Mr. Suicide

by Nicole Cushing

  You took a deep breath and pulled. The board gave way, revealing a glass door with a gaping, jagged hole near the bottom. A dark mouth, ringed with glass teeth. When you crawled through, you were careless and cut yourself on the forearm. You let out a string of curses through gritted teeth. Stung like a motherfucker. The old man laughed at you. “Fucking rookie,” he snarled.

  You wished you’d remembered to bring first aid supplies along with you. All you could do was fumble around in the dark, take a sock out of your backpack, and tie it around the wound. You knew it would probably look ridiculous when you ventured back into the light, but you wanted to save your clean T-shirts for something besides mopping up blood.

  After the old man climbed in after you, the plywood rested back in place. The inside was cool and smelled like chemicals that had once been intended to clean but had somehow even managed to go rotten, themselves.

  The old man collapsed onto the floor. “I’m gonna rest for a bit.”

  You knew why he was resting. Your muscles demanded rest, too. They’d been on the verge of mutiny when you’d arrived at the dry cleaning place. But you’d kept control over them and they hadn’t mutinied. You didn’t want to rest. You wanted to get drunk or high for the first time. You didn’t want the old man to rest, either. You wanted him to tell you where the goodies were. You wanted him to teach you how to smoke the goodies or how to hold your liquor. It was like Christmas morning. You wanted to unwrap your presents. And the old man was like your dad, telling you he wasn’t fuckin’ ready to watch you unwrap your presents.

  After a few minutes, he started to snore and you were alone again. You rested your back against the tile floor and used your backpack as a pillow. The floor felt dusty and hard, but you didn’t miss your bed back at home. Even a drugless drug den was preferable to the artificial life you’d had to live with your parents. You listened to the occasional car roll past, its stereo booming. Pale street lamps flickered on, reaching past the loosened plywood and jagged glass, sending a splinter of light in your direction. But it didn’t reach you. It fell a few feet off to your side. You were glad it didn’t reach you. You preferred the dark.

  It did reach the old man, though. It lit up the area around his eyes. The light seemed to sink inside his crow’s feet, but it reflected off the eyeballs themselves. In the black room and in that pale light, against his pale skin, any trace of color seemed bold and pulsating and alive. You noted the redness inside his eyes, the pronounced veins. They seemed even worse than your own eyes, after the peroxide. You could almost see the blood coursing through them.

  You started to get a hard-on. Those deformed, lidless, decrepit eyes—so gorgeous. You took off your pants and pulled your cock out of your underwear. Stroked your meat. That’s all you wanted to do at first. Just whack off and be done with it. But those eyes… that decrepitude. He slept, surely he slept. He snored. And yet those lidless eyes had no choice but to flaunt their hideousness. You crawled over and got closer to him. What ugly sights had those ugly eyes seen in all their ugly years in this world? You jacked off more ferociously.

  You were not heterosexual, nor homosexual, nor bisexual; all of these terms insisted on defining attraction in reference to one set of body parts, or another, or both. You realized, at this point, that all three orientations were useless in defining your experience. You were attracted to damage, decay, and disease and the old man’s eyes were luscious with all three. You wanted to fuck brokenness, whether that brokenness belonged to a crippled girl your own age or an old bum with lidless, wrinkled, bloodshot eyes.

  You scooted even closer for a better look and noticed even more redness in those eyes than you’d noticed before. Noticed how the pupil seemed unstable, as though it had gotten detached and drifted. As you masturbated with your left hand you touched his crow’s feet with your right. And when your finger brushed up against the desiccated skin, you could no longer restrain yourself. You came. You shot your sperm off into the womb of the surrounding darkness. You let out an involuntary whimper.

  The old man stirred. Brought his hands up to his face. Why was it that, when he woke up, you felt ashamed? You hadn’t felt ashamed of fucking Cressida. You hadn’t felt ashamed of masturbating while thinking about beating her. You hadn’t felt ashamed of wanting to kill her. You hadn’t felt ashamed of wanting to kill yourself or of having plotted—however briefly—to kill your mother. You hadn’t felt ashamed of walking around unbathed and ungroomed and reeking of sweat.

  What led you to feel self-conscious when the old man stirred? Was it some latent respect for your elders? The sense that the old man, unlike Cressida, represented an authority figure? Someone who knew about drugs and booze and passports when you did not? Someone who was clearly a pro in terms of navigating the streets? Was it that you knew he wouldn’t understand why you’d been attracted to him? That he would mistakenly ascribe it to homosexuality, and express revulsion against you, and leave you or demand that you leave him? You weren’t sure you could bear that—not now, after having just had his magnificent decrepitude revealed to you by that stray beam of pale, flickering lamplight.

  Maybe you felt self-conscious because of the growing, nagging suspicion you were being watched (and had been watched for a long time). A sense that the darkness around you was sentient. You heard noises—a sort of mumbling that sounded like mocking. Were you self-conscious because you now felt certain the Darkness was laughing at you?

  You fumbled to find the right words to explain yourself to the old man. “I, I was just looking at you,” you said. “Admiring you. You don’t understand. You should take it as a compliment. You’re almost everything I want to be.”

  His hand stroked the side of his face that was turned away from you. When he brought it back up where you could see it, heavy strings of jism were draped over it. “You fuckin’ perv,” he gasped. He seemed astonished, and astonished at having been astonished. “I know Degeneracy is part of the Path but… but… in all my years out here, I’ve never… I’m… I’m… I’m an old man!” His voice broke and he sounded like he was going to cry. “You gotta leave now, you hear?”

  You shook your head. You had no intention of going anywhere.

  “Look, if you don’t get out of here, then I’ll holler real loud. I’ve been out here—one place or other—for twenty-five years or so, Junior. I ain’t some piece of shit flushed out onto the streets by his parents. I have friends out here who would fucking cut you bad for what you just did.”

  “I didn’t do anything to you,” you said. And it was true. You had no control over the fact that your cum had fallen on him, any more than you would have had control over falling confetti.

  “You fuckin’ came on my face you fuckin’ pansy!” He got up and reached into his pants pocket. Pulled out something short and stubby that glinted in the lamplight. “Shit, forget about me calling my friends. You ain’t nothin’ but a fuckin’ light-in-the-loafers kid. I only hung out with you because I let myself feel sorry for your candy ass! I was worried that you’d be chewed up and spit out of the streets in a matter of days, without a little guidance. I can fuckin’ cut you, myself. Cut out those googly eyes so they can’t fuckin’ faggot-stare at me all the time. How’d you like that?”

  There had been a time when you’d have liked that very much. But that time had passed. So much had changed. You were on a path to salvation and your brother was right: if you opened your eyes to the best parts of ugliness, then you had answers.

  You put some space between the two of you. Tried to soothe him with reassurances that none of this was necessary. You wanted him to understand that you hadn’t meant any harm. You wanted to stay with him. “I think we can work this out,” you said. “It’s not like you think it is. Besides, you’re old and I’m young and you probably need someone to help you. Like you needed me to help you with the door when we came in here. I mean, we can be a good team.”

  That’s when you heard the old man’s feet galloping over the floor toward you. “F
uck you,” he screamed. “Fuck you for throwing that up in my face!” You dove out of the way—crashed against something thick and metal. Your side felt sore. The old man fell, too. Ran into the front door. Let out a yelp. Landed with a thud and a howl. Ran into the jagged glass, you told yourself. Cut himself, probably on the leg.

  You got up. Noticed that something didn’t seem quite right. Felt around your face and noticed the frames of your glasses had gotten bent in the collision. You adjusted them so that they sat evenly atop your nose again. Then you stood over him. The short stubby thing that had glinted in the old man’s hand now glinted on the floor. You grabbed it by the wrong end and it poked you. It was a sharp knife. You were lucky you hadn’t cut yourself when you picked it up. You brandished it. Lowered your voice to a soft mumble. You knew he wouldn’t calm down if you weren’t calm, too. “Listen…” you told him. “I mean… just listen… Shhh…”

  The old man growled in between winces. You could hear him scrambling on the tile, like a bug that had been turned on its back and was unable to right itself. “Don’t you fuckin’ shhh me, son.”

  “I wanted this to be a partnership of equals,” you said. “But you’re fighting me too much to do that, you see. So I’m going to have to be the one who wears the pants in this relationship.”

  More scrambling and, for the first time, whimpers. “Look… I’ll give you some of what I got… the drugs, I mean. Pills. Good stuff. Just clear out of here.”

  “I’ll take those pills, sure, but only with you. Not without you. You don’t seem to understand me. From now on, we’re going to be together…”

  “Fuckin’ faggot! You clear out of here now you fuckin’ fag—”

  What could you do? Let him go on like that? Let him continue misunderstanding your motives? Your muscles tightened. You felt your heart knocking away in your chest. You felt flush. You felt alive. The last time you’d felt this alive you were fucking Cressida. Digging your nails into her shoulders. Bruising her. Scarring her.

  What happened next was a blur (the way sex often is). Exactly what moment did the whole thing start? Who did what to whom? You remember only that there was a tumbling. There was the splinter of pale, flickering light. When he was too bashful to take his clothes off, you cut them off. You remember that. It took a very long time for him to get hard, you remembered that. He fought it. But your hands were soft, so his nerves responded and the old soldier cranked up, almost mechanically, little by little, to attention. And when he’d gotten good and stiff, you felt the urge to kill infuse itself into your urge to fuck. You had a sense—however delusional—that the knife was highly sensate. When it touched the old man, you felt—viscerally felt—pleasure: a quiver of your cock, a shiver down your spine, erupting gooseflesh. You made incisions and the old man let out primal cries in response. Howls, like those of a man who was coming. You sucked and you swallowed whatever fluids oozed forth from the wounds. Your knife and your fingers and your cock and your teeth ravished every inch of him. How could they not, with the whole banquet of decrepitude laid out for your enjoyment? You tumbled and kissed and you came in your pants and, after he’d stopped screaming and fighting, you took your pants off.

  You needed little help getting hard a second time. You needed little help to come a second time. Euphoria… one hundred thousand needs met in the space of seconds.

  You do not recall exactly where you came. Some hole. (A natural orifice? One of your own construction? You can’t say.) You can remember being sweat-slicked and spent. You remember wiping a strand of your friend’s flesh off your face, and realizing that somewhere along the line you’d lost your glasses. You remember stroking his chest hair and letting your fingertips explore every delicious wrinkle along his torso. They reminded you of labia. You wondered if they were as sensitive, for the old man, as labia were for a girl. “Coochie coochie coo,” you said. You nuzzled against the web of wrinkles on his neck. Loved the feel of them against your cheek.

  He didn’t say anything. Your breath hitched. You put your ear up to his chest, listening for a thump. Nothing. You looked up. In the tumble of sex, you’d moved away from the ray of flickering light. You couldn’t see his face anymore. You couldn’t hear his heart.

  A wave of tension squeezed your brain and made your stomach lurch. Sure, you’d felt the urge to kill him, but it was still a surprise when he was gone. (After all, you’d felt the urge twice before—with Mom and with Cressida—and hadn’t succumbed.)

  Your only friend, gone, because you hadn’t had the willpower to resist the urge to kill and because he didn’t have the stamina to withstand what it meant to be your friend. Because he fought being your friend. You could have had a beautiful partnership together, if only he’d cooperated. Instead, you only had this. It was what you wanted, but it wasn’t what you wanted.

  The Darkness around you chuckled.

  You knew from the very first moment you heard it that it was the Darkness chuckling. Not a person in the darkness, but that living Darkness which was the Great Dark Mouth. And yet, despite this knowledge, you paid lip service to the saner proposition that another human being was in there with you. “Who’s there?” you said. “Show yourself!”

  The voice taunted back. “‘Show yourself’? I’m showing myself all over this fucking room, bucko. If you can’t see me, you’re blind!” Of course, He was showing Himself. The voice was the Darkness, and Darkness was everywhere.

  The chuckling only stopped when a more alarming noise cut through it. Outside, off in the distance, a police siren wailed. For a moment, you panicked. Then you giggled. Oh, how they would misconstrue all this, if they happened onto the scene. They wouldn’t realize it wasn’t your fault that this happened. The old man had died because he fought back when he was in no real position to fight back.

  But you didn’t have to worry about the police, as least not that night. The siren faded and twisted with the Doppler effect as the car careened past your hideaway.

  You thought about the transition from life to death, about the threshold the old man had crossed through. It was both dramatic and subtle. When you let your hand roam, you could still feel sweat on his brow. Sweat that had trickled out when he was alive. When you let your hand drift down to his groin, you could feel it was slick and gummy with other vital fluids, once nestled inside of him, now resting atop him in various degrees of dryness. His brain and heart and lungs and the chunks of what used to be his cock no longer worked. You noticed, for the first time, the faint smell of shit. His body had expelled whatever meager nourishment he’d last taken in.

  And yet, he was still a recognizable thing. Two arms, two legs, a head. He still had those delicious wrinkles to nuzzle against. In the darkness, you could no longer see those stunning eyes. But you knew they were still there, still stunning in all their beautiful ugliness.

  You realized he still had value. He could still, in a way, be your friend because he wasn’t gone. If he was buried or all burned up, he’d be gone. But he wasn’t buried or burned up. He was changed, but—if you thought about it—only slightly. Crossing the threshold had faded him… twisted him… like the Doppler effect faded and twisted the sound of the police siren. The police siren was still a police siren, wasn’t it? Just… warped, from your perspective. Changed. So your friend could still be your friend. It’s just that your friendship would have to be different, now. Death wasn’t a barrier for the meat hook people in Perfect Monsters, so it didn’t have to be a barrier for you, either.

  You weren’t a fool. You knew that, over time, he would change more and more and that, ultimately, some of the changes might not be to your liking. But some of the changes would be wonderful. You didn’t believe in God, but whispered a prayer anyway, because a prayer was the only kind of sentence that sufficed to contain your desperation. “Please,” you whispered, “I know he will have to lose his flesh, but don’t let any bug eat up his eyes.”

  The Great Dark Mouth answered your prayer with more laughter. Then He spoke. “Flesh
-thing likes his flesh,” He said. The voice was sarcastic, taunting, condescending. Then you could feel the Great Dark Mouth around you, as though He was a physical presence. Heavy, humid, cold. Reeking of trash and smoke. Felt Him around your neck, clenching His teeth on you like an animal displaying His dominance. You gasped for air, but couldn’t get it. You began to feel your pulse throbbing away in your carotid arteries, felt your torso start to ache with the thudding of your heart. You felt vertigo. The ground was dark and the ceiling was dark and you searched in vain for that stray beam of lamplight to give you a landmark, to fix your location.

  Your stomach churned. The Great Dark Mouth cackled. “Flesh-thing,” He mocked. “Flesh-thing,” and then you passed out.

  XII

  You dreamed you were in a vast desert, in the middle of a circle of towering stone obelisks. The sky had four suns—one in each of the cardinal directions—but you felt cool, because the suns were arranged in such a manner that there was shade coming from each direction. You were totally bathed in the shadows of the obelisks.

  That’s when you heard the voice: the one that had spoken to you before you’d fallen asleep, the voice of the Great Dark Mouth. It sounded young, like your own, but it wasn’t your own. Not quite. “Listen up, bucko. Perfect Monsters is the holiest of holy books. There is only one copy of it in existence. I created it solely for you, to use as a road map and guide for how to escape life. It’s divided into three sections, one for each step along the Three-Fold Path. Allow me to elucidate. Step One: Degeneracy. To escape life, you must first escape society. And the best way to escape society is to violate its norms in such an extreme manner that you are no longer welcome; to embrace that which humanity has been taught to turn away from and condemn: the ugly, the misshapen, the foul. After tonight, I think we can say you have performed the first step with flying colors. But now you mustn’t get stuck on the first step. You know, so many people do that. Get stuck, I mean.”