by John Shirley
“It is nothing,” the girl said. “Relax.”
My anger went away. Just like that. I sat down again. Suddenly I felt tired. Really tired. I couldn’t move. I felt so relaxed that I couldn’t even lift my hand from my leg.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“It is nothing, mon petit,” said the girl. “You are fine.”
“I can’t fucking move,” I said.
“Madame Picou has paralysed you. But it is only temporary. Do not worry.”
“What’s she paralysed me for?”
“It is necessary.”
“Why?”
Instead of answering me, the girl and the old bird jabbered at each other again. It seemed like the girl was asking questions and the old bird was giving her instructions, waving her arms about.
The girl went away. The old bird stared at me. Her face didn’t move. She didn’t blink.
“What you staring at?” I said.
She didn’t answer.
Then the girl came back. She had some stuff in her hands. She put it on the bed.
There was a little doll made of string and cloth and twigs. A pair of scissors. A pin cushion. A little cloth bag. A bottle with some sort of liquid in it.
“What’s going on?” I said.
The old bird put her finger to her lips and hissed at me.
“Shush yourself, you cunt,” I said. “What’s that? A fucking voodoo doll? You gonna put a curse on me or something?”
“It is a gris-gris,” said the girl.
“What the fuck’s that then?”
“It is to bind us together,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
The girl took my hands and knelt in front of me. Usually when she touched me she made me feel calm. But I was getting scared and that made me angry. I’m a Sex Pistol. I ain’t supposed to be scared of nothing.
“I need you, mon petit,” the girl said. “I need you to save me.”
“I thought you were gonna save me,” I said.
“I would if I could, mon petit,” said the girl. “But you are beyond redemption. I am sorry.”
“Fuck off,” I said. If I could’ve moved I would’ve smacked her one. But I couldn’t, so I spat on her instead. My gob hit the side of her face. A big greeny. She just stayed where she was. Looked at me sadly and let it trickle down. Then she stood up.
She and the old bird jabbered some more. The old bird was waving her arms about, telling her what to do. The girl picked up the little doll. She got something out of her pocket and showed it to me. It was a picture of me, cut out of a newspaper. I was up on stage playing my bass. The girl pinned the picture of me to the little doll and gave it to the old woman. Then she picked up the scissors from the bed and came towards me.
“Fuck off,” I said. “Get away from me.” I spat at her again. It hit the front of her dress, but she ignored it.
I tried to move, but I was still fucking paralysed.
“You cut me and I’ll fucking kill you,” I said.
She reached out towards me. She made a sound through her teeth like she was trying to calm a fucking wild animal. When her hand got close enough I tried to bite it, but she was too quick. Her hand shot up and grabbed my hair.
“Fucking get off,” I said.
She brought up the other hand with the scissors and cut a bit of my hair off.
“Fuck off!" I screamed at her. “I’ll fucking kill you, you bitch!”
She held up the tuft of black hairs. Like she was showing me I didn’t need to worry ’cos she’d only cut off a few. The old bird held up the doll, and the girl stuck the hairs to it. There was so much Vaseline on them that she didn’t need glue or nothing. The old woman put the doll down on the bed and then picked up the little cloth bag and opened it. There was some sort of powder in it. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it looked like smack. The old bird sprinkled some of the powder over the doll and started to jabber something in a foreign language. She closed her eyes and started to sway from side to side.
“What the fuck’s she doing?” I said.
“Offering your image to the spirit,” said the girl.
“What for?”
“So that we can seal the bond.”
I shook my head. “What is this fucking bond? What are you doing to me? I ain’t done nothing to you.”
The girl looked at me. “I was like you, mon petit,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She pointed at the badge on my jacket. “I was a mess. I was …” She mimed injecting a syringe into her arm.
“A junkie?”
She nodded. Behind her the old bird was still swaying and jabbering.
“And now you’re clean?” I said.
The girl pulled a weird face. Like: not really. “You will keep me clean,” she said.
“Oh yeah?” I said. “And how am I gonna do that?”
“By accepting my desire as your own.”
I asked her what she meant, but she just smiled and turned round and went into the other room.
“Oi!” I shouted. “Don’t fucking walk away from me! Come back here, you cunt!”
But she was gone. The old bird was still swaying and muttering. I could see her bulging eyes moving under her eyelids.
“And you can shut the fuck up as well,” I said.
But she didn’t. She just kept on and on. Jabba jabba jabba.
A few minutes later the girl came back. She’d taken all her clothes off. She was naked. Gorgeous. The most beautiful girl I had ever seen.
“Fuck,” I said. “Are we gonna shag? Is that part of this voodoo shit?”
The girl smiled, but she didn’t say anything. She came towards me. The light slid across her naked flesh. It was like she was made of golden oil. I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to be so beautiful. I loved Nancy, but this girl made Nancy look like a skanky old slag. I didn’t know whether I had a hard-on ’cos I couldn’t feel anything from the neck down. But in my brain I had a hard-on. The biggest fucking hard-on in the world.
I sat there staring at her with my mouth open as the girl came over. My eyes couldn’t get enough of her. I wanted to touch her so bad. Fuck all that angel stuff from before.
I was staring at her tits and cunt, so I didn’t notice the tattoo at first. It was only when she started to pull my leather jacket off that I saw she had a tattoo of a thin black snake around her right arm.
“What’s that?” I said.
“Le Grand Zombi,” she replied.
“You what?”
“It is the serpent. It protects me from harm.”
“Bollocks,” I said. “Oi, what you doing with my jacket?”
She had my jacket off me now. She threw it on the bed at the old bird’s fat ugly feet and looked at my arms.
“So many scratches, so many bruises,” she said. She sounded sad. “Why do you hate yourself, mon petit?”
“I don’t hate myself,” I said. “I fucking love myself. I’m fucking brilliant, me.”
I grinned at her, but she just looked sad. She turned away from me. Beautiful arse.
She picked up the little bottle and pulled the cork out of it. Then she started to shake out the liquid inside, spraying drops of it over the old bird and the voodoo doll.
The old bird didn’t seem to mind. Didn’t even notice.
The girl closed her eyes and started to jabber like the old woman. She started to dance too, her body rippling like a snake, her tits jiggling. She really got into it, went into a kind of trance. She shook more of the liquid over herself. Poured it over the snake tattoo on her arm, making it shine. Then she sprinkled the liquid over me, over my arm, the one I’d cut open. The wound had gone septic, but I couldn’t feel it, not now. I looked at the arm as the liquid splashed over it, but only for a second. Looking at the girl’s jiggling tits was much more fun.
Both of the fucking women were totally out of it now. Jiggling and jabbering. All that ju-ju voodoo bollocks. The girl kept splashing li
quid round. All over me, over her, over the old bird holding the doll.
“I’m fucking bored of this,” I said loudly, but neither of them heard me.
The girl kept splashing water until the bottle was empty. Then she threw the bottle away.
The jabbering changed. It was creepy. It was like the two of them were linked together or something. Suddenly their voices got deeper. Slower. They started saying the same words. The old bird held out the doll and the girl grabbed it. They both clung to it like a couple of kids fighting over a toy. The girl reached out with her other arm and grabbed my hand. I couldn’t do nothing about it. We were like a human chain. The old bird and the girl still swaying and jiggling like nutters.
“What is this? Ring a ring of fucking roses?” I said.
Then the snake tattoo on the girl’s arm started to move. I thought it was just the light at first, or my eyes, or that fucking stuff the old bird had injected into me fucking up my head.
“Fucking hell,” I said. I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again. The snake tattoo was still moving. The thin black snake was curling down the girl’s arm like a stripe on a fucking barber’s pole. Down towards her wrist. Towards her hand. Towards my hand.
I tried to break free, but I couldn’t move. I shouted and spat at her, but it made no difference.
The snake tattoo wasn’t a tattoo no more. It was a real snake. It made a rustling sound when it moved. Its tongue flickered in and out. Its little yellow eyes fucking stared at me.
I yelled out when it moved from the girl’s hand on to my hand. Then it was coiling up my arm. Taking its time. I couldn’t feel it, but I could see it. I moved my head back as far as I could, terrified it was going to come all the way up my arm and bite me in the neck like a fucking vampire. Maybe it’d eat my eyes. Or crawl down my fucking throat and choke me. Maybe it’d go inside me and lay eggs and loads of baby snakes would hatch out and eat their way out of my stomach. I screamed at them to get the fucking thing off me, but they were still out of it, jiggling and chanting.
The snake moved up my arm to just above my elbow. Then it stopped. It gathered in its coils, bunched up. Now it looked like the belt I wrapped round my arm when I wanted to find a vein. The snake tightened round my arm until a big blue vein popped up in my elbow. I could see the vein pulsing away. Slowly the snake lifted its head. Then it struck. It opened its mouth wide and sank its fucking fangs right into the vein.
I screamed. I couldn’t feel nothing, but I screamed.
“Get it off, you bitches! Get this fucking thing off me!”
My voice sounded weird in my own head. Rough and echoing. Like it was someone else’s voice shouting from down the end of a long metal tunnel. My body was still paralysed, but my arm felt hot. I thought of the snake’s venom mixing with my blood. Rushing through my body, travelling to my heart and my brain. I wondered if I was gonna die. The thought of dying didn’t seem too bad. If I died on tour I’d get in the papers. I’d be on the front page. Yeah, that’d be all right.
My thoughts were falling apart. The room pulsed in and out, getting small then big, bright then dim. I didn’t know the two birds had stopped their voodoo bollocks until the girl knelt in front of me. She took my hands. She smiled at me. Face shiny with sweat. Big brown eyes glowing. Even now she was beautiful. She’d fucking killed me, but she was beautiful.
“The snake is my desire, mon petit,” she said. “You must feed my desire as well as your own. This way only one of us will die.”
I could hardly keep my eyes open. My head was like a heavy rock. I tried to speak. I heard the words in my head, but I don’t know if she did.
“Fuck you,” I said.
Then it all went black. When I woke up it was dark and I was shivering. There was a hammering sound. Voices.
“Sid! Sid!”
I didn’t realise I could move until I sat up. I felt like shit. Body aching, full of cramps. Covered in cold sweat. Arm, chest, and bollocks itching like crazy.
I looked around. My head felt full of broken glass. I was in the broom cupboard in the Kingfish Club. The cupboard where I’d shagged the bird. The cupboard where the girl had come to me.
There was no one here now. Just me.
“Sid! Sid!”
“What?” I shouted.
The door opened. It was Noel.
“We’re all packed up, Sid. Ready to move on.”
“Where we fucking going?” I said.
“Dallas, Sid. We’re going to Dallas. Come on, man. You want a hand?”
Noel came into the room and helped me up. I rushed over to the sink and puked my guts out.
“You okay, Sid,” Noel said.
“No, I feel fucking terrible,” I said. “I need some stuff, Noel. I need it now.”
“No stuff, Sid. You know that. Soon as we get on the bus you can have some valium. How’s that sound?”
I wasn’t listening. I remembered what the girl had said. “You must feed my desire as well as your own.”
I took my leather jacket off. Curled around my arm was the little black snake. It lifted its head and flicked its tongue at me. I screamed.
“Jesus, Sid,” Noel said. “What’s wrong?”
“Get it off me, Noel!” I yelled. “Fucking get it off me!”
“Get what off you, Sid?” Noel asked.
I held my arm out. “The snake! Get the fucking snake off!”
Noel looked at my arm. “There’s no snake, Sid,” he said. “You’re hallucinating, man. Come on.”
He walked out of the room. I looked at the snake wrapped around my arm. The snake only I could see. I looked at the blue vein pulsing in the crook of my elbow, and in that second I knew.
I was lost. Lost for good. There was no way back.
Feed the snake, I thought. Feed the fucking snake.
I put my leather jacket on and followed Noel out of the room.
The Happiest Hell on Earth
By John Skipp & Cody Goodfellow
May 5, 1972
To: Spec. Agent R. Stanley
Federal Bureau of Investigation
As you probably know, Prisoner #0003 has died, after 37 years in solitary confinement for his role in the Animal Wars. He was the last and longest-held of the original conspirators, the rest having either been executed or paroled to their new homeland in Florida when Nixon and Governor Gator signed the Animal Liberation treaty last year.
That he resisted extradition to Moreauvia while refusing to disavow his crimes was no reflection on his daily conduct. He was a model prisoner until the day he leapt from his window in the VIP block, having torn the bars out with his trunk, in a display of strength we would never have expected, given his age. He never had any contact with the outside world, but even after his movie was banned and the UN declared him a war criminal, the elephant-man still got a lot of fan mail from the forty-eight "two-legged" states.
Because Mr. Hoover always took such a special interest in his case, we believe #0003 was just waiting for the death of your illustrious Director: not only to end his own life, but to reveal the enclosed manuscript, which we found neatly stacked upon his cot. The fact that he waited only one day after Mr. Hoover’s death lends credence to this interpretation.
I truly shudder to think of the effect this will have on the public, if any of it is proven true, but I earnestly hope that it will be buried no longer. This poor, divided nation deserves to know why so many millions of Americans still live in the trees, and who is truly responsible.
That is why I have also forwarded copies to Ben Bradlee, Jack Anderson, Jann Wenner, William F. Buckley, and people at several other media outlets.
Let it be known: I am a Republican and a patriot, and am prepared to face all consequences. I do this not to bring our country down, but to restore it to its greatness.
Good luck, God bless America, and apologies for the inconvenience.
Sincerely,
From: Warden R. Clampett
Texarkana Federal Prison
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DOCUMENT A
PART ONE: ON THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS
The rosy dawn paints the gray sands. The bull-men in their white shrouds wait, snorting, pawing. Disturbed by something on the wind.
The Master stands in the launch, arms at his sides like a conductor at rest. Behind me, the jungle clenches like a green fist, flexing its claws. They have all come to see the return of the Other with the Whip, and what he has brought with him.
M'ling crouches in the bow, pointed ears back to bask in the sea breeze on his black face. The less favored beasts bend to their oars, and Montgomery sneaks a nip from a flask, as he answers the Master’s questions. Loaded to the gunwales with supplies and fresh specimens—a puma, a llama, six hutches of rabbits, and a pack of excited staghounds.
But all eyes are hooked on the sinking lifeboat towed behind the launch, and the solitary creature sitting in it.
What kind of animal would be so dangerous that the Doctor would not have it in the launch?
From the crown of a palm tree, Virgil the monkey-man howls. “A Five-Man! A Five-Man, like me!”
By slow, painful turns, the launch creeps into the cut in the shore. The bull-men bow to the Master and the Other as they unload the cages and crates. I take up the ledger and, with a quill pen in my trunk, make a tally of the goods.
The strange man climbs awkwardly out of his lifeboat and wallows up onto the beach.
Claws lose their purchase on boxes and drop them in the surf. All eyes follow the Stranger as he approaches the Master. Without fear, without bowing his head.
He was on a schooner touring the Galapagos Islands that got wrecked in a storm. It was nothing less than a miracle that Montgomery’s chartered tramp steamer happened upon him in his lifeboat. The Captain put the Stranger off with Montgomery after he came between poor M'ling and the vicious, bullying crew. “Someone is sure to come looking for me….”
“Here,” the Master says, “they are unlikely to find you.”
The Stranger asks for a radio, and is told we have none. The steamer puts in only thrice a year, and the island is well off the shipping lanes. Though uninvited, he is to be our guest.