by Ray Garton
I’d kill for you to stop, Adam had thought.
A couple years ago, he had arranged for Adam to tour a “creature factory.” Annoyed, Adam had asked Carter to come along so he would not have to endure it alone. Carter was far more excited about the tour than Adam could feign. For Adam, it had been a marginally amusing diversion. For Carter, it had been a revelation. Carter had been awed by the masks, makeup, shockingly realistic wounds and severed limbs. Had become as excited as a child and asked endless questions, wanting to know exactly how everything worked, how it had been made, how it was operated. Adam had been a little embarrassed by his friend’s behavior, and after a while, even the two long-haired guys taking them through the shop seemed to tire of the rapid-fire questions.
After they left, Carter had talked about nothing else, and went back a few times, without Adam, to ask more questions. Within the month, he had taken over his mother’s old darkroom, filled it with everything he needed, all purchased on his dad’s credit card, and made his first mask. A reptilian face with a curved, sharp beak and bulging yellow eyes. Masks and body parts soon filled the shelves, and he was always trying to make Adam up as a zombie or burn victim.
While Adam was impressed with Carter’s abilities—he had started out pretty good and improved rapidly—he simply could not get excited about the field. About six months after starting. Carter had asked him about his lack of enthusiasm.
“You just don’t like movies, admit it,” Carter had said.
“I love movies. Carter. I just don’t like the business of making them or the people in it. Well...your dad’s a nice guy, but he’s an exception. My dad’s a prick. If I got into the movie business, any part of it, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be long before I couldn’t enjoy movies anymore. Before I...became like my dad. I’d rather die than be like him. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But you’re so good at this, Carter! Just because I’m not interested doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go into it. You’d probably end up being one of the best in the business.”
“Oh, no, I don’t wanna do this for a living,” Carter had said.
“You don’t?”
“And work with pricks like your dad? Are you on crack? It’s just something I like to do.”
“Well, you’re going to have to do something, eventually. We both will.”
Carter shook his head. “It’s just a hobby.”
“It’s sure an expensive hobby.”
Carter had grinned. “That’s the one good thing about the movie business. It pays my dad enough to afford all this shit.”
The attic stairs were at the end of the second floor hall and were narrower and steeper than the others in the house. The door at the top bore two vintage ‘70s movie posters: The Incredible Melting Man and The Devil’s Rain. Oddly enough, Carter had purchased all of his horror movie posters prior to his interest in the mechanics of horror movies. He had started a movie poster collection when he was a little kid, about the same time Adam had started his.
The door was locked, so Adam knocked hard and shouted Carter’s name to be heard above the music. The music lowered and the door opened.
“Hey!” Carter said. He wore an enormous T2 T-shirt—even on Carter it was billowy—and a pair of baggy, dark blue shorts. His hands appeared to have been sprayed with blood. “C’mon in.”
Adam closed the door and followed Carter into the brightly lighted room. More movie posters covered the walls and slanted ceiling.
“What are you working on?” Adam asked. He went with Carter to a rectangular table stained with paint and covered with what would look to most people like junk. Adam saw the work in progress.
In front of him lay a severed male human head. No, it looked more like it had been torn off than severed. The neck ended in a dangling mass of bloody meat, veins, and a stump of neck bone. Carter had been putting on the gory finishing touches.
“Carter, that’s...disgusting,” Adam said, and he meant it. “Really awful. I don’t know if I can look at it much longer.”
Carter grinned. “Thank you. Here, look at this.” He put an index finger in the mouth and pulled it open. It looked as if the head had been silenced in the middle of a scream. “And this.” He reached into the mouth with thumb and finger and pulled a pliable, glistening tongue forward until it rested on the bottom teeth. Even the teeth, which were not perfectly straight—one in the front was even chipped—looked remarkably authentic. “This moves, too.” He wiggled the stump of neck bone, which ended in a jagged break on the bottom. Then closed his fist on the long salt-and-pepper hair that fell all around the bald pate. Held up the head by the hair and let it dangle, face tilted slightly downward. It looked as if he had just ripped it off the body.
Adam shook his head in awe. “Does it work?”
“Haven’t tried it yet.”
“Are you going to try it on Devin?”
“Nah, I’m getting tired of trying stuff on him. He’s too easy. You tell him bell-bottoms have come back, he jumps on a chair and screams like a woman.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll try it on Mrs. Sanchez, I don’t know.” He leaned back in his chair, yawned and stretched, rubbed the back of his neck with one paint-stained hand. “I’ve been doing this since about seven-thirty this morning. My neck feels like his looks,” he said, nodding at the head on the table. He stood. “I didn’t eat any breakfast. Wanna get some lunch?”
“Sure, sounds good. But there’s something I thought you’d like to do with me first.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“Well...it’s a long story.”
“Sounds mysterious.”
“Not really. I’ll tell you in the car.”
Carter rolled his eyes. “You writers. Everything’s gotta be a story. I’ve gotta take a shower and change clothes.”
They left the attic and went down the narrow stairs. In the hall, Carter lumbered along beside Adam and asked, “Hey, got any plans for tonight? There’s a showing of the 1936 Flash Gordon serial. All thirteen chapters, back to back.”
“Is that the one with the flying dildos with sparklers stuck up their—”
“Hey! It was the Star Wars of its time! Those effects were state of the art!”
Adam laughed. “You special effects guys. Always defending your flying dildos.”
While Carter took a shower, Adam sat on the end of his bed and played a game on Carter’s Playstation.
Carter Brandis stood six feet, three inches tall and weighed well over three hundred pounds. Even though he had an ample belly, he looked imposing and powerful rather than sloppily fat. At least, that was how he looked to people who did not know him. If you knew him as well as Adam did, you knew there was not an ounce of imposing flesh on his genuinely large bones.
Even back in the third grade, Carter had been overweight, and had been picked on mercilessly by the other kids, which was probably why Adam—who had always been picked on for being scrawny—had approached him during recess one day and introduced himself. From junior high to graduation, Adam gained on his classmates in height but remained skinny. Carter, on the other hand, sprouted until he towered over all the other students and most of his teachers, but he got fatter as well.
Carter’s biggest problem was exercise, because he got very little, if any at all. He was sedentary, spent most of his time working in the attic. But even before he had begun his expensive hobby, he had never been active, preferring to watch a movie, read a book, or just sit and talk to doing anything physical.
Adam often asked Carter to join him for a swim, a brisk walk, or a game of tennis, but he always refused. Adam did not want to be like so many other people—“You really should lose some weight, Carter,” and, “You need some exercise, big guy,”—and tell Carter what he should do. He knew Carter was as sensitive as he. But Adam was concerned for his friend’s health.
Since being with Gwen the day before, when she had told him he needed to work out because he was scrawny, Adam had been thinking,
and the thinking had developed into a plan, and the plan had led him to Carter’s house. He was pretty sure it would not work, but decided to try it anyway.
Carter entered the room wearing a robe and carrying a towel. “Have you ever seen Mimi Rogers naked?”
“No, she wouldn’t take her clothes off, the bitch. But she gives great head.” Adam kept playing the video game.
“Smartass.” He threw the towel over his head and briskly scrubbed at his wet, dirty-blonde hair. “I saw her in some movie on Skinemax late last night. Full Body Massage. Ever seen it?”
“I’ve seen the box in the video store. Any good?”
“Who cares?” Carter said as he started to get dressed. “I mean, I don’t even remember what it was about. I just remember Mimi Rogers naked. She’s, like, one of the greatest special effects ever put on film. Her tits are...well, they’ve practically got their own weather systems. Each of them. And they’re real.”
“You’re sure?”
“First of all, the only women who intentionally have their tits blown up that big are in the porn business. Mimi’s breasts are totally an act of God. They moved, for one thing, like tits’re supposed to.”
“You’ve researched this? The whole thing about the women in porn?”
“Lick me.”
Adam laughed, then said, “Shit,” when he was killed on the television screen. He put the control down and stood. “So, did you tape it?”
“No, but it’s on again next weekend.” Carter’s hair was still wet, but he swept a comb through it after putting on a Babylon 5 T-shirt and a pair of baggy black jeans that were thin at the knees. “Okay, so what’s this mysterious thing you’re gonna tell me about?”
“Oh, nothing much,” Adam said with a shrug. “I just wondered if you wanted to come to the house because Dad’s having Mimi Rogers over for lunch, and I thought you’d—”
Carter’s mouth dropped open and his eyes became hubcaps. “Are you shitting me?”
Adam laughed so hard, he staggered backward and almost fell on the bed. He was a lousy liar and could never sustain a gag. Carter had a poker face and the willingness to say just about anything that might get a reaction from someone, but he was a sucker.
Carter swept his towel up off the floor and threw it at Adam. “You bitch!”
Still laughing, Adam said, “C’mon, let’s go. I’ll tell you about it on the way.”
Carter followed him into the hall and closed his bedroom door. “On the way to where?”
“Mimi Rogers’s house.”
“Oh, would you just—you can eat my crustiest pair of shorts!”
Adam laughed all the way down the stairs.
* * *
“Holy Jesus Christ!” Carter barked, turning to Adam in the car. Once again, his jaw hung loose, eyes wide. “You...you’re joking, right? That’s the only reason you showed up today, isn’t it? To mess with my head?”
“Nope. No joke.” Adam was grinning.
“That sorta thing...it only happens in letters to Penthouse.” Carter’s forehead wrinkled with a deep frown as he processed the new information. “But isn’t that, like...incest?”
“She married my dad, that’s all. We’re not related by blood.”
“Yeah, but still, that’s...well, look, Adam, I’m not dissin’ you, but...there’s just something a little too...Woody Allen about it, you know? It seems a little sick, doing a woman you call Mom.”
“I don’t call her ‘Mom.’ I’ve never called her ‘Mom.’”
“Even so, Adam, think about it. That’s you and your dad parkin’ your skinmobiles in the same garage, you know what I mean?”
Adam laughed. “Yeah, I know, it is a little weird, but I—”
“A little weird? There’s hardly any difference than if you and your dad were doin’ her at the same time.”
“Oh no, uh-uh,” Adam said sternly, shaking his head. He was no longer laughing and his smile had disappeared without a trace. “No, there’s a big difference. He doesn’t even know about it. And if he did, he’d probably kill me with his bare hands.”
Carter turned his head side to side slowly and said, “No, man, you’re kidding yourself. You’re both doin’ the same woman!”
“But not at the same time.”
“So what’s the big difference?”
“For one thing, we’re not doing her at the same time, like I said. If we were, I’d never be able to get it up, and I’d probably puke trying.”
Neither of them said anything for a while. Adam was about to turn on the radio when he noticed Carter was glancing at him every few seconds with a sheepish expression.
“What?” Adam asked.
“Well, it’s kinda personal, but...what’s she like?”
Adam smirked. “You mean in bed?”
“Hey. Alex Trebeck. Yes, in bed.”
“Well, she’s better than being sodomized by a bull elephant.”
“Cut the shit.”
Adam’s smirk became a smile as he took in a deep breath. “Here’s a bombshell. She’s got reloads.”
“Oh, bite me, she does not. I’ve seen her in a bikini and those are—”
“I’ve felt them, Carter.”
“You...you mean, her funbags have...little funbags inside?”
Adam nodded. “Back-up funbags.”
“Shit. But...they move. Remember that day I was over at your house and she was wearing that T-shirt with no bra? I was so worried you’d want to leave the room before she did, because there was no way I could’ve stood up. Her breasts jiggled under that T-shirt, Adam. They jiggled.”
“Looks like strides are being made in the field of funbagology, Carter.” Carter said nothing for several seconds, then let out a long sigh, as if he were exhausted. Rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I don’t know, Adam. I mean, doing something like that, doing your stepmom...” He dropped his hands and turned to Adam. “You’re either gonna burn in Hell or end up on The Jerry Springer Show.”
“I’d prefer Hell.”
FOUR
Adam’s idea had been to take Gwen’s advice, join a health club, and put some muscle on his bones, and to get Carter to join with him. Carter was reluctant at first but, still stunned by the revelation that Adam had been having sex with his dad’s wife, he agreed to give it a try, especially when Adam said he would not do it without him. Adam drove them to The Spectrum, a Beverly Hills health club where his mother had been a member for as long as he could remember.
The Spectrum was a bad idea. Adam had forgotten that it catered mostly to industry types, from studio suits to actors. They left immediately.
“I don’t like living around them, and with one of them,” Adam said, back in the car. “I sure as hell don’t want to sweat with them.”
They went to the one place in Los Angeles where people in the movie business would not be caught dead: Hollywood. They joined Sal’s Gym and Sauna, a little piece of strip mall just off Sunset. The place was as quiet as a mausoleum when Sal himself took them on a tour of the equipment. They got lockers and worked out for a while, laughing the whole time, feeling like idiots on the exercise equipment.
On the way back to the car, Adam noticed a bookstore a few doors down in the strip mall, The Book Place. Neither had seen it before and went inside to look around.
It was a used bookstore, but with a hippyish, New-Agey look and feel. Along with the large selection of books, the store sold scented candles, potpourri, and incense. Their aromas blended into a sweet, cloying smell that made them both wrinkle their noses when they walked in.
Carter went to the magazine shelves while Adam made his way slowly up and down the narrow aisles between tall shelves of books.
She stepped in front of him so abruptly, Adam almost ran into her.
“Hi,” she said, smiling.
Pale, with hair a deep red, pulled back from the sides and held with something in back, while loose strands cascaded past her shoulders. She said nothing after “hi,” but did
not move. Just stood there smiling crookedly. There was a dimple in her left cheek, where the corner of her mouth turned down instead of up like the right. In contrast to her dark red hair, her pale blue eyes exploded from her face in spite of her slight squint. A charming squint.
“I bet you’re looking for something interesting,” she said.
Adam realized he had not replied to her greeting, just stared at her. He cleared his throat and said, “Um...hi.” Instantly, he realized how stupid that sounded because she had already said something else, moved forward in the exchange. He felt like an idiot.
“Do I need to talk slower?” she said.
“Oh, no. Um...I just...I was startled, I guess.”
“Okay Hi.”
“Hi.”
“I bet you’re looking for something interesting.”
“Always.” He finally smiled.
“Let me guess.” She looked into his eyes, squinted a little more, ran a fingertip along her lower lip. Turning, she walked deeper into the store, slowly, and Adam followed. “Elmore Leonard. Or...no! Something gritty but darker. Ummm...David Martin? Thomas Harris?”
“Adam Julian.”
“Oh. Who’s he?”
“That would be, um...me.”
“Oh!” She turned to him with wide eyes. “What do you write?”
“The songs. You know...the ones that make the whole world sing.” Embarrassment burned in Adam’s neck and cheeks. He did not know why he had said it or where it had come from, but it had slipped by the censors and was on the air.
His palms were wet, but there were no tremors in his legs yet. When he was overly nervous or stressed, his legs became possessed by the shivers. Carter said it made him look like Don Knotts in Alien, but there was nothing Adam could do about it.
Then she laughed! The sound so surprised Adam, he took an abrupt step backward. It was such a bright sound, so embracing. And it was not quiet.
“My mom listens to his music sometimes,” she said. “Course, she also listens to the Grateful Dead.”
They came to a wall of shelves at the end of the aisle. Adam recognized it as the horror section because it held the works of only two authors: Stephen King and Dean Koontz. The girl looked around at the books, spread her arms, and said, “Ah, the giants.” Then she giggled. “I bet you don’t know what that line’s from.”