Cross Country Murder Song

by Cross Country Murder Song (retail) (epub)

  As he drifted between consciousness and unconsciousness he discovered a place where his mother and her friends gathered to pray and worship; a tall building, brightly lit, so much so that the windows’ golden glare made him want to shield his weakening eyes. There was always something in the far corner of the room though; a wooden box set on legs that the light never seemed to reach. His mother was talking to him, holding on to his hand, but he couldn’t resist the coffin-shaped box at the end of the room. One night he found himself standing there listening to the whimpering, and he leant forward trying to make out the features of those inside, but the thin slit on the lid made it impossible to see and every time he leant forward his shadow rushed in and filled the space like sand. He tried the lid, but the heavy chains wrapped around it and the hefty padlock meant it couldn’t be prised open. He hadn’t seen the man before then, he hadn’t noticed him among the congregation, never seen him as one of his mother’s friends, but he was the first person that offered to help him. He was tall and broad, his shirtsleeves rolled up, he noticed the ink on his fingers as if he’d recently been poring over a ledger. He wore a pair of rimless oval spectacles that he kept perched on his head and he kept rubbing at the space between his eyebrows as if his sinuses or stress were a constant source of trouble.

  We could get him out of there, if you wanted to, was the first thing he said to him, a giant hand placed on his shoulder. The wailing of his mother and her friends rose in a thick rope of voices that stretched to the ceiling.

  But the chains, he said indicating the thick swathe of black links held tightly around the box, wrapped like a python squeezing the life out of its prey. The tall man leant forward and placed his hand on the steel links and they fell apart and dropped to the floor. The tall man stepped back and invited him to open the lid and look inside and as he did so the light burst through the room and burnt itself into every corner, silencing the voices and leaving only the glowing sun outside to make shapes through the tall windows, the promise of another day to come.

  He was back inside the box, but he could feel the tall man standing over him.

  I can get you out of there, the tall man said. But it will cost you everything you have.

  I don’t have anything, he said.

  Then, said the tall man, we have a deal.

  There were voices then, a clamour at the top of the stairs, a woman’s voice louder than the rest; he could hear keys, heavy footsteps coming quickly towards him. The lights were on and someone was calling, his box was being jostled, he heard a padlock snap open and the sound of chains falling to the floor. There was a woman standing over him, she placed her hand in his and then she was gone again and when she returned there were men with her, one of them tried to help him sit up and as he did so he felt nauseous and light-headed. He felt himself being carried up the stairs and into a brilliantly lit hallway, but he was too weak to raise an arm and shield his eyes.

  He made the papers and the TV news, the grisly details of the story fascinated the public and he found himself as something of a minor celebrity. His dazed, inquisitive face looked back at him in a glare of flashbulbs from front pages. The nurses would bring them in and sit with him as he read his own story. He’d catch them staring at him sometimes trying to gauge what he couldn’t guess. When he finally managed to regain the use of his legs and left hospital a small crowd of well-wishers had gathered outside to cheer him as he left. He’d been in the box for almost a month. He’d told the police and doctors that it had felt like days. The man had fled, they said, taken his car and vanished, left a note for the maid telling her where to find the boxes, the FBI were looking for him now.

  What about the tall man, he asked the police officer, didn’t he call you? The policeman looked perplexed, he scanned his notes, he didn’t know anything about a tall man he said.

  His brief notoriety brought him money and even job offers and for a while he found himself living in one of the large houses set in their own grounds that overlooked the city. His benefactor had offered him free room and board for as long as he needed. Even though he was left alone most of the time he felt beholden to him and consequently he felt trapped. Sometimes at night, the benefactor would come to his room and try to engage him in conversation, ask him what had happened to him, talk to him about his time in the box. Afterwards he would dream he was back there in the cellar with the soft voice sounding in the darkness next to him. He’d wake with a start and short of breath and then walk through to the kitchen and out of the back door and stand in the landscaped gardens looking down at the distant city. One night he kept on walking and let himself out through a wooden gate set in the high stone wall and disappeared down the hill without once looking back.

  Within weeks he was back sleeping on a park bench. Even though strangers made him skittish, he felt more comfortable out in the world. He was sleeping on a bench when he woke to feel someone going through his pockets; he came to with a start and grabbed at the thief’s wrist. With his free hand the thief lunged at him with the kitchen knife he was holding. He saw the wooden handle and the dull blade as the knife snagged at his neck and cut into his throat. He slumped back and gasped as the thief panicked and ran. They found him the next morning, his blood black and pooled beneath the bench, his head listing at a strange angle. He made the papers again, his sad, strange story giving commuters pause, the benefactor paid for his funeral and they buried him on the hill near the house where he walked from that day to go meet his fate.

  He was standing in an office, the sound of typing coming through the door. As he stood there a lightbulb slowly lit up above his head. In the distance, beyond the boxes and boxes of files, someone was seated at a desk. He motioned to him and as he approached him he recognised the tall man, his glasses perched low on his nose. He peered up at him over the lenses and indicated he sit in the seat in front of him. There was a folder open on his desk and he was staring intently at a white oblong card. He turned it over so that it was face up, the infinitesimally small script was hard to read in the hazy light. He reached forward and took the card, but could only make out the ticked box and an acronym: IOU. The tall man reached forward and held his wrist and he found himself thinking about his mother and her friends and realised how very far away they were. Then for an instant it got darker and he looked up at the endless blanket of flickering lightbulbs but he knew he’d find no comfort there.

  Chorus

  The driver stepped inside of the Motel 6 and steeled himself for the curious glance of the hotel clerk. He’d become used to the unflinching stare as his appearance became more dishevelled. He’d once surprised himself stepping into an elevator, as the doors parted and the full-length mirror stood before him to reveal the bearded, wide-eyed stranger with the mussed hair and streaks of oil and dirt on his shirt. He gasped audibly and tried to pat down his hair on the short journey to his room. Later as he spent more time in his car and less at hotels and motels, his urge to keep moving became more fevered, he felt paranoid in those rooms, checking the wardrobes, darting quickly into the bathrooms, pulling back shower curtains. Ultimately, his appearance began to deteriorate, the stubble a little longer, the eyes a little wilder, the headaches a little stronger.

  Fucking Alice Cooper, he would later mumble to his reflection, as his hair grew greasy and lank, the rings around his eyes ever more troubled and dark. His journey, increasingly disjointed and frenetic, saw him, unknowingly, often, doubling back. He’d come close to running short of gas and struggled to work out where he’d been. He’d lost track of the maps he’d balled up and thrown from the car in anger and frustration. He once returned to a roadside gas station three hours after he’d already been there. When he sauntered in to pay for his petrol and pick up some snacks, the teenage boy behind the counter greeted him with a mix of courtesy and surprise.

  Get lost? asked the boy, returning his change.

  Nope, said the driver, just heading west. He adopted the stance of a surfer on his board indicating with an outstret
ched arm – as if for balance – what he assumed was true west.

  Need a map? asked the boy for the second time that day, uncertainty creeping into his voice.

  You don’t need a map when you’re on an adventure, the driver said, happily not recognising the person who had served him only hours earlier.

  I guess not, said the boy watching his thin frame exit the store and make for his car.

  Sometimes as he drove he listened to the CD player, more often to the radio. Talk shows, Classic Rock stations, sports networks with double header hosts who punctuated their discussions (one would assume one point, the other the exact counterpoint, the subject matter was almost secondary) by bashing a miniature gong as an exultant full stop to their yammering. The babbling and righteous, the laconic and insipid, all human life, he thought wearily, is here. Call-in hosts with an agenda to bait the listener (which must have worked on more than one occasion when he found himself leaning forward in his seat to scream at the radio) and rouse the audience to interaction. It didn’t take much, listeners sounded like they were queuing up to play punchbag to the braying hosts. Some songs would take him back to his basement. He used to play music for his friends in their wooden boxes, sometimes to soothe them, sometimes himself, sometimes just to drown out the moans and pleas.

  As he became more reliant on the interior of his car and less sure of the outside world he found ways not to leave the safe confines of his vehicle. He amassed a collection of containers to piss in as he travelled. Sometimes when his confidence was high, he arranged the receptacle while negotiating the road in front of him, cheerily placing himself in position while overtaking and occasionally tuning in the radio dial. He tried a range of cups and containers in a series of trial and error that really was hit and miss.

  Things he pissed into as he drove included a Coke cup, a Gatorade bottle, a Pepsi Big Gulp cup (and what a gulp, it took him three attempts to fill it), a Burger King container (with appallingly splattered results. He might as well have lain his dick on his thigh and let go. It was far more porous than he thought too; it had stained the car seat before he’d notice the box seeping). A KFC bucket, it made a deep, drumming sound he found very satisfying, he played with the flow, stemming the rope of piss, building up the pressure and letting it go again with a rattling splash. The Colonel’s cheery face vibrating happily with each splurge. He imagined the glasses sliding off his nose with the persistent tremor. He played that game until he almost went under the wheels of an oncoming truck.

  Found dead with my dick in a KFC bucket, he said aloud to himself, I might make the papers.

  Two Häagen-Dazs tubs (Strawberry Cheesecake, Bailey’s Irish Cream) and a plastic bag that he only noticed the air holes in once it was too late to stop. He considered the warning to keep plastic bags away from children printed on the side as his shoe filled up and his sock got warmer.

  At the Motel 6, he pushed his hair back from his eyes and lay on his bed. He took the bible from the bedside cabinet and tore its pages out until he tired of the mess. He sat at the edge of the bed and pulled his boots off with a grunt, reaching for the TV remote. One of the cable channels was playing some adventure movie which he thought he recognised, he watched it listlessly, propped up on his pillows, eating the packet of M&Ms that sat propped up on his chest. Intermittently they rolled away and disappeared beneath his torso. He was surprised to see the rescue scene on his TV dissolve into a soft-core coupling, the diminutive blonde girl sitting atop her rescuer grinding him gratefully into the dirt, his hat snatched from his head to frame her pretty face.

  He sat up and reached for the cable menu on top of the TV.

  Dick Champ is the Sexy Explorer in Poon Raider, he read aloud bemusedly, full hardcore version available after 9pm.

  He glanced at the screen to admire the careful editing that let the viewer think he was experiencing something he was not. It wasn’t even lunchtime so he settled back on the bed as Dick Champ cracked his whip and bucked insurmountable odds. He could hear the admiring gasps of the next girl he’d saved turning into something more as he succumbed to sleep.

  Song 6: Porn

  In his dream Death was at the door complaining about the flies buzzing around his face. He attempted to wave them away with a long skeletal hand, but they persisted, floating in and around his hooded skull, disappearing in and out of the black maw shrouding his features, darting around the dull red gleam of his eyes. I’m tired, said Death, tired of this, tired of carrying all this sadness around with me. Death pulled back his long grey and black coat to reveal a ribcage filled with rows of gleaming teeth, dried, curling ears like slender cuts of meat and fat wet tongues. Cut, said the Director with a sigh.

  He’d been daydreaming again.

  He looked down at the twinkling eyes and brilliant teeth of his co-star, Trina Topps. Her bulging, silicone breasts sat as two giant, austere orbs on his thigh, the pink skin pinched around their base like an old woman’s mouth. I have to stop thinking like that, he thought, it doesn’t help. She flashed him a smile and all he saw was the greying roots of her dull auburn hair, the spidery lines around each eye. His dick lay against his stomach, pallid and soft, gleaming dully with globs of Trina’s spit. He sat up dazed, someone handed him a towel, Trina gave him a wink as she wrapped a robe around herself, her tits unmoving, slowly disappearing beneath the folds of white cotton. Her nipples looked like drink coasters and were about as sensitive, he thought. He surveyed the room around him (they were in someone’s palatial bungalow, behind two gigantic dark wooden doors studded with iron knots, ugly, mostly white leather furniture, far too many plants and a pool at the back clogged with leaves from the boughs of the overhanging trees) and shook the thought away like a dog with wet ears. Bobby was staring at him. Bobby was the director. You okay? he asked. If I were okay we’d have finished the scene, he thought, but he answered instead with a shrug, tightening the towel around his waist. The room smelt of sweat, it felt clammy, he walked into the kitchen and placed both hands on the worktop, he wondered why they hadn’t cleaned the water in the pool, it looked like it was filled with hair, the spindly leaves and pieces of bark set as dark, swirling spots on its surface.

  He’d first made his name in the San Fernando Valley with a series known as The Cocksman Movies. Eight in all where he, as rutting, strutting Dick Champ (that was his billing, who came up with that he thought, smiling thinly in spite of himself) parlayed his way, usually with his dick in his hand or someone else’s, through a series of big budget scenarios – big budget by the standards of the porn industry at least. He’d been the lusty Indiana Jones, or his equivalent, in Poon Raider (hadn’t a girl been bitten by a snake on set and sued the studio? It was all hazy; scenarios of convulsing flesh, tan lines and pumping fists merging in his mind), he’d dodged boulders, cracked his whip, fought and seduced Nazis and ended one scene with a girl wearing his fedora as she sat astride him, her hips making urgent, fervent circles as he lay there still inside her.

  Indiana (or Dick Champ – The Sexy Explorer as the sleeve proudly proclaimed) was his favourite, he liked the outfit; he’d stolen the leather jacket after the shoot. The trousers were no good though, they were designed to come apart at the seams. He’d played Lord Invader in their Star Wars homage, that’s what they called their thinly veiled, sodden remakes of contemporary classics; a homage. In the unimaginatively titled Sex Wars he’d spent half the film in PVC leggings that smelled second-hand and a doctored motorcycle helmet with a blackened visor that meant he was slick with sweat before every take. He’d grown to hate Lord Invader and his wheezing demeanour and consequently, the Star Wars franchise too. He only had to hear the familiar trumpeting theme before he flicked channels. They were the big moneyspinners though; they caught the editorial eye of Variety; to his equal delight and dismay the magazine ran a photo of him; unfortunately, it was a cropped picture of him delivering one of many money shots, his face contorted into a paroxysm of sexual delight. It looked like he’d been kicked in the st
omach. For a while there were rumours of the big studios suing them, but it came to nothing. Consequently, both titles garnered cult status, showing as a double bill late on Friday nights in some mainstream cinemas. He’d been invited on to the Howard Stern Show, Howard told him he knew something about being sued himself while his production team made honking sounds and played hysterical canned laughter as he sat there utterly bemused.

  You’re a big guy, right? asked Howard. I’m tiny, I mean, I’m like a mouse, could I get a gig in porn? I mean, he leered; some of those chicks are hot.

  He’d met a publisher at a party who broached the idea of him writing his autobiography. Maybe later, he countered, when I’m done with this life or it’s done with me. They both laughed, clinking glasses as the party moved around them in the beaming faces of their fellow guests, girls stealing second glances at him, not sure where they knew him from, but that they did somehow. That was strong currency in this town.

  He could remember the first time it happened or didn’t happen. He’d worked with Kristal and Bunnie before. Two diminutive blondes who sometimes doubled up to play the part of sisters. They weren’t of course, but the idea made them easier to sell. As the Crystal Sisters they were always the hot ticket for autographs at sex expos for long lines of bubble-shaped men in polo shirts and loafers. He didn’t understand where the name came from and when he asked Bunnie she told him that it rhymed, stupid. She was giggling as she said it, she was always giggling, her perpetually gleaming mouth daubed in bright lip gloss. Kristal had appeared in Poon Hunter, he’d rescued and then seduced her, or had she rescued him and then he’d seduced her as a thank you, he couldn’t recall. Very James Bond if that had been the case, he thought. The girls even had their own DVD hit with Sisters Under the Skin; he had no idea what the title meant either, but then he imagined it didn’t worry them or their audience. It didn’t matter, he liked them solo, but he liked them working together best. We’re going to tag team you, they’d say before the director called out action. Kissing him sweetly on the cheek as if he were dropping them home after a date.