Twilight's Last Gleaming

by Hertzen Chimera

  Clive Idaho felt a hand on his left leg and froze, he wasn’t that drunk.

  “Free drinks for the beautiful people.” Bedford Delaware intoned dreamily, sliding his hand slowly up the thigh but having the sense to remove the offending appendage before Clive Idaho panicked; only to find the same mischievous hand wandering up to Clive Idaho’s glossy, black hair and fixing the flick that had fallen into his eyes a touch.

  “What exactly is this place like?” Clive Idaho caught himself slurring.

  Lily Veyne giggled at her drunken little Chinaman, “Well, it's just a very..” she laughed, “Excellent gig. Lots of fun. Loads of drugs, if you’re into that sort of thing. Loads of dosh rolling around. Everyone trying to be more bizarre than each other. And basically tapping off all over the joint.”

  “Scandalous behaviour.” Bedford Delaware shone a sickly sweating sheen.

  Clive Idaho, for the first time, smiled right into Bedford Delaware's face.

  “Hey! Lily Veyne took him by the chin, Less of the eyes, my lover boy. You're mine. And kissed him.” her fingers sliding round the back of his neck and pulling him tight into the act. Bedford Delaware's hand went on a wander trespassing near the thigh. Then the neat little package. Clive Idaho shuddered; not knowing the owner of the hand. Lily Veyne kept him occupied up-top, breathed, “You like it when I do that?”

  Clive Idaho kissed her, sliding his thin tongue in. The hand at his crotch slid down the zip and eased out the little bronze cock. Clive Idaho shuddered again; he had put all thought of Bedford out of his mind. Wasn’t he in the kitchen making more drinks?

  There was a perfumed hiss at his car. Clive Idaho pulled away from Lily Veyne, confused; oppressed. Ignore that. Lily Veyne charmed, It won't cause us any harm. She took his face again, kept him under her spell, We are alone. Just the two of us. It is the perfect occasion. Twin disciples of Sin, so hungry for the pleasures of the flesh. The revolting taste of passion. So hot for each other.

  Clive Idaho reached into Lily Veyne's knickers; explored; fingered.

  Bedford Delaware, having been a part of many such seductions, knew it was okay to replace his hand on the Oriental cock, even scrape the flexible tip with his thumbnail.

  “That's me.” Lily Veyne breathed, “I’ll be honest with you, Clive Idaho. Me. Indulge yourself. I'm all yours. I want you to take me.” she threw her head back as his finger hit the spot. Clive Idaho dived at her alabaster neck; seduction so easy. Gorging insatiably on the soft, succulent meat. Inhaling the scent of violets. And the intoxication of sweat. The aromas seeping from her pores almost perfect replicas of the human pheromones manufactured by the body to promote copulation. Heighten the hit. Bolster the buzz. Seduction so easy.

  Lily Veyne's clothes were coming off.

  So were Clive Idaho’s. But Clive Idaho seemed oblivious to the real identity of his undresser, so intent was he on seeing Lily Veyne's tits, hold them in his hands. Check that her pubes were the same snow-blond as the hair on her head. Oh, those pink, bunny eyes. He was now in overdrive; fucking eager. Almost unclothed. His bare back stroked and scratched from above and below. It was like a drug; brand-named OBLIVION. To be perfectly frank, Clive Idaho no longer gave a shit who he was on, who was on him, in him, under him – that is what OBLIVION meant.

  The smell of Lily Veyne’s vagina as it spluttered around his erection, it actually had a smell like you wouldn’t believe, not at all what you would expect from between the legs of a woman, healthy or otherwise. Some alien aroma beyond Earth words. Something only the actual chemical formula could describe. Lily Veyne was bending back off the couch onto the floor like caramel with this cunty-horror stench rising from her like vapour. Clive Idaho was over her, his back arched, preparing for the second flesh injection. Bedford Delaware straddling behind the pair of them also naked, his cock poised for entry into that auburn cavern standing out from that hard Chinese rump. Bedford Delaware shoved his prick home.

  Clive Idaho shoved his prick home. Like a flesh ballet. Everyone grunted; wallowing in the stifling degradation; snuffling the offal flesh. Lily Veyne below, her feet pressing the leather cushions down the back of the couch in sharp squeaks. Clive Idaho inside her, bucking for Europe. Bedford Delaware inside him, conscientious; keeping time. The three of them a well-oiled mechanism. A “sex” machine.

  Bedford Delaware was jolted by a spasm round his cock and thrown forward onto Clive Idaho’s slick back. Seemed to fall too far through ribs and lungs and found his hands squashing Lily Veyne’s large breasts into her chest. She looked up at Clive Idaho’s dark eyes; his face a sudden and appalled mass of expressions. She stretched her neck to kiss his, and bit a huge apple-core of muscle, bone, flesh and gristle from the centre of his oriental face.

  Bedford Delaware thrust ever harder; spurred on to evermore ridiculous anatomical feats, pushing his winkle-picking pencil-thin cock through rectal walls, misplacing intestines and skewering spleen, and it shot out of Clive Idaho’s belly button, impaling Lily Veyne’s solar plexus.

  Clive Idaho spluttered gallons of Erotic™ from the gaping hole in his swelling babyface. Lily Veyne slurped up the horror as it showered down onto her. Drenching her. Gulping down the yards of barking donkey spunk. The gyrations reached fever pitch. Accelerating to an unbelievably accurate mechanisation of flesh and bone and passion and grotesque bodily contortion and accentuation. A livid monstrosity drowning the sick trio until their faces went blue and their bellies filled with pregnant raptures from a new dimension. Clive Idaho let out one deafening grunt.

  All three were flung apart as if from a spinning wheel. Clive Idaho bucked high into the room due to the tremendous recoil of the triplet climax, landing in a curious heap.

  Bedford Delaware came round by the kitchen, rubbing the back of his neck.

  Lily Veyne had somehow slid back several, feet up the couch, her legs splayed across the wall. She tumbled backwards to her knees beside the unconscious oriental. Stooped to unfold her battered body and planted a big, wet kiss on his repaired face; eyes swimming against the tide.

  Clive Idaho righted himself to his elbows, gasping precious air, quite red in the face.

  “What the fuck was that?” Bedford Delaware was impressed, “You fucking weird bastard.”

  “Aye.” Lily Veyne agreed, ruffling Clive Idaho’s hair, “Reet good.”

  SESSION VI

  Screaming blue murder throughout the night's deep violet skirmish. Vapid venomous snakes of deceit slither through dreams infecting the darker corners with their acerbic schizophrenia. Bedclothes like living fabric. Whispering poisonous insinuations. Spurting rancid globs of dream disease. Tearing themselves to shreds as an illustration of the phenomenal power at the source of their invocation.

  Mr Whysilage on his back in some dank and dreary back alley of the tower block city we had happened in. Motionless and mortally wounded.

  Not, as his likeness Steve Martin would have been, cracking swift one-liners despite his condition; just bleeding that ridiculously corny green blood and slowly, surely; certainly: dying.

  New York, I had heard a passing native call this place. Or, at least, that's how the virtually indecipherable lingo made it sound around all the guttural clicks and pops of pronunciation. It suited me fine to call this place New York. I could sympathise with exactly what this meant. It sufficed.

  Mr Whysilage miraculously recovered from his mugging; what a fighter. Pulled through just as I expected him to turn white and splutter out a last request for me to deliver to his wife and kids in the nonsensical verbal diarrhoea that had issued from his pewter lips since that unfortunate incident at the eaterie.

  Psycho--genetical-infestation rejection he’d later try to explain away the revolting abomination I had coughed up while I was JAZZING - a word he threw off as if I’d know what he meant; which, fundamentally, I did. But he hadn't yet regained his command of the English language in any way, shade or form.

  “Gwi-naaaa-dthu.” he coughed as he gestured for me to
lift him out of the filthy puddle of piss he was flailing around in. The sound of the alien muggers’ heals still echoing in the cool early-morning bronze haze. Cuban heals. Flesh Cubans these muggers had. They were built like brick shithouses. No arms. But these massively powerful torsos, taut with musculature. No heads; Just a trio of lizardlike eyes decorating the torsal brim, each independent of its neighbour. Their inordinately long thighs that stretched down to prehensile feet that could grip like human hands and for heals they had these revolting flesh Cubans.

  Blocks of bone and gristle underfoot that raised them to tippy-toes, making them resemble beheaded poultry drag-queens as they jostled Mr Whysilage to the ground and robbed him of nothing more than his artificial arms and one pair of canary-yellow sunglasses. Like they were mugging to order.

  “Gbikahamadabadwek.” he slipped into yet another dialect.

  “Schneldz.” he ranted, flashing through dialects like a cold-caller flashes through a phone book, “Iba-akecht!!” “Nimzah-M.” “Avvujetang.” tripping clumsily over his tongue from one alien dialect to another, “Ydskenskin; agtik djiinka batkardik!!” Into ... Galimatian?? “Files de putes!” he exclaimed, “J’espere qu'ils s’etouffent sous les aiselles de leurs meres. Les batards lepreux ensorceleurs en tuniques.”

  What was this? At long last a language barely recognisable as Terran and how long had it been since the discordant days of my G1.01 Level Galimatian Language lessons?

  “Voici, tout le monde” and “Depeche-toi” being the only vaguely Galimatian terms that initially leapt to mind. I tried hard to visualize those uncomfortable times wearing those hot earphones and parroting “Bonjour” and “Comment Allez-Vous” et “Cava Bien, Monsieur” et “Le dejeuner est pret, madam et de quel quai part le train pour Tours...” Et voila! Most of what I’d hoped I’d forgotten came skulking back like a rain-soaked dog with its tail between its legs.

  “Monsieur Whysilage.” I began shakily. “Er, Pourquoi ... parlez-vous Galimatian, maintenant?”

  “Ah, tu parles aussi cette Langue Royale, mon petit etranger?” he erupted with Gallic flourish.

  I said yes, I do speak Galimatian. A grave mistake.

  Well, there seemed to be no end to his colloquial contortions. On he prattled in fluent Galimatian slang. Me, I was left for dead by the speed and emotional ferocity of his mind-blasting delivery. On and on and on he babbled as we left the alleyway together, him racing at the limit of his eloquence. Breathless with the effort and excitement of his verbiage. His head bobbing this way and that. His shoulders bobbing and shuffling expressively to enhance the finer subtleties of the expurgation, embellish the acres of dialogue with a far-too-subtle sarcasm. Trying desperately to keep up with him as I struggled to pluck single words and the odd phrase or two from the linguistic assault being made on my poor English ears.

  I finally screamed, “Mnsr Whysilage. For pity's sake: Stop.” I waved him down in English.

  “Tu parles trop vite pour moi. Je ne comprend rien. Plus lentement, s'il vous plait.”

  “Okay, why didn't you say?…” he suddenly caught himself replying in North Americenese Yankee Doodle Dandee Speak.

  “Huh.” he smiled, “I hate it when that happens. I guess it's time I told you what's going on, ain’t it?”

  “That would be a help.” I huffed.

  “Okay, I'll make it snappy; in case I lose the focus again. Random vocaliser. Local influence coefficient unstable. Totally out of my control when I am this traumatised.” he was resigned to convey with a helpless, armless shrug of the shoulders. Then a smile. He was very philosophical about his latest handicap.

  “Get down.” he suddenly hissed, diving for cover behind a parked vehicle on the sidewalk. I got down.

  “What is it?” I was terrified suddenly.

  “So that's what all this outrageous jazzzzz is about?” he pouted.

  “What?” I peered over the golden fender of the vehicle, “Get your Goddamn head down, soldier!” he snapped like an army sergeant caught behind enemy lines.

  “I don't see a thing.” I shouted.

  “There!” he raised his chin in the general direction of interest.

  I looked but only saw the shadows caused by cloud formations rolling over this mega cityscape with dolorous magnanimity, “I don't see anything.”

  “Loooook.” he frowned focussing his attention, grinding his teeth so the mastication muscles on his face throbbed hypnotically, “Ornamentals…”

  “I don't see a thing...” I was trying to tell him, “I don't see…” Then I saw it. Them. The Ornamentals. It was, quite possibly the most unsettling sight I had laid eyes on thus far. Across the freeway, that drew its artificial finger through the city, a disturbance in the very fabric of the foyer of Rushmore Towers opposite. You couldn’t see it until you really looked but if you looked you saw.

  “We gotta get a ride outta here..” Mr Whysilage gave his best Sergeant John Wayne.

  “We going to WALK out of this one too?” I asked, only to find Mr Whysilage on his side in the gutter, licking. Yes. You didn’t mis-hear me just then; I said licking.

  Either he had gone mad with the stress of the days events or Mr Whysilage knew exactly what he was doing as he enthusiastically licked the nether region of the vehicle we were taking cover behind, causing it to judder and shudder as if ticklish to the glottic foreplay.

  The glittering foyer of Rushmore Towers began to go molten then, while still in the familiar wet shapes of swing doors, Doric columns, plate crystal and paving tiles, congealed up and forward onto the sidewalk. A mountainous rock face, grinning to life, four dark, brooding, predatory structures like a quartet of irate hardware stores turned inside out and animated by some malevolent enchantment.

  A compartment door as demure as the Mona Lisa smile opened at the far end of the vehicle.

  “Gggggggoessssocce.” Mr Whysilage rattled. No explanation needed. I scrambled for the moist aperture and slid into its crude-oil interior. Mr Whysilage close behind.

  “Ddddtttttthhhwywi.” he buzzed. As if in response, the vehicle's tickled judder enhanced itself to a rhythmic, mechanical throb of ignition. Revved itself comfortingly.

  “VvrrrrrrrrRRRRrrrrnnnnnnw.” Mr Whysilage gossiped with the mechanism as out the vehicle's transparent side the four black beings could be seen lumbering electro-statically across the freeway, cutting a swathe through the mad rush-hour dash of homeward-bound living commuter vehicles. Causing a major pile-up strewn with the unctuous green life-fluid. Sparks of chemical compression spat their indignation at the freeway-straddling Ornamentals. The vehicle we were slumped uncomfortably inside burped with life. The g-force of acceleration threw us back into its darker back portion. Stale odours of the locker room. The slimy secretions of locomotion, blubber and seep from the living ceiling to engine parts buried beneath the perforated floor pan.

  Through the window we watched as the lemon of the sky blanched, rising to a cold russet then got all violet and morose in the next instant as we sped along, in the freeway. Destination inconceivable.

  “And how is the food here?” Dr Fanny Bradburg, asked a-propos of nothing.

  “The food? This is also relevant?” I asked.

  “Of course. I wouldn’t have asked, otherwise, would I?” my therapist replied.

  “The food is fine ... for prison food.” I sneered.

  “Now, now, Mister Deniz. No need to get bitter and twisted. No need at all.” she prattled on school-mistress-like, “Bed baths?”

  “Very nice.” I fondly remembered the erotic libation of the luscious, the voluptuous albino Staff Nurse Lily Veyne. I continually fantasise about her soft, round nakedness. Actually awoke one sweltering morning with an unbelievably itchy crotch patch. Felt really good to alleviate the irritation with a good double-handed scratch. The sharp white nails of all twelve fingers working the small pain to a bleeding agony of pustules and infected pores, a tender moment. Sex must really hurt.

  “And we are giving you enough time in
the pool?” Fanny Bradburg asked, executing yet another notepad tick.

  I hate the swimming pool. Never could quite get the hang of any standard stroke: my version of swimming entailed ... well, you know when you're walking by the canal in the dusk of Winter and you espy some small child drowning in the industrial filth, they flounder and thrash their arms about, they swallow copious lungfuls of sever-rat urine, go under, come back up for air and, just when you think they've got the hang of it and they're about to stop fooling around and swim to shore, they drown?

  “Yes.” I reply, “They give me just enough time in the pool.”

  SEVEN

  “I am a complete bastard; not worth a wet shite in a paper cup; a cunt gone off; a turd; something you'd step round in the street.

  “How could I have lot it happen? It's obvious from the look on their faces that he had me. Fucked me up the arse. I'm a fucking shirt-lifter. How could I stoop so low? God, I'm so fuckin ashamed.”

  Exactly this sort of self-disgusted scolding had spewed forth from young Clive Idaho's lips ever since he returned to his family home sometime in the cockerel-shrieking early hours. His parents would be so ashamed of his perverse alter-existence. How could he so betray them? What a weak bastard, a cocksucker, hah, theirs irony there for you, even rent boys on the game are financially rewarded for their services to cockdom; alls Clive Idaho got was a couple of Arrowroot biscuits to dip in his lukewarm coffee after the act and an uncomfortably unbearable atmosphere before he left Bedford Delaware's apartment in utterly embarrassed silence.

  There came a light percussion at his bedroom door.

  “Everything is okay, Clive?” his big sister Sukie hailed in fluent Cantonese. Clive Idaho wished he wasn’t there. Wished he hadn't returned here to face the inevitable grilling. The where have you beens. The what did you get up tos. The…