Season of the Witch

by Charlee Jacob

  The doctor arrived, dragging his feet—as if he wore the manacles, instead of Sam. He was late and knew it. Poor Kriger didn’t matter enough to concern him.

  They dispensed with preliminaries.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mack Le Naif.”

  “That French?”

  “Yeah. Oui.” (It came out pronounced ooey, as in ooey-gooey brainpan, was a worm-man, a boneless crotch of a worm-man was he. He sat upon the railroad tracks, the train he did not see. Ooey-gooey brainpan.)

  “How do you spell it?”

  Doctor knew it wasn’t his name. This was to test what Sam’d say, not to reach what or who he was. Did he know his real name, date, standard crap? Was he competent to stand trial before Pilate? Did he blither, needing an icy vinegar enema? Could he sing, dance, jugulate?

  “K-N-I-F-E.”

  “What’s your current address?”

  “I don’t have a house. I gave it up. I like existing in this state of mind. Easier to furnish. Camus, tell me, where you existentialate?”

  “Know today’s date?”

  “Too late and not soon enough. Genesis fucked up a long time ago but where the hell is entropy when its moment is due?”

  The doctor’s mouth twitched, as if trying to flick a booger off his prissy mustache. “Place of employment?

  “Church of The Immaculate Knuckle Garrote, next door to The First National Twat On Loan.”

  The doctor blinked.

  “Who’s president of the United States?”

  “Jeff Dahmer. Got elected promising no new taxes and a lime pit in every kitchen. But I think he’s a poseur, don’t you? I voted for that B.T.K. guy but those damn hanging chads…”

  The doctor stood up. “Think you’re scary? I’m not put off. I see one of you jerks once a week on average. You’re nothing special. Not god or devil or particularly original. The jokes are stale. You’re a sick, lowlife, scummy, nasal drainage-sucking, sewer-ratfucker in need of new material and a snotrag.”

  Sam fought a scowl. He wouldn’t let this doc get the best of him. “Wait’ll you see one every day. Soon, brother shrinkwrap. You may even join the movement.”

  The doctor glared yet stepped back, making Sam feel better. He smiled. “Can I use the phone yet?”

  Doc’s turn to smile. “Answer’s still no. Not until your evaluation is over. Maybe not even then. Suck it up and quit smearing it on the wall. You’ve no power here and nothing to say about it.”

  Sam snapped, “I want a lawyer. And I’m entitled to a call!”

  The doc shrugged. “This is a hospital, not a police station. Your loony rights are more nebulous.”

  Sam tried to stand but was manacled to the chair. He managed to bounce the chair, knowing it increased his helpless image. He screamed until his throat hurt. “I have to call and tell them!”

  The doctor buzzed the orderlies. They dragged Sam back to his soiled cell, the room’s wall-batting soft as the linings of hundreds of padded bras.

  Sam calmed down. He didn’t actually have to use the phone anymore. If he closed his eyes and concentrated, he could speak out loud what he wanted to tell them.

  And they would hear.

  ««—»»

  Thelonious sat in his cell, sullen. He’d tried for hours to change.

  No paws. No fur. His broken, wired jaw had no fangs.

  He’d hope he could shift and slip out of his restraints.

  Why couldn’t he change?

  He’d managed to get a call out to his publisher, the only one gutsy enough to take on necrOmania seXualis. Located in Orlando, Florida, Necro Publications was the leading small press venue for hardcore horror, owned and run by David G. Barnett, the industry’s true prophet. He’d sounded calm as he heard Thelonious had been arrested as the Triple X Slayer. But he continued to call him Calia, which was the name she’d had when he met her. Thelonious simply put up with it.

  “Really?” David asked, voice its usual tough-as-the-devil smooth. “I haven’t heard the news down here. Been busy as hell. You do it?”

  “Sure.”

  “No shit? What kind of body count, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Not at all. Six or seven this time. I forget. Been busy as hell, too.”

  “This time?”

  “Yes, they’re for the second book. But there were some in the first book. Carrying on a tradition.”

  “Hmm. Been nice to know that for the contract. Liability, you know,” David pointed out. “So how’s Pirsya?”

  “Dead.”

  “You didn’t…”

  “Kill her? No. I’d never hurt Pirsya.”

  “You mentioned a second book. You were doing a sequel?”

  “Well…yeah.”

  “But, Calia, we never got the first book out. So how could you do a sequel?”

  Calia and Pirsya (Wait—was Pirsya alive or dead at this point?) had met David at a horror convention in New York City. He had a table in the dealer’s room, selling scanty thongs with his grinning face painted on them. Also selling a line of the most outrageous novels and collections ever published. He was a dwarf with very muscular arms from rowing in regattas. He sort-of looked like the actor Vin Diesel, if Diesel were half his height. Close enough, though, Barnett was such a chick magnet.

  Falling in love with him instantly (a trick for a lesbian like Calia), the two women knew he was it, the only publisher for necrOmania seXualis.

  Every other editor they approached practically shit themselves, genuflecting, sweating holy water. David looked through it, not a muscle in his face twitching, nothing in his eyes but libertine smarts and visceral visionary. Without glancing up, he simply commented: “Cool.”

  Now Thelonious asked him, “What do you mean we didn’t get the book out? We did. I’ve got—had—boxes of it.”

  David was silent, the way he’d get when he was thinking on the phone, aware you were on the other end and couldn’t see him.

  “Calia,” he said at length. “Remember? The postal truck was struck by lightning. Lost every copy. We did a second print, then the printer’s shop got flattened by basketball-sized hailstones. For the third try, a hurricane blew the storage area into the damn Gulf of Mexico. I tried one more time, that’s how much I believed in this project and wanted to do it. But on the fourth try, the printer got invaded by locusts. Locusts, Calia, who ate every page. That’s fucked up. Too Biblical even for a sinner like me. I mean, if I were to try a fifth time, I’d be afraid I may father some poor first-born bastard only to see him drop dead. I felt like I’d become a story in my own Damned anthology. I couldn’t even advertise the book for pre-sale on our website. We kept getting this phantom worm virus. Even I can take a hint. Sorry, babe. Don’t count on me for a sequel either. Anything I can do to help you right now?”

  Thelonious found himself shivering, sinking to the floor.

  “No, David. I figure I’m screwed to the max. Don’t want you dragged into this anymore than you have been.”

  “Okay. Keep me posted. Sorry about Pirsya and your troubles, babe.”

  Theolonius was confused. necrOmania seXualis was never out?

  Then what were those copies the cops boxed up at the house? Plus what they already had in their evidence room? And those books that people saw, closing Reddie-Eddie’s?

  Now he couldn’t find the white hound inside himself.

  At the door to his cage were the two detectives who’d arrested him.

  “We want to ask you about these three photos,” said Ed Poe. He produced the pics Thelonious’d done on a timer, for the second book after his…turning, his becoming Theolonious.

  “Now,” Tom Larson began, “are these for real? ‘Cause our expert can’t figure out how you did it.”

  “No,” Thelonious replied, thoroughly dejected and exhausted. “I faked them.”

  “How?” Thelonious didn’t know which cop asked that.

  “Trade secret.” He looked up and winked but didn’t smile. Well
, with his jaw wired shut… “Oh, by the way.”

  They’d been about to leave and turned back to him.

  “What?”

  “Do you still have my copies of necrOmania seXualis? And what you took last summer from Reddie Eddie’s?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Thelonious smiled, not with his wired jaw. With his eyes.

  – | – | –

  Chapter 7

  Action at the git-n-slit always tapered off between 6:00 and 7:00 P.M. When tricks went home to eat dinners with mummies and duds or to see legitimate girlfriends. The powder muff girls left for pizza or burritos.

  Tonight Frank Bunny, restless, hips sore from gravity and contact with a barely-cushioned metal seat all day, buzzed out of the store room. The wheelchair whirred zzz’s.

  “Chisholm!” he shouted. “Get your armored carrier ass in gear and restock the cooler. Step on it, fat girl.”

  Whizzz went his chair wheels. Insectile love songs. Wasps stinging beetles to death. Flies humming hopeful lullabies as they dropped eggs into carrion incubators. He rode back into the office, closing the door. Doing whatever he did in there. Perhaps indulging in gory reminiscences of land mines he’d built and loved.

  Chaz filled up cans and bottles behind cold, fogged glass doors. He emerged with goosebumps, teeth chattering. But he smiled. How nice it would be to phone in a tip to the police.

  He’d tell about the bathroom-bordello staffed by underaged girls. It’d make the papers, tabloid TV’s journalism forums, and seedy talk show circuit. Rosie would be infamous—not at all like those poor children abducted and forced to do bestial things. No way. She was her own pimp. Those outstanding boys trapped on police video cams would be seen by their doting parents for the batshit fuckers they were, and no doubt a few scholarships to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton would be rescinded.

  And Frank Bunny. He thought it was the AIDS scare making condom sales rise. Now he’d finally know what had been going on for months under his supposedly eagle eyes. How jocks called him ‘sir’ to his face while, behind his back, they crashed their love boats against Rosie’s beach. First he’d go cyanic, fighting for air during an apoplectic seizure. He’d leak hot lime green snot from both nostrils, indigo bubbles foaming at his mouth. His eyes’d crack like fried marbles. His sphincter would first drop shit, then its bloody insides (like poor Timmy Yale). Cola Slugg lakes of it. As if he’d stored up from every child he’d scattered with his bombs.

  Nobody’d know Chaz blew the whistle. He might get arrested in the first bust. Then he’d be released, part of the group traveling news show to news show in the hectic month or two following, when the entire viewing country registered it a ten on its collective smutmeter.

  He’d tell such a dark tale. Sure, Rosie was a whore but it was her father’s karma. Those innocent-eyed ghosts coming through the walls, sobbing, screaming, keeping her awake at night. The stress of coming to grips with what a monster her dad was. You’re the offspring of a mangler like him, it’s hard not to suspect there’s a beast inside you, too. No way to be decent. Sins of the regenerative organ…

  More. Her dad was abusive. Locked her in a closet, making her lie still as if she were a bomb victim, while he crawled across her to get his pitted rocks off.

  dark Dark DARK DARK!

  Chaz’d be a celeb, shedding the baby fat his brothers’d lost by the time they were his age. No more need of ramblin’ Rosie, he’d get fan mail, have so many girls his dick would be calloused. Rosie might end up at a girl-slut jail, or be monitored at home—with an electric anklet replacing that rosebud toe ring she was so proud of. Then Chaz and Marty would write a screenplay about this dark Dark DARK DARK! tale. Damn… needed a supernatural element. Yeah! Some of Frank’s ghosts.

  “Baby Huey!”

  Chaz hadn’t heard the chair.

  “Sweep up. Even you don’t cast enough shadow to hide all the goddamn crap on the floor—but you’re getting there.”

  The chair squeaked, turned a 180, rumbled a brogue… RRR’s this time.

  Chaz swept, remembering the slim needle he’d brought. Could go in and out, hardly leaving a telltale prick. Not so’s anyone in a hurry in a claustrophobic, poorly lit, blood-spattered room would notice. He pulled it from his wallet, sidled up to the condom display by the register, next to the basket of aging chocolate eggs.

  Presently, no customers in the store.

  Chaz punctured each package, feeling for the circle of pristine latex within, pulling the needle through. Several miniscule holes for every package. He made certain to hit dead centers so the tips were no longer secure.

  I have standards, Mr. Jizzum, he thought to himself.

  (But no health insurance, baby.)

  Bark bark. “What are you doing?” yelled Frank.

  No RRR’s or zzz’s this time. Chaz hadn’t heard his boss coming. He jumped, dropping the needle. Had Frank seen? He patted the packets in the open box. “Straightening these up, sir. They were messy.”

  “Whew! You smell like a butane lighter factory. And you’re a walking commercial for more fiber, you know that? You eating fistfuls of candy bars out here? You ever see a kid who’s been eating American chocolate and steps on a mine? Red, white and brown!”

  “I don’t eat candy,” Chaz said between clenched teeth. “Refined sugar can kill me. Remember the three nights I was off—in the hospital?”

  Frank spat. “I believe that like I believe you could have a girlfriend. Go straighten the books and magazines. And no jerking off to the centerfolds. We got windows.”

  He popped a wheelie—sort of. Chaz heard the storeroom door close again.

  Chaz snorted. Centerfolds? The old creep had no idea what Chaz got off on. Splatter-Proust, Hieronymus Bosch-verse. Tripping the blight fantastic in graphics and graphic prose. Fingering the pages, cheap and coarse or smooth vellum, corners sharp as Babylon nipples, pages spread like thighs with secrets between. Which was why he and Marty didn’t go in for Internet porn-horror. They’d tried it but it left them cold. Too impersonal, too stagnant. They needed what they could hold in their hands. Possessing it, body-by-proxy. Each book was a lover, a slave, to be enjoyed, then added to the collection. Solidity: a rustle and flap against moist fingertips.

  Besides, you had to be a little nervous that authorities (i.e. powers that be… whoever it was, moral majority, sperm police, onward Christian soldiers, whatever) were keeping tabs on the short list of your demented Internet-cookies. Not that there wasn’t sick shit out there that had to be shut down. Sites that forced kids into stuff formerly only regulated to fictional hells. Hey, fiction was what it ought to remain. No actual…

  (Yet he’d heard necrOmania seXualis had real snuff photos in it and he was dying to see it, jealous of Marty. So was that beyond the realm of aiding and abetting?)

  Still, Internet. You were naive thinking your activities safe, constitutionally private. They could show at your door any second with a cotton swab for your tongue and sterile tweezers to yank out a few of your pubic hairs.

  Each story, each book, was different, you see… sometimes not by much. But still the scenarios, character, mayhem. Violence and hormones. Curiosity about mortality and immortality. The difference between a dream and a nightmare often a matter of degree from Passion Play to slasher. Not filth and dirty pictures but poetry and art. The allure of death which literature and craftwork had been obsessed with since their dawn, focused utterly on the chiaroscuro. Stumbling one step more into the blood-and-rose scented black mist while it caressed his naked body, leading him further toward the plunge which dropped him down forever. Into that deep, convulsing vagina of Hell.

  Chaz straightened rows of smutmags and news journals, sports and teen digests. Lazily arranged the comics—a few terror-based, only with less vocabulary. He moved to the spinning rack of books. Romance: puke vomit projectile hurl! Hunkmen on the covers, like what guy really looked like that without steroids and cosmetics? Westerns, spytales, biographies of celebs—bori
ng. Mysteries: for those poised to be intrigued by the dark’s intricacies yet too afraid of wetting their pants. Mainstream horror: and if you could find it at the school library, you knew it wouldn’t transport you. It was like Rosie—a tease.

  Then Chaz saw it. IT.

  Behind an incomprehensible sci-fi book by a writer with PH.D’s in both physics and dental hygiene. He squinted a doubletake, heart skipping beats. He blinked and waited for it to vanish. He didn’t dare touch…IT.

  “Shit-be-damned,” he said, voice so soft the tone made him jump, believing someone behind him must’ve said it.

  necrOmania seXualis. Only the O and X capitalized.

  A joke, right? Even now they watched him, laughing. They’d sneaked in one of the scant dozen sold or stolen. Or given to them at the bottom of a dead buddy’s stash.

  Chaz honked. “Marty, come on. I know you’re here.”

  No, he reminded himself that Marty’s grandparents had destroyed it, along with the rest of Seuter’s collection.

  He opened just the cover.

  Text by Pirsya Profane. Artwork by T. Spunk.

  Chaz gulped, rifling through the other books, each side of the rack, spinning to do the next. The only copy. He snatched it up, fingers greasy with boy sweat as he opened it to anywhere.

  There was an interesting picture, part photo and part drawing. Not snuff, the woman was alive. Yet half of her face was horribly burned. The figures illustrated around it were tentacled, with vulvas and penises intersecting in a surreal Cthulhu fantasy. And there were lines of prose he guessed to be from the piece the illustration accompanied.

  And then I was sleepwalking through R’lyeh.

  (Yes, definitely Lovecraftian.)

  He flipped through until he saw what he’d swear was a dead woman. There were three photographs on the page, two of them showing a slashed abdomen with organs spilling out. The pen and ink around the three pics were done in mostly Egyptian hieroglyphics, also in English: Re-Enter The Bending Bondage Of Egypt.