Strange Landscape

by Tony Duvert

  the sky suddenly overcast the boy has put on trousers strolling out into the street with an airplane that ejects weighted parachutes ping-pong balls for bombs I didn’t doubt that such toys were made out of real flying airplanes

  it swirled turning high above our heads there had been failures earlier the plane now slowed down hesitated suddenly rocked swayed hiccuped then headed nose pointing straight down smashing crashing against the wall of a garage several little white balls popping out and the fuselage ricocheted along the sidewalk the little boy his face so red ready to burst out bawling I should have certainly laughed I should have said it’s all fucked up your pretty plane he should have hurled it at my head he’s so embarrassed someone has witnessed the crash he picks up the plane making a great pretense of putting all the bombs back in their bay straightening twisted wings flicks the jammed propeller with one hand cuts his palm on one of the sharp blades sucks the blood then real tears at last of real rage stamping both feet down hard upon the plane upon the little white balls pings of hollow tin pongs of celluloid that crackles he runs off toward the garden holding his cut hand I move away but without any haste

  it’s him it was him I recognize him! a real screaming procession behind me now two cops in blue uniforms some bald man some skinny woman and the kid who points at me with his blackened thumb the cops surround grab me by the waist like they really enjoy it Papa stares coldly and then sends a fist flying against my chin while Mama sharpens her claws one against the other before running them down both my cheeks I receive one of her pointed pumps square in the balls they pull the screaming cunt off me but she fights the two cops swinging both legs up into the air stiletto heels stabbing me neatly again in the groin You’re certain it’s him? one of the fuzz finally asks the kid I moan But why me? Repeat what he did to you orders the other cop creaming already in his shiny blue gabardine He’s a pervert that’s what he came into our garden opened his fly and exposed his then he ran after me after I wouldn’t touch his a real screwball there wasn’t anybody in the house I walked past it every fine afternoon all alone I listened to the children in the surrounding gardens especially those of the institution there are a great many boys all very snobbish never speak to any of us I took the big ladder once in order to pick cherries leaning it up against the wall that separates their place from ours looked down into their private park too many trees once I climbed all the way up a tall chestnut I reached by walking tightrope along the pointed coping atop the common wall and from there spied you wouldn’t believe what those kids the branch broke they found me picked me up took care of me I’m one among them now no one will ever find me again very soon they won’t have any neighbors what with their buying up all the surrounding villas and having them demolished planting more and more trees enlarging their park isolating themselves gradually they have eaten up all the other estates on all the surrounding hills reaching as far as the forest destroying all the houses of the village that look directly down upon their great meadow sometimes you see those boys strolling through the village streets surely as smartly dressed as Parisians as for me quite obviously they won’t let me leave even though my legs are fine now if I returned today I would discover their filthy establishment no longer exists they’ve resold the property selling it back in small plots all that’s left now an empty house and the original garden I would be the sole survivor since everyone claims the boys all disappeared one by one perhaps murdered I can’t believe such a thing myself This brat of yours is a psychopathic liar I never so much as entered your garden let alone the rest you’ve got no right to treat me like this Enough! or I’ll beat this sick pervert weirdo to a pulp! yelps the mother indignant cunt as one arm covered in blue grabbed me from the left while another arm decked out in that same color latched onto my right armpit and both of them shoved me down into a chair those bastards get their kicks torturing never stopping until I am forced to invent monstrous lies I’m no longer allowed to remain alone my memory revives these bodies these faces the lies they made me utter I had hoped it was a whorehouse one for men with special tastes a special kind of torture a preferential situation I myself had chosen I can of course forbid myself to think about it seek a hiding place here within my body it exists wherever I wish it suffers nothing thus exchanging what began as screams for the slow intake of breath exchanging what began as a slow emptying away of self for the pleasure of deep sleep I live in a perpetual tepidity an absolute calm the great house that surrounds encloses me and its activity of a thousand distant sounds humming without definite shape are concerned about me set me down here impassive indispensable I can no longer smell the rotting bodies bound hand and foot alongside my own I create this darkness that conceals them the purity of this blackness in which everything is absorbed and moves no longer

  which one of my two eyes that remains open makes out a twinkling of stars but a black form moves between eclipsing blond hair face invisible where only the curve of an eyebrow expresses a hint of surprise of fear and sets them reflecting in the glimmer shimmer mirror of a single pupil as that young man bends down toward me judging me dead since he doesn’t speak touching cautiously my skin it cannot already be ice cold he’ll understand then but he lifts the blanket and stretches himself out on top of me he’s seen the source of this rivulet of blood my pubis shorn of its member emasculated he presses his own bulge down there against my gaping girlish hole kissing my forehead that still sweats and his own hard sex plows into my wound exploring I scream from the pain deep inside me paralyzed he going wild shooting off in spite of the tenderness of his features and of his age clutching at me everywhere hands upon me grabbing twisting my cheeks arms flanks ass then his rod has pierced some flaccid membrane within that messy pulp probing further exploring sounding an opening within the innominate bone of my pubis it’s this recomposed reset image that fills overwhelms this dream into which I have fainted I wake up the young man is standing alongside me wiping off his cock and his clothes he must be surprised that a cadaver could have bled so much like some virginal girl and all at once the rutting street lust he felt a moment ago nauseates him

  he pulls the blanket back up to my forehead I attempt with one hand to touch that spot down there where I have been eviscerated if I’m able to reach it I will be able perhaps to distinguish his fuck from my blood I would love to hold between my fingers that sticky glistening pulsing life he mixed with my own with my death since he believed me dead already

  I am waiting for other passers-by who will ring the bell beside the portico a little while later they arrive for their nocturnal pleasures they are severe and tense they visit this brothel as one might a cemetery or a monument to the dead or is it only the weak light the shadows here that prevent me from reading gaiety upon their faces

  I would cut it up that weak light separate it into sections I am no longer alive enough to feel sick a happiness round and white changes my body into a sphere and a light bursts this conch shell I am going to explode

  my flesh continued its labors and eliminated me slowly from within itself minute by minute I broke loose emerged from its shell soon I will be able to throw off this blanket and all it conceals I will dust off my clothes piss in a corner my hand stroking the member silken fleshy that it grasps within its fist I will cast one final glance around me there is a stinking culvert some putrid canal further away I lean against the guard rail of a sluice gate move along the river-bank until the rush of water reaches open fields day will soon be breaking it is already proclaiming its coming by the clatter of shutters opening in distant houses the passing of automobiles on the road below and far-off foghorns there is no tree here though for the birds their sinister cries their nests concealed beneath thick foliage only the noise of a family of rats in an attic

  some schoolboys the first to be seen straggle down the street some young girls too but I am not concerned with them I don’t allow anything to exist superfluous to me

  since a moment ago I no longer am bleeding one less sensation of vertigo to put up
with no longer do I risk losing consciousness all there was to risk losing is already lost hours move within me without really elapsing

  I send scattering then this light and construct these silhouettes I live within them I am these walls this roof this flesh these plants whose changing colors create the dawn the night and all the seasons nothing would survive without these generations of boys collected within me and set down here who repeat to infinity the only things that keep alive the passing of days and the immobility of memory I look now into the heart of one particular day it contains images that flare forth opening out like a fan starting at this point I delineate marking off a dying body sperm urine blood oozing all around me like the entrails of a mummy contained within its canopic jar they have erected just such a mummy in the middle of a tree-lined garden path high on poles interspersed with rags tarpaulins cardboard crates makeshift mountain rising heavenward ready to topple under its own weight when suddenly seven or so boys hurl themselves forward rushing toward the mummy they are not allowed to come too close the game being that they must decide whether someone is hiding within without ever touching the effigy several times already the noisy band had circled now returning on tiptoe we could make out their elongated shadows from where we crouched inside suddenly they stopped moving whispering Sssh! listening carefully to hear if one of us stirs within this gaudy bazaar of rags boxes and old canvas but they hear nothing so they start upon another tack trying to make us laugh it’s what we feared desired most we hug one another tightly I strangle him at the very moment when he can hold himself in no longer and beneath my bear hug he emits a tiny gurgle nothing those outside can hear but that won’t last we’re having too much fun here inside together mummies a game we no longer play because you need to much junk for it and afterward nobody ever wanted to clean up the mess but it was so much fun that one time his little chirps cheeps as we both hugged each other so tightly almost choking together in order not to burst out laughing until he

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  the little boy opened the cabin door cautiously and lowering his head went in darkness all around reaching out for him then his glance fell upon some faint luminosity there where between two partitions branches were not so tightly interwoven still he was hardly any less frightened than he’d been back there in the forest he listened to the slow creaking of trees in the night wind the hoarse drunken cries of night birds feeling his way farther and farther into that pitch stopped short eyes wide open now despite their need for sleep

  he senses something else in here with him I waited for him to go past the first partition was determined I would force him to speak to open up for me all that was contained within that tiny brain so white so nacreous head bestrewn with parsley leaves green and fresh like a tiny garden in springtime he has hair a forehead a nose cheeks eyes or maybe not any eyes a mouth a neck and so many words to describe him words descending all the way down to his toenails and to the extent that words exist he exists but he cannot continue all alone an infinity of words necessary to create him yet he will not utter one himself

  I twist on my straight-backed chair unable to break free undo those ropes around my legs my hands or shake off the mouth gag the neckerchief covering my eyes slowly suffocating struggling growing too hot words fade away efface the invisible outside beyond these walls calling to me once again those who are still living forehead nose eyes no no need for eyes and always a shoulder receding I have tried thousands of times to stop its going risked my voice and my hands I’ve lost them always receding to imagine within myself how better it might be if they returned drew nearer still nearer showed me their faces and saw mine spoke touched created me

  I must find out why they always turn their backs to me is it because they have no faces otherwise the walls these walls would collapse my straps grow lax come loose I’m unable to feel reach them that’s why I must continue to believe they will return to help me but they’ve gone away forever the mechanism functions without them things twinkling in darkness untouchable unknowable gone I wasn’t any of those things he held there in his hand

  he held tightly in his hand a coin walked up to the zinc cafe counter came out again with a big bottle of soda icy cold there was a long aaaah of satisfaction from all those surrounding him there was

  there had been me there on all fours drawing nearer to them they spat upon his head and threatened him with that bottle within which a bit of orange liquid still frothed then they all made off toward a vacant lot and picked up pebbles throwing them at me aiming at his face laughing all of them

  they belch and laugh hands sticky with sugar the youngest kids are quite impressed by my cries when a stone achieves a perfect bull’s-eye they play at

  they came often to play along this filthy street on the outskirts of town down by the factories a high brick wall stretching out for miles and miles and an inscription in huge black letters at regular intervals URINATING IS FORBIDDEN IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAW OF but a mischievous little kid who doesn’t yet know how to read approaches and plays with his prick at last squirting a stream against the grimy bricks he goes at it for a long time and before rebuttoning coldly stares down at his tiny cute little prick all at once gone rigid even though he probably forgot to button up his pants earlier quite innocently rivers of piss behind the wall send up a thin brown smoke that the wind swirls beats down against the windows of neighboring houses

  and we enjoyed whacking off together bodies stiff all over not just down there even a tightness inside our bellies mine when it got hard stood out straight in front of me but pointing up at an angle like an airplane taking off if I touch him touch Simon down there it’s worse than a keg of dynamite I move my fist up and down along his cock faster and faster and it spits some white droplets not all that many really but all very white very hot like the coating you see on milk when you heat it too fast there are three four such curds speckling my pull-over Oh my sweater! Simon shouts holy Jesus wipe it off quick look what you’ve done It’s not me who did anything it’s your own juice No your spunk punk I won’t lend you any of my things ever again What will they say in the dorm when they find out they must have noticed that we’re not there huh? Yeah sure but so what? isn’t it more fun to fuck off like this than in one big heap of pissy bodies the way they do up there? Simon unties the cord that keeps the door to his cabin shut the night is less black in this forest the moon is out Simon is two years older than me he’s got muscles he has already begun to shoot real juice not just piss and water when he whacks off his cock is thick the skin hangs down completely covering that knob at the end a pink mushroom it’s not very pretty to look at as for myself I still don’t do it fast when I skin my own back it really feels too much like skinning myself alive hurts it’ll get more elastic when I’m older Simon says and underneath that skin there’s this red strawberry it looks so fragile so moist you’d think you were staring up into one of your nostrils and yet it pleases me all the same sometimes to pull it back hurt and all and look at it

  no matter what his reaction will be the day I’m eleven I’ll get him to push his belly up against me with that aristocratic air of his I’m just a brat to him but I’ll act very serious I’ll ask him softly gently cleverly spurning his kisses if he realizes doesn’t he that we don’t have the right if he realizes doesn’t he that if but wouldn’t he rather like to try it anyway with me this thing he’s so hot for doing with girls if they all weren’t so silly so coy so cowardly if it won’t be better doing it to me I could be his darling little girl I would love so much lying in his arms sometimes I will hide my prick between my legs thighs pressed tight so that I can have like them a tummy that ends in a point a triangle he will shove his cock in there it will suddenly bang up against mine they’ll both say peek-a-boo! to each other we must swap blood first though I hope he knows how to play chess too I’m tired of always beating all the other boys here

  he finds me again by the tr
ee I had sat down on the ground arms hugging my knees trying to keep warm I was lost really lost surely would die be eaten up by wild animals I see a glimmer of light moving toward me swaying up and down coming closer closer in the dark woods I almost called out to it but I was too scared Were you afraid maybe I wouldn’t come back huh? Simon said you’d never guess what was going on back there everybody working himself into a shit fit it’s some new little guy who’s sick we all had to make up his bed for him and a lot of other silly crap like that A new boy? Simon didn’t feel like explaining further I already ate back there but I remembered you hadn’t any chow he unfolds the sweater he’s brought me and inside there’s a paper bag two sandwiches one pate the other butter overlaid with jam Simon says This one’s the best it’s real pate have you ever eaten real pate before? It looks more like cow shit to me when they’ve eaten too much grass and it gets all runny smells like cow farts too ugh! I’d rather you brought me peanut butter Yeah sure made from my own nuts huh laughs Simon go on now and put on your sweater even though I’m thinking we won’t remain dressed for long Why? we’re going back now? Oh nothing like that the night these woods they give me some wild ideas you know we could go over to my cabin right now yeah let’s do that come on we’d better hurry you just follow my flashlight’s beam huh But is it very far? me still scared more than I want to admit Wait careful there’s a steep slope coming up and then we have to go all the way down it to the bottom an almost perpendicular incline dangerous covered entirely with trees jutting out at an angle all twisted and a tunnel hollowed out within thick underbrush growing narrower and narrower rounded at the edges like a toboggan slide twigs trampled down both sides worn away by so many hearty young asses careening Simon goes first inching his way slowly crouching the rubber soles of his sneakers help him keep his balance but I soon slip trip tumble halfway down sliding the rest the seat of my pants all covered with dirt cheeks feeling chafed shaking myself out at the bottom trying to look casual even though my ass hurts and my legs are all bleeding the thickets had grown thicker at the bottom breeze of wind rising suddenly bringing with it the smell of smoke Simon pushed back the branches his flashlight beam dancing ahead branches snapping back in place whipping my face my bare bleeding legs we’re suddenly in a clearing a stream glistens black calm no rushing sound no tall grass on either side we have to leap across it Simon says he goes first but when I jump only one foot makes it skidding down the side of a wet boulder Simon reaches out for my hand pulling me toward him my shoe all covered in mud the cabin is luckily right there just ahead long and low rectangular made out of dead wood covered over with dry leaves I’m glad we’re going inside