In Extremis

by John Shirley

  There’s Buck. He’s emaciated, his blond hair in a white boy’s approximation of dreadlocks. Under his arm’s an expensive skateboard with a lot of cartoony stickers on it; he’s wearing a Levi’s jacket sans sleeves, stupid looking surfer shorts, tattoos.

  Perrick attempts: “Hey. Buck. I paid her, man. She’s out hittin’ the pipe an’ hittin’ the needle, slammin’ your money.”

  “Heeeeey, dudeski, the bitch does that again she’s gonna be a bad memory an’ she knows that. And I hope she hears me.” He shouts past Perrick. “You hear me, bitch?”

  Perrick is holding her up with one hand to take the weight off his dick and the strain is hacking away at his veneer. Can’t take much more.

  Was she going to bite through? She can’t—she’s dead. Right?

  Buck’s saying, “I bet she’s in the bathroom doin’ up some shit and laughin’. I always know when she’s laughin’ at me no matter where she is. I can feel it. Right now. I’m like, psychic. Her mouth’s open and she’s laughing right now—”

  Perrick ventures, “I don’t think so.” He’s walking a line, between whimpering and hysterical laughter. He feels like he has the weight of the planet hanging from his dick. The pregnant mass of the fucking bitch Mother Earth . . .

  Buck ignores him, he’s shouting, “—And I’m gonna KICK HER ASS FOR IT!” And he kicks the door, smashing it into the corpse hanging from Perrick so that the pain dances through him and expresses itself with a long ululating howl and he tries to edge aside but the door is kicked again and wham, bangs into the corpse again and Perrick howls again, tries desperately to get out of the way until at last Buck pushes in and past him, turns and sees the body with its head under his coat.

  “Oh this is cute, right when I’m talkin’ to you she’s givin’ you head, dude!” He starts yanking at the body to get her out where he can slap her around. “Tryin’-a pretend you’re not here, I bitch-slap you, let go of that shit and get your ass over here!”

  Perrick is making a hot-coals kind of dance, his face a rictus of pain, trying to prevent his dick from being pulled off—starts following Buck’s pull around the room in a Chinese parade dragon effect with the body, making funny little marching shuffles with his feet like a kid playing choo-choo.

  Perrick yelling, “No, no, don’t you, don’t—no wait!”

  Suddenly Buck stops and stares. Looks at the body. Lets it fall limp. Steps over to the panting Perrick and peeks into the coat. Takes a startled step back.

  “Jeezus! You fuckin’ murdered my old lady with that puny little dick of yours!”

  Perrick’s sobbing, “I didn’t mean it, Buck, she just—she was all nodded out and I guess I got carried away on some crystal and I guess I was kinda mad at her anyway so I was kinda chokin’ her and I didn’t see what was happening and—she just croaked, man! And she clamped down on there some kind a death grip reflex thing and I’m fuckin’ stuck, man!”

  “The balls too?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I really got carried away, you know?”

  “This . . .” Buck shakes his head as if in high moral judgment. “This . . . this is gonna cost you extra.”

  Perrick suddenly feels a cold melty feeling at his dick. He thinks, at first, she’s bitten right through. But then he checks it out. He sees . . . “Oh shit. Oh no. I’m losin’ feeling in it.”

  “Well you oughta be glad, dudeski!”

  “You don’t fucking understand! If I can’t feel it—that means it’s dying! MY DICK’S DYING!”

  Buck crosses his arms, considers the strange union of the corpse and the dick with a philosopher’s judiciousness. “Yo, calm down, there’s a way . . . we make a deal, we get you out . . . This is so totally gnarly.”

  Buck starts moving around, looking at the thing from different angles, sniggering behind his hand.

  Perrick yells, “It ain’t fuckin’ funny, Buck!”

  “Sure it is. You know what else? This is just like Suzie. It really is. And you know what else? It was in all the signs today, man.” He takes out a glass crack pipe, blackened with use, thumbs in a rock and fires it up, poofs in a thoughtful way. Buck’s head seems to expand slightly like a toy balloon. He exhales and chatters, “Astrology, it was her planets, man, they’re all fucked up with her lunar signs. And it was in the smog colors. You ever read smog colors. Like tea leaves? And the way people was walkin’ in the Mix, I always know, I’m kinda psychic like that, I see the patterns in the Mix, you know? Some days there’s wack shit in the air that just gets a life of its own.”

  Perrick’s on the gelatinous rim of the Grand Abyss called Hysteria. “Stop hittin’ on that fuckin’ pipe and get her the fuck off me!”

  Buck blows white smoke and says, “Hey don’t be comin’ at me like that, dudeski, ’s bullshit.”

  “I got a few thousand dollars in the bank, I can get you two hundred fifty bucks right away, get you two thousand tomorrow, you get her off me. It’s all I could get out of the joint account I had with my wife when I left her but you can have it all man. Just.., Just . . . shit . . .”

  Buck’s interested now. “Two grand?” He looks speculatively again at the corpse: “Maybe I get a screwdriver and pry her jaws or something?”

  “No, no, you do stuff like that, she clamps down harder. Some kinda reflex thing in her jaw muscles or something. And I don’t want anybody to get crazy with a tool because my fucking DICK is in there, you know what I’m saying? It’s still all swollen up, I don’t want just anybody cutting around in there—I got to have a surgeon.”

  “Nah, dudeski. You go to the emergency room, the cops will come around. I tell you what. I know a doctor. He does bullet work and shit. He’ll do it and he won’t roll over on you. He’s good. But we can’t get you to him with that thing hangin’ down there and he don’t make house calls no matter what—he don’t never go out. He’s a speed freak wors’en you. Totally tweakin’. But he cuts good. He smells bad—but he cuts good.”

  “So . . . what are you saying?”

  “Gotta cut off her head.”

  Perrick stares at him. “What?”

  “I’m waiting for another idea, dudeski. Cut off her head—or, anyway, cut off her body I guess—get all the weight of her body off you. Do it quick, we can get you out of here with it . . .” He takes a big buck knife from his pocket and opens it, flourishes the blade . . .

  Perrick hesitates. Hands jittering as he pokes at the head, trying to see how his genitals are doing. “I don’t know . . . It’s all purple. Oh God. I . . . I’m gonna get gangrene. And I gotta piss. I can’t . . .”

  Buck suggests, perfectly seriously: “Heeeeey, wait’ll we get the head separated from the shoulders, you can piss out her neck.” He hits the pipe again.

  Perrick retches at this, a retching from deep inside him . . . he screws his eyes shut . . . then he takes a deep breath and manages: “Just . . . just do it, just do it. Cut off her . . . her body. Her head. You know.”

  Buck laughs, “Me?! No way, José! Fuckin’-A no-way!” He folds up the knife and drops it in Perrick’s coat pocket. “That’s your jobby, kemosabe! I just paid eight bucks for a good organic vegan lunch and I ain’t gonna lose it!”

  Perrick protests, “Hey look, seriously, I can’t—”

  “You wanna lose your dick? You did her, man, it’s your responsibility. I come back later. Oh first—” He takes her ankles. As if to a chauffeur: “To the bathroom, James.”

  Clumsily, each step risking Perrick’s ability to reproduce, they carry her between them to the bathroom. Buck chuckles, “I swear to God this is just like her . . . I was gonna kill her myself, tell you the truth, but I’d never do it that way, wouldn’t trust the bitch . . . and this is why.”

  In the bathroom, Perrick is standing in the tub. Takes out the knife, then removes his coat and tosses it on the floor next to Buck. Trying not to think about it, he opens the knife and begins to saw at her neck.

  “Yo yo yo yo whoooooa!” Buck blurts. “Wait a motherfuc
kin’ minute I wanta get outta here before you . . .” He backs out of the bathroom, grimacing, heads for the hall door, pauses to take a hit from his pipe, goes out the door stage whispering just loud enough for Perrick to hear in the bathroom, “I’ll be back, man, I got to cop some rock but I’ll be back, take you to that doctor, a thousand bucks and that’s between you, me and the rollers if you don’t come through . . .”

  Perrick still sawing. Sawing and sobbing. He expects her to react by biting down harder but—though blood spurts and then levels off, simply wells out of her—she doesn’t react and that’s horrible. How can morticians do it? Just . . . sawing at someone. The body should scream or something, dead or not. Maybe she was clamping harder? How could he tell—no feeling down there now. “Oh God, oh no. I’m gonna throw up on her. This is . . . I can’t feel a thing now I think I . . . I think she’s biting through, Oh God . . .”

  The blood making hollow spatters and drip-drops into the tub. Wet crackly noises as he goes through the spine. Letting his eyes glaze, his hands seem to know the work. CRICK- CRICK-CRACKLE. A splash and . . .

  Thump.

  The body thumping down into the tub. He drops the knife onto it. Turns quickly because he can’t keep it down anymore: the vomit. Painful vomiting. Then he turns on the shower. Vomit and blood going down the drain.

  He steps out, dries himself off—and dries off the head still hanging, without corpus, from his dick. It has mostly finished its draining. It’s bluish yellow now. The eyes sunken into the head more. Cheeks sunken. His johnson, where it shows at the root, above her teeth, is angry red and blue. He wonders if he should wash her hair. Give her a shampoo. What the fuck. Maybe brush her teeth too while he’s at it.

  Crazy thoughts. Control yourself. Walk your ass through it, Perrick.

  Perrick steps through the bathroom door with the head dangling from his groin. It bounces ludicrously as he walks. A bloody towel is wrapped around the neck stump. The head’s eyes are open now and looking up at him. Once more he’s wearing the raincoat and underwear. Raincoat isn’t blood-soaked but his stomach is spattered and the underwear is scarlet brown and his legs are streaked. He’s somewhat relieved and yet in shock. He staggers over to his rig, his syringe, draws some crank from the spoon. Looks down at the head. Starts to giggle. Suppresses it.

  Says to himself, “Wish I had some horse. Like to take some. Share some with you. Don’t worry, I don’t have to pee no more, I can’t feel nothin’ down there . . . Hey . . . close your eyes, Suzie . . .” He reaches down and tries to close them and can’t get them closed . . . “Okay, I understand, sure: we got to have some communication.” A peacock’s tail of garbage in his head. He thinks: I’m losing it. He looks at the needle. A friend. “Speed ain’t right for this. Need champagne for . . . I don’t know if this is a marriage or a divorce . . .”

  He says the Magic Words: “Fuck it.” He injects the speed. Rushes. Giggles. Sobs. Giggles. Sobs. Babbles.

  “Suzie . . . Suzie-bitch talk to me, tell me: is this . . . this is your way to—”

  He’s interrupted by a delicate knock on the door.

  He hears a fluting female voice, sort of silly flirtatious “Andy! Oh Annn-dyyyy!”

  Perrick at first thinks this is Suzie’s voice. Stares down at the head. It’s pulsing from the drug-rush. Emanating.

  “Suzie—How’d you say that with your mouth full?” Laughing and crying both as he says it.

  The voice again and this time Perrick realizes it’s coming from the hall door. “Annn-dyyyyy! The Pakistani lady at the front deh-esk said you were ho-ommme!” A more normal voice: “Come on, open up, let’s talk already!”

  It sinks in who this is. His wife. Andrea. He mutters, “Jesus Fuck. My fucking wife, I don’t even—but oh yeah sure—sure uh-huh makes sense . . .”

  He starts to giggle and tosses the syringe into a wastebasket, buttons up his coat over the head. Throws a bedspread haphazardly over the small amount of blood on the floor that dripped through the towel. Funny head-hump bobbling under the coat as he goes to the door, opens the door for his fairly straight wife who looks around with distaste. She’s Jewish, well dressed.

  She says, “This place even smells horrible, doll. Listen—” She closes the door and comes toward him. “You look awful. So—you’ve been using? You ready to come home? I thought about it and thought about it and I don’t think you would’ve gone to that whore if you weren’t on the drugs. I mean, you weren’t in your right mind, and we’re gonna take you to one of those twenty-eight day programs and start over—if you’re willing. I mean, you really have to be willing. And no more other women, paid for or otherwise . . .” She stares at his legs. “Why are you wearing a raincoat and no pants? It’s not even raining. You got shorts on under there?”

  “No I . . . Got a head. Ahead of . . . myself.” Trying to keep down the crazy half giggle. “Put on the coat before the pants. Come on, sit down.”

  Andrea looks around skeptically. “Where? I don’t know if I want to sit on any of this . . . I mean, do you launder any of this bedding?”

  “The bed’s Okay. Just . . . head over here.” Laughter creaking down in his throat as he gestures to the bed. She moves to it and sits gingerly.

  “You threw the bedspread on the floor? Very nice.”

  Perrick giggles moronically. “Head to.” He walks awkwardly toward her.

  “You’re walking funny, your shoulders all slumped, you got a backache?”

  Perrick’s close to tears now, getting it out spastically. “Got to keep your head down in this world!” Fairly barking the word “head.” He snorts, “If you don’t keep your head down, you’ve head it, pal!”

  She gapes at him. He begins to laugh hysterically. She looks at the lump bobbing under his coat. “Whatever have you got . . . ?”

  Perrick is sobbing openly now, breaking down. “HEADN’T THOUGHT ABOUT IT!”

  And then the towel dislodges and falls to his feet in a wet bloody lump.

  Andrea gives a rabbity little shriek and jumps to her feet. “You’ve been doing something again. Something . . .”

  Perrick approaches her, feeling madly earnest. Seeing a crepuscular ray of hope. “Andrea—talk to her. You’re a woman. Talk to her for me. Convince her to let go.”

  It might work. It might.

  Andrea just backs away, the bitch, whenever you really need them they pull shit like this . . .

  She squeaks: “What?”

  Perrick pleads, “Talk to her! Woman to woman! What do they call it? Yeah: Tête-à-tête! Talk to her—!”

  Blood is dripping down his leg . . . he starts to open his coat . . .

  Andrea bursts out: “You don’t have to open that!” She’s angling for the door. “You really don’t have to. I don’t—I mean, everybody should have their personal space, the marriage counselor said that, and uh—”

  But he opens the coat and flings it off. Andrea’s eyes are ping pong balls in her head as she sees Suzie. She takes a long noisy breath that sounds as if she’s choking on something. She touches her throat with her hand . . .

  Perrick approaches her, weeping, smiling, idiotically appealing: “Talk to her about it, Andrea, just get down there and jaw with her! Woman to woman! If you want to talk to her face to face I could—” He squats and bends over so the head sort of half dangles between his legs . . . he’s quite serious and sincere as he goes on: “—and you could, you know, go around behind me and put your face under me there—if you don’t mind, I mean, you always said I had a cute tush—and then you could talk to her—you could just—”

  Andrea’s backed into the door. She turns and claws at it. Yanks it open with a sound of animal fear and sprints out into the hall. Perrick stares after her, a little disappointed but already forgetting about it. He turns away from the door and begins to caress the head, to move his hips against it, not a sexual motion but more like . . . dancing.

  Then Buck appears at the door, staring down the hall at the retreating Andrea.
>
  “Yo dudeski your old lady’s really geeking out behind—”

  He breaks off, seeing Perrick dancing. As Perrick dances over to the dresser, turns on the radio. It’s playing “Cheek to Cheek.” Buck looks ill and disgusted.

  Perrick is tenderly dancing with the head, singing along, badly but sincerely. “. . . when we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek!”

  Buck murmurs, “Oh wow. Dudeski.”

  The music swells in Perrick’s head. Buck looks at him calculatingly now. Then goes to him, drapes the coat over his shoulders, leads him—still dancing—to the door.

  “You know what, dudeski? Your old lady’s going to call the cops . . . let’s get out of here . . . Get to that ATM . . . I bet that cunt has your bank account frozen but we got another wheeze maybe . . .”

  To Perrick, the part of him that used to plan his life and drive his body about, all this is seen detached, like from behind a trick mirror. He’s just watching as his body dances out the door with Buck, Suzie’s head bobbing along. He watches without feeling as it goes along with him down the stairs and down the street.

  A vacant lot. A half-dozen neighborhood homies and dudeskis hanging around a lazy blue flame in a rusting oil barrel. One of this group, a black guy calls himself Hotwinner, is arguing with Buck. Saying, “I say it’s a load of fuckin’ bullshit.”

  Buck shrugs. “Put your money down and check it out. I’m lying, I pay off three to one.”

  Hotwinner says. “I get to look close.”

  Buck nods. “Rockin’”

  “Okay, here it is. Just don’t pull any gafflin’ bullshit—” And he forks over five bucks.

  Buck says, “Anybody else?”

  Two others pony up. “Yeah here, it’s a waste of good wine money but fuck it—you goin’ to pay off or we keep you ass fo’ my dog to have his dinner—”

  Buck yells at the rickety van parked at the curb. “Hey yo, Perrick! Let’s do it!”

  No response. Buck makes a sound of irritation, hustles to the back of the van, opens it, drags Perrick out.