatched his head up.

  Still, he wasn’t satisfied. He hadn’t made the man beg; he’d only broken his body. The meat’s glassy-looking eyes said so. “Get ready for a splashing, you fucking freak.”

  Curly was ready. He’d wasted no time moving to the front of the freak’s held-up head.

  “Yeah, baby, I’m buildin’…I’m geeet…t…t…tin’ reeaddy…yeah, that’s it. Ohhh, yeah.” Though the smack-smack-smack of his beating, pounding hand echoed weakly throughout the alley, it was more than audible enough for the both of them to enjoy, the freak, too, if he wasn’t totally lost in shock.

  Greasy couldn’t help himself.

  He fell into his friend’s cock-beating rhythm, jerking the toy’s head in tandem. “Yeah, that’s it, STAIN! Get ready. It’s commin’ to the top. Cummin’ for YOU.” Greasy—in time to the humiliation—banged the man’s head on the crate.

  “Ohhh…baby…yeah!” Curly felt himself building. Soon. Any second. “Fu…fuck…fuckin’ CHRIST.” Curly, eyes glazed with hate, let fly a massive glob of hot-load jism all over the man’s face.

  “You son-of-a-bitchin’ dog,” Greasy yelled, half-dropping half-slamming the toy’s head. “You got some on my hand. You, ASSHOLE.”

  “Don’t get mad. Friend’s got to share, right?” Curly laughed as he packed his tool away.

  Greasy wiped his hand on what was left of the toy’s tattered T-shirt.

  “What the flying-fuck is wrong with this guy, anyway?”

  Greasy stood with a stupid I-dunno look on his face.

  They didn’t get it.

  Usually when they went to have a good time, they knew they were going to be in for some real choice-cut begging.

  But not from this guy.

  Not from the moment they’d first jumped him.

  They’d been eye-balling his ass for a couple of days, seeing him around the hood, periodically talking with people, or they with him. Asking for chits and shit, they’d guessed.

  Just being a bum wouldn’t have necessarily caught their attention. There were plenty of those. They’d had plenty of those, along with others, more up-scale, that they’d used…rolled, murdered.

  This guy had been just right.

  Made for them somehow.

  Deserving.

  A freak.

  From the moment they’d seen the man’s albino skin, their wheels had started turning. Then, when they had gotten closer and seen the rest, the guy’s fate had been sealed.

  The man’s eyes were colorless, and he had scars all over his face and hands, jagged, torturous lines that criss-crossed themselves, almost like a spider-web, as if he were some kind of savage from New Zealand or something. Weird. The world didn’t need freaks like that.

  Snatching his ass had simply been a matter of timing.

  “Maybe he’s mental,” Greasy offered, lazily walking around, pacing in a half-moon circuit, looking at the silent, dying piece of freak-shit before him.

  “Don’t know. Maybe. He’s sure as hell something…” Curly paused a moment letting his last word trail off. Then louder: “Probably right. Just off somewhere, gone in his mind. Sailing on a lake or something.”

  “Maybe so. But not for long. I got something for him. Gonna be sailing down to Hell in a minute.” Greasy unzipped his pants.

  “You gotta be shittin’ me. Whatcha think you’re doing, anyway?”

  “What’s it look like? You had yours, now I’m gonna have mine.”

  Curly stared, hands crossed, with a thin, wicked grin. “Go for it, bud.”

  Greasy glared at the man’s bared buttocks. He couldn’t really see the man’s anus. Not enough light. Just a bit from the lone glow-globe they had brought and stuck on the side of a battered, low-hanging fire-escape.

  What he could see wasn’t pretty. Just fun. He had worked the albino over pretty good with the broom-handle, jagged, splintered edge leading the way, shoving it in-and-out with a fervor that had surprised even him. The damage had been a kick. He’d seen it, done it, many times before: chunks of meat coming out, blood-soaked, shit-smelling—fun.

  But with this guy, he’d felt something else.

  Anger.

  He didn’t know why. Strange. But his lust was afire, could hardly wait to stick it to this guy…in him. Teach the motherfucker his place.

  Greasy shoved down his baggy pants. He never wore underwear. Then, as an afterthought, he said, “Check the guy’s pockets. Maybe he’s got a rubber.”

  “Done.” Curly fumbled through the pockets of the large Army field-jacket he wore, that he’d taken from the toy when they’d jumped him only a half-hour earlier. “Nada, bud. But hold a minute, will ya?”

  “What for?”

  “This, meego,” Curly said, pulling out a small baggie from his khakis. “This shit here,” Curly pointed with his chin at his buddy’s stiff wood, then at the toy’s ass, “is too fuckin’ wild to watch straight.”

  “Gimme some of that,” Greasy said before breaking out in a short-stepping shuffle toward his friend, his body moving carefully to not trip over the pants around his ankles. Getting to his bud, he held up a fist, thumb-side up.

  Curly poured the contents onto Greasy’s index finger. “Nothing like a little BLUE to get you pumpin’.”

  “No shit.” Greasy bobbed his head to a silent cadence as he moved the powder around in some semblance of a line. He was glad he couldn’t smell anymore. Made alleys like that bearable. But thank God, he could still suck-it-up. “Yeahhh. Now that’s the shit.” He snorted the blue-colored crystal-powder up his ruined nose. “Whoooo!” he yelled, immediately feeling the stuff hit his system with all the damn strength that made it th
e rave-of-the-age.

  “Mother-fucking-awesome!” Curly yelled, finishing his own snort. “Now go and get it on, baby. Let the Greeking commence.”

  Greasy shuffled back to the toy, stared at the mess he’d made, and spat. “Fuck. I’m going to end up ballin’ a cheek. What a mess.” Bending down, he pulled a clip-it blade from his pant’s pocket and flicked it open. Snap. Standing, he grabbed a hunk of the toy’s T-shirt and stuck his blade in. A few cuts later, he held a swatch of dirty cotton and quickly worked to daub some of the goop, just enough to make the way clear.

  “Careful now. Don’t want to catch nothing.”

  “So fuckin’ what,” Greasy answered, slicking his cock with some spittle. “Somethin’ starts burnin’, I’ll just go down to the clinic and get a nice dose of one-shot-cures-all.”

  Watching his partner getting into his work, and with the BLUE really kicking in, Curly’s heart started to pound, and he felt his own ‘Charlie’ coming back on the rise. There was something strange about watching the toy getting it. They had really torn the man up, and they weren’t done. But it was like…like nothing they could do would be enough. Something about this dude just sparked him off, made something inside him want to hurt the bastard more and more.

  Curly’s mouth salivated as he enjoyed the show. What a jump, he thought. He felt his heart beating like a hammer in his BLUE-charged penis. I think I’m gonna have to get a piece of that.

  ◙

  He could feel what was being done to his body. Could feel it in all its dark-praising glory—all its pain. That was his job, his charge, and yet, he was still distant. He wondered for a moment what was happening. Internal bleeding, obviously. His insides were all ripped, torn, and gouged. Infection, too, from that dirty mini-spear shoved up him, plus his own mixed-in fecal matter, were already spreading their poison . He felt his life-juice leaking on the inside, as well as all the places where it was coming out of him…coating his legs, helping to lubricate the asshole’s thing in a ménage-à-trois of blood, flesh, and shit.

  He took note, automatically recording every grunt from the panting pig behind him…in him. Every grunt.

  Then he started to spasm, his body choking out, gagging on something. What now? Oh, my shattered teeth. How could he have forgotten those? Must’ve let my mind wander. But to where…Calcutta? Bonn? Tokyo? Someplace more local perhaps? Oregon, maybe. To the woman getting raped, almost as violently as he, a mere five hundred yards away, in some nasty little apartment-cube? To her baby, screaming in the background, soiled, laying on a blanket, wondering what was happening? His only diversion: a bottle of sour milk waiting to make his little day.

  He felt it all.

  ALL.

  That was his job. And it was a full day’s work. To feel it all, to remember all the pains of the past, as well as the pains being administered in the present. And he did…every stripe, every wail, every burning, pleading scream that had ever escaped a human throat…every fallen tear, every word-cut heart. It was all in him. It was him.

  He was PERSONIFICATION.

  His cicatrix made sure of it, a series of lines that was his personal harrow-of-record, marking him with their all too-visible web. They made him look like a savage, like some freaked-out worshipper of Barker’s Pinhead. Scars, channeling all the sorrow to the pinpoint needling of nerves, mercifully unreadable to the humans who looked at them and thought him to be some vile thing.

  The rat-a-tat-tat of flesh-butchering ammunition rippled through his guts, every moment of every day. And gagging, that suffocating feeling, the terror…of…of smoke, black and thick, acrid, mercilessly substituting itself as air, incinerating his lungs as he felt…what so many…what so many had felt during the sacking of Troy, the nightmare of Masada.

  Buchenwald.

  He felt it all.

  Spears, swords, and knives…piercing his body from the battles of Arbela, Syracuse, Thermoplæ. Maces and clubs smashing his skull. The sharpened-edge that had pierced and opened so many pregnant, begging mothers…in Egypt, in Bethlehem.

  When he willed it, he could focus, feel it happen, as if it were now, the looking up in terror at the dark savage sun as his heart was ripped from its housing, then offered high as a visceral sacrifice.

  Laser blasts sliced him, self-cauterizing dismemberment, leaving him drawn-and quartered, with not a molecule of air left in his body during Moon War I.

  Dresden lived within. Bataan. The known and unknown victims of the Cold War.

  Gettysburg.

  And every word. Every cutting remark, bold-faced lie, and heart-wrecking plea.

  He could hear them in his mind, every damned second of every cursed day-and-night. Words. Torturous words. As painful in their own right as the race-cleansing gas of Dachau. They all reverberated in his thoughts, from tormentor and victim, demanding remembrance. Awaiting the Great Day.

  I was only joking, I didn’t really want to dance with you, you’re ugly…You fucking bitch-whore-cunt…Please, daddy, please. My head hurts; don’t hit me again…I don’t care what you say, it’s not my baby…Don’t worry; you’re only being re-located…Depends on your definition of is…trust me…I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I won’t cheat again…Pleeease don–don–don’t kill me…THERE IS NO GOD.

  Every lying treatise dwelled within…every filthy Dear-John-Dear-Jane letter, every evil bull written, every duplicitous I’ll-be-working-late-don’t-wait-up phone message…every evil radio transmission, every computer- typewriter- morse-generated lie…they were all etched into his very being.

  He was faithful. He kept the record within. He was, in truth, the Great Ledger, the Maker’s personal walking, talking, feeling book of accounts.

  After all the ages, one haunting question still nagged.

  Why?

  It was a foolish question. One for which there was no answer, save to the Searcher-of-Hearts.

  Why do people do this to one another? Wasn’t it enough that man had to face natural death? Enough they could get sick? That they toiled—just to eat?

  A foolish question.

  He remembered having it when he’d seen the rivers, the endless rivers of tears cascading down the face of Adam as he wailed out his sorrow to the Everlasting.

  He remembered having it before even then. About his own kind. When he’d fought against his brothers after they’d dared to follow the beautiful one.

  What waste.

  Why?

  Certainly, part of the reason behind man’s folly, was the other side. Locusts, flies, lying-birds, scorpions—devils. They helped to cause so much, like what they have done…are doing, working within Curly and Greasy, the gloating fiends.

  Still—there was no excuse.

  Man could resist.

  One day, there would be an accounting and a reckoning. Man had been warned: "Forget not to show love unto strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."

  Some did far worse than entertain.

  ◙

  “Ready for a smoke?” Greasy asked.

  “Yeah, well…maybe another hit of BLUE.” Looking down, Curly grimaced. He was a mess. Gore soaked. “I’m kinda grossed out. You didn’t say our ‘girl’ here was split.”

  “A little pay-back s’all…fer shootin’ your squirt on my hand.” Pulling out a pack of Black Jack 5s, Greasy packed ’em down hard. “Better leave the BLUE alone for now. Too much of that nitro, and we’ll be about as assed-out as this motherfucker.”

  “Fine.” Curly glanced at the messy heap strewn-out on the ground.

  “Hey, ya hear something?” Greasy asked just after tearing open his new pack of cigs.

  “Think I did. Fucker’s still alive! Think he’s saying something.” Curly moved to the crumpled pile on the ground.

  Curly was immediately joined by his friend, the both of them bending down, leaning close to hear what was coming from the ruined man’s devastated mouth.

  They were right.

  The toy was speaking, repeating something. A messag
e that sounded like—

  “‘Why?’ Is that what this pigshit’s saying? ‘Why?’”

  “Sounds like it, meego,” Greasy chuckled in answer.

  “Why? MOTHERFUCKER. I’ll tell you why. Because we can. That’s why.” Curly spat out the words. Why? The question freaked him out somehow. Gave him the creeps. Made him feel…as if he’d…done something wrong. Who’d this piece of shit think he was, anyway? Why?

  “Can’t believe this fucker’s still alive. After all we’ve done…well fuckin’ goddamn-it-to-Shirley, this sonuvabitch is tough. I’ll tell you wha—” Greasy stopped. His buddy wasn’t paying attention, just stood, staring at the lump with some kind of strange look on his face. Greasy called out, good and loud: “HEY!”

  “Yeah, man,” Curly answered. “I hear ya. Fuck this white-ass-piece-of-whipped-shit.” Curly would never in this life know that the man lying before him could see the telltale sparkle in his eyes, his friend’s eyes, the sign of devils within.

  “What do you want to do? Kill him?” As if by magic, Greasy’s clip-it was again in-hand, its serrated edge looking raw and hungry.

  “Already done that,” Curly answered. “Just a matter of time.” Then, looking down and feeling again that strange compulsive urge to inflict, he said, “Go ahead and take out his eyes.”

  Greasy nodded, smiling.

  ◙

  The nameless OPEN-24-HOURS restaurant was small and cozy. A little dirty at first glance, but that was a lie. The place was just old, and like many old things, its parts were stained and marred, a bit ragged about the edges. But it was relatively clean. He hoped to find out what the food tasted like—and soon.

  It had been a rough night, one not without its sense of irony. He never really got any rest, never experienced a moment’s peace. After a ravishing, however, for what seemed like the barest flicker of time, he often did feel better.

  It had something to do with the re-knitting of himself.