High Life

by Matthew Stokoe

  “I wanted to set some boundaries.”

  “And now that I know them, what? You want me back?”

  “Isn’t that what you want?”

  I shuffled about and avoided the question.

  “Do you want me to turn her on her side?”

  “No, I’m going to enter through the abdomen.”

  “Why?”

  “Pass me a scalpel.”

  Bella was locked in. She didn’t look at me. Her attention was focused on the smooth white belly in front of her. She ran her hands over Lorn’s breasts, then on down to the outside of her hips, as though trying to commit the body on the table to some tactile portion of memory. I gave her the sharpest looking thing I could find on the tray of instruments, then moved to stand behind and a little to one side of her.

  The scalpel blade caught light from the overhead cluster. I felt myself holding my breath. Bella leaned forward and kissed Lorn for a long time. She stroked the side of her face and it looked like she was whispering something. Then she straightened and stood absolutely still, and for a moment it was as though everything in the world was copying her. Even the air in the room seemed to stop moving.

  But things didn’t stay that way. Bella reached out with her scalpel. And even while her hand was traveling through the air it was obvious to me that something was wrong. She was going for a point immediately below Lorn’s sternum, a point that looked way too high up the body to be anywhere near the kidneys. I took a step forward then hesitated. I mean, I wasn’t a doctor and this could easily have been a bona fide technique. But then Bella made her incision. She held the scalpel like a pencil and drew it firmly down in a straight line to the top of Lorn’s pubic hair—it was too much of a cut, and far too similar to what Karen had ended up with in the park.

  I jerked her away from the table and spun her around. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Bella’s hand flicked out and the scalpel sliced the air in front of my face.

  “Back off. You had your fun with her, now I’m having mine.”

  “You said just her kidney.”

  “I changed my mind. Wait upstairs if you don’t want to watch.”

  Bella looked disgusted and turned back to the table. Blood ran from Lorn’s wound, out over both sides of her stomach in bright red sheets. Her cunt hair was soaked with it and small rills were already spilling from the table and spattering against the floor. The cut was deep but her abdomen held together. Bella wasn’t all the way through yet. She got ready for another stroke. I grabbed for her arm but she was fast and managed to bring her blade across the back of my hand before I could get a decent grip. It hurt like fuck and I jumped back, expecting her to try for more damage. But she didn’t come after me, she just stood there like an animal defending a carcass, her face stretched and ugly.

  “Don’t be stupid, Jack. You’ve got a lot to lose.”

  She stared hard at me, then, like she figured the gash on my hand had sufficiently impressed upon me the idea that I shouldn’t interfere, she prepared to start work again. But all I was impressed with was the obvious fact that nothing short of force was going to stop her opening Lorn up all the way and scooping out her guts.

  So, walk away and let her get on with her killing? Or do a little of my own? It wasn’t a difficult choice to make. Any affection I’d felt for Bella had been choked out of existence the night Ryan and I killed Powell. And now, with my new ad contract, there was absolutely no reason to stay linked to her. On the other hand, I still kind of liked Lorn.

  And there were two other reasons that made removing Bella an attractive proposition. One, it would get rid of that nagging glove problem—the only physical evidence connecting me to Powell’s murder. And two, I could fuck her while I was doing it.

  This last was the clincher, and before she started cutting again I moved up close and hit her full force on the side of the head. She went down hard and slumped around one of the legs of the operating table, unconscious. I moved quickly about the room, collecting a few things and stripping off my clothes. I took Bella’s gown off too and tied her hands in front of her with a roll of bandage. Then I flipped her on to her stomach and waited for her to come around. She didn’t take much more than a minute, which was good because I was worried about leaving Lorn too long without attention.

  Bella made a few painful sounds before she opened her eyes, after that her noises got angry and I figured it was time to start. She was still groggy so it wasn’t much trouble to pull her ass up, get her knees under her, and slide my cock in from behind. I wrapped a length of yellow-brown surgical tubing around her neck while she was like that, then just stayed that way, my cock hard as a pipe inside her, the tubing in place but not tight enough to do anything. Until she got a little more active and tried to speak. Then I went to work.

  I held the tubing like the reins of a horse and cut off her air. It surprised me how deep the rubber squeezed into her neck, it looked almost like a cartoon. She tried to move forward and started shaking her head. Her movements were jerky. I pulled back harder and pumped my dick into her. She’d been silent since I tightened up, but now she started to make grunty choking noises which I figured were some kind of breathing reflex. Her cunt went a bit loose too, which I hadn’t expected, and she lifted her tied hands off the floor to claw at her neck. I loosened my grip suddenly so she overbalanced and fell face-first against the floor. There was blood on the tiles when I hauled her up again.

  I felt the tension in her body, the locked muscles, the bones which seemed suddenly to protrude where before they had been so smoothly padded. She tried repeatedly to get her fingers under the tubing and pull it away from her neck, but her weight made it difficult and she went through this weird cycle of snatching her hands up to her throat, then jamming them back down again before gravity could kick in and do its thing with her face and the floor.

  It was hard to keep my eyes open. I wanted to close them and absorb the raft of sensation pouring from the woman beneath me—the straining of her back, the taste of sweat between her shoulder blades, the smell of the gas she farted out as she struggled to free herself. Her cunt vibrated loosely around my cock, like whatever usually held it tight and in place had let go and it was now just a drifting, unconnected tunnel of gut. I felt a withdrawal of the life inside her, as though some emergency survival instinct was sucking it toward the center of her body, away from the edges, trying to save it.

  She pissed against me. It felt hot and thick and it made my head swim because it meant I was actually doing it—I actually had my dick inside a body that was racing toward death.

  Sometimes when she moved around I could see her face. It wasn’t a good color. Her tongue was so swollen it looked like the front half of a shoe.

  She lurched around more and more desperately, kicking her legs out and trying to get to her feet. After one particularly violent effort she sagged for a moment and started to pump shit. It blasted out of her ass in a liquid brown fountain that went on so long I had to pull my cock out and watch. My stomach dripped with it, it made a pool around our knees.

  And because I didn’t have my weight against her anymore she was able to get her feet under her and jerk upright. The movement took me by surprise and I lost my hold on the tubing. For a second I thought I was in trouble, but then she slipped on the shit and fell heavily on her elbow. Something snapped, but she didn’t scream. She was too busy trying to suck air past her tongue.

  I jumped on her and we rolled around until I trapped her arms between our two bodies and got her on her back. It was awkward pushing inside her this way because I was using my hands to strangle her now and I had to keep tight against her so she couldn’t free her arms. But with one of them broken and her being pretty badly fucked up already, she couldn’t fight hard enough to stop me.

  Face-to-face made everything so much more immediate. I wanted our mouths to be together so I could share her last breaths, taste her spit, be as intimately involved in her experience of dying as possib
le. Her tongue made it difficult, though, and she kept moving her head around. The best I could do was put my forehead against hers and catch what smell of her I could over the shit.

  She made weak humping motions with her hips, trying to throw me off, but her strength was gone. I fucked her as hard as I could, expecting a gradual relaxing of her body as the life drained from it. But when it happened, it happened quickly, like a switch had been thrown, and the change was exquisite. I felt it around my cock, through my belly and arms, a profound stillness that was suddenly there, reaching out to me with a promise of endless tranquillity.

  I took my hands off her neck and looked closely at her open eyes, at the way her tits shuddered with each of my thrusts. And when some of the air trapped in her lungs worked its way out of her nose and made a hissing noise like a blow-up toy deflating, I started to spurt. It went on forever, and after it was over, after I’d pumped myself so dry it felt like I’d never be able to come again, I lay on top of her, listening to the thudding in my chest and the silence in hers.

  A little later I checked on Lorn. Her breathing was very shallow and the amount of blood on the floor around the table was frightening. I thought about unhooking her from the anesthetic, but with a wound like that on her guts, getting conscious again without major pain relief might have been even more dangerous than the build-up of sedative in her system. So I left her as she was, there wasn’t anything else I could do. I left Bella as she was, too.

  On the way back to the Palm Grove I called the paramedics from a pay phone.

  Epilogue

  So, who says you can’t have everything? The men’s grooming gig went as planned, a juggernaut of publicity for shaving gel, shampoo, deodorant, and soap rolling across America with my face on the front. It made me a lot of money and it made me a celebrity. Not movie-star level, not quite yet, but I’m starting to get offers.

  I bought a bigger house than the one I had on Willow Glen and I got a faster car than the Mustang. Evenings I go out to places where household names pass the time between films. On weekends I go to their houses for dinner. When I have a shoot I travel by limo and if it’s out of town I stay five-star. I can go to any state in the country and get recognized, interviewed, and laid. My agent tells me in a couple of years I’ll be the new Brad Pitt.

  The paramedics got to Lorn, but they weren’t quick enough. She was dead before they could load her into the ambulance—a combination of blood loss and respiratory failure brought on by the anesthetic. If she’d made it through, I guess I would have tried to start up a proper relationship, and I have to say I felt pretty bad about what happened to her for a long time.

  But it all worked out in the end. On a shoot in Marina del Ray I connected with a Hawaiian Tropic girl. We live together now. She’s the perfect partner for me—a blond Californian with good tits who shows up on TV and in magazines. We’re close, we have similar goals and interests, and if it isn’t exactly love, who gives a shit? We only have to step outside for that.

  The police never decided exactly what happened to Bella. They couldn’t figure out if the same guy who killed her cut Lorn open as well, or if Bella did it herself for some reason before she got offed. Even the function and ownership of the Apricot Lane clinic couldn’t be satisfactorily determined because the paper trail on it dead-ended with a sugar company in Mauritius that went out of business six years ago.

  I guess, after all, I got some kind of revenge for Karen. But even back when she died it wasn’t something that really mattered, and I care even less now. In fact, I find it pretty difficult to care much about anything that happened before Bella checked out. There was Rex, I suppose, a guy whose death I indirectly caused. And Powell, a semi-innocent man I helped murder. But Rex would have died eventually anyhow, and Powell wasn’t someone I could dredge up much emotion for.

  The only person from that time I even halfway miss is Ryan. I’m not about to wish he was alive again, but at least he lives in my memory as someone of significance. He tried to frame me, he beat me up, and he fucked things between me and Bella, but he also forced me to recognize things about myself. Some people might say those kind of things shouldn’t be recognized. I don’t know, maybe they shouldn’t. But I figure if they’re in there, ignoring them won’t change the person you are. And, shit, I’m a pretty normal guy, I’m not that different from a lot of people. Maybe only a few men ever actually get to fuck someone who’s dead, but I bet a whole lot of others think about it.

  And Bella? She’s already started to fade. I guess she did a lot for me before she turned nasty, and I know I should remember the good times. But I can’t. All I remember about her is the sight of shit pouring out of her ass, and the way she went still around my cock.

  Other selections in Dennis Cooper’s Little House on the Bowery series

  GODLIKE a novel by Richard Hell

  141 pages, a trade paperback original, $13.95

  Godlike, Hell’s second novel, is a stunning achievement, and quite likely his most important work in any medium to date. Combining the grit, wit, and invention of Go Now with the charged lyricism and emotional implosiveness of his groundbreaking music, Godlike is brilliant in form as well as dazzling in its heartwrenching tale of one whose values in life are the values of poetry. Set largely in the early ’70s, but structured as a middle-aged poet’s 1997 notebooks and drafts for a memoir-novel, the book recounts the story of a young man’s affair with a remarkable teenage poet. Godlike is a novel of compelling originality and transcendent beauty.

  HEADLESS stories by Benjamin Weissman

  157 pages, a trade paperback original, $12.95

  “Headless is at play in the world. It is fearless, fun, and sometimes filthy. Weissman invites you into an alphabet soup of delight in language. Eat up.”

  —Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones

  “Headless [is] a playful mélange of erotic black comedy and domestic pathos, dysfunctional families and all-too-functional men, dictators and lumberjacks. Weissman is an expert juggler of tone …”

  —Los Angeles Times

  WIDE EYED stories by Trinie dalton

  170 pages, a trade paperback original, $13.95

  “With linked anecdotes substituting for plot, Dalton’s 20 quick, vibrant, wild tales read more like fantastical diary entries than short stories … The latest in Dennis Cooper’s Little House on the Bowery series, the work is ripe with sensuality and playfulness … Dalton’s unique blend of dream and bracingly honest observation makes this a delightfully weird and disarming read.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  ARTIFICIAL LiGHT

  a novel by James Greer

  336 pages, a trade paperback original, $15.95

  “Greer does a superb job of transcending conventional genrefication, bringing something fresh to contemporary literature … A very enjoyable read [with a] highly inventive structure, full of eccentricities and rock music factoids …”

  —Library Journal

  THE FALL OF HEARTLESS HORSE

  by Martha kinney

  97 pages, a trade paperback original, $11.95

  “Tumultuous and beautiful, an emotional inquiry into writing and the nature of illusion, so highly pleasurable, a surprise and triumph for the American novel.”

  —Claude Simon, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

  These books are available at local bookstores.

  They can also be purchased online through www.akashicbooks.com.

  To order by mail send a check or money order to:

  AKASHIC BOOKS

  PO Box 1456, New York, NY 10009

  www.akashicbooks.com, info@akashicbooks.com

  (Prices include shipping. Outside the U.S., add $8 to each book ordered.)

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Ch
apter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Epilogue