by Poppy Brite
Then his intestines were loosening and warming, his muscles melting in concentric rings around Zach, drawing him in deep. He linked his hands at the small of Zach’s back. Blood ran down his arms, dripped over their bodies, began to soak into the mattress.
“Ahhh—” Zach’s teeth closed on Trevor’s shoulder, a tiny exquisite pain. “You’re so tight. It almost hurts.”
“You can fuck me hard. You can open me up.”
“Yeah?” Zach scrambled to his knees, put his hands on Trevor’s thighs and pushed them up and back, driving in still deeper. His face was streaked with blood, his expression poised between pain and ecstasy. “Like that? Does that feel good?”
“Yes—but harder—” Trevor groped for Zach’s hand, guided it to his penis. When Zach closed his fingers around the head and began to stroke, Trevor put his hand over Zach’s and squeezed brutally.
“Trev, I don’t want to hurt you—”
“Harder!” Trevor sobbed. “I have to get there!”
“WHERE, DAMMIT?” Zach grabbed Trevor’s chin with his free hand, forced Trevor to look him in the face. Zach’s eyes were huge, wild. “WHAT ARE YOU MAKING ME DO TO YOU?”
The pleasure and the drugs overloaded Trevor’s synapses with towering sensation. But he felt a vortex beginning to open in his brain. His consciousness swirled around the edges of it, began to be drawn into it. He drove his hips up hard against Zach, impaling himself. The area between his asshole and his balls and the tip of his penis felt like one huge raw nerve. Zach’s heartbeat throbbed deep in his guts. Light poured out of the vortex, sparkling, swarming.
Beyond that vortex was Birdland. If he was ever going to be with Zach again, he had to go there now.
Trevor let himself go.
“Trev? Trevor?! GODDAMMIT, TREVOR!!!” Zach punched the pillow beside Trevor’s head. Trevor didn’t move or seem to hear.
Zach had felt Trevor’s back arching, Trevor’s come welling into his palm and dripping between his fingers, and he had nearly come too. But then Trevor had stopped moaning and his eyes had gone blank and he had fallen back on the mattress.
Zach’s heart lurched painfully. He felt for Trevor’s heartbeat, listened for his breathing. Both were strong and steady. Trevor’s eyes were half-open, blinking slowly. But they were unfocused, and did not flicker when Zach passed his hand before them or peered into them. Zach shivered. Trevor’s eyes looked abandoned.
“Trev?” he whispered. “Remember, you promised not to leave me.”
No response.
“Trevor? … Please?” Zach pressed his mouth against Trevor’s slack lips, kissed hard. Again no response.
He didn’t think Trevor was in there. Or perhaps Trevor had gone so deep that he couldn’t hear. A word rang in Zach’s mind like the tolling of a deep dissonant bell. Catatonia.
The thought scared him so badly that he grabbed Trevor by the shoulders and shook him hard. Trevor’s head rolled bonelessly on his neck. A silvery thread of saliva leaked from one corner of his mouth. There was nothing in his eyes, nothing in his face.
Zach clawed at his own face, bit his fingers viciously, sobbed in frustration and dread. Why had he ever thought it was a good idea to feed Trevor mushrooms? Why had he thought either of them could handle such a heavy-duty mindfuck within these cursed, malicious walls?
Suddenly he remembered what Trevor had said right before passing out. I have to get there. Had Trevor used the shock of orgasm to detach himself from his body somehow? Was his spirit careening around the house, unable to communicate with Zach, unable to get back in?
Or, worse, was Trevor no longer here at all? What if he went crashing into the spirit world, demanding his explanation for being alive, and Bobby decided to keep him there? What if Bobby just wanted to finish the job he’d left undone before? Embodied or not, Trevor was still tripping his ass off, and that made him more vulnerable than he already was. If Trevor had gone somewhere else, Zach knew he had to follow.
But how in hell was Zach supposed to leave his body? He was used to having orgasms; no matter how intense they were, his spirit did not separate from his flesh, did not extrude on some umbilical thread of ectoplasm, did not detach. He had never thought about how solidly mired in his body he was until now, when he wanted to get out of it.
He concentrated furiously, tried to project himself into Trevor’s brain. He’d gotten in once, but it seemed the password had been changed. Zach tried to imagine what the new one might be, tried to feel around the edges of Trevor’s blown consciousness. He forced himself to go limp, surrender to the drug, think about anything but projecting. He tore at his hair and his scalp, trying to rip his own ghost out of his skull. None of it worked. Zach collapsed back on the mattress, hugged Trevor and sobbed into his chest. A thin sheen of sweat had come up on Trevor’s skin. It rippled with opalescent colors and smelled faintly of coffee.
Coffee …
Zach had a dangerous idea.
He tested Trevor’s heartbeat again. It remained even and strong. He kissed Trevor’s cheek, spoke into his ear. “I love you, Trev. I’m coming to get you. Just try not to go too far in.”
He pushed himself up, nearly passed out himself as the blood rushed to his head, tried to let it happen but recovered. He crossed the bedroom and edged into the hall, refused to look toward the bathroom or at the doorway into the living room, would not glance over his shoulder as he entered the kitchen. He had never felt so unsafe in this house.
Zach opened the refrigerator, squinted into the dazzling light, took out the bag of coffee Trevor had bought. He carried it over to the coffee maker from Potter’s Store and shook a generous amount into the filter basket, then ran tapwater into the pot and poured it through. A few seconds later the machine began to bubble and a dark, rich scent filled the kitchen. The odor nauseated him: he knew what he was probably going to have to do.
Zach couldn’t wait for the pot to fill. As soon as a cupful had collected, he yanked it out and splashed it into a mug. The stream of brewing coffee sizzled against the hotplate. Zach’s nerves twitched in sympathy. He thrust the pot back in, flipped the switch off, grabbed the steaming mug, and hurried back to the bedroom.
“Trev? Want some joe? C’mon …” He slid a hand behind Trevor’s neck and propped his head up, wafted the mug back and forth under Trevor’s nose without much hope, As he had feared, Trevor made no response. He was gone, all right.
Zach looked into the mug. The black surface of the coffee shimmered, as full of subtle sinister colors as an oil slick. To Zach it looked like the surface of death. His heart twinged, and Zach apologized to it in advance for what he was about to do.
He took a deep breath and blew on the demon joe, the drug that bore his father’s name. He said a prayer to his various gods, steadied his hand.
Then he raised the mug to his lips and drank the bitter brew straight down.
Trevor felt himself rising through the syrupy air of the room, through the ceiling and the roof, out into the night. The sky arched above him like a great black bowl pricked with diamonds. He saw the kudzu swarming over the roof, the sturdy little car parked behind the house, the willow tree in the yard where he and Zach had talked that first day, fronds wavering in the terrible razor-edged moonlight. He was rising and rising. He could see the streets of Missing Mile in the distance, dark and still. The house was far below him now, a toy rectangle he could almost forget.
This isn’t where I’m supposed to be, he realized. Got to get back to Birdland …
All at once it was like a film being run in reverse and speeded up; he was falling in a dizzy spiral back toward the roof, through the sucking vines, back through the ceiling and into the rooms and melting down the walls and crackling through the power lines and dripping from the faucets and disappearing down the drains, into the broken fragments of the mirror …
He was there.
The thought filled him with a cold excitement that was almost fear. Whatever, wherever Birdland was, he was there now.
The sensations of his body returned. He opened his eyes and found himself standing on a street corner in a city he could not name. It was like a composite of every city he had ever been in, the run-down sections and shady neighborhoods: ashen buildings squirming with illegible graffiti, broken and boarded windows, ragged posters stapled to telephone poles, peeling from brick walls. The few splashes of color in the landscape seemed somehow wrong.
The sidewalk and the street were empty. Though the slice of sky above him was an unhealthy purplish color that reflected back the city’s light and masked any moon or stars, it seemed very late at night. Trevor saw no signs of life in the buildings around him, heard no traffic, no voices.
But the place did not feel threatening. He thought he recognized it, and he was sure it recognized him. Trevor chose a direction at random and started walking. He thought he heard the wail of a saxophone in the distance, though it kept fading in and out until he couldn’t be sure it was there at all.
He passed the dark maw of a parking garage with a length of chicken wire stretched across it, a stretch of vacant lot seeded with broken bottles, a row of pawnshops, laundromats, storefront churches of Holy Light, all closed. Everything had a stark, slick, compressed look, more than two dimensions but not quite three. The buildings were solid enough; he could feel the sidewalk under his feet, the cool night air blowing his hair back from his face, the bones in his fingers moving as he stuck his hands in his pockets—
Pockets? He had been lying naked in bed with Zach. Trevor looked down at himself and saw that he was wearing a black pinstriped suit jacket with wide notched lapels, 1940s-style lapels. Underneath it was a black silk shirt with a loud checkered tie knotted loosely at the collar. His trousers matched the jacket, and on his feet were a pair of scuffed but obviously expensive black loafers. He had never worn clothes like this, but he’d seen hundreds of photos of Charlie Parker in just such a getup.
Trevor kept walking. Once he smelled the aroma of coffee, rich and strong, but he couldn’t trace its direction. After a few minutes it was gone.
Soon he came to a row of bars that seemed to be open. The block was lit with old-fashioned wrought-iron gas lamps on each corner. The bars were dark, but neon flickered far in their depths, fitful chartreuse, cool blue, lurid crimson. The narrow alleys between the bars were darker still. A yeasty perfume drifted from them: the smell of a hundred kinds of liquor-dregs mingling, brewing a noxious new poison.
A few cars were parked along the curb, humpy sedans and finned dragsters, all empty. But there was still no one else on the street, and the windows of the bars were opaque, throwing back distorted reflections. The street was full of puddles that rippled with strange light and seductive colors.
All at once Trevor realized what was wrong with the colors here. The place was like a black-and-white photograph tinted by hand, overlaid with color rather than permeated with it. It had an appearance at once faded and garish.
Bobby’s comic had always been drawn in black and white. He remembered Didi coloring in a page of it with crayons once, just scribbling in a swath of red here, a streak of blue there. That had looked sort of like this place.
Trevor stood uncertainly on the sidewalk, reluctant to enter any of the dark bars, hesitant to leave the signs of life behind him. The street seemed to grow darker in the distance, the buildings larger and more industrial-looking. Already the air was tinged with a faint scorched odor, part chemical, part meat. He didn’t want to get lost among the factories and slag heaps of Birdland.
So where was he supposed to go? He stepped into the street to get a better view of the bars, scanned their tattered awnings and tawdry lights looking for some clue. He found none. But suddenly someone lurched out of one of the alleys, and Trevor’s quick step backward was all that kept the scrawny figure from plowing right into him.
The guy gripped the lapels of Trevor’s jacket with spidery fingers, stared imploringly up at Trevor. His face was gaunt, his huge burning eyes set in sockets so deep they looked like they’d been scooped out with a spoon. His flesh had a fibrous texture. His long black coat hung on his shoulders like a pair of broken wings. Its baggy sleeves had slid up over his wrists as he grabbed Trevor. Fresh needle marks ran up both sticklike arms as far as Trevor could see.
“Please gimme some credit,” he hissed. “I got a big old shiny rock coming in.”
It was Skeletal Sammy. Bobby’s quintessential junkie character, all hustle and twitch and promise, animated by his addiction. This was the character Trevor had been trying to sketch at the kitchen table the day he learned he could draw. He remembered Bobby leaning over his shoulder and kissing the top of his head, whispering in his ear. You draw a mean junkie, kiddo.
He reached up and encircled Sammy’s skinny wrists, gently removed Sammy’s skeletal claws from his lapels. He felt an odd tenderness for this character. “Sorry, Sam,” he said. “I don’t have anything.”
“Whaddaya mean? You’re the Man, aren’cha? You got these, don’cha?” Sammy seized Trevor’s hands, held them for a long moment. His flesh was cold as morgue tiles. Trevor felt something gouging his palm. When Sammy let go, Trevor found himself holding a small glittering jewel. It looked like a diamond, but with a faint blue glow at its core. He rolled it over his palm, watched its facets catch the light.
“That’s all I got,” said Sammy. “I know it ain’t much, but I’ll make good later.”
He reached into the folds of his coat and pulled out a syringe wrapped in a dirty handkerchief. The plunger was depressed, the barrel empty. The needle gleamed dully beneath a thin film of dried blood.
“Just give me a little,” begged Sammy.
“I don’t have anything. I swear.”
Skeletal Sammy peered at Trevor as if one of them must have gone crazy and he wasn’t sure which one it was. “I do know you, right?”
“Well—” Trevor wasn’t sure how to answer.
“You are an artist, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then c’mon. I’ll pay you double tomorrow. I’ll suck your dick. Anything. Just be a pal an’ roll up your sleeve.”
“What for?”
“The red, baby.” Sammy clutched at Trevor’s sleeve. “That sweet red flowin’ in your vein.”
“You want my blood?”
Skeletal Sammy stared him in the eye and nodded slowly. The naked, wretched need in Sammy’s face was like nothing Trevor had seen before. He remembered a phrase from William S. Burroughs. Sammy’s face was an equation written in the algebra of need.
Trevor had never been any good at math. But he did know that there were two sides to every equation. If the inhabitants of this universe or dimension or comic or whatever the hell it was could get high on his bodily fluids, maybe he could extract something from them, too.
He put his hand over Sammy’s, forced the diamond back into Sammy’s palm.
“What if I give you some?” he asked. “Do you know where Bobby McGee is?”
Again that slow nod.
“Will you take me there?”
“ ’Course I will,” Sammy said. “He’s been expecting you.”
The junkie tried to smile. It was a ghastly sight.
“Okay, then.”
Sammy led him into one of the dark bars. The interior was both garish and squalid, with walls of filthy purple velvet and a floor unwashed for so long that Trevor felt the soles of his shoes peeling softly away from it as he walked. A sign advertising a brand of beer he’d never heard of flickered green and gold above the bar. Reflected in a dirty mirror on the opposite wall, it made a dizzy tunnel of light spiraling away into infinity. There was no bartender, no customers. The place was silent.
They sat at one of the rickety little tables. Trevor took off his pinstriped jacket, rolled up the left sleeve of his silk shirt. He saw that his scars were still open, oozing slow tears of blood. The stains didn’t show on the black cloth, though the sleeve was wet with it. Sammy’s eyes honed in on the blood. He loo
ked as if he would like to lap it right off Trevor’s arm.
Instead he reached into his voluminous overcoat, pulled out a length of rubber tubing, and tied it around his own arm inches above the elbow. “If I tie off ahead of time,” he explained, “I can shoot it while it’s still good an’ hot.” He reached over and stroked Trevor’s hand. His touch was ambiguous, not quite sexual. “You ready?”
“Clean your needle first. You’re not sticking that dirty thing in my arm.”
“No, that ain’t where you like to stick dirty things, is it?”
Before Trevor could fully process this remark, Sammy got up from the table, slipped behind the bar, and came back with a glass full of neat whiskey. He took out his syringe, immersed the needle in the amber liquor and swished it around several times. Then he pulled out a cheap cigarette lighter, ran its flame along the needle and let it linger on the tip. The alcohol flared up clear blue, burned off fast. Sammy glanced at Trevor. “Satisfied?”
Trevor had no idea if this procedure really sterilized the needle, but at least the scummy-looking crust of dried blood was gone. He nodded, feeling as if somewhere during this transaction he had lost the upper hand.
Sammy bent over Trevor’s arm and slid the needle into the open scar closest to the elbow. For a moment he probed, and a scintilla of pain shot through the soft meat. Then the needle found a vein and sank in deep. Sammy pulled the plunger slowly back. A dark flower of blood welled into the syringe. Trevor felt the needle shivering with each beat of his heart.
Sammy kept hold of his hand, idly stroking his wrist and playing with his fingers. But as soon as he had a full hypo, Sammy yanked the needle out of the wound. With absolutely no wasted motion he pulled up his own sleeve, stuck the needle deep into the flesh of his inner elbow, and pushed the plunger. Trevor’s blood seemed to rush into his vein as if his own blood were sucking hungrily at it. Trevor saw Sammy’s eyelids fluttering, the pinkish rag of his tongue glistening in his mouth. “Ohhh … thaasss the sweeeeet red …”