Duet for the Devil

by T. Winter-Damon and Randy Chandler

Kindle Edition

Necro Publications

2011

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KINDLE Edition

Duet for the Devil © 2000 t. Winter-Damon & Randy Chandler

Introduction © 2000 Edward Lee

Cover art © 2005 Erik Wilson

This digital edition January 2011 © Necro Publications

Cover, Book Design & Typesetting:

David G. Barnett

Fat Cat Graphic Design

http://www.fatcatgraphicdesign.com

a Necro Publication

5139 Maxon Terrace • Sanford, FL 32771

http://www.necropublications.com

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to an eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

— | — | —

This book is dedicated to those libertine literary predecessors who dared flaunt their visionary excesses to the outrage of chaste Society’s timid, hypocrital flocks of sheep:

Donatien-Alphonse-Françoise, “Le Comte de Sade”

Isidore Ducasse, “Le Comte de Lautréamont”

Charles Baudelaire

Arthur Rimbaud

Antonin Artaud

Jonathan (Wayne) Latimer

William S. Burroughs

J.G. Ballard

K.W. Jeter

to those philosophers/adepts who have helped lead us down strange & stranger shadowpaths:

William Butler Yeats

Aleister Crowley

Austin Osman Spare

don Juan Matus

Kenneth Grant

Michael Bertiaux

Peter Carroll

to those film directors whose images unflinchingly subvert the limits of the “safe” & “sane”—conjuring forth the surreal nexus of The Dreamtime & “consensus reality” & nightmare logic:

David Cronenberg

David Lynch

Dario Argento

Pier Paolo Pasolini

John Waters

to those inspired artists of the abattoir who lived out their own depraved & savagely transcendent dreams:

Gaius Caesar, “Caligula”

Gilles de Rais

Countess Elisabeth de Báthory

&, of course,

“The Lord High Executioner,” Himself, “The Zodiac”

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Introduction

I write hardcore horror. I think I’ve done a pretty decent job writing the kind of horror fiction that, for the most part, I most like to read, and I’m quite proud of my “grossest” works, such as The Bighead, “Header,” “The Pig,” “The Dritiphilist,” and other projects collaborative and solo. I’m particularly tickled by some of the scenes that miraculously didn’t get cut by the mass-market editors back in the early ’90s. (Conversely, other scenes did get cut for being too “hard,” but that’s all right. I’ll find some use for those down the road.) But to return to the point, horror fiction of the hardest edge is something I’ll always hold near and dear to my creative heart. Hence, I’ve always been amused and flattered when fans, editors, small press publishers, other writers, etc., tell me that I’m the King of Hardcore Horror. I don’t think that I’m the King of anything except maybe chain-smoking and my own particular recipe for crabcakes. Still, I’m flattered by the readership response to the major fund of my work over the last ten-plus years. It’s a kick.

Don’t misinterpret me. I like all kinds of horror, not just the gross stuff. Quiet, soft, implied, roundabout, the material from the old days—I dig it all. My favorite horror novel, for instance, is the late, great Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady Of Darkness, which can hardly be described as “hardcore.” Ramsey Campbell’s story “The Depths,” while not overtly explicit, packs an incredible hardcore punch—proof of a talent that far exceeds anything I could accomplish on my very best day. Jack Ketchum’s Off Season and Dick Laymon’s The Cellar are among the best examples I’ve ever read of the “hardcore” done with discipline and exemplary prose style. Other favorites of the harder edge include Joe Haldeman’s “Monster,” David Drake’s “Smokey Joe,” comic king Grant Morrison’s “The Braille Encyclopedia,” Clive Barker’s “Rawhead Rex,” and Doug Winter’s “Splatter.” To me, these works represent hardcore horror as an art form, just as entertaining—and just as important—as Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” or Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown.” Certainly, Lovecraft too, projected horribly explicit images of the so-called “gross-out” in a time when more detailed delineation would have been censored or flat-out rejected.

My view has always been that as society moves onward into new ages, readers become more interested (or more curious) about horrors of a more explicit nature in fiction. Why? Because the same curiosity develops around every other aspect of our society. Read the newspapers for proof. Compare Time magazine today with Time magazine thirty years ago, and you’ll see. This, I will always contend, is a HEALTHY curiosity about our lives and times.

Detractors scoff, and always will. But that’s universal. Some people don’t want things to change. Like everyone from Cornwallis to the courts charging William S. Burroughs with obscenity. Like Tipper Gore and Jesse Helms. Thankfully, I’m sure, our society will evolve in spite of such counter-sensibilities. All men and women are entitled to their beliefs. But as time moves on, Tipper notwithstanding, our interest in the details of humanity becomes more explicit. Hence, our fiction becomes more explicit, too. This serves as a logical reflection of maturing psyches. We live now in an explicit reality. And good fiction mirrors reality.

Several voices in the horror genre have readily lambasted me for my Constitutional right to compose fiction as I see fit. One such detractor bluntly called me an “asshole” for executing that same right. Boo hoo, I’m crying, see? Such sentiments only add to the compilation of my above objections. There’s this snobbish, self-aggrandizing, egomaniacal, auto-masturbatory, holier-than-thou, smirking cult notion that if horror is explicit, then it must be junk.

The book you hold in your hands is proof of the opposite. Is it gross? Hell, yes. It’s grosser than anything I’ve ever written or ever read. It’s pornographically violent and pornographically sexual. It delves into taboos so mind-boggling that the likes of Richard Ramirez and Richard Speck would be jealous, and it does so with an eagerness of vision and an energy to offend. I welcome this, because that which offends us also provokes us…to think.

This is the kind of book that cloistered critical minds will brand as the work of a misogynistic hack. Actually, it’s expressly the contrary. It’s a piece of ultimately wicked art. It’s a fictional foray into the purview of some of the things that most cause us to wonder about what we—as a society—are giving birth to.

Serial-murder, sexual dementia, undiluted sociopathy, violence as pastime…and all the other details of the darkest trimmings of humanity’s heart.

The very worst that our species has to offer.

I’m very curious about that, and I think that a lot of you are too. I also think it’s a normal curiosity.

Fiction provides a metaphoric mirror to our times. And as the 20th Century has ended now, the reflection grows more disturbing; hence, so does horror fiction.

The ’60s gave us a man on the moon, the ’70s gave us The Collected Works of Samuel Beckett, and the ’80s gave us the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Look what the ’90s gave us: crack babies and Yugoslav rape camps, Susan Smith, Munchausen Syndrome, Oklahoma City, Internet sites for torture enthusiasts, and OJ’s blood all over the goddamn place. We’ve got The New Heroin Look, and modeling agencies scouting anorexia clinics with six-figure contracts. Convicted murderers at the U.S. Naval Academy; U.S. Army servicemen in Okinawa raping a 12-year-old because they didn’t want to spring for cab fa re to the red-light district. Jersey rich kids murdering their 1-hour-old baby and leaving it in a dumpster, and Larry Singleton fileting a woman in Tampa several years after being paroled on “good behavior” (he’d previously raped a 15-year-old girl and cut off her arms at the elbows). Nine-year-olds gang-raping adult women in New York, 6-year-olds in Richmond, CA, beating a 1-month-old baby to death “for kicks,” another 6-year-old in New York whipped, burned with cigarettes, vaginally mutilated, forced to eat her own excrement—all by her mother who then shattered the little girl’s skull against the wall—and yet another 6-year-old, in Boulder, strangled in her basement the day after Christmas. Last but not least, we’ve got Columbine High.

That was in the LAST century. But what will THIS century bring?

I think that the most honest forms of fiction will certainly give us a clue.

If you’ve ever wondered about what hell might be like, wonder no further. Here’s a solid glimpse. It’s the hell right next door. It’s the hell the next time you get a flat tire and someone pulls up to help. It’s the hell that might be waiting for you the next time you walk down the street.

It’s the hell that’s, regrettably, an integral part of our world.

Welcome.

Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer meets L.A. Confidential meets Angel Heart. How’s that sound for a nice, cheery mix? This unparalleled novel will take you deep, deep down into the snakepit of a psycho’s soul.

Are you up for the ride? I’m betting you can’t hack it.

I sure as hell couldn’t.

Edward Lee

Seattle, Washington

13 January, 2000

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BEWARE

the OMEN

of the

TWELVE

SIGNS

&

the

TWELVE

HOUSES

— | — | —

0.

the

GREAT WHEEL,

the

CALENDAR ROUND

(the four elements)

(worlds of earth & spirit joined)

“Gentle reader, being–as you are–

a cautious man of uncorrupted tastes,

lay aside this disobliging work,

as orgiastic as it is abject.

Unless you’ve graduated from the school

of Satan (Devil of a pedagogue!)

the poems will be Greek to you, or else

you’ll set me down for one more raving fool.

If, however, your impassive eye

can plunge into the chasms on each page,

read on, my friend: you’ll learn to love me yet.

Inquiring spirit, fellow-sufferer

in search, even here, of your own Paradise,

pity me… if not, to Hell with you!”

—Charles Baudelaire,

“Epigraph for a Banned Book.”

— | — | —

1.

ARIES

(fire)

“Hell has no limits, nor is circumscribed

In one self place; but where we are is Hell

& where Hell is, there must we ever be

& to be short, when all the world dissolves

& every creature shall be purified,

All places shall be Hell…”

—Christopher T. Marlowe

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2.

TAURUS

(earth)

“…And humanity cries peace, and brings war. And humanity speaks of glory and a magnificent destiny, and leads deeper into death and degradation. And humanity is brimful of promises and so-called good intentions, yet behind it is a trail of abject failure and betrayal. And humanity is afraid for it and is steeped in evil.

And as with all things, by its fruit shall we know humanity. And humanity’s fruits are foul, bruised and bitter, and rotten to the core. And humanity’s home is the earth, and the earth is Hell.

Now there is nothing more evil in the universe than man.

His world is Hell, and he himself is the Devil.”

—Robert de Grimston, Founder,

The Process Church of the Final Judgment

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3.

GEMINI

(air)

“Many bulls have surrounded me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.”

“For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me.”

“Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.”

—Psalm 22: v. 12, 16, 20.

“I am the demon from the bottomless pit here on earth to create havoc and terror.

I am War. I am death. I am destruction.”

—David Berkowitz, Son of ()Sa()m,

(alleged) member,

The Twenty Two Disciples of Hell

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4.

cancer

(water)

“THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAT

WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN

IN PARAD I (C)E AND THEY I HAVE

KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES.”

—The Zodiac

(excerpt from 3-part cryptogram)

“BY P BY

F A G

I U

R R N

E

S L A V E S

B D By

Y R

K I O

N C P

I E

F E

E”

—The Zodiac

(acrostic on taunting letter).

— | — | —

5.

LEO

(fire)

“Satan Trismegistus subtly rocks

our ravished spirits on his wicked bed

until the precious metal of our will

is leached out by this cunning alchemist:

the Devil’s hand directs our every move—

the things we loathe become the things we love;

day by day we drop through noisome shades

quite undeterred on our descent to Hell.

…

If rape and arson, poison and the knife

have not yet stitched their ludicrous designs

onto the banal buckram of our fates,

it is because our souls lack enterprise!”

—Charles Baudelaire

“To the Reader”

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6.

VIRGO

(earth)

“… I’ve got 360 people, I’ve got 36 states, in three different countries. My victims never knew what was going to happen to them. I’ve had shootings, knifings, strangulations, beatings, & I’ve participated in actual crucifixions of humans. All across the country, there’s people just like me, who set out to destroy human life.”

—Henry Lee Lucas

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7.

LIBRA

(air)

“This is the House of the Devil.”

“Here–the one they call the Devil. I offer Him to you, as I offer you to Him. You know why they are so eager for you to eschew Him. Of course you know. It is because they don’t want…(you)…to have power.

Be smart. Come this way. I can arrange it…”

—Adolfo De Jesus Constanzo,

brujo, mayombero, ritual cannibal

— | — | —

8.

SCORPIO

(water)

“I am the Devil, & I am here to do the Devil’s work.”

—Tex Watson, Disciple, Manson Family

“What about your children? You say there are just a few?

There are many, many more, coming in the same direction.

They are running in the streets —& they are coming right at you!”

—Charles Manson

— | — | —

9.

SAGITTARIUS

(fire)

“I love to kill people. I love to watch them die. I would shoot them in the head & they would wiggle & squirm all over the place, & then just stop. Or I would cut them with a knife & watch their faces turn real white. I love all that blood.”

“One time I told this woman to give me all her money. She said no. So I cut her & pulled her eyes out.”

“Hail Satan!”

—Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalker

— | — | —

10.

CAPRICORN

(earth)

“My prophesy upon this wasted earth and upon the corrupt creation that squats upon its ruined surface is:

THOU SHALT KILL.”

—Robert DeGrimston, Jehovah on War

— | — | —

11.

AQUARIUS

(air)

“…I shall

no longer announce to anyone.

when I comitt my murders,

they shall look like routine

robberies, killings of anger,

& a few fake accidents, etc.

The police shall never catch me,

because I have been too clever

for them.”

—The Zodiac

(excerpt from 7-page diatribe)

— | — | —

12.

PISCES

(water)

“Souls of Poets dead and gone,

What Elysium have ye known,

Happy field or mossy cavern,

Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

Have ye tippled drink more fine

Than mine host’s Canary wine?

Or are fruits of Paradise

Sweeter than those dainty pies…”

“…I have heard that on a day

Mine host’s sign-board flew away,

Nobody knew whither, till

An astrologer’s old quill

To a sheepskin gave the story,

Said he saw you in your glory,

Underneath a new old sign

Sipping beverage divine,

And pledging with contented smack

The Mermaid in the Zodiac…”

—John Keats

— | — | —

Prologue

the sea is a distant whispering. The sea is an invading rhythm, close as the throbbing pulsebeat of your temples, close as the drumbeat tattoo within your deepest ear, close as the sluicing ebb-flow-ebb, the conspiracy of flesh & clockwork, the tyranny that dictates all of mortal pain & pleasure, the assassin locked within the prison chamber defined by boundaries of bone & blood…

The sea is the fluid slap of flesh-on-flesh.

The sea is the taste & scent of sex.

The sea is the womb of generation.

The sea is the pulse of power.

The sea is the life-essence reduced to the abstract.

The sea is said to be the cruelest, most remorseless jungle.

The sea is the dissolution, the unbinding, the promise of the omniscient/the omnicorporeal/the omnivorous:

DEATH.

It has been said that “DEATH IS THE ULTIMATE FUCK…”

& each orgasm is but an echo of that final truth:

— | — | —

[ 1 ]

This is the longest night of all. Gateway of the Great Night.

This is not the first night He shall break the First Commandment of lord yahweh. Not the first night that He shall break that named by canon The Sixth or The Fifth… But it is the first night that He shall serve the Circle of Twelve as the Collector of Souls…

The hulking shadow of the gun-wielding marauder circles the ’61 Rambler four-door station wagon parked on the chill, still strip of lover’s lane, sidling clockwise, passing by the girl who cowers in the passenger seat, passing the right rear door, halting for one eternal instant, extending His right hand that grips the pistol, a tight yellowish beam of light lances out, momentarily dazzling the eyes of the terrified teenagers, & He squeezes off a single shot, the bullet striking the right rear window slightly low & just off-center, exploding the safety glass in what seems some roaring Hell hail spewing forth from the mouth of Belial. (Hail Belial! Lord of the North!, the chant echoes through the lost, cold corridors of His buzzing brain…).

He pauses. Scans the desolate stretch of Lake Herman Road. Assures Himself He is alone with His Chosen, here, just off the road, outside the chainlink fence of gate #10, entry to the Benicia Water Pumping Station.

He circles to the left. Fires a second shot. Penetrating the rear wheel housing. Flushing His prey. There is a fumbling series of clicks as the panicked girl strives to spring the latch. There is a groaning creak of cold metal as she manages to yank the car door open.

He laughs. Oh, how He laughs with the sheer Joy of the Hunt…

He closes the distance to the driver’s window with brisk, certain strides. Thrusts His arm through the open window, crushing the cold muzzle of the .22-caliber J.C. Higgins model 80 semi-automatic against trembling flesh, just behind the boy’s left ear.

The pistol coughs, & the bullet —a Super X copper-coated long rifle—shatters his skull, splattering blood & brains all over the Rambler’s interior…

««—»»

A newspaper lies open on the heavy oak dining room table. Circled in red ink is the headline:

PUBLIC OUTRAGE, NO LEADS IN BRUTAL

OCALA CHILD-SLAYING

A line in the same red ink veers off into the central gutter, with a huge question mark &, scrawled hastily in bold print, the single word:

ZODIAC

Lying atop the facing page is a plain white business-sized envelope bearing a Houston postmark & no return address. It bulges with its unseen contents, straining the typed name & street number of the Chicago addressee:

Warren Franklin Hawkes

The blue-steel barrel of the 13-round Browning 1935 High Power 9mm looks like the gaping mouth of a Howitzer to the young college students staring up from where they lie submissively on the picnic blanket. Both wondering, this just can’t be happening —why us…? why us…?

This secluded lakefront beach at the tip of the tiny peninsula, further isolated by two large oak trees, had seemed an idyllic dream spot for a late-September afternoon & evening’s relaxation. A perfect place to share farewells, following their close friendship at Pacific Union College, as the girl prepares for transfer to UC at Riverside where she plans to study music.

The stocky man looming above them conceals His face behind a bizarre, black executioner’s-style mask with almost-waist-length tabard with a crossed circle stitched in white. Beneath it He wears a blue-black windbreaker & a reddish-black wool shirt.

His voice is calm & controlled. Even & soft-spoken. “I want your money & your car keys,” He orders.

“I want your car to go to Mexico.”

It’s just a robbery, the boy thinks, issuing a muted sigh of relief…

A syringe & half a dozen ampules filled with a potent new designer drug lie scattered atop the battered metal tabletop amid the clutter in this cramped “outlaw” lab. The fluid within them pulses with a chill blue light like the rippling ebb/flow essence of deepsea currents from the yawning, phosphorescent depths of some sub-Mindanao Abyss, the very spirit of lurking Leviathan (Hail Leviathan! Lord of the West! its mesmeric patterns seem to whisper on wavelengths of the subliminal…)

He is well-dressed, in a lightweight wool, navy business suit & black silk shirt. A pair of black plastic-framed, “Clark Kent”-style glasses partially mask His face. They are secured by a sturdy strap of dark elastic (the type that machinists often use).

He is concealed from the road by a maple thicket, burning with autumnal hues of rust & gold & scarlet.

He cradles a rifle in His arms. Waiting. For His moment. For the Hunt. Stalking the most dangerous animal of all…

[ 2 ]

Truman Gilmore just passed the Kansas-Missouri border less than thirty-five miles back. He’s heading east through Jackson County, Missouri, & making pretty good time. Despite the pitstop to relieve himself & refuel back at that Texaco in Kansas City, MO. Despite the indulgent several minutes that he’d lost in the drive-thru at McDonald’s, peeling out a crisp twenty for his two Big Macs, Super Size Fries & a large coffee “no-cream-extra-sugar-please,” carefully counting every penny of the change back from the youngster in her rust-&-white uniform. Can’t be too careful, he’d thought to himself, even if she does remind me of a sixteen-year-old Sandy Duncan…

Truman Gilmore’s full-size-safety-&-comfort Olds DELTA 88 Royale Brougham pushes through the cool molecules of late September air with a whooshing slipstream of turbulence stirred in its wake. The Firestone Steel Belts hum reassuringly as they bite their friction-heated treads into the tiny hills & valleys of the tarmac’s rough & pebbly surface. The car is a blur of white as it chews up the ribbon of pitchy pavement between just-passed & going-to, which, today, means Jefferson City, if time allows, looped by way of Marshall, Moberly & Columbia…

The Goodtime Gospel Hour sings out its organ-piping message of promised redemption, warming Truman’s eager soul like canned rays of the golden-moted sunlight slanting through the gaps in the tree-lined roadway, lifting his spirits on angel wings of Love & Brotherhood & Salvation-for-the-basest-sinner.

The flimsy cardboard box lies opened on the roadmap-covered front seat cushion. Beside it lies the brown paper bag with its red-&-yellow primaries, still holding a few rapidly cooling, wrinkling, uneaten fries. There are still a few bites of bun & burger in the open box, a few wisps of pale-green shredded iceburg lettuce, perhaps half a dozen stray sesame seeds, stuck to the box with droplets of congealing grease. Perhaps, for just a second, the thought flashes from synapse to synapse, then blinks out of even semi-consciousness & buries itself somewhere deep within the mnemonic storage banks of grey matter housed within the bone-cage of his fully fleshed skull:

in the inner cities, foraging in dumpsters for their next meal, are starving ten-year-olds who’d sell you their souls or their bodies for that seven-dollar feast you just wolfed down, who’d shove a knife between your ribs for the scraps, you fat-bellied bastard …

But if the thought occurs to him at all, it never registers. Instead, he focuses on the burning in the pit of his stomach, the unpleasant too-fullness cinched by his slender, white leather belt, the confining tightness of his white, bulging trousers of rayon-blend.

The sour-&-sulfur stench of a fart wheezes & wriggles in the mountainous divide of flesh crushed into the creme-velour of cushion sagging beneath his two-hundred-fifty-plus pounds of bulk.

Truman belches softly into the cupping palm of his left hand. Then says, “Excuse me—” in rote, to no one but himself.

Interstate 70 hums with traffic, just a few miles to the south. The Missouri River snakes on, washing the banks of its plodding course, perhaps ten miles to the north of where the shiny white Olds slices through the cool, mid-afternoon, September air. U.S. 24 follows the curve of the river…but Truman swears after all these years this route is a shortcut.

Two-lane blacktop slips by beneath his tires.

& the waterlogged body of an axe-split farmer snags on a river-jutting branch, & the current of the Missouri tugs it slowly in to shore, its carrion scent drawing a swarm of swirling gnats, & larger, hungry horseflies.

The Blue Coral Wax-rubbed paintjob of the big Olds gleams white as stripped bone in the slanting sunlight.

The stacked cardboard boxes packed with as-yet-unsold copies of The Revised New Testament weigh the backseat cushions heavily, bowing beneath the weight of The Word…

A young girl seems to step from nowhere onto the ribbon of otherwise-deserted roadway up ahead, into the path of the speeding DELTA 88—

In the scant instants while he brakes, Truman identifies her as: young (twelve? thirteen?), white, obviously in trouble. The gingham dress she wears seems disheveled, her long black hair wildly mussed, her feet bare despite the crispness of the air. She waves her arms above her head in the universal gesture signaling distress, a plea for help—

The Goodtime Gospel Hour swells out its message of redemption…

Truman pulls the Olds to a careful stop along the shoulder. Steps from the opened car door. & into the crosshairs of the scope pointing at him from among the nearby thicket of flame-leafed maples, crimson with the autumn’s early chill.

The sunlight glints momentarily on the polished lens of the rifle’s scope. Perhaps a trained commando might detect its inadvertent warning. But Truman is no commando—only a middle-aged, pot-bellied, Bible salesman.

& the finger that gently squeezes the trigger is a finger wise in the ways of bringing death. There is no hint of uncertainty. No tremor of mercy in its skillful, even artistic, touch.

The rifle is a varmint-shooter, a Winchester Model 70, chambered for .220 Swift. It had belonged to the farmer floating even now in the river. But there has been a transfer of ownership in the interim, albeit without official documentation, & therefore virtually untraceable to its current possessor—

A sharp crack rings out. & echoes.

The shot scores expertly. But it is far from a killing blow. That would have been far too easy… Instead, Truman senses his legs buckling beneath the bullet’s impact, before his brain even registers the sound, let alone signals the bright flash of pain that sears his flesh as his right kneecap is shattered.

The Bible salesman folds. He lies on his back, moaning & whimpering his pain & terror. He cannot hear the distant whisper of the sliding bolt, the brazen click of the spent shell ejecting, nor can he sense the precise realigning of the crosshairs. The second sharp crack registers only as a pop in his pain-fogged brain. His body jerks as his left kneecap is blown all to Hell.

“Ohhh! Jeeezusss!” he wails.

But, instead of a savior, a shadow falls across his writhing body, bringing a far darker promise…

It is the shadow of the young girl straddling his body, squatting to examine his bloodstained pants legs, the terror etched into the features of his face, to draw out his fear-scent into her flaring nostrils.

Truman is beyond noticing. Beyond caring. But if he did, he would notice that she wears no underwear beneath her gingham dress, her young privates lewdly exposed as she squats over him.

He hears the click of a switchblade flashing from its black plastic casing, traced with coiling dragons in gold. He feels the tip slice into his groin, expertly probing, feels the new pain sear his abdomen.

He hears the hiss of evacuating fluids. Feels the soaking heat of wetness splash upon his thighs & belly. Sees it steaming in the cool September air. Hears it splatter on the pavement. Smells the scent of her urine. Feels it burn like vinegar in the shrieking rawness of his wounds…

[ 3 ]

Strands of barbed wire—some rusted, some still wickedly bright like glistening metallic thorns—are blocked precisely onto the variously textured backgrounds of distressed oak-framed plaques. This collection of jagged, brutal memorabilia dominates the walls of the spacious apartment.

The walls themselves are painted in a muted beige-buff blend that the color chart had labeled, “Desert Sand.” Both hue & name had struck immediate chords of resonance in Frank’s mind, appealing on levels conscious & subconscious to his perceptions of rugged masculinity.

Frank Hawkes is a big man. A rugged man. Right now, he stands in his living room. He is clad only in a tan dress shirt of conservative western cut & a pair of pale blue boxer shorts & black “Gold Toe” socks (the quality kind, that all those upscale men’s stores seem to tout…).

The long shirttail hem dangles against his hairy, muscular thighs, the fabric shifting, crinkling across his flesh as he stoops to lift the hand-tooled shoulder holster lying atop his coffee table. The table is heavy oak, styled in studiedly rough-hewn, folksy fashion—”country,” in the popular idiom.

The out-sized holster is of mahogany-brown leather, freshly scrubbed with saddle soap & polished to a waxy luster. He slips the leather strap over his left arm, giving it a brisk tug. It slithers into place, comfortable & familiar, looped over his brawny, ex-tackle’s shoulder, & under the hollow of his armpit. Frank is a dick. A professional lone gun for hire. A private eye.

But Frank is also a man with a mission…

Suitcases are piled on the floor beside the couch.

He picks up his .44 Magnum long-barrel from the coffee table, the scarred knuckles of his big right hand brushing momentarily against the stack of leather-bound photo albums.

He spins the cylinder. Smooth. Well-oiled. & fully chambered with the embossed disks of six clean brass casings glinting reassuringly. He sights down that deadly-accurate length of barrel. The Pachmeyer grip of the pistol cradled in his grasp soothes him like the held hand of an intimate, a lover…

He holsters the gun, then reaches for his pack of Marlboros. Digs out a smoke, & lights it with a practiced flourish of his 24-kt. lighter.

Frank walks down the hallway, enters the bathroom, flicks on the light, & stares into the mirror. His eyes are hard, slate-grey, like cold North Atlantic waters. He gives the can of Gillette foamy Lemon-Lime a few brisk shakes, squirts an ample portion into his palm, lathers up, & begins to shave, his cigarette still dangling from his lips. The reflection of its burning tip momentarily flashes of exploding mortar shells—

His mouth suddenly tastes bitter. He flicks his smoke into the open toilet bowl. It hisses savagely, then sputters out…

[ 4 ]

IN THE WAR ROOM…he sits Buddha-like & naked on the stone floor, the steel blade of the ceremonial sword bridging his loins raising a crop of goosebumps where steel teases flesh— His frosty eyes fall upon a Civil War battlescene wherein Walt Whitman contemplates a bloody pile of amputated limbs & human debris, then the eyes fall out of focus & the amputee-ghosts roam within the confines of the deadly silent room— The candle flames flicker in the ghost-stirred air & shadows lick the brick walls & awaken the soldier-spirits sleeping in other oil paintings— Uttering the ungodly incantation, he awaits the succubus, his ritual erection rising to kiss the blood-hungry blade of the sword, swelling in blood-engorged anticipation of her arrival & of the carnal pleasure/pain to follow— One of the nine candles loses its flame as it is snuffed out by wet invisible fingers & the succubus appears as a snaking tendril of white smoke, billowing, expanding, languidly forming itself into the shape of a lithe woman, her fingers swimming toward his thighs as smoke becomes supple flesh— Wordsmoke whispers from her perfect lips, a solitary puff: “Professor…” & she touches his thighs with a delicate spider kiss— He trembles as she lifts the sword from his loins— He whispers as she carves shallow designs in the flesh of his hairless thighs— He moans in tortured ecstasy as she laps blood from the precise etchings— “Come, Professor…”

She straddles his blood-slick loins & draws him into her snug center & he is transported to a battlefield at the edge of the world where a bloodmoon looms over the chaotic clash of opposing armies, & the screams of fallen soldiers are hymns to the merciless gods of war— This is the place where Hell invades earth, marked by human spillage, exploding entrails, sacrificial cannon fodder, smoldering gore, headless torsos…glory of war & he explodes in a deathless profusion of semen & blood & the succubus sucks him dry, his soul shriveling geometrically with each thick spurt & beat of pulse—

[ 5 ]

The young girl in the gingham dress bends to place her lips against the jagged puncture wound in Truman’s shattered right kneecap. Her small pink tongue laves a snail-trail of warm saliva around the perimeter of the raw, gaping hole. Her lips part. Her tongue thrusts into the bloody wound, lapping the copper-tasting essence into her mouth like a thirsty kitten working at a saucer of milk.

She raises her head at the sound of approaching footsteps.

“Can I do him, now, Uncle Mal…?” she asks. Her voice trembles with excitement.

“No. Not yet, Julie,” says the stocky man standing beside her, the one she had addressed as “Uncle Mal.” He is stocky. Not fat. Despite His obvious middle-age. He appears to be in His late forties. His brown hair is touched with more than a hint of grey. His “brick-shithouse” build dwarfs Him slightly. He looks perhaps five-feet-eight-inches. His exact height is five ten & a half.

“Can’t do our thing, yet,” He says, His voice notable for its absolute control, its total lack of accent or inflection. “Not here. We’ll have to take him with us… at least for a while.”

The elastic strap stretches, rumpling the hair of His temples slightly, as Mal removes His glasses, folds them meticulously, & tucks them into His jacket pocket. He wears black, “spit-polished” halfboots. Surgical gloves sheathe both hands. His left is knotted around the handle of a black leather attaché case. The scoped Winchester Model 70 He clutches in the other seems totally out of sync…

“Quick, Snuff, take a look in his car,” Mal orders. “Bring me his keys—”

The short, ferret-faced man with the shoulder-length, dirty blonde hair & scraggly Vandyke beard hurries to comply. His eyes are hidden behind the quicksilver flash of mirrorshades.

The translucent latex of his surgical gloves stretches like a second skin as he yanks open the car door & peers inside the hermetic closeness of the DELTA 88. A rush of recycled, burger-&-grease-scented air whooshes out as he tugs on the chrome handle, & the heavy door swings open smoothly, easily…

“Holy crap! There’s a whole shitload a’ Bibles in th’ back seat, Mal!” Snuff yells to the stocky man.

“Well, haul them out & dump them—fast!” Mal orders. “We need the space for the three of us…”

Snuff stuffs the ignition key & its companions into the pocket of his Levi’s. Then begins to quickly unload the stack of boxes from the back seat, hauling them off the road & stashing them in a deep rut thickly clogged with weeds, some hundred-or-so feet from the blacktop.

Mal, meanwhile, removes a small vial of yellowish powder from the flat leather case strapped inside His shirt, against His chest. A tattoo in various shades of blue, a demonic, tentacle-faced figure with pitchfork & dangling noose, & the partial inscription, “LUE EVI,” barely shows through the gap in His opened shirt-front.

“Get away from him, Juliette. Now. I need some room—”

The girl’s face betrays her petulance, but she obeys immediately. She has learned from experience. Her body has the scars to prove His teaching methods.

“Go help your father, Juliette. We must clear the road—quickly, before we have company…”

“& don’t forget to put on your goddamn gloves,” He adds. “No mistakes—ever!” The strong inflection that He places upon the word strikes the ear with its deviation from His normal monotone.

This is the man-monster known secretly as “Maldoror” (a nom de guerre, self-chosen from the title character of Lautréamont’s notorious tale of a seductively Evil visionary who claims: “I set my genius to portray the pleasures of cruelty!”). He flicks the combination lock of His attaché case into the required sequence, & opens it. Visible among the contents is a peculiar object that appears to be a twelve-inch kitchen knife with a white-cotten surgical-taped handle, its blade sheathed within an odd, wooden, perhaps hand-made scabbard. This is His infamous Count Zaroff knife… He removes several items from within, arranging them carefully upon the pavement. He expertly, precisely cinches twin tourniquets of surgical band-rubber around Truman’s lower thighs, staunching the bloodflow.

His skill as a medic is professional.

His IQ has been verified at 167.

For a razor-edged eternity of seconds, a phantom finger somewhere deep within Maldoror’s backbrain punches a button marked “FASTFORWARD,” & the old tapes whir & chatter through mnemonic tracks, strobing like a video in frenzied blue:

Three years of pitching decks, doing hardtime onboard the minesweeper, U.S.S. Lamprey… strange ports & stranger vices for the taking… UCLA, double major, pre-med & philosophy… mastering the power over life & death… twining snakes & skulls & scalpels… Plato’s Timaeus, Metaphysical Neo-Kantianism, Nietzsche & de Sade… 4.0… entrepreneur, penny-ante pusher of speed & coke, long before those joneses went au courrant…

Maldoror’s fingers, like carbon-steel pawls, prise open the Bible salesman’s pain-clenching jaws. Then force the cloying ball of hard rubber between his splayed lips, wedging it between his bared incisors. The black leather strap is tugged viciously, gouging the flesh of cheeks & nape. The brass buckle is tightly cinched. The bondage device efficiently gagging & silencing the wounded man.

“I advise that you refrain from vomiting, Bible Man—you just might strangle on your own puke…” Mal warns.

Truman’s wrists are pinned behind his back. The steel rings of handcuffs click securely. The sound exaggerated in the stillness like a cell door slamming shut…

Maldoror douses Truman’s lacerated, ruptured flesh with alcohol. The helpless victim’s body spasms with incendiary agony.

Maldoror smears the yellowish powder of Sulfathiozole Sodium (purchased in a pet shop several states away…) into Truman’s open wounds.

Maldoror rolls the man onto his side. Tugs the Bible salesman’s blood-drenched trousers down around his knees, exposing the fishbelly-white expanse of blubbery buttocks…

The wicked needle of a hypodermic glistens like a thorn of flame in the slanting rays of mid-afternoon sun. Maldoror inserts the tip into a half-empty vial of Demerol. Carefully calibrates a heavy jolt. Brandishes the apparatus in an upthrust angle. Flicks the cylinder with the sheathed nail of His middle finger. Depresses the plunger gently, seemingly fascinated by the spritz of opiate-like drug as He bleeds off the lethal pocket of air…

With practiced skill He slides the needle into the exposed skin of the Bible salesman’s right buttock & rams the plunger home, watching with obvious excitement as the fluid is injected into the underlying musculature…

The tape unwinds again within the stocky killer’s brain.

A fellow student bribed—coke for his cravings bartered for access into Legrand’s Funeral Parlor, where the user works as attendant…caught in the act of sexually violating a sixteen-year-old blonde’s already-raped-&-mutilated corpse…

Maldoror unzips His trousers, freeing His throbbing erection…

Old Man Legrand—staring horrorstruck at this grossly obscene spectacle of the cadaver-rutting Beast spinning out His throes of morbid ecstasy…

Maldoror begins, openly, to masturbate Himself …

Fear of lost business silencing the scandal…

But George Brittain, the soon-to-become mystery killer, the proto-Maldoror, drops out & goes subterranean until He no longer fears reprisal…

[ 6 ]

Frank Hawkes stands before the elevator door, his broad shoulders hunched slightly as his huge hands clutch the collective handles of his cluster of bulging suitcases.

Elijah waits beside him. Elijah, silent & observing. Elijah, whose role as sole companion is a destiny of riding the endless blacktop ribbon to oblivion, as they seek to unmask the ever-shifting face of the one Frank has long-since termed, “The Beast.”

Once, Frank sought justice. Once, Frank entertained the fleeting fantasy of a trial proscribed by law & carried out in due accordance with its statutes.

But that was once, & this is now. & daydreams of justice have transformed themselves into the wakeful nights & waking nightmares of obsessive Vengeance, into an endless highway rolling onward towards Redemption or Apocalypse. Vengeance, swift & sudden as Kansas lightning. Imagined against a yellow-grey sky, upon a plain that stretches beyond the limitless horizon, as the clouds boil & break like Perdition’s surf above, & the cyclone’s gyre begins its awe-ful, tortured doom-course. The Endless Battle, the barbaric perceived it….

Or the One Leg of Tezcatlipoca, Lord of the Night Sky, to the inventive Aztecs: Tezcatlipoca, protean bringer of black magicks, introducer of human sacrifice, his nagual, his animal guise, the jaguar, its spotted pelt the starry sky…

Frank’s pursuit of his elusive quarry has long crossed the threshold that separates the mundane from the mythic. He has opened doors that cannot be closed. Perhaps it is the Celtic Wi1d Hunt that sweeps Elijah & him along, but a Wild Hunt where Hellequin seeks Hellequin in an eternal maze of smoke & mirrors.

But this he fails to recognize…as yet. As for the future, he has not looked into the cards.

As for the past, it is one blur of roads & towns & cities without ending, of face-upon-face-upon-face—some grave-cold, already ravaged by the Beast, some etched with pain by the proximity of the Angel of Abominations, by the Annihilating Angel’s passing, most but blank pieces in a greater puzzle.

As for the future & the mythic nature of his quest—Frank Hawkes perceives it as The Final Showdown.

As for now, his shadow looms against the elevator’s waiting door.

[ 7 ]

The moon burns silver—a pox-scarred corpse-rind of a face.

The moon burns red—like a festered wound or the eye of Hell, or, perhaps, in some opium-sweating dream, the yawning cunt-mouth of the Whore of Babylon.

The moon burns blue—flickering hypnotically, provoking the perverse, seducing all who watch into the deepest depths of fevered melancholia, depravity & morbid lust.

A man searches the night alleys for a phantom legend. The whisper of the sea is close at hand. The alleys twist & disappear. These are the blackest shadows of a city/town/village soul-sick & Evil-rumored, cankered with the traffickings of grossest blasphemy & vice. He has searched through many alleys, through many towns, through many lands. In this particular cesspool of rat warrens & wharves, of taverns & tattoo parlors & slut-mills & shooting galleries & gambling dens, he searches for the ultimate, elusive place of tainted & forbidden pleasures—a place where torture & death are bought & sold…

It may be Algier or Tunis, where the flesh is bartered on the block, where ru’ asa’ rule & nurture pain-as-art, circa 1649.

It may be Jamaica, 1716, the pirate stronghold of Port Royal.

It may be Shanghai or San Francisco, 1856 (fourteen-hundred murders in three years…), the smoke of opium coils in the breeze.

It may be Marseilles, the waterfront in 1857.

It may be London, 1865, in the slums that infect the quays & banks of the Thames, where the Beggars’ Banquet meets.

It may be Canton, white slaves & yellow, city of sanpans & secretly-sold children, the year: 1905.

It may be New Orleans, the funk of Blues whispers of sin & sex & Mary Jane & needles, 1927.

It may be Havana, 1948, haven of the decadent, its trade in gambling & blue films & whores.

It may be Saigon or Copenhagen, 1980, child-sex & S&M.

A single thread connects all these, a certain rumored visitation…

Of an evil that transcends the boundaries of Space & Time, weaving a haunted spell of perversity & pain, then disappearing…

A man searches the night alleys for a phantom legend. The ultimate snuff parlor, the place known always (although in the lingo of a hundred tongues translated…) as “THE MERMAID’S INN.”

[ 8 ]

Maldoror groans, & shudders out His lust, ejaculating onto the Bible salesman’s nakedly exposed thighs & buttocks…

Subterranean in Tijuana, 1967—a tavern offering pleasures to whet the bizarre appetites of even the most jaded of the forever-damned…

His fly rasps shut.

“& Onan spilled his seed—right…?”

“Well, look what they’re up to—” Maldoror points to the relatively open stretch of meadow, where Snuff & Juliette are standing side by side. “A bit of desecration, eh?”

The young girl holds her father’s bobbing penis, directing the stream of stinking urine that he voids into the weed-choked rut, splattering the Holy Scriptures with his tainted piss…

“Quit fiddling & farting around, you two. I need some help here…” Maldoror commands.

The ferret-faced skell from Hell steps quickly to aid the serge-suited Maldoror, Medic of Mutilations. Snuff strips off the navy-blue windbreaker that he wears unzipped to midriff & hands it to Julie. The muscles in his wiry arms are tight knots tugging at the deadweight bulk of the trussed Truman. The sleeves of his black T-shirt ride up with his exertions, exposing a jailhouse tattoo on his left arm emblazoned, “666.” His right arm bears a circled “A”: the universal signature of anarchy…

Exposed also is the custom twin-shoulder nylon webwork that holsters a Cobray M-11/9mm, semi-auto pistol (hotrodded to full…), left-slung, & the carefully balanced pair of Velcro’d three-cell magazine pouches. Ninety-six rounds per side…

Julie carries her shoes & suitcase she has retrieved from its cache-place near the thicket of fiery maples lining the road.

“You know, Bible Hawker, you & I have a lot in common. You peddle Salvation, while I, long ago, gave up My chosen career—to become the Door-to-Door Death Salesman…” Maldoror taunts.

“I’m hot.” Julie purrs. “Y’ gonna do me, now, Daddy…?”

“Get your ass in the car. Right now. & quit shaking it in front of your old man when he’s supposed to be helping Me—”

The heavy car door slams.

“Looks like the fat fucker’s crapped hisself, he’s so goddamned scared!” Snuff says.

“Systemic trauma. Shock from the injuries.” Typical Maldoror answers.

& Snuff & Maldoror lower the blood-&-feces-stained bulk of Truman Gilmore down into the dark, coffin-like vault of the opened trunk of the Olds.

“Well, Bible Man, welcome to the remake of The 120 Days of Sodom,” Maldoror chuckles harshly.

The lid of the trunk thuds shut with the finality of a death certificate.

[ 9 ]

The rumbling increases from above.

The bell chimes.

The twin doors jerk open, as if the two halves are tugged by giant hands.

Frank & Elijah step into the waiting cage, its smoked glass walls replicating their images into infinity. A common enough act. But, at its most primitive, an act of faith, trusting their frail flesh to the god in the machine. An act that most likely would reduce the staunchest soul among a warband of Apapocuva-Guarani cannibals to terror tremors. A close-walled cage, suspended by unseen cables within a shaft equally invisible to the passenger or prisoner within. Great magicks, these, as the cage quivers, there is a deep-timbered hum, a sudden lurch of floor beneath their feet, & a giddy sensation of descent…

The DOWN lamp in the now abandoned hallway flickers red like some embered eye of Hell.

With the lurch comes a rush into the depths of memory—

Yes. Into the pit of beckoning madness…

California, Land of Flower-Power Dreams…

October 30, 1966: a young girl, a cheerleader, studying late at the library of Riverside City College is slashed to death, nearly decapitated, by the unleashed fury of her assailant, His Timex wristwatch torn loose & left behind. Evidence. Among other evidence. But even now, the case remains officially unsolved. A potential link a macabre poem carved into a desktop, its signature, “Z”…

December 20, 1968: a seventeen-year-old student & his female companion, still sweet-sixteen, are shot to death while parked on Lake Herman Road, a desolate, secluded stretch well-known as a local lover’s lane. Two youngsters & a Rambler station wagon, riddled with bullets, pooled in blood. Nine bullets with a “six & six” land-&-grooving pattern. A stocky man in a windbreaker, the mysterious killer who vanished somewhere into the well of the Great Night, unapprehended…

July 5, 1969: a twenty-two-year-old wife & waitress—already once-divorced, party girl & frequent date of off-duty cops, apparently still searching for her inner self, unable to accept her chosen role—is pursued through the city streets of downtown Vallejo by a sinister, light-colored car. It is near midnight, & the Hellride leads her & her male companion farther, ever farther, out into the deserted countryside. Out onto yet another local lover’s lane, to the shadowed parking lot of the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course. She is shot to death. Nine rounds from a 9mm Luger emptied into her yielding flesh. Her friend seriously wounded. By a stocky man in a Navy-style windbreaker. By a man who called the local police station half an hour later to confess His guilt as slayer in this “double homicide,” as well as that of the year before. Clues of an ex-husband that she feared—married under the assumed name, “Phillips,” in January 1966, five months following his discharge from San Francisco’s Army Presidio. Now believed residing somewhere in Mexico. Clues of a man who tracked & tormented the slain girl with His frequent & unwanted public presence. Yet no one could offer a positive identification. As if He were some phantom. A phantom with possible links to the Virgin Islands, where she & her ex-husband had honeymooned, with possible links to drug deals & previous murder. To the occult. Thirteen cents in change found in the purse of the deceased.

July 31, 1969: Three separate segments of a cryptic cipher code are mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner & the Vallejo Times-Herald.

August 7, 1969: a three-page letter to the Vallejo Times-Herald. The mystery killer now known as “Zodiac” has at last announced His reign of terror that shall claim uncounted lives…

September 27, 1969: two Pacific Union College students are ambushed at Lake Berryessa. A stocky man wearing a mock-medieval executioner’s-type hood & tabard with crossed-circle emblazoned on the chest. Held at gunpoint. Bound with lengths of clothesline. Both stabbed repeatedly with a peculiar, foot-long blade—described as “maybe a bayonet or breadknife.” The boy survives. The girl dies of twenty-four wounds—ten in her back, one full-length into her chest, one each into her breasts, her groin & abdomen, the other nine piercing her side. A message scrawled in black felt-tip pen upon his white Karmann Ghia’s door. An eerie phone call to the Napa Sheriff’s Office: “I want to report a murder—no, a double murder… I’m the one that did it.”

October 11, 1969: a cabbie shot execution-style by a stocky man, nearby the Presidio. Two days later a letter follows, along with a bloody scrap of the slain man’s shirt enclosed…

The images flash through Frank’s mind, like signposts on an endless, forward-racing highway.

Reality is a brief jolt of arrested motion, as the elevator lurches to a halt.

The doors slide open, & he & Elijah stroll out into the subterranean parking lot of his homebase Chicago highrise apartment.

[ 10 ]

He moves through the tinted smoke as though walking underwater, buoyed by something unseen in the thick atmosphere, for he is as yet unburdened by the weight of history (his story or someone else’s?). He detours around the dock workers’ game of poison darts & approaches the bar which resembles the prow of a miniature ship. The cadaverous barkeep looks at him with dead eyes, & says, “What’s your pleasure, mate?” He gives the question deep consideration, formulates his answer but doesn’t dare speak the unspeakable—not yet, not while he still walks on sea legs. Instead, he orders a glass of ale & pays for it with one of the gold coins he took from the damp pocket of the rotting corpse he stumbled over in that fog-choked alley an hour ago. The barkeep sniffs the coin, then bites it.

“Dead man’s gold,” he mutters as he moves stiffly to the other end of the bar to refill the mug of a big man with a hairless head of assorted tattoos.

An amplified voice echoes above the din of THE MERMAID’S INN: “Hold on to your family jewels, mates. Here’s the exotic Barnacle Belle!”

The lights dim & two spotlights, one azure & one cobalt, cut through the smoke, their shafts meeting in an inverted “V” on the dancer who revs her hips to the raunchy music. What appear to be barnacles are attached to her otherwise-naked body. Hoots & half-demented howls arise from the crowd as Belle goes into her bump-&-grind routine. With movements in near-perfect sync with the hypnotic tune, she begins to strip the barnacles from her body, leaving bloody wounds in her flesh.

“Fucking impossible,” the man says, banging his mug of ale on the bar.

“Nothing’s impossible here,” says the barkeep, looking more & more like a holocaust victim.

[ 11 ]

Two-lane blacktop boils away in the wake of the big white Delta 88, a swirling of flame-hued autumn leaves marking their slipstream…

Maldoror has drawn on a pair of supple black leather gloves, masking the surgical gloves of micropore that He wears beneath.

He eyes the speedometer carefully, keeping the stolen automobile just a cunt hair below the posted legal limit.

Snuff worms his hand down deep into the tight-stretched slit of his denims’ right hip pocket, digs out a miniature silver coffin (the kind Goth shops sell as earrings…), & prises open the hinged lid with the edge of his thumbnail. He chuckles to himself as the sight of his elastic-gloved thrust of thumb reminds him of a condom sheath bagging an upthrust erection—

His own penis gives a sympathetic lurch at the keyed suggestion, the bare-skinned flash of his daughter’s thighs in the rearview mirror, & juxtaposed images of the bloody, ragged bullet wounds in the Bible salesman’s shattered kneecaps & the sun-glinting blade of the axe raised in a high-swung arc, then curving sinuously downwards flashing deathpromise with a singing keen as he drives the razor-sharp wedge of the blade into the shattering pumpkin-flesh of that balding, overall-clad farmer’s skull, splattering bone & brains & blood, cleaving downwards through neck & vertebrae, splitting torso & abdomen like a rotten stump, the impetus of the blade halted only by the jarring crunch as finely honed steel impacts pelvic girdle…

Snuff holds the miniature coffin carefully in his left hand. With the fingers of his right, he reaches down into the front of his T-shirt & draws out a tiny silver spoon. It is delicate, sensuous in its motif: styled in high Art Nouveau, the tip of the handle a beautiful girl’s face, framed in a swirling cascade of hair that twines down the slender length to encircle the hollow of the bowl.

The spoon dangles from a silver chain looped around his neck. Rays of westering sunlight glint on its smoothly polished surface…

Snuff’s eyes fix on the image reflected in the rearview mirror:

The soft curves of his young daughter’s face, tanned to a rich, olive-brown, the flesh warm & radiant where the sunlight teases across her left, westward-exposed side, darkly, mysteriously cool on the right, the shadowed side. Equinox. The word enters his mind through chance associations. One of those many occult-sounding words that Mal frequently uses, invests with the magicks of His bizarre structure of beliefs, leaves floating in only half-perceived meaning in His henchman’s well of subconscious memory…

Snuff thrusts his fingers into his right hip pocket, tugs out the flattish disk of a woman’s compact, faux tortoiseshell, flashes on the memento’s former owner, a lovely, deliciously long-legged, twenty-two-year-old redhead (dead these seven, eight…? years), who had suffered with such exquisite agonies before he had slashed her swanlike throat to bloody ribbons…

Juliette’s lips pout seductively, invitingly, as she applies a fresh glaze of coral lip gloss to the flaring, peevish set of their precocious, naughty-little-minx-Lolita-wickedness, their promise of XXX-rated expertise…

Snuff flips open the compact’s lid. Stares into his own hollow-eyed mask of seething hungers. Exposes the 24-kt. razor & tiny, flute like straw that are prized fetishes of his fastlane addiction.

His face is reflected, distorted by their slanted planes & curves into demonic caricatures of inner self…

In the rearview mirror, his daughter’s dark hair cascades about her slender shoulders, like ravens’ wings swirling, fluttering in a world half sunfire half shadow…

[ 12 ]

The gunmetal silver Stingray is nosing almost due south, on Interstate 75. Warren “Frank” Hawkes just passed Gainseville about half an hour ago, & he’s scanning the road signs carefully—he doesn’t want to miss the turnoff east to Ocala.

The T-top of the Stingray is open, & Frank’s dark, silverstreaked hair is ruffled by the slipstream rush of humid air.

His companion’s hair is breezeblown, also, as he thrusts his face forward into the wind, leaning out of the passenger window. He doesn’t mind a few stray bugs squashed up his nose at a cumulative speed well in excess of seventy m.p.h. He doesn’t mind the way his ears flap in the breeze, either. After all, it’s a pretty good buzz for a redbone hound.

Frank digs into his almost-empty pack of smokes. Cellophane crinkles & crackles as his large yet agile fingers pry out another Marlboro. Only five more left, he notes, better restock ASAP… He punches in the knob with its generic neo-hieroglyph denoting “LIGHTER” until the coil glows yellow orange, then brushes its searing surface to the tip of the cigarette clenched between his lips with a steady nonchalance that telegraphs “habitual” & the inferred, “chain smoker,” like a cocksure heavyweight going for a KO in the first two rounds…

Frank drags deep. Senses the satisfaction of tinder-dry tobacco smoldering to grey-white ash, the acrid bite of smoke pulled in a forced downdraft through his throat into the empty caverns of his lungs; then exhaled with slow, pleasurable deliberation.

“Damn, Elijah, sure wish I had a cold Bud right now!” he muses to the dog.

For just a moment, he allows himself the luxury of savoring his petty indulgences. Not bad for a kid from Wichita, he thinks, the flash of déjà vu strong as he does so. The gold sparks on his wrist in the September sunset’s fire as he flexes just enough to scope the dial of his vintage Rolex Daytona: 5:57. The massive span of his left hand’s scarred fingers is wrapped easily around the wheel, guiding the sleek, bulletlike bulk of every teenage all-American boy’s automotive wet dream through the steady stream of freeway traffic past the b1ur of whiteline & billboards & road signs.

To another rendezvous with the aftermath of violent death:

News of a brutally murdered eight-year-old black girl. One Stephanie Jefferson. Reported missing. Discovered two weeks later in a drainage ditch behind a junkyard. Her nude body (or at least what was left of it) barely concealed beneath a couple of discarded truck tires. Sexually violated: before or after death…? The condition & decomposition of her corpse made it impossible to answer accurately. Ninety-plus-degree weather & high humidity. The profusion of native insectivora. But undoubtedly the work of a sexual sadist. She was found hog-tied & hog-butchered. With the marks of burns still visible upon her rotting flesh…

[ 13 ]

“There’s always room at the Inn,” says the emaciated man behind the cobalt quicksilver shades (just a moment ago, his dead eyes stared nakedly exposed—or was it an illusion…?) He leans against the brick wall with a go-to-Hell nonchalance.

“You the innkeeper?” asks the snuff seeker, impatiently rubbing the stubble on his chin.

“They call me ‘Professor,’” he says with a snarl-like twist of thin, bloodless lips. “The Inn needs no keeper. It keeps itself. I keep tabs on the comings & goings of mindless mortals. Scum like you make your pitiful marks on the world, & I mark it down in the Devil’s history book. I’m Bachelor of Battles. Ph.D. of Death, & I can show you a fine fucking time if you possess the proper mettle.”

“You know what I’m after?”

“Fucking A, Jack. You’re all after the same sad shit.”

The man reaches down for his boot knife & thrusts the blade against the Professor’s throat. “How’s this for the proper metal? Now, you listen to me, Doctor of Death. They call me ‘Slice.’ I’m sure you can guess why. Now, where’s the real action in this joint?”

Professor smiles, showing stained teeth, & spits: “Go ahead, cut me.”

Slice notices two disturbing things: the man has a bulging erection, & he is chained to the brick wall. Shifting his strategy, Slice says, “Tell me where the snuff stuff is, then I’ll cut you.”

“The door at the end of the hall takes you down to the catacombs.”

“Okay, Doc. A deal’s a deal.” He carves a bloody crescent in Professor’s pale cheek, then knees him in the groin in hopes of spoiling the pervert’s pleasure.

Professor retches & heaves a stinking stream of bile. His blue-tinted glasses dangle from one ear, & the stare of his unfettered milky eyes follows Slice down the dim corridor. In a clotted voice he shouts: “We’ll do business again, Pilgrim!”

Slipping his blood-whetted knife back into his boot, Slice opens the heavy wooden door, & descends groove-worn stone steps in darkness. The air is damp, stained with the slaughterhouse scent of bloody death—this not lost on his twisting, tumescent member, nor is it lost in that cavernous pit of carnal hunger, dark & inexplicable, that squirming serpentine nest of overpowering lust for pain-pleasure & death-the-mystical-doorway to some godless eternity—

Loose the serpents upon this ignorant imperfect world! Free these conscious-stricken monkeys from their carnal confusion & stupid scams. Let Death be the pure, expertly-cut diamond of rare truth! The onomatopoetic ontology of orgasmic onus, omnivorous pussy, opaque ooze of penile emission, onrushing onslaught upon your one-horse philosophy—say OHM, O ye outlaws & outlanders, OHM to that Olympus of electric orgies, amen. ahmen. O Man. Omen, muthafucker.

He enters the first chamber beneath the Inn, & joins a small clot of Evil-smelling spectators, zombies by their eyes & outfits, huddled around a woman with no arms & no legs. Her hideous stumps were long ago cauterized by the house dick, who still speaks the hardboiled lingo of those Chandleresque detective tales from America’s era of flagging innocence. The woman wears only a spike-studded collar around her neck & the collar is attached to a wall by a ten-foot chain. As the first stiff crawls between the stumps of her thighs, she begins to jabber like a tongue-tied idiot. Slice smiles with the realization that her tongue has been reduced to a tiny stump of muscle. The humping corpse pumps her with the graceless passions of the dead, & the woman’s bum bounces on the stone floor like a fleshy basketball.

“Cute,” muses Slice, “but not my cup of tea.” He approaches the house dick, who stands by the wall with arms folded across his blood-spattered tie. “So where’s the snuff stuff?” asks Slice.

The house dick cracks a crooked smile & spouts. “I had you pegged as a pattycake pansy, but I see now you ain’t like them other zipless zombies. Follow me, pal.”

He follows. Down a brick, bowel-like corridor. Tagging along like a hungry stray dog behind the dick. Two brutes seize him, one on each arm, & throw him against the wall & clasp manacles on his wrists. Slice tries to fight them off but his arms are now chained to the wall & the brute with the shaved head & mascara & purple eyeshadow punches him in the gut.

“Hold him still,” commands the dick. He is holding a needle & syringe glowing with blue light. “Time for a jolt of Blue Devil.”

Slice tries to voice a protest but there is a partial vacuum in his lungs from the gut punch. The needle slips into a vein in his left arm & blue light is injected into his bloodstream. The world suddenly tilts on an axis of madness.

“You ever killed anybody, pal?” The house dick’s voice seems a faraway place & has the crackling, thrashing sound of a tree falling in a lonely forest.

Slice attempts to answer but his mouth won’t work.

“No matter. You’re cocked & loaded now. A fine dose of death hunger.”

Light-headed & queasy, Slice notices a blue luminescence, then realizes he is its source; his skin is glowing with blue light.

The house dick tells the brutes: “Bring in the girl.”

An adolescent girl with over-developed breasts is thrown to the floor at Slice’s feet. “Please don’t hurt me,” she pleads.

The dick releases Slice’s wrists from the manacles.

“I wanna go home,” the girl sobs. On her bare knees she looks in fear upon the shining blue Devilish face of the man towering over her.

His eyes eerie & glowing with blue light, Slice clasps his powerful hands around her slender throat, rushing on the feel of soft, fear-sweating flesh, the windpipe crumpling like a discarded milk carton (imagine: the graphics in red, “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD?,” imprinted on its waxy surface…) in his viselike choke-hold. The necklace of purple bruises glowing like amethysts, imaged through the wired vision of Blue Devil. His head is a skull of cobalt crystal resonating to her vibes of terror, a symphony in blue, scintillating the essence of all blue, an extreme beyond blue, fireworks rainbow of blue exploding through his every cell, shattering his perceptions into a million jagged fragments, each a holographic prism-chord of DEATH IN BLUE…

He senses her vertebrae snapping like fragile wishbones, & he keys off the childhood memory of strangling a clucking, wildly thrashing hen (his younger sister’s pet), while he brutally violates the stupid creature…

The scent of death glows in every molecule of air, the pheromones of fear thick in the intermingling of sweat & evacuated body wastes, the final flood of impurities exiting en masse from every pore & orifice, the purging ritual of death…

The death rattle gurgles from her crushed esophagus…

Then Slice carves her with his boot knife into a sculpture of mutilated meat.

[ 14 ]

Near the Texas-Louisiana border, on a beach in the populous Gulf Intercoastal Waterway region near Houston-Galveston, the badly decomposed corpse of an Hispanic male washes up with the early morning’s incoming tide:

The soft, dark, silt-like sand burbles with the myriad burrows of long-horned sand fleas, & glistens rosy-golden in the gentle fire of September dawn. White-rumped sandpipers, recently roused, begin their day’s foraging; long, skewer-like bills dart & jab into the oozing grit, dragging forth their tiny, wriggling prey. Flecks of tar cling in clotted smudges to their fragile calipers of claws. Stinging midges swarm in low-flying swirls of pinprick existence.

Oily crusts of seafoam ridge up around the tide-dragged bulk of rotting human flesh. The shoreward-pounding surf spills its gurgling flood in a phantom rush of wetness up the gentle incline of beach. Runnels of briny water etch fleeting gulleys in the seaward pull of ebbflow. A hungry horde of sideways-scuttling hermit crabs, their turret-like shell-homes swaying & clicking one against the other, pick greedily at the tattered meat of the ocean-ravaged corpse. The dawn breeze is heavy with the scent of salt & decaying organic matter & offshore oil spill. The tide whispers its secret dramas, whispers its rhythm-pulse of life & death in endless ebb & flow…

[ 15 ]

Less than an hour later:

The early morning jogger crests the nearest dune, scattering bursts of the dirt-gritty sand as the soles of his Nikes impact & flex, monotonously impact & flex again & again with neo-mechanistic precision, plunging him down the steep, scrub-choked incline to the narrow strand of petro-chemical-polluted beach. Wired into his Walkman’s rhythms, the hammering pulsebeat of Vangelis’ “Chariots of Fire” dictates the measure of his strides in the dreamtime rush of dripping sweat & pistoning muscles. His laboring lungs ache with the pleasant fire of September-chill dawn air…

Stan Simpson breaks pace—abruptly. He nearly stumbles over the sodden hump of sprawling, sea-dragged corpse. The sight & the stench of corrupted flesh shrieks through his perceptions. His legs cramp from the suddenness of his ceased exertions. No cool-down to restore his body to its proper biorhythms…

His stomach cramps painfully, rejecting violently its half-digested contents: a Cuisinart-blend of OJ, Gatorade, spirulina powder, egg yolks, sliced banana, & four ounces of Almond-Date Granola in acidophilus…

[ 16 ]

September sunlight slants from low on the eastern horizon, throwing the deep shadows of the dunes across the sparse strip of beach like a cloak of blue-grey flung upon the sand. Long human shadows saunter down the scrub-dotted incline of beach, approaching from the north. Boots kick up tiny, staccato bursts of dingy sand.

The shadows pause. Gesture. Stoop.

“Christ Jeee-Zusss! They drug us all the way out here—”

“For some fuckin’ Spic floater—”

“Ain’t they got anything better for us t’ do than help mop up th’ risin’ tide of brown scum—?”

“Now, shhhh-itt, Virgil, y’ don’t wanna sound like y’ ain’t culturally aware, do y’…?”

The tan & khaki fabric of their still-crisp uniforms flutters slightly in the salt-etched breeze.

“Sum-bitch stinks!” The image of the sea-ravaged corpse flashes in the wire-framed reflection of mirrorshades. “Fly bait—”

The dark swarm of stinging midges has thickened as the beach warms. Larger flies buzz angrily like the far-off, hinted echo of phantom chainsaws…

“Looks t’ me like The Smuggler’s Blues done claimed another casualty.”

“Could be Banana-polit-linked… This hack job looks t’ me like it has th’ earmarks—”

“Heh! that wz pretty good, Virgil, considering—”

The fingertip of the shadow brushes the severed outline demarcating the obscenity of absence, & the hollow pits of ear holes, openly exposed.

The two Galveston County Deputies kneel, examining the body more closely.

“Yeah. & they took off all ten fingers, nice & clean,” says the taller, leaner of the two, poking at the hands of the corpse with his nightstick to show off the neatly-severed stumps to his partner.

“Whacked off his cock, too, while they were at it, & stuffed the fuckin’ thing in th’ Spic’s mouth, Bill…”

“Ain’t nothin’ special about that, typical way they do their politicos—”

“& dopers. If this dude double-crossed someone connected, or maybe threatened t’ rat ’em—”

“Looks like somebody thought they were an artist.”

The two stare at the white-lipped gashes sliced into the man’s chest:

7734

“Some kinda gang thing, y’ think?” questions Virgil.

“Have t’ wait for th’ fuckin’ coroner on this one,” says Bill. “Be interesting t’ know if he bled t’ death or choked on his own cock—”

[ 17 ]

Snuff dips the tiny spoon into his stash of nose candy, deftly pouring twin lines of white powder onto the mirror’s gleaming surface, forming it precisely with the gold fire of the razor’s edge. He inserts the tip of the fluted straw into first one nostril, then the other, snorting deeply, reveling in the riprush of his indulgence…

His daughter, Juliette, is only thirteen. But the sea-blue Hell of her eyes flashes with a wanton madness that shrieks of fathomless sins, of depravities wriggling their whorish lusts at the darkest netherpit of backbrain…

Since the age of five she has been trained as a beast of prey. Blooded early. She hungers for the scent of fear, of pain & suffering. She is casual. Insolent. In her dealing out of death… A cardshark who ten-times-out-of-ten can upturn The Horseman or The Blasted Tower as she wants, cutting her Tarot of the Doomed with fluid grace & so-disarming innocence…

…Snuff can see her as she eagerly slices off the Mexican’s cock & ball sacs as he lies on the gently rocking deck of his sailboat, the man squealing & spasming like a live-butchered hog… The girl, bareassed naked, having played out her part of the captive runaway, bartered to this lecherous & affluent Hispanic, this real estate broker (who, through his ad in the “PERSONAL” column of a Galveston swingin’ singles-only newspaper, cautiously suggested what he really sought…), by the pair of sleazy pimps that Maldoror & her father seemed typecast for…

…The girl, alone with the stranger & below deck in the cabin, so seemingly innocent & helpless, as the man, Jorge, had torn off her clothes, exposing her girlish charms to his shark-hungry eyes & clawing, lewdly exploring fingers… The girl giggled fiendishly as her father kicked the man savagely at the base of his skull, stunning him, crushing him against her naked body as Snuff throttled him to near-senselessness, then tugged his khaki-colored shorts down around his hairy thighs & raped the Mexican anally while he gasped & moaned, face-downwards, atop the young girl’s soft, white, quivering belly…

The throbbing serpent of veins & gristle rears its ugly, mushrooming head within the confines of Snuff’s tight Levi’s, at the remembrance of their unspeakable crimes of passion…

[ 18 ]

“OCALA

3/4 MILE”

the warning road sign reads.

Frank Hawkes eases the gunmetal silver Stingray into the extreme right-hand lane.

His EXIT sign flashes its notice in bold white-on-green, & Frank’s left hand-tooled lizardskin Tony Lama gently depresses the clutch pedal. The polish of the desert tan boot is GI-reg, lighter-candled, glossy. The pressure on the clutch is precise, syncing perfectly with the downward gearing of the stick shift & the succession of smoothly-executed taps on the brake pedal with his right foot—a pro at Daytona couldn’t slow for the slope of the turnoff ramp with cleaner moves…

Yeah. But this is North Central Florida. Thoroughbred country. From his past experience, Frank recalls the profusion of stables & practice tracks, the rich emerald verdure of fields & turf.

He’s been this route before. What was it—sixteen? seventeen…? years ago that the brutal, assassin-style gunshot murders of the handcuffed & helpless elderly couple in their antique store had drawn his attention. But it had been a false lead in his relentless search, tracking the bloodtrail of seemingly unrelated homicides that he knew to be the work of a single “family” of serial slayers. The close-range pistol killings of the popular, neighborly couple had been a cruel & senseless termination. Unnecessary in the context of the robbery that netted the perps over half a million dollars worth of “hot” one-of-a-kind collectors’ items, tainted with blood & damn hard to fence, considering… It had been a gut feeling that the true motive might have been the thrill of the kill. A weird prickling of the nape hairs when he’d read the printout of an NCIC alert. He’d known full well that some of the “signatures” of his quarry had been absent. Perhaps, in part, it had been the relative proximity of the lakes encircling the region. Or just strained nerves, eagerly seeking some clue to pick up the broken links of the chain of crimes that he’d spent every spare moment, & more, connecting from their earliest manifestations in the publicity-hungry bravado of a San Francisco-area urban terrorist gone subterranean, no longer needful of the headline splash of media hype detailing his every bloody exploit, zig-zagging again & again the length & breadth of the U.S. in a webwork of death & torture—

For over thirty years Frank has pursued the elusive phantom of his own personal “Great White Whale”—

The High Priest of Sudden Sadistic Slaying, gathering a veritable army of slave souls to serve Him in Paradi(c)e, a depraved genius paranoically meticulous in His every action, glorying in the secret knowledge that He is without doubt the Sultan of Serial Killers, His “family” of murderers having taken more lives than all other multiple slayers in American history, North & South, combined…

His personal tally of kills pales the lurid exploits of Pedro Lopez, “the Monster of the Andes,” with his three hundred-plus child murders, & the infamous claims of Henry Lee Lucas & Ottis Toole (later recanted…) by a ratio of nearly two-to-one…

Only he knows the exact sum total of His kills. Each murder engraved in photographic detail in the black Hell of His perverted, seething intellect & some sick souvenir saved from each for future reminiscence…answering the arcane needs of His obsession.

For Frank, his own obsession is to bring this sadistic maniac to justice—swift & final.

For Frank, the System he once served has failed miserably as a workable solution in stopping this reign of bloodshed & terror.

For Frank, today, at least one loop in his lifeline has come full circle. It was his AWOL to this very spot that was given as the official reason for his termination from the Bureau. & all for a red herring. For “gross insubordination & dereliction of duty.”

But if it hadn’t been that incident, it would have been another. He was a marked man for his decidedly eccentric viewpoints.

But, what the Hell, as the saying goes:

“LIFE’S A BITCH & THEN YOU DIE…”

[ 19 ]

As the man called Slice—his lapis lazuli brain languishing in the bluesy afterglow of his inspired work on the killing floor—leaves Mermaid’s Inn, Professor takes the private elevator to the small “lab” over the snuff parlor.

He sits at the compact computer keyboard, turns on the juice & keys in the four-digit command code: “7734.” The video monitor flashes through each color of the programmed spectrum, finally locking on an intense sapphire blue. Then he inserts the sterile needle into the last good vein in his left arm & sets the IV drip of glowing blue liquid at ten drops per minute…

Feeling the first-stage euphoria of blue rush, he plugs the tiny jack on the end of a matte black cable into the dermal patch on the back of his neck.

Twenty drips later he has created a new psychic profile:

“Codename Slice.”

He punches the “Homing” code, hits “ENTER” & leans back in his chair like a kid getting set for a roller-coaster ride.

The monitor’s screen suddenly displays a kaleidoscopic dance of every conceivable shade of blue. His brain begins humming an electronic symphony of bluenotes, his penis pops out of his pants, thick veins pulsing with blue hunger, & his mind is catapulted

(stage two) into the computermind, running the circuitry in milliseconds & shooting off into blue ether… searching… homing…

(stage three) MINDLINK:

Waterfront. Salt-spray wind. Bootheels beating blue funk tattoos on the misty street. Dark alley deathrattle from dying drunk. DUI. Dying Under the Influence. Beyond the yellow glow of streetlamps darkness breaks into a mosaic of soft blue. Yellow, dented taxi turns corner & noses along waterfront. Hail the taxi with your stiff dick, look at the driver with murder in your eyes, silencing him before his lips have a chance to move, slide into the backseat & give him the address that came to you from nowhere (?), & check to see that your bootknife is still in place, snuggled coldly against your ankle like a steel kiss tempered with deathhunger & ready for action. Taxi stinks of dried puke, stale tobacco smoke, aged-on-upholstery booze, cheap cologne & pungent body odor filtered through dirty clothing. The Hispanic driver is rapping about baseball, basketball & pussy, watching you in the rearview mirror. Though he tries to hide it, you smell his fear. He is going on about John Dillinger’s dick when the taxi arrives at the address you gave him.

“Pull into that alley,” you tell him.

After a long moment’s hesitation, he drives into the dark alley formed by the tenement building & a liquor store. He starts babbling in Spanish, something about money, you think, & your hand drops to the handle of your bootknife. With a whisper of steel on leather the knife comes out, & with your left hand you grab a handful of his curly, greased hair, yank his head back, & bring the blade around swiftly & slice his Adam’s apple. He makes a wheezing, gagging sound as you force the blade deeper & rake it across his throat. Warm liquid sprays your hand & wrist. His head comes further back over the driver’s seatback & you feel the blade make contact with vertebrae in his neck. His entire body shudders. You cream in your jeans & withdraw the knife. Leaning back in your seat & closing your eyes to the blue haze, you flavor the bloodsmell. The scent of copper.

“A penny for your thoughts…” you quip to the corpse, giggling in stoned elation at your free-associating, gallows humor…

You get out of the car, open the driver’s door, expose the dead man’s blood-wet chest, & carve “7734” into the flesh of his abdomen.

You reach down in the jingling depths of your pants pocket, draw out two pennies in spare change, & lay the twin disks of grimed & battered coinage meticulously across the whites of his gaping, deathblind eyes…

“Buy yourself a ride with the Boatman, chump,” you say to the cabbie, his internal meter reading: “PERMANENTLY EXPIRED.”

“Come to think of it, you can still get your two cents-worth in with the coppers—right…?”

Professor fumbles over the keyboard, finds the ESCAPE key & punches it. The monitor’s screen goes blank. He disconnects himself from the electronic apparatus, removes the IV needle from his arm, & gets up to change his pants.

On the elevator trip down everything starts to go wrong, so wrong that he curses science for its insidious & demonic tendency toward chaos, the unpredictable fly in the fucking ointment, the fly in the hard-won formula, the aftereffects of his techno-chemo experiment in sweet horror, his empirical thrusts into the psyche of a killer primed for slaughter by Blue Devil (Li Di 9)…

“This should not be fucking happening…” his words sound muffled in the elevator—the low-high vibration of the elevator’s cable is a hypnotic hum, insinuating snakes of unwanted stimulation—muffled & wrong, like the way the ceiling-recessed lights in this descending box (a coffin lowered into the earthen trench) are now burning blue, when a few seconds ago they were yellow, or the visionary flashes to that other brain, that other over-stimulated bundle of nerves & flesh & blood & muscle, tense & coiled & ready for a kill, another place… Another kill, you feel it coming as the elevator drops in terminal slowness, going lower than it should, descending into chaos…

“Fucking scientific shit!”

…& you sink to the floor, your eyes rolling up toward your brain, & blue-tinged visions unfold, take physical form but the words on your lips never quite take shape (“Fuck physics”)…

…Climbing a stairway steep & dimly lit by a naked 60 watt bulb, you run your fingertips along the wall of peeling paint, spray-painted graffiti & knife-carved runes… You are unstoppable, invincible, & you can almost see through the fucking walls to the other side where human hearts are beating lust-tightened skins, jungle drum drum boogie down dirty hot jam yeah. baby. that’s. what. I. like. There right there uuuuhh yeah OK uuuooh Oh Oh mmmm… you know the door is unlocked before you touch the knob, & you are moving with blue stealth across the stained cat-shit-smelling carpet, to the bedroom where the lovers are going at it for all they’re worth (which, at this moment, isn’t a Hell of a lot) amid crimson shadows thrown by the red party bulb in the Mickey Mouse lamp on the bedside table—You already have the knife in your hand & an erection in your pants—You/Professor/Slice are about to merge minds with your victims in orgasm-in-death, true multiple personalities, true Blue you old Devil…

The woman is on top, straddling the guy’s loins, wild in the saddle, taking the saddle horn deep, moaning & tossing her long hair. You creep up behind her, knife ready, & you hook your arm around her neck as you spring onto the bed. Holding the breathless woman in a choke hold, you raise the blade high, then plunge it into the guy’s chest. His eyes swell like balloons & you know he is shooting his last wad. Your cheek is against the woman’s sex-tangled hair & you savor the scent of perfume & lust. The down of soft, silky hairs glistens an almost-subliminal blue-lit haze across the curve of her shoulders & upper back. Tiny beads of perspiration trickle the fear-taughtened ridgeline of spine. Tiny beads of cobalt blue. & you realize that glow is the cold blue fire emanating from beneath the translucent parchment mask of flesh you know as “face…” She tries to scream, but your hand covers her mouth. Your erection probes the crevice of her supple rear. Leaving the knife in the dead man’s heart, you unzip your pants & pull out your bluish prick. You jerk the corpse’s cooling cock out of her & replace it with your own loggerhead. Keeping her back arched against your belly, you pump her & it comes to you that what you shoot inside her will be blue, glowing. When you can wait no longer, you yank the knife out of the man’s chest & stab the woman’s abdomen. She screams through your fingers. You twist & jerk the blade inside her, & your mind merges with hers in that brief, beautiful moment of death (like stabbing yourself in a hari-kari-like ceremony of sex & snuff), & blue light explodes into her & across the ceiling, flickering blue stars showering the bed, the dying woman, everything.

The house dick finds Professor on the floor of the elevator, his wang hanging out of his fly.

“Crazy sonofabitch,” he mumbles. “For a fucking genius, you sure pull some dumbass shit.”

[ 20 ]

The snaps on Julie’s suitcase click open.

The leather creaks & whispers as she unfolds its contents. Quite immodestly, Julie strips off her gingham dress, while both Maldoror & her own father obviously ogle her deliciously tempting nudity in the chrome-framed, rearward-staring mirror.

She is a child/woman seductress, a harlot/beast of exquisite immaturity budding into the curves & musk-scented fur of puberty… a teenage sex kitten eager to be stroked & petted… to be toyed with in endless, deadly games of cat-&-mouse…

She knows no pity—only lust & death & torment…

Julie exposes herself to them, to the two pairs of eyes that stare at her youthful nakedness, taunting them to act out their twisted desires…

She selects a pair of skin-tight short shorts & a halter top, both of the same, chaste-innocent-suggesting whiteness… snowy against her olive-tan skin as she begins to wriggle playfully into them…

Snuff can stand her come-hither looks no longer, & he clambers over the seatback into the rear of the vehicle with her.

Maldoror watches them at the peripheral boundaries of His detached perception, relishing the utter perversity of the situation, the obscene acts of unnatural, incestuous lust that are certain to follow in the metallic echoes of Snuff’s zipper, slithering down its tracks at the insistent pressure of his daughter’s girlishly small & fragile fingers. He imagines the release of the rearing cobra from its straining nest, & the pouting lips of little Miss Julie as she bends to render it her supplication…

He is certain of His own invincibility—He has outwitted the Agents of the Law for over thirty years, through a series of capital crimes that make Henry Lee & his companions look like amateurs at mayhem… But Maldoror considers them both as conspirators in crime. As assets… & as liabilities… They are useful. But sometimes difficult to control. Careless cretins. Who must constantly be watched & reminded.

But He is confident in the knowledge of His rather arcane & costly precautions:

He thinks back on their “business” trip to Hong Kong four years ago. The “black clinic” of the outlaw plastic surgeon, posing as a tattoo artist, & practicing both arts… the twin shots of scopalamine/morphium-blend, the “Twilight Sleep” that had put both father & daughter under…

While the skin at the base of their skulls had been slit & peeled back, & glass ampules of blue-ringed octopus’ venom (a neuromuscular poison of incredible lethality, extracted from the Indo-Pacific Octopus maculosus…) were implanted subdermally. Along with a CCD-linked primer charge of nitromannite, in a peach-&-pit system molded around a central PVC-shelled core of 60-40-cast RDX-TNT… A coded pulse, activated by Maldoror’s sub-micro sending unit, would trigger a miniscule yet devastating explosion of intense shattering power… If the detonation didn’t rip their head (s) clean off, it would most certainly serve to rupture the venom ampule into the victim’s system—

A “failsafe” to silence them should they be apprehended, before they could be taken into custody & interrogated …

Father & daughter were kept under with repeated injections of the “Twilight Sleep”—

Until the scars were sufficiently healed to conceal beneath a tiny tattoo that each received, appropriately, images of the blue-ringed octopus…

Maldoror, in His monomanic egotism had long identified with this deadly ocean predator, this macro-cephalic master of camouflage, many-armed & ever-manipulating ……

Yes.

It had been costly—

The better portion of two complete importations squandered on the trip & the precautionary surgery…

But it was INSURANCE…

In more ways than one.

Snuff had been lured to the underground clinic with the promise that, while she was unconscious, the surgeon would perform an operation on the child “fixing” her so that they could tamper with her as they pleased (as she so-soon would begin to mature), & neither of the men wished to risk the potential embarrassment & inconvenience of accidentally impregnating her…

& Snuff had gone under with her, begging for a spike of the Twilight stuff, Why? Shit! He’d try anyfuckin’thing at least once if he thought it would get him WASTED…

[ 21 ]

Frank Hawkes guides the gunmetal silver Stingray through the streets of northwestern Ocala. The bad side of town. Things really haven’t changed a Hell of a lot since he last passed through its city limits. At least not visibly.

Frank allows himself a momentary flight into a world of daydream—a strange synthesis of nearly equal parts of free-associating pop philosophy, wish fulfillment & nostalgic reminiscence:

If Time is indeed the metaphoric river that many hypothesize, & if urban, late 20th Century mainstream America—the Third Wave society postulated by Alvin Toffler in his popular writings might be represented by a series of white-churning rapids, then perhaps Ocala might be symbolized by a lazily circling backwater. A slightly seedy Norman Rockwell triptych honoring an almost-extinct Americana preserved only in the more bucolic reaches of The Twilight Zone: the old swimming hole & freckle-faced kids sharing chugalugs of fresh-squeezed OJ from one of those forever-smiling Mr. Kool-Aid pitchers; a field of turf bordered by white split rail fences stretching on into the infinity of vanishing point & populated by a pair of frisky thoroughbreds & their wobbly-legged foals; tearfully homey clapboard houses with fading whitewash & picket fences & cast-iron lawn jockeys with flaking paint, the rust crusted on them like shriveled rinds of orange peel…

But surface appearances deceive…& long term memory can play the trickster… Facets within facets—

There is no swimming hole.

The white fences are board, not picket.

& NOBODY BUT NOBODY WOULD BE CRAZY ENOUGH TO PLACE A LAWN JOCKEY IN THEIR YARD. NOT HERE…

Not on this side of town. Not in northwestern Ocala…

The air is thick with the oppressive, enveloping humidity that soon raises the red itching of prickly heat on his dripping flesh…

Seven murders in one recent month. Most likely drug-related.

& if Ocala had a theme song, it sure as Hell wouldn’t be that goddamn insipid whistling from The Andy Griffith Show or that doo-doo-doo’ing drivel from Mayberry RFD. NO. Maybe Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee” (?) or The Atlanta Rhythm Section’s “Cocaine Charlie” (?) or Hoyt Axton’s “My Snowblind Friend” (?) or Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “The Needle and the Spoon” (?)…

[ 22 ]

Like a shadow set free from its human mooring, Pynchon slips unnoticed into the blue den of cutthroats, perverts & thieves—the regulars (& a few irregulars) who come to Mermaid’s Inn to worship the Evil gods of their choice. A darker shadow moving in a world of shadows. Washed in flickering blue. A veteran of secret wars & a practitioner of the blacker guerrilla arts, Pynchon is a master of the discipline of Perceptual Invisibility—which is why no one in the Inn will remember seeing him here on this balmy night.

If he wanted to, he could kill at least ten unsuspecting assholes in a Hong Kong minute & be gone before anyone noticed the first corpse.

But tonight he won’t.

Tonight he has another mission, a mission worth far more than the pitiful lives of all the pub-crawling scum in this whole place.

Under his long, black leather jacket, his Zombie 9mm sleeps in its shoulder holster, close to his heart. The light-weight Zombie is his favorite handgun & a very light sleeper; though he has no present intention of waking it tonight, he is grateful for its company. Pynchon likes the way it becomes a part of his hand & an extension of his steel will as the Zombie spits, slamming crimson petals into frail flesh, bucking in his hand like a wild lover at the moment of orgasmic release… But not tonight, my dear; tonight there are other fish to fry. Pynchon works freelance, usually for the highest bidder & without selling his soul to any master or ideology. Those who employ his services know he could dispatch them as easily as anyone else. He could play havoc with the balance of global underground power if he so desired. In fact, he knows the hits he would have to make in order to throw the above- & below-ground power structures into chaos, but there would be nothing for him to gain by such actions. He makes his livelihood by milking the multinational beast of corporate horrors. Like his Zombie, Pynchon doesn’t give a damn who dies at his gun hand.

A target is a target is a target…

The house dick leans a fat arm on the bar, chatting up a retired madam from a bygone era of simple, painted ladies & cheaper flesh. Pynchon waits in the shadow & smoke at the other end of the bar. When finally the dick waddles to the john like an aging weightlifter, Pynchon follows.

Their eyes meet in the mirror. “You don’t look happy to see me, old friend,” Pynchon says with a tight-lipped smile.

The house dick spins around to face him in the flesh. “Why should I be? Whenever you’re around, there’s a shitstorm brewing. But, on the other hand, when you’re around & I don’t see ya, there’s always a goddamn bloodbath.”

“So it’s shit or go blind, eh, Rupert?”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just piss…”

“Be my guest.”

Rupert the house dick goes to the stained urinal to drain his shrunken lizard. Uneasy with his back to Pynchon, he keeps glancing over his shoulder.

“Where is the illustrious Professor Punk?” Pynchon leans against the tile wall & crosses his arms over his chest.

“Bastard’s still in bed. He’s under the weather.”

“Oh?”

“One of his fuckin’ experiments almost did him in.”

“You know what he’s workin’ on?”

“You know better than that,” says Rupert, zipping his plaid pants. “I ain’t ready to die.”

“In that case, let me up to see him.”

“I can’t. I don’t have the elevator key.”

Pynchon becomes a blur as he spins Rupert around & slams his balding head against the wall above the urinal. Rupert slides down the tile & over the porcelain, his bloody face coming to rest in the pissy water.

“You don’t want to lie to me again, my fat friend. Give me the key.”

“Jeezus,” he groans, pushing up from the pisser. He reaches into a vest pocket & withdraws the key. “Here. Take the sonofabitch.”

Pynchon takes the key & says, “You’re a mess, Rupert. I’m afraid you just blew any chance you had at getting into that old madam’s silk panties.”

[ 23 ]

Truman Gilmore is down & out in Demerol City…

His universe is heavy with the stink of blood & sweat & feces, & gasoline & the new-car/techno-scent of long-chain polymers…

His ravaged skin is chafed with the synthetic pile of carpet, his arms strained in their shoulder sockets by the unnatural torque of his bondage, his fat wrists gouged by the cold cruel grip of stainless steel manacles… But he is, quite literally, oblivious to the confines of his temporary prison…

Truman Gilmore’s existence is a grave-black Bardo, his rnam-shes mind-locked in a transitional state flickering between “Moment of Death” & the clear light of “Experiencing Reality”—

The drifting entity of his consciousness is assaulted by visions of the karma path he’s traveled…like a runaway ride careening & clattering through a berserk Fun House whose rails are a fragile silver psychic cord vibrating with a road-noise steel-belt hum…the pop-up monsters of his own sweet secret sins writhe/wriggle/slobber, lurching upright with pneumatic slamdance hisses…

But there is no one to read Truman through this realm of tortured being…no one to recite aloud from Bar-do Thodol to guide him through…

& neither the Holy Scriptures nor the Eternal Dollar that he worships holds the power to save his endangered soul…

No, if anything, they have only served, not in his Salvation, but in prolonging the span of his waiting agony, & the depths of degradation that must surely lie ahead shall pale his darkest shrieking nightmares into gusts of breath swirling in the stillness of some long-forgotten winter midnight…

There are more things in heaven & earth (& HELL), Truman, than are dreamed of in your (so-pitifully limited) philosophy:

&, indeed,

EVER THE DOORS OF HELL HANG OPEN:

[ 24 ]

Frank’s hairy, mitt-like right fist unknots itself from the steering wheel, & reaches out with surprising gentleness to run his outstretched fingers through the ruff of hair along the back of Elijah’s neck, stroking & scratching with absent-minded affection.

Momentary inner musings fade & the reality of road & real estate once more asserts its primacy:

The sign on the convenience mart reads “JACK’S FOOD STORE.”

“Better grab myself a pack of smokes while I’m thinking of it, Old Boy—” Frank says to his companion, the redbone hound.

He hangs a hard turn, burning a little rubber as the treads of the Vette’s steelbelt radials bite pavement, noses it between a mudcaked & backroad-battered ’71 Ford pick-up & a once-yellow, ’52 Studebaker rust monster deluxe.

The sign on the wall outside clearly states: “NO LOITERING OR DRINKING ON PREMISES,” but a pair of aging black winos are leaning against the building, sharing slobbering swigs from a crumpled brown #8 grocery sack wrapped around a bottle that looks suspiciously like NIGHT TRAIN to Frank’s trained eye. Both wear dipso-reg navy knit caps & frayed & filth-stained army surplus jackets. Their body language deciphers as charter members of Local #000 of the Street Trash Legion. Alkies. Shiv swingers. Neither looks like he might be holding. Or packing heat.

Shit. Those hands are shakin’ so bad they couldn’t even squeeze a trigger, much less sight a handgun. Or fumble with a junkie’s kit to fix…

Satisfied with his perimeter scan, Frank unbuckles his safety belt & harness. Grasps the door handle. Pops the latch. Eases the car door open so as to avoid chipping his gunmetal-lacquered paint job on the junker of a truck parked beside him.

“Keep an eye on things for me, Elijah. I’ll be back. Pronto.”

Frank climbs from the contoured cockpit of the Stingray, unfolding his six-foot-two-inch, one-hundred-ninety-seven-pound frame. He stands erect. Closes the door firmly, No hint of a slam. No fumbling, no pussy footin’. Smooth moves, cool & assured…

Frank dominates the narrow gap between his Vette & the ’71 Ford pickup. His Brooks Brothers suit is styled in Texas Oil Baron chic-desert tan, precisely tailored, but cut loosely to allow his still powerfully muscled ex-Tackle’s body ample room to flex freely when strenuous physical exertion is dictated by the dynamics of situation. Ample room to conceal the long blue barrel of his shoulder-holstered .44 Magnum “Dirty Harry Special” with its six Teflon-coated, chambered rounds.

They call it “the most powerful handgun in the world.”

Big man. Big gun.

His choice of handguns is no accident: he’s a Harry Callahan fanatic, having seen each of those Eastwood classics at least a dozen times in his cross-country odysseys, the familiar, tough-guy scripts serving as a trusted point of reference in a world where the flash-in-the-pan fads of the “Me” generation & the sordid & the sleazy seem to have all-but corrupted the traditional values of “Truth, Justice & the American Way…”

For a Midwestern farm boy raised on John Wayne’s two-fisted, six-gun-totin’ bijou exploits & the Red-White-&-Blue melodrama of Captain America & Superman comics, the honored veteran of a bloody war fought on their terms in the rot-infested jungles of Indochina, the need for heroes still exists…

Frank stretches, working the minor kinks & cramps from his joints & muscles.

His big right hand reaches up to his face. His huge thumb & index finger clasp the gold rims of his mirror-glazed aviator’s glasses, adjusting them precisely, pushing them up into place on the bridge of his rather large & slightly battered yet vaguely aristocratic nose—a nose betraying to the careful observer both a vestige of his Anglo-Saxon ancestry & the three breaks that the cartilaginous structure has sustained…

Frank eyes the pair of bottle-sharing winos with a cold, analytical detachment as he saunters past them, reaches out, & pushes open the door to JACK’S.

Most folks would say that no white boy in his right mind would stroll in there unescorted.

But nobody’s around to warn him, &, anyway, Frank Hawkes is one baddass muthuhfuckin’ honkie…

[ 25 ]

Professor is curled knee-to-chest beneath soiled & tangled sheets on the army cot in the cluttered room he calls the “lab.” Saliva bubbles from his blue-tinged lips & his unruly nostril hairs flutter in the stale breeze from his rattling lungs.

Pynchon bends over, puts his lips to the sleeping man’s ear & whispers: “Do assholes dream of chrome dildos … ?”

“Um?” Professor’s eyelids twitch. His mouth sucks on his own spit.

Pynchon flips the cot over & dumps him on the floor.

“Hey…” Professor sits up & looks around the room like an awakened sleepwalker, trying to get his bearings.

“Wake-up call for Professor Punk,” Pynchon says with a grin.

“Christ. Not you.”

Lighting a thin cigar, Pynchon exhales the thick smoke & says, “Erebos wants a full report.”

“That’ll take time.” Professor stands, smoothing his rumpled clothes with his bony hands.

“Your time is mortgaged to the hilt already. You are to give me a verbal report, followed by your usual bullshit written reports.”

“Why did Erebos send you? You’re not even…”

“A scientist?” Pynchon blows a stinking cloud of cigar smoke in Professor’s face. “I’m an expert on reading people & I have a photographic memory. If you lie to me, I’ll know it. & you’ll live just long enough to regret it. I’m a bloodhound on the trail of truth.”

“Your innovative torture techniques are legend,” Professor remembers aloud, resignation in his voice.

“Right. So have your morning fix & let’s get started with a full briefing.”

“Is it morning?”

“ It is for you.”

While Professor washes up in the water closet, Pynchon surveys the high-tech hardware— state-of-the-art, compact & powerful. But nothing that could not be found on the black market if your money is the right color…

“Before I can tell you anything,” says Professor, shambling out of the WC, his face dripping water, “I have to see your plastic.”

“I’m not here to check for security leaks,” says Pynchon, pulling out what looks like a black credit card. “You know I can get what I want without this Mickey Mouse plastic.”

“Just following procedure.” Professor takes the plastic & slots it into a mini-terminal disguised as an oil painting of a mermaid lolling seductively in the bluish moonlight washing across a bed of jagged, bone-white coral. The thin rectangle of black plastic disappears into the mermaid’s abdomen & a series of numbers appears on the screen of one of the six monitors in the room. “Okay. You’re cleared.”

Pynchon sits on the corner of a redwood desk & sucks on his cigar.

“How much background do you need?” asks Professor, taking his seat in front of the desk.

“Start with the Blue Devil interface.”

Professor nods, then launches into his monotone, recounting details of the most extraordinary experiment of his life. “As you no doubt know, Blue Devil (Li Di 9) was inadvertently formulated by myself & a colleague of mine, George Brittain, while we were pre-med students at UCLA. We were working with cadavers—”

“I know all of that,” Pynchon interrupts. “Brittain schooled with you after serving His time in the Navy aboard the U.S.S. Lamprey, but disappeared suddenly—presumably after He tired of diddling corpses… Unless you have new information about Him, stop wasting my time & get to the initial interface.”

“Short & sweet, then,” says Professor. “We found a suitable subject, shot him up with the Blue Devil, field-tested him on one of our girls, then put him under & implanted the microchip supplied by the Erebos wizzers. So we hooked him up, mainframed him & turned him loose.

“All I had to do then was patch myself in, start the IV drip, & the computer homed in on him. We achieved Mindlink. I was in his head. In his body.” Excitement edges his voice. “I was in two fucking places at once. I was there when he went on his killing spree. I felt what he felt. The bloodlust was overpowering.”

“You couldn’t control him?” Pynchon asks.

“No, I had no influence at all. It was all I could do to unhook myself & stop the IV feed.” Professor rubs his temples with bony fingers. “A few minutes later everything went to Hell. Even though I was disconnected, I was suddenly slammed right back into his skull. His killing spree was just beginning. The incredible thing is, his mind—my mind—merged with the minds of his victims. You have any idea what that’s like? I can’t begin to describe it. At a certain point, there is no killer & no victim. There is only the act of killing & the moment of death. Death is like nothing you could ever imagine. It’s…” He falls silent, staring at his hands.

Pynchon relights his cigar & says, “You’re holding something back—”

“No, no, I…I’m not through. To tell you the truth, I’m scared shitless. Just before the psychic link to the killer broke itself off, he became aware of me, of my presence in his psyche. & he didn’t like it. I think he’s coming for me now. I’m to be his next victim.”

“Sounds like drug-induced paranoia to me.”

“No. I was in his mind, his soul. I know him. I know what he wants. He wants to kill me.”

“So your great experiment went to shit.”

“That’s a fucking understatement. Look, Pynchon, you can tell Lucy Nation & her Erebos drones I want out. They can get themselves another boy. I’m through—”

“That’s not the way it works, pal. You’re not through till Erebos is through with you.”

“Jesus Christ, man, that monster is going to rip me apart.”‘

“You’re well-paid for the risks involved.” Pynchon smiles. “Oh, what dangerous games we play, eh, Professor? Things get a little hot & you’re ready to call it quits. I’m disappointed in you.”

“Okay. I’ll pay you to take this guy out. Kill him before he kills me.”

“Standard consulting rates—I’m an expert—”

“How much? I’m willing to go ten grand if you’ll take him out—ASAP!”

“Two K an hour. Plus expenses…obviously.”

“Christ! I don’t want him fucking gold-plated—just DEAD!”

Pynchon feigns professional anger: “You want a bargain—? Go hire yourself a coupla’ fuckin’ hophead gang spooks or some Gook kid with a Saturday Night Special that’s just as liable to blow his own fuckin’ face off as put down his target—”

“Twenty grand. You eat the expenses. It’s a local hit. Piece a’ cake…” Professor tries to play it hard-to-get.

But Pynchon can read the fear pheromones of his sweat & sense his pulse rate jagging on a sublim graph readout. Read him like a lie-detector remote… Only. With a far, far lower fail-factor…

Pynchon runs a quick mental cost/benefit. Then answers: “I’ll tell you what, PP. For old times’ sake. I’ll do your boy for a flat twenty K. But don’t think this sets any precedent. Call it a BLUE LIGHT SPECIAL, ehhh?”

Pynchon pauses for dramatic effect. Then adds: “Of course, that’s pending Erebos’ approval of the contract—I’m not sure Lucy will want this freak hit…”

“Talk to her & get back to me—fast. If you can’t do it, I’ll find somebody who can.”

“Don’t do anything rash. Or I might have to feed you to the big bad monster myself. Lucy Nation is not somebody you want to piss off—”

“So I hear.” Beads of sweat glisten on Professor’s forehead.

Pynchon offers his right hand.

On reflex Professor extends his own.

Pynchon’s firm handshake becomes a vice-grip, crushing the scientist’s knuckles. Pynchon sucks on his cigar so that its ember glows red hot, then he touches the fire to the back of Professor’s captive hand.

“Let’s get on with the briefing,” Pynchon says. “This time, don’t leave anything out…”

Professor goes to his knees, whimpering helplessly, smelling the seared-pork stink of his own burning flesh.

[ 26 ]

The Olds heads east. Past industrial complexes & the scaffolds & girders & cranes & hardhat crews of construction sites. Past the signatures of Progress. Trees leveled. Sod plundered & upturned & graded. Bulldozers. Cranes. Cement mixers. Rumbling. Creaking. Clattering. Groaning.

Those insignificant anarchies of Nature tamed & transformed…

The imperfect & irregular made uniform & answerable to the dictates of geometry. Asymmetries brought to the conformity of the angular & curvilinear…

In the struggle of Man vs. Nature, the Thelemaic dictum remains: “Do what you will” is the whole of the Law…

&, if there is one single catch-phrase that can encompass the credo by which Maldoror lives, then it is expressed in those four simple words. WORDS OF POWER. Godlike power. Demonic power. But simplicity is not Maldoror’s forte... He has studied the writings of Austin Osman Spare & of Michael Bertiaux & Kenneth Grant & Peter Carroll & The Circle of Chaos, & He has incorporated the unfettering insights of Chaos Magick with those of Heretical Gnosticism, traditional Ceremonial Magick & Satanism, & He knows that “MAN HAS WILLED MAN!” & He knows that “NO BELIEF IS VALID—YET EVERY BELIEF IS VALID!,” & He knows “NOTHING IS TRUE! EVERYTHING IS PERMISSIBLE!,” & He knows “MY DESIRES SHALL BECOME FLESH, MY DREAMS REALITY & NO FEAR SHALL ALTER IT ONE WHIT!,”…power without limits…Man freed to express his every thought & desire in action. Unchained from the strictures of taboo & moral conscience. Truly existing BEYOND GOOD & EVIL…de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom made manifest in flesh & bone & blood…

A riptide of blood that has swept secretly across the face of America for just over thirty years. As yet unchecked. As yet, except for perhaps a handful of the enlightened, unlinked… By the majority perceived solely as random outbursts of chaotic mega-violence…

The Blue Coral-waxed whiteness of the Olds gleams like a polished fragment of bone in the bloodfire of early September sunset…

Maldoror & Snuff are both seated in the front. Mal’s eyes fixed on the highway ahead, scanning peripherally the rearview mirrors, the digital readout of the speedometer, carefully monitoring His speed, even though the car is set on Cruise Control.

Julie slumps in the backseat, bored, lost in a waking dream of sexual ennui & frustrated lustmord, eager for the roar & the mind-devouring frenzied glitter-rush of MTV, or some “wet,” titillating event to make her rea1, once more…

The radio is playing “Road to Nowhere” by the Talking Heads…

The music turned down low, as Mal will suffer no distractions, yet it is the rare compromise that He makes to pacify Snuff’s road-raised Hellion of a daughter—wayward offspring of a Twentieth-C highwayman & cutthroat. In most things, Mal prefers to bend & twist her headstrong wishes to “conform” to the erratic bizarreries of His own decidedly perverse aesthetic. The scars on the secret flesh of her young body bear testimony to His deeds of hardcore discipline. He prefers light opera to Rock. Gilbert & Sullivan to Metallica & Rage Against the Machine & Nine Inch Nails. He identifies with the Lord High Executioner of the Mikado. & He identifies with the philosophical aesthetics of King Diamond. & the overt dementia & barely concealed S&M of the darker groups’ leather-clad lyrics & psycho-sexual cattle prod-to-the-libido beat cannot help but fascinate & excite the slithering beté noir of His backbrain…

& the Black Beast slithers forth from its slime-damp netherpit of sub-subconscious midnight. Hissing. Speaking in the mad, mindless babble of a thousand varied tongues…

The Scarlet Whore of babblin’ babble-on; the tight-assed, smart-sassed, whip-lashed, hot-gashed, white-trashed, ultimate CUNT incarnate; the fever-thighed, wild-eyed, slime-legged SLUT of Babylon…

Mal’s mind spewing its boogie-rap-mambo-jive of ssssiiiicccckkkk cccciiiittttyyyy sweeeettt sssuuugggarrrrr sssssseXXXyyyyy sublim serpent solicitations…

“Gotta’ little house down by th’ roadside. It’s made outta’ rattlesnake hide. Gotta’ itty bitty chimney way up on top. Made outta’ human skulls…” the words of Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?” clatter clatter ping through the flip flop flipping maze of Mal’s pinball pinup pit of deepest deep blue Hell…

A young girl stands by the side of the road.

A hitchhiker.

A real young juicy one.

Long blonde hair.

Thumb out.

T-shirt: tight & straining.

Titties: small, upthrust & firm.

Faded denim cutoffs: tight. So tight they bulge at the seams threatening to split & spill the creamy white-pinkness of round jiggling juvenile flesh they so barely hide, so flauntingly reveal in flashes of split-second white-hot fishhook-in-the-skull intensity begging—yeah begging—to indulge those CRIMES OF PASSION restlessly slumbering in the snake pit mind of Maldoror…

& Snuff. “Riding shotgun”: his mirrorshade-glazed eyes scanning the roadside for some new hot wet action…

The White Line Fever sings through his buzzing brainpan searing pinpricks of slavering NEED…

Snuff feels his groin tighten. Again. Stretching the taut fabric of his Levi’s tentpole-like with the fierceness of his rising lust…

The soft, gently curving swell of the girl’s bottom, peeping from beneath the deliberately-frayed edges of her “Daisy Duke” cutoffs, draws an appreciative whistle from his parched lips as the car slides past her in the gathering dusk. “I want a piece of that tight tail!” Snuff moans. “Hey, Mal, how ‘bout we give her a ride—?”

But there is no need for the henchman to prompt his employer/fellow traveler-on-roads-of-sex-&-death— Mal is already goosing the brake pedal long before Snuff’s words are uttered, slowing the Olds gradually, easing it onto the pulloff lane of gently sloping shoulder.

Mal slides the slushbox trannie into REVERSE & backs slowly down the pavement towards the lone girl on the roadside…

[ 27 ]

The clerk who rings up Frank’s purchase really doesn’t seem a half-bad sort. Quite pleasant. But he mentions he’s a temporary, just filling in for a few days…

He asks Frank: “Didjasee dat wrassling match last night—de one wid ‘De Nature Boy’ Ric Flair, WHOOO!, vs. dat short dude wid de green mask & de bullwhip?”

Frank shakes his head & lays down a twenty.

“No…? Shame. Dat was one badddasssss fight, M’man…”

Frank thanks him. Folds the bills he receives back into his snakeskin wallet. Drops the coins into his right front pocket. Then picks up his bag with the pack of Marlboros, the pre-wrapped roast beef sandwich, two chilled bottles of Budweiser, & a copy of the local newspaper, & exits.

The pair of winos have drifted off.

Elijah’s taken good care of the Vette, Frank notes.

He opens the door.

Climbs in.

Buckles up & harnesses himself.

Hits the ignition.

Depresses the clutch, shifting into REVERSE.

Backs up.

Throws the Stingray in a quick shift sequence from FIRST through THIRD, lurching forward into the traffic flow.

[ 28 ]

Moonlight glistens on her talonlike fingernails of stainless steel as Lucy Nation converses with Pynchon via cellular. The ember of her cigarette glows like a Hellcoal in the darkened room, as she takes a long, deep drag, French-inhales, & exhales the writhing blue smoke as she speaks. “You’re confident he told you everything?”

“Oh, he tried to withhold a little, but I got it out of the wormy bastard,” Pynchon replies. “What he didn’t want to tell me was that the killer carved a number on the belly of one of his victims, & that the number came from Professor’s mind.”

“But he said he had no control over the killer—” she says, taking another drag of potent custom Turkish blend laced with the slightest trace of Omen.

“No conscious control. He said the number carving must’ve come from his subconscious…”

“What was the significance of the number?”

“It’s the access code to his Mindlink program. Seven-seven-three-four.”

She stands in silhouette, & walks to the picture window of her plush penthouse, overlooking the Miami metropolis. She stares in silence at the nightscape, the undulating swells of moonlit ocean.

“It would seem,” she says, “that our Professor is too weak-willed for his own experiment. What we need is someone with an iron will.” She pauses for emphasis. “Someone like you—”

“I don’t fancy being anybody’s lab rat.”

“Widen your perspective. If you can control another person, a henchman, assassin, or whatever you want to call him, if you can control him with your mind, you could score any number of hits without ever leaving your armchair. You would run no risk of getting caught or killed. You would be the ultimate hit man. &, according to Professor, you would still get the thrill of the kill—”

In his favored lustmord lair in the deepest pit of Mermaid’s Inn, Pynchon nods. Smiling. “I’m beginning to see the big picture. If this thing can be perfected, wars of the future could be fought by armchair generals manipulating their zombie-like soldiers. The fat brass send out their troops & experience no-risk combat.”

“Yes. The ‘Henchman Effect.’ The military implications are almost limitless.”

“As would be the profits when you put this baby on the international market.”

“Are you game?”

“Providing two conditions, yes,” Pynchon answers. “I am your business partner, not your employee.”

“Fair enough. I’ll have my lawyers draw up the contract. Just don’t disappoint me… I might be forced to let you work it off the hard way—as the next lil’ Chicken-Lickin’ pullin’ punk-end down in the John Wayne Gacy Room… & that’s guaranteed short-term employment…”

“Condition Two: I want to fuck you.”

“Compromise, Mr. Badass Stud. Take it or leave it. You don’t fuck me. Nobody fucks with Lucy Nation. Call it semantics, if you like. I screw you, my style—nasty, real nasty…

“I’ll bring along some of my special Stayhard drug—”

The phone clicks & the line buzzes like a swarm of angry flies.

[ 29 ]

“Need a lift, Kid—?” Snuff asks. He is careful to conceal the eagerness that he feels at the sight of her young body.

The girl is petite, perhaps five feet tall. Five-one at most. Her build is slender yet provocative. Her small, jutting breasts beneath the taut fabric of her T-shirt are ripe, budding cones of firm, succulent flesh. Like hydroponic nectarines, their promise of rosy-pink & juicy-sweet delicacy begging to be tasted. The nubbins of her young nipples erect & thrusting, chafing against the tight-stretched jersey knit, stiffened by the crisp chill in the air caressing her warm, goose-prickled skin.

The hem of the T-shirt rides up as she moves, exposing a brief, tempting glimpse of the soft, supple flesh of her belly, the deep dimple of her navel, warm & dark & moist with the salt tang of perspiration, the faint hint of musky, natural perfumes:

These things Snuff senses, with the unfailing instincts of the predator...

His eyes scan the tight, faded fabric of her denim cutoffs, detaiIing the way her flesh seems poured into their confines, the way the material gathers in the outlined furrow at her thighs’ junction, the bulging thread of the seams, the fleetingly exposed glimpse of creamy bottom-cheeks, an inch or more of the lush, melon-like globes bare & jiggling as she sways closer to the waiting Olds & its passengers. The swinging rhythm of her hips accentuated by the three-inch cork wedges of her sandals.

Her hair is golden blonde. Long & slightly permed. Flowing from her shoulders in a cascade of cornsilk-soft wisps, brushing across the curve of her shoulders & upper back in the gust of September evening.

Snuff ogles her. Undresses her mentally. But his lust is a secret concealed beneath the quicksilver flash of mirrorshades.

& his body language is a studied scam of projected mild, decidedly unthreatening mannerisms. He leans casually from the opened window, palm upturned in the ancient gesture assuring that it holds no weapons. For the moment, he has stripped off the surgical glove from his left hand.

Julie punches the control lowering her window on the rear of the passengers’ side. The glass hums slowly downward, sheathing itself in the chrome-trimmed frame.

She pops her head out.

Motions with her right hand, also temporarily bared of latex.

“C’mon, Silly! You must be freezin’ your buns off out there! & after all, I could use some company—it’s such a bummer riding all the way cross-country with just your Dad & Uncle—”

“Gee! Thanks! I thought I’d never get a ride! The only ones that keep pulling over are old salesmen & freaks & geeks & leches—uuugghhh! You can tell just by looking at them they just want to get you inside their cars so they can paw you & everything…y’ know—?”

The young blonde hitchhiker is relieved to find the warmth & safety offered by the girl & her relatives—the dusk is thickening, growing ever darker & more foreboding to a teenage girl alone on this infrequently traveled road…

Snuff swings the passenger door open.

Julie slides over behind Mal.

& Heather Rylie crawls into the big white anonymous car, into the waiting entry to her own very special gate to Hell.

[ 30 ]

Frank cruises the streets of northwest Ocala, getting the “lay of the land,” reacquainting himself with this seemier side of a truly pretty city:

In the failing light, he notices a sign at a car wash: it begins with “PLEASE UNDERSTAND,” but he doesn’t catch the rest, some warning about loitering or the like… He chuckles at the seeming paradox.

“Now, I’ve seen some weird signs in my time, Elijah, but that sure strikes me as about the goddamn looniest ever—how many of those loiterers they’re tryin’ to chase off would be able to read that high-falutin’ sign?

“For that matter,” he adds, “I wonder how many of ’em would be able to fathom what ‘UNDERSTAND’ means—even if they cared?”

They pass rows of unhealthy-looking, splotchy yards, crammed with battered pickup trucks, broken recliners & trash cans spilled or simply overflowing, & what trees there are seem to grow away from the houses they surround, as if in disgust.

Rap music & salsa rhythms throb in the gloaming air, pulsing all around them like blood fevered with the taint of heroin & PCP & crack & the seething microbes of a thousand festering venereal diseases.

The bluish cathode light of TV screens seems to leak through the windows or opened doorways of every house he passes, from the mostly unseen somewhere at the rear of front rooms, bombarding the inhabitants with a meaningless jumble of game shows & sitcoms & cop shows & commercials. Even through the thunder of the ghetto blasters & car radios an occasional shriek or scream is heard, voodoo viragos layin’ down heavy vibes on some poor bastard for his vices, or just bitchin’ out the yardapes & anklebiters…

Frank twists the cap off a Bud. Chugs a big gulp. Tears the cello-wrap off his RB on White. He wolfs it & kills the brew.

Local hardguys hang out on every corner. The white punks flip him off. The bad bloods just mouth him in a jittering of jivetalk that sounds like Martian or Swahili for all the sense it makes to Frank.

Money & baggies pass hands in open view.

Several times when he stops for a red light young skinny girls lean toward him from the curb asking if he’d like a “straight date” or “Greek action” or a “trip around the world” — AIDS CITY, man! he can almost see those monkeys ridin’ on their backs…

Pit bulls & flea-bitten, vicious mongrels snarl or bark threateningly from the gathering shadows of nearly every yard. Tough “show” for the players & the wheeler-dealers. Or just bargain-basement burglar alarms for the poor-but-honest folks.

“Don’t think they like you, Boy,” Frank tells Elijah. “But I’ll bet you could kick ‘A’ on most any of ’em—what d’ya say…?”

The redbone hound growls & bares his teeth as if in answer to his master’s question.

“Atta boy!” Frank says, “You tell ’em, Trooper—”

They loop down a side street, just off the main drag.

“& I thought the ‘PLEASE UNDERSTAND’ sign was weird?” Frank says. “Just look at that one—”

He points to a nearby tavern. It’s made of block & painted (of all colors!) lilac blue… The name of the place is “PINK…” something, either “GARDENIA”(?). or “CARNATION”(?). But a Mayflower moving truck passes by in the other direction, obscuring his view before he can catch more than a fleeting glimpse of the second word.

“Good thing the cash was in the mail before we left—” Frank says. “We’re rollin’ in the dough again. I think we should both eat steak tonight, Elijah—huh…?”

[ 31 ]

He sits at the compact computer keyboard, turns on the juice & keys in the seven-digit command code: “SERIALK.”

This time Prof. Punk is not plugged into the slow drip-feed of Li Di 9, the “Blue Devil” IV interface. This time Prof. Punk is bathed in the cold sweat of fear. The visit from Pynchon had set the ice of cold steel paranoia in his veins. The tentative agreement they seem to have reached does little to alleviate his apprehensions. Who can predict the whims of Erebos? Or fathom the web of delusions, deceits & devious seductions woven by the infamous Lucy Nation?

& he knows with the divinations of gut logic, reading the systolic spasmings of his own coiled rope of intestines, his inner eye tracing the twenty-two-odd feet of duodenum, the ten-foot stretch of jejunum, the four yards of ileum connecting with the cecum, the ascending colon, the transverse & descending colons, taking the hairpin “S” curve of the sigmoid flexure down down & dirty to the business end of all this gut—the rectum & the anus…

He knows that the hardwired, Blue-tripping psycho known as “Slice” is out to spill his self-same innards…

& he feels his bowels twitch & threaten to betray him with incontinence with the fear of that knowledge.

But Prof. Punk has always considered himself a survivor. Perverse as that may seem in light of certain past actions…

His fingers tap a staccato symphony on the keyboard as he accesses this decidedly ersatz program, entering passwords, keying in the correct sequences of proscribed responses & blowing past the killer ICE that is tripwired into the system to perma-frost the unauthorized & unwary:

Skimming the filenames scrolling upward in alpha sequence:

“David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam”

“Kenneth Bianchi, The Hillside Strangler”

“Jerome Henry Brudos”

“Theodore Bundy”

“Angelo Buono, The Hillside Strangler”

“Alton Coleman”

“Juan Corona”

“Dean Arnold Corll”

“Antone Costa”

“Jeffrey Dahmer, The Milwaukee Cannibal”

“Albert DeSalvo, The Boston Strangler”

“Mark Essex”

“Donald Leroy Evans”

“Larry Eyler”

“Albert Fish”

“John Wayne Gacy, The Killer Clown”

“Gerald Gallego”

“Ed Gein”

“Gary Michael Heidnik”

“Kevin & Reginald Haley, The Demon Brothers Of L.A.”

“Charles Hatcher”

“Green River Killer”

“Charles Manson”

“Earle Leonard Nelson”

“Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker”

“Arthur Shawcross”

“Christopher Wilder”

“Wichita’s B(ind).T(orture).K(ill).S(layer).”

“Wayne Bertram Williams”

“Zodiac”

SUBFILE

“Warren Franklin (“Frank”) Hawkes.”

D.O.B.: 42/06/22

PLACE OF BIRTH: WICHITA, KANSAS

HEIGHT: 6’ 2 1/2”.

WEIGHT: 195.

EDUCATION: KANSAS STATE (1960-1965): B.A.: ECONOMICS. 2 SEMESTERS TOWARD MASTERS. ROTC. SCHOLARSHIP: FOOTBALL.

MILITARY SERVICE: 1965-1969: U.S. ARMY RANGERS. 3 TOURS-OF-DUTY VIETNAM.

DISCHARGE: HONORABLE: AWARDED SILVER STAR & PURPLE HEART (SHRAPNEL WOUNDS: ABDOMEN & LEFT ARM & ELBOW). MUSTERED OUT with RANK of CAPTAIN.

MARITAL STATUS: DIVORCED (1990): EX-WIFE: JUDITH LYNN (47/02/13). CHILDREN: WARREN FRANKLIN, JR. (83/10/23). MELISSA LYNN (87/12/21).

OCCUPATION (CURREXT): FREELANCE JOURNALIST. PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. SERIAL CRIMES INVESTIGATOR: STATUS: UNOFFICIAL.

OCCUPATION (FORMER): FBI AGENT: STATUS: TERMINATED (1983): CHARGES: GROSS INSUBORDINATION & DERELICTION of DUTY.

AUTHOR: definitive textbooks:

—Pattern Violence, Mass Murder, and Serial Killings in Contemporary American Society: an Assessment of Current Problems and Historic Perspective

—A Profile of Anarchic and Psychotic Terrorism in Urban and Rural North America

AUTHOR: popular texts: BEST SELLER (over 2,200,000 copies):

—Satan and Serial Violence, an occult conspiracy

[ 32 ]

INTRODUCTION to Satan and Serial Violence:

From the political upheaval & burgeoning occult movements of the ’60s, a new breed of terrorist emerged.

Every war has its beachheads, its forays, its skirmishes, its trench warfare…

& there are, also, the secret agents, the subversives, the guerrillas…

Even when the Hell-legions of Chaos, the minions of Darkness, battle for dominion over Earth.

In His November 9, 1969, missive to the San Francisco Chronicle, the mysterious serial killer known as “The Zodiac” warned the world:

“So I shall change the way the/ collecting of slaves. I shall/ no longer announce to anyone./ when I comitt (sic) My murders,/ they shall look like routine/ robberies, killings of anger, &/ a few fake accidents, etc./ The police shall never catch Me,/ because I have been too clever/ for them.”

[ 33 ]

Snuff uses the several spare seconds while Heather slides into the backseat to tug the surgical glove back onto his bared left hand, then thrusts both hands into the pockets of his windbreaker.

Julie, conversely, does nothing to disguise or secret her gloved hands. Instead, she has slid seamlessly into her hype, her well-drilled scam with the precision of a cardshark or shortchange artist, flowing with the moves that require no conscious concentration, but have become an auto pilot program triggering her every word & nuance of body language, like a Stepford Kid gone street punk…

The pale-green plastic squeeze-bottle of Extra Moisturizing Soft Sense Skin Lotion with Vitamin E has materialized from suitcase-to-hand with the fluid sleight of hand of a Three Card Monte dealer.

“’Scuse the gloves—” Julie spiels, “But I’ve like got this really bad thing with chapped hands & all—” She pauses momentarily to squirt a squelching dollop of vaguely almond-scented lotion into her bared left palm, rubbing it briskly into the skin while she adds: “& so the doctor like said I had’ta wear these dweebie gloves & I feel like such a freak—”

The glove is flexed over her fingers, slithering into place, masking the identifying ridges & whorls of her hands like a synthetic epi-epidermal layer marked “GENERIC.” …Orchestrated so coolly with disarming little wriggles of pert nose & butterfly-fluttering of eyelids over squinching seablues & a giggle-eliciting facial grimace…

All as Heather plops her shapely bottom down onto the soft, comfy backseat cushion. Slides into place. Grasps the door handle, slamming it securely shut. & turns her pretty face to greet her newfound benefactor.

On cue, Julie’s antics break her up into a softly stifled, blushing bout of giggles.

“I just can’t thank you all enough—” the blonde gushes.

“No sweat! Glad to save you from the oily clutches of leering pervs & the…uhhh…proverbial ‘fate worse than death’…or a frozen tush & NEW-monia or sumthin’!”

“Geez! I never thought it’d be so hard to catch a lift with decent folks! You’re all so sweet—”

“Oh. Yeah. Like I said: ‘No sweat!’ I’m Julie. & this is my Uncle Mal & my Daddy—” she says, motioning to the men in the front seat.

“I’m Heather. Heather Rylie…”

Mal taps the gas pedal, & the big white Olds kicks up a flurry of skittering gravel as it lurches out onto the asphalt, heading east towards Illinois.

[ 34 ]

Dawn spills through the curtains of Frank Hawkes’ motel room. As usual, he’s settled for accommodations that are clean & comfortable, but more homey & hoi polloi than hoighty-toighty. He’s an habitue of Holiday Inns & Howard Johnsons, kissing off the like of Hiltons & those other highbrow havens of the prestige seekers & power brokers. Frank feels at home where he can slide Elijah in without hardass or hassles. Where he doesn’t have to grease palms or kiss “A” to bed & board his pooch.

He dresses carefully, checking himself twice in the bathroom mirror, smoothing out any wrinkles, real or imagined, in his suitcoat & pantlegs. If only the wrinkles in my life were so goddamn easy to put right, he thinks, as he fires up his third Marlboro of the morning…

[ 35 ]

Before he became something more than human, he liked to hang out in punk joints & coffee houses like Nouveau Espresso & 90 Night—funky little clubs where young radicals & anarchists & Post-Beat post-hip poets & punk musicians gather for mutual ego massage or to have their philosophies styled in the latest fashion. In that previous life, Slice was an angry young poet known as “The Bard of Bones,” because he always wore his hand-tooled leather-&-bones outfit when he read his mad poetry in public. T-bones, chicken bones, pork chop bones, dog bones, cat bones (painted black), squirrel skulls, a human femur, all rattling musically as he moved about like a demented witch doctor, mouthing his bone-chilling poems & death hymns. His outfit was topped off with a spooky hoodoo headdress made of a cow’s skull & hung with chicken feet & bird feathers. He strutted his killer stuff & the tight little pussies in the audience (those with the kinkier libidos that flamed darkly to the spark of his Hellcoals-&-gris-gris-laden rap) would get wet & squirmy, aching for that big bone bulging beneath his loincloth. The Bard of Bones got a lot of pussy in those days.

Then came his Bloodbone Poems & his subsequent arrest on obscenity charges.

(The arresting stormtroopers were pretty riled about his stacks of photo albums filled with their lurid headline clippings screaming an obsession with sordid sex, urban bloodbath & mega-violence. Neither did they appreciate his state-of-the-art collection of S&M, fetishist & bondage zines. Their bootheels & balled-fists-in-the-gut made that rather clear…)

He was convicted, placed on probation & ordered to undergo psychiatric counseling. He enjoyed the cat-&-mouse mindgames he played with the shrink, entertaining private fantasies of extremely creative carnage. The drawback was that he lost interest in writing poetry. But he convinced Dr. Howard (who looked too much like Moe of The Three Stooges) that he had no desire to perform in public again. The baggy-eyed quack never scratched the surface of his mind’s core—that dark chamber of id horrors inhabited by a psyche blown wild by storms of Evil. The stupid shrink never even caught a glimpse of the bloodlust boiling behind those hooded eyes. His Freudian flimflam was a total flop. The Bard of Bones became “Slice” right under Herr Doktor’s big nose. & now he is someone else—something else. Something more than human. A nocturnal predator attuned to the poetry of the blooded flesh. He sees the universe in bones laid bare by his blade. & Slice becomes the hunter of the blue nocturne.

He blows into 90 Night like a storm-building thunderhead.

“Bones! Is that you, man?” squeaks a rat-faced faggot.

Slice shakes his head. Negative, asshole. He picks up the sultry scent of choice prey. His bootknife shifts against his ankle.

A pretty drag queen is sitting on a stool, reading into the mike a long poem about the gay plague.

Slice slinks across the room & sits at a vacant table. A butch lesbian wearing a dildo on a rope around her neck looks into his face, then quickly looks away. He can imagine what she saw there: saw him stuffing that dildo dick down her fucking throat, fucking her with it ’til blood filled up the torn crater of her mouth. You ain’t butch enough to handle me, cunt. Choke on it, you half-human bitch.

The queen on the stool ends his epic by ripping off his blonde wig & spinning around on the stool to reveal a death’s-head mask on the back of his head. The audience applauds & cheers. Slice hawks up thick phlegm from the back of his throat & spits the blue glob on the floor, causing three punks at the next table to look in disgust at him & move to another table. Don’t you know artistic criticism when you see it?

The scent comes in stronger.

Something dark & powerful stirs in his belly & groin.

A prettyboy MC steps to the mike & says: “Ladies & gentlemen—Miss Phaedra Flame!”

The prey mounts the stage. The black sheen of her long hair, her black bodystocking & black lip gloss accent her milk-white face.

A demonic grin sharpens the predator’s face.

Phaedra Flame holds up a slim red-bound book, & says, “These are my Torch Poems.” She holds up a blowtorch in her other hand & a tongue of fire licks at the book. Then flames engulf the book, & she tosses it into a bucket of water. “I hereby proclaim the death of the printed word!”

The audience whistles & cheers. Mindless sheep.

“Now I do real poetry,” Phaedra says with a sly smile.

From the Olympus of his heightened blue awareness, the New God Slice looks down upon the roomful of ragged mortals & savors the coming creation. Destruction is creation, Reductionist to the Nth. His artistic medium will be flesh/bone/blood. Each slaughtered lamb a work of art, impermanent like ice sculpture. Art that literally sends spirits soaring into the great unknown.

Phaedra is putting her body & soul into her impromptu scat poetry, moving with feline grace, slinky & seductive, speaking directly to the New God, though she is not consciously aware that she is doing so. “…hungry in the hamburger air, tossed aside like a used condom, wearing the emblem of a washed-out revolution, alone with my own bloody abortion…”

Slice studies her every move, the jiggle of her full breasts, the quiver of her firm thighs, the pucker of her lips as she wraps them around each word. He is mentally outlining his artistic approach, planning the impetus of his strokes, finding cosmic inspiration in the poetry of her moving body.

The revelation hits him with such force that he is thrown back in his chair, his long hands dangling below the seat. He sees it all with crystal blue clarity: his handiwork must be exhibited for the masses, not merely for the homicide police & the coroner. He will display his blood art, like human graffiti, to the public. Phaedra Flame will be his first message to the world. The more sensitive souls will see the meaning beyond the carved & flayed flesh. Perhaps a few will even glimpse the coming blue doom.

The demonic grin returns & remains on his face like a mask.

As he follows her out the rear door of 90 Night & into the poorly lit parking lot, he suddenly feels fear. Not his own fear, but the wimpy emotion of that intruding mind from Mermaid’s Inn. The mind of the four-eyed Professor, the one who inadvertently turned him into the New God—

Welcome aboard, Professor. Welcome to mindfuck. Come along & I’ll show you what I’m going to do to you. You’re in my orbit now. He can feel the wimp squirm, taste his terror, sense his futile resistance. You can’t hide from me now, cuntface. You know that now. You’re just beginning to see MY power. Across town, the helpless one cringes. You thought you control me? Fat chance. We’ll do her, you & me, then we’ll turn her into raw art. I know you get off on death. Imaging the rush you’ll get when I do you…

She bends to unlock the door of her battered bronze Toyota, & Slice puts the tip of the blade against the small of her back.

“Don’t make a sound—” he hisses.

Phaedra’s body tenses & her breath catches in her throat.

He steps beside her, putting an arm around her like a lover, shifting the knifepoint to the underside of her right breast. “I loved your poems,” he whispers. “They put me in an abstract mood.”

He walks her to a garbage-filled green dumpster behind the coffee house.

“I’m going to do something very abstract,” he tells her. “You’ll be the talk of the art world.”

He leads her behind the dumpster & pushes her back against its cool surface. “If you scream, I’ll slit your pretty throat.”

He slits the thin material of her bodystocking from the neck to the crotch, then peels it off her supple body.

“I smell your essence. I hear the blood rushing through your veins, wanting to come out.”

He deftly works his fingers through her pubic bush & into the warm lips of her quim. She tries to draw back from his touch, but her buttocks are already pressed flush against the dumpster.

His zipper opens with a loud rasp & his ponderous penis nudges against her dry slit. “Please…don’t…” she whispers.

“You’re dry as a bone,” he giggles, “but I can fix that.”

He clamps his left hand over her mouth & runs the blade downward, over her belly. “I’m going to fuck you,” he says & jabs the blade deep into her vagina.

—Professor feels a twinge of envy as the huge cock slides deep into the bloodslick tunnel of ruined flesh. Had he been so well endowed, he may never have gone through his various bookwormish stages of transformation, womanless through high school & college, through a series of bungled sexual encounters with prostitutes & sluts who made light of his inchworm cock, & on into the solitary pursuit of science. Had fate given this magnificent dong to him instead of this crazed sadist, then maybe he would not have summoned the succubus, in his LSD ritual of sex & self-destruction, she who tipped him to the formula & possibilities of Li Di 1… Envy, regret, &, now, revulsion, as he is trapped in the monster’s mind, bearing sick witness to the slaughter of the dying woman. Her mind screams in terror & disbelief as the blade slices off her breast.

A short-handled axe flashes in the dim light from a distant street lamp & strikes the woman’s shoulder, completely separating her arm from her body. A fountain of blood gushes from the severed socket, drenching you/her psychotic slayer & the litter-strewn pavement alike in the hot spill of her life-essence. She enters into numbing & merciful shock/you feel the center of her mind melting, dispersing randomly/each dripping direction going to death/butcher shop chic/a little off the top…?

Her head comes off with ease, though the axe keeps slipping in your blood-greased hands. Like the cries of a kitten down a well, the beheaded woman’s mewling echoes somewhere in your backroombrain, psychic scream from a locked corridor. Then dead silence. You start to hum a tuneless stream of bluenotes as you sculpt meat & bone. With your eyes ablaze with blue fire, it’s easy to work in the dark.

He/you/she/ IT…spirit flesh bliss blowing back eons…back to the big fucking bang!

From your angle-less corner of the blinding blue galaxy you feel her ghost fly away.

You work blind, by feel, by the sound of rending flesh & grinding bone, by the light of an inner blue radiance, out where interstellar radio messages bleed into curved mirrors & broken space & time, keying a haunted memory of idiotic phone conversations breaking into your old reality like that CB breaker breaker shit coming out of your TV & making you want to find those rednecked motherfuckers & make them bleed like stuck pigs. Ah, sweet memories. Whose memories…?

Bad to the last bone. Blistering blue heat bending mirrors, mirrors catching the bluenotes you hum as you do you best work. Monster art. Opening soon at your guerrilla theater.

[ 36 ]

In the darkened courtyard of a seedy motel somewhere on the outskirts of Quincy, IL, a white Olds DELTA 88 backs up to the walkway directly in front of Room Fourteen. The farthest from the office. The courtyard is a well of shadows, lit only by the sallow light that leaks through grimy windowpanes & the jittering reds & blues of surrounding neon signs crackling & flickering the pandered pulse of too-bright promises & the harsh, stabbing beams of semis’ headlamps.

Mal has already paid for the room in cash. Signed the register “Truman P. Gilmore” in an illegible scrawl. & flashed His captive’s drivers license, gloved thumb obscuring photo, as positive ID.

“Two rooms. Adjoining. My brother & his daughter are with Me. Been a long trip. Somewhere quiet—”

“Rooms Twelve & Fourteen. At the back of the court. Yeah—” he chuckles as if by rote, “Of course, there’s no Room Thirteen…”

Mal steps from the car. Strolls to the motel-room door. & leisurely inserts the key in the lock. Listens as it clicks. Enters.

Goddamn place fucking stinks, He notes to Himself. Chemical fertilizers, diesel fumes, flyblown garbage, moldy carpeting & rotting wallboard, stale, soured sweat & cheap liquor.

Perfect.

Just perfect. All we need to make this complete is Tony Perkins. Or maybe Rory Calhoun straight out of his role in Motel Hell. Always did think that was a singularly attractive title for a Slice-&-Dice…

Snuff escorts his pretty, blonde-haired “daughter” from the backseat, across the several feet of potholed asphalt, shuffling across the cracked & dusty concrete walkway, into the waiting doorway.

No one notices the borrowed switchblade pressed just beneath the out-thrust of her ribcage. Or the cotton wadding stuffed into her mouth to keep her silent. After a couple of skillfully-inserted jolts of novocaine had rendered lips & tongue temporarily jellylike & numbed beyond any coherent attempts at speech.

Mr. Bruce Davids, Motel Clerk, sure isn’t paying any attention to the new arrivals. Instead, he’s watching the so-sexy little jiggling backside peeping temptingly from beneath the rucked up hem of snow white pant legs, as that teenie boppin’ bimbette with the long black hair & short shorts & white halter top bends over to fiddle with the Pepsi machine mounted strategically just opposite the office window.

“Holy shit! that’s some mightyfinefuckin’ young jailbait snatch,” he moans lewdly to himself, imagining just what he’d like to do with her soft, warm, decidedly underage cunt & mouth & ass…OOooohhh. frigging JJJEEEzzzuSSSss!… yyyeahhhhh…that sweet, tight young ass…

The girl finally drifts off into the gaudy neon-lit street…

& Mr. Bruce Davids, Motel Clerk, tries to return to scanning the centerfold of his Hustler magazine. Finds the balloon-breasted, staple-naveled slut in the skinpics a sloppy seconds. SHIT! seconds. Hell! Thirds or fourths by direct comparison. The loose, meaty red folds of the woman’s obscenely exposed vaginal gash, split-beavered for her ogling throngs of pitiful jerkoffs, reminds him of a diseased & festering wound…

He makes a quick exit to the office’s crapper, & tugs out his achingly erect & throbbing penis, imaging his delicious little dream girl bareass naked & bent over on her hands & knees, just begging for the length of meat he’s beating off frantically into the grimy white porcelain orifice of the beckoning commode…

Groaning out his sick lust as he spurts his gushing semen into the piss-stained toilet bowl, & wishes…

While Mal & Snuff carry the blanket-wrapped two-hundred-fifty-pound bulk of Truman Gilmore the few scant feet between trunk & open doorway.

[ 37 ]

Frank uses the pay phone in the lobby of the motel restaurant.

He makes a call to the OPD.

“Yes, could you please put me through to Detective Sergeant Clarence Carter of Homicide?”

A silent sigh of relief.

“Yes, this is Frank Hawkes. I need to speak with him regarding the Jefferson case—” Frank scratches absent-mindedly at his eyebrows with the splayed thumb & forefinger of his left hand.

“Yeah, Clarence. Frank Hawkes. Been a Helluvawhile. How long is it—sixteen, seventeen years? Yeah, yeah. HowtheHellyoubeen?

“Nope. Not with the Bureau anymore. Freelance now. PI. Workin’ out of Chi-Town. Thought maybe you could give me the straight skinny on this scene.

“Sure. Of course. Whatever you can. No. It’s a related case. Think this may be part of a serial thing—

“An hour—?

“Had breakfast yet—?

“How ’bout my motel? They’ve got a coffee shop out front that doesn’t look like a total roach-haven.

“Yeah. Okay. Here’s the address…

“Sure!

“Really good to talk to you.

“The FAMILY? No. Divorced—”

[ 38 ]

The satellite’s orbit begins to decay as it passes over Manila. Its inevitable entrance by fire into Earth’s dense atmosphere has not yet been calculated by those paid to monitor such things; when the Com-Sat’s demise is plotted, it will be deemed one more hunk of expensive space junk likely to shed a minimum of dangerous debris upon the planet. Scant minutes later, the doomed satellite passes high above & to the south of Hong Kong, &, eventually, over Miami, where, several miles inland, a squad car lurches to a stop in front of the coffee house 90 Night. If the satellite’s onboard equipment were still operational, its camera could snap pictures of the bloody, contorted corpse hanging by a rope from the roof of the coffee house, could zoom in on the horrified & sickened faces of some of the individuals in the crowd, gathered to bear witness to the bizarre abomination. But the Com-Sat is shut down, making its silent way to inevitable destruction somewhere over an ocean of the southern hemisphere, sometime after it flashes by the beaches of Galveston, its bulk visible only as a brilliant pinpoint above the extreme horizon where sea meets sky…

It was the biggest goddamn fly he had ever seen. Not a horsefly, not a green fly, but a frigging housefly so big that Officer Robbins thought it must be a goddamn mutant, what with all the pollution & shit in the air. & why was it, in un-flylike behavior, still out making its rounds in the dead of night…?

Now he’s staring into the bloody cavern that the fly disappeared into a moment ago. That’s what the gaping wound in the girl’s chest reminds him of—a raw cavern. Christ! It could be two girls, Robbins thinks, the way all the body parts are hanging there, oozing all that gore & shit, the hand jammed up her ass so it looks like she’s shitting a fucking severed arm, & the head, oh Jesus, the head clamped between the thighs like she’s giving birth to her own fucking head. Some sicko had a field day with this poor babe. From what’s visible of her face she was probably a looker. Before the butcher worked her over.

A guy in a business suit steps up for a better look at the mutilated thing twisting a little on the rope as the salt-edged breeze in from the shore seems to invest it with a momentary, mocking breath of pseudo-life.

“Get back,” Robbins orders the wide-eyed suit. “Something drops off her, you get it smack in the face.” He turns to the small crowd of onlookers & closet ghouls & says, “Everybody stay back. This ain’t a sideshow. Jesus!”

He lights a cigar & waits for the homicide boys to arrive. While he waits, he watches for that goddamned mutant fly to come out of that bloody fucking cave.

[ 39 ]

He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword…

& it is true. That “VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE.”

(But there sure seem to be a Helluva lot of flies in the collective ointment of the existential lately, ehhh…?)

It’s only a short walk down the block & into an open alleyway’s mouth between the darkened storefronts of BILL’S ARMY SURPLUS & SUTTERS AUTO PARTS EXCHANGE, perhaps sixty or seventy feet down the alley, then ’round the back & into the service walkway into the motel’s courtyard for the white-halter-top-&-short-shorts-clad Julie to rendezvous with Mal & Snuff in Room Fourteen.

But she has to take a detour. To pick up a few things that Mal had said He needed. Down to the end of the block & across the street to a late-night drugstore that in its better days had boasted a REXALL sign in neon, but now simply has a pair of spots shining on a painted “RX” on the wall above the smeared & BB-holed glass of the once-pneumatic swinging doors.

The three-&-a-half-inch heels of Julie’s sandals click noisily on the asphalt as she crosses at the stoplight, careful to avoid the temptation of jaywalking the corner…

Being a “good little girl” as usual, avoiding any possible infraction of wildly varying state laws & city ordinances for a mere citation that might link her legally to place & time…

&, after all, she does look like some teenie-bop slut out hookin’… No reason to attract further undue attention…

Behind the counter is a grossly fat black woman with a yellow bandana tied around her head. Her huge hips & buttocks seem to be melting down over the sagging seat of the stool she’s perched on in vast floes of blubber & the riotous Bird-of-Paradise-patterned fabric of her size XXXX mumu. She’s reading some story about aliens from Aldebaran & two-headed babies in The Weekly World News, & it’s pretty obvious that she’s one of those “enquiring minds that really want to know…”

The only other customer is an elderly, emaciated-looking man wearing a grey tweed coat that hangs on him at least five sizes too large & a fedora in the same tatty tweed. He looks like a scarecrow with the straw fallen out or an aging horror writer back from a six-month stay at the Dachau Hilton. His choice in reading matter seems pretty weird, as well. He’s got a TEEN Magazine in his hand & a Hustler, a Penthouse & a Swank on the counter. Along with a Garfield doll, an enema bag, a jar of Vaseline, & two dozen Trojan rubbers…

The pharmacist who’s helping him reminds Julie of that wired druggist from the old Fridays TV show, the one who used to tug at invisible cobwebs on his face & kept shrieking, “I can handle IT!…”

By comparison, Julie thinks she must come on like a “straight.”

She waits until the perv leaves, then steps up to the counter with her own purchases: two plastic drop cloths, a pack of Gillette Super Blue Blades, a roll of micropore bandage, & a packet of assorted-sized sewing needles.

“Fffuckkkkk!” she curses under her breath, they were all out of goddamn duct tape… Mal is bound to whoop her ass good for not bringing back everything He’d asked for.

She hands the pharmacist dude a ten dollar bill, then wriggles the change down deep in the skintight slit of her right front pocket.

Julie struts out onto the neon-jittering street, carrying her odds & ends in a plain brown shopping sack.

She looks over her shoulder for a moment. Thinks she sees a shooting star in the southern sky.

She waits impatiently for the light to change. Then crosses.

Her route back to the motel is already planned, but there’s a pink Continental parked right in front of SUTTERS AUTO PARTS EXCHANGE, & there are two big black bucks in leather jackets trying to drag a struggling peroxide-blonde bimbo in a faux leopard coat into the back seat of the car. The bimbo is drunk or stoned, she’s staggering & shouting obscenities at her two assailants? Companions?

Julie decides to cut through the alley in front of her, exactly one block down from her intended access.

She’s only about twenty-five feet in when she realizes that she may have made a first-class mistake:

This alley either deadends or turns a corner up ahead, & it’s one Helluva lot longer than sixty feet. It’s like a filth-strewn box canyon of brick & concrete & there are three black youths entering after her, blocking any hope of exit or escape in that direction

& she lent Mal her switchblade—

fuckin’ goddamn shit on my luck, she berates herself, was I ever a friggin’ asshole for not following plans…!

Julie knows she can’t risk bringing attention to herself by screaming for help. Her only alternatives seem to be: WALK. Or RUN…

She considers running. But she’d have to take off her shoes or she’d trip for sure. & the ground is littered with jagged shards of broken glass, glinting in bright slivers as they catch a stray ray of light from a passing car outside.

She’d rip her feet to bloody shreds before she got halfway…

She decides to walk.

Faster.

She scans the near-pitch black darkness of the alley for some makeshift weapon. If she gets really desperate, she can slash at them with a spike of glass. But she’s not into slicing her own hand to ribbons on it.

FFFucKKK! Another one just stepped into her path from out of somewhere—a doorway…?

FUCK is right! That’s EXACTLY what these skells are planning for her, she thinks— Oooohhhhh! SHIT! gangbanged by four hopped-up niggers if I’m LUCKY… if not… then…

Julie’s normal cool dissolves into a flood of cold sweat reeking of fear pheromones…

[ 40 ]

Detective Sergeant Clarence Carter is one damn fine, hard workin’ cop: that’s how Frank tagged him after their abbreviated partnership during their ill-fated investigation of the brutal slayings of the elderly antique-dealing husband & wife, nearly two decades ago.

They had formed the kind of immediate, intense bonding, that “friendship-under-fire,” born of two professionals whose strong mutual respect & smoothly syncing teamwork have seen them through their own shared private slice of Hell.

Clarence Carter is the type of bright, dedicated, caring law enforcement officer that any precinct should be proud to claim among their ranks. He’s a stocky, broad-shouldered man who, although technically overweight, looks like he was born to wear that bankers’ grey business suit.

For Frank, the strand-perfect sculpting of his fashionably short black hair has always triggered momentary olfactory delusions of just-sprinkled Bay Rum, time warping nostalgic visions of candycane striped barber poles & razor straps.

On the infrequent occasions when Frank catches the CBS program, “This Morning,” the handsome, jovial black weatherman, Mark McEwan, instantly reminds him of a could-be brother—far balder but slightly younger version of his friend, Sergeant Carter. Down to his short, impeccably trimmed mustache.

But this morning, the detective’s normal MO of warm, easy humor has been replaced by a grim clinical determination that Frank finds genuinely unnerving. The newly discovered fifth face of Mount Rushmore. “Good morning, Frank, it’s great to see you again.” Clarence says, extending his left hand to bestow an almost-painfully firm, lingering shake. “I just wish—” he hesitates, & Frank notices the hint of a tic in the musculature of Carter’s cheek, just below his right eye. “—this were under other circumstances.”

The hollow semicircles of bagged flesh beneath Clarence’s eyes do not go unnoted, either.

“Bad, huh?”

“Bad? No. The goddamned worst, Frank. This sex fiend…just just couldn’t believe that even the sickest of sickos could do anything that Jesus-bleedin’ brutal to some innocent little kid!”

“I don’t mean in any way to dismiss the horror of what you’re feeling, Clarence—” Frank bows his head slightly, staring at the toe tips of his boots, “—but I’ve seen some shit in the last ten years that literally could drive you nuts if—”

Frank & Clarence discuss the Jefferson case with the pathologist, a bland, expressionless man of medium height & medium build. His only distinguishing mark is the absurdly large, oval wire-rims that he wears, lending him the appearance of some looney “Toon” from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

But the autopsy report is serious. Dead serious. & even the anticipated norm of sick humor that is perhaps the most vital part of most forensic pathologists’ basic survival skills is uncharacteristically absent as Offenbaur (?) Oppenhagger (?)—the man’s name is as unmemorable as his appearance—recites the disgusting clinical details that cannot hint at the tragedy of this young, innocent child’s senseless, brutal murder.

[ 41 ]

“We just want to have sex with you,” Mal explains to Heather. “You have had sex before haven’t you?”

Heather tries to mumble something in answer, but the words she thinks are articulated by a novocaine-numbed tongue, filtered through the cotton wadding stuffing her mouth, & issued through lips similarly injected with the pain-killing alkaloid.

The sound emitted carries no coherent meaning, “mmmethhmmmnnohhhhrrrthhheee…” The pretty blonde teenager only succeeds in helplessly drooling out of the corners of her mouth.

Hot tears well from her blue eyes. Not as blue as the deep sky color they had flashed when the girl had first entered the waiting Olds. No. The flood of tears she has already shed has washed the artificially enhanced brilliant blue of her contact lenses away, the soft, pliant disks lost along with the relative innocence of her dreams…

Now her eyes are the pale blue of pure terror. Her pupils exaggeratedly dilated from the fear & the side effects of the painkiller (the procaine hydrochloride in its standard 1/10 ratio with saline solution, the duration of its activity boosted by the addition of epinephrine to the infusion). The tears roll down her cheeks, trickle down her chin, tickling the smooth, warm, trembling flesh.

“Just nod your head if the answer is ‘yes,”‘ Mal says to her. “If you do exactly what we tell you to, you won’t be hurt.”

Heather is huddled on the carpeting at the foot of the twin bed nearest to the door. Her left wrist is handcuffed to the metal bed frame. The carpeting is frayed & soil-stained, originally a nondescript shade of red with ticking of darker threads running through it. The cheap synthetic fiber chafes & rubs at the exposed flesh of her shapely thighs & calves.

“I said ‘You have had sex before, haven’t you?”‘ Mal repeats. “Nod if the answer is ‘yes’.” Snuff has the TV turned on to cable, the volume up to create a background mask of noise—some movie on Cinemax or HBO or SelecTV with Charles Bronson about a gang of young toughs who are raping his Hispanic maid…

Heather nods her head up & down several times.

She blushes & tries to avert her eyes from His penetrating gaze that seems to stare into the dark depths of her very soul.

Mal bends, grabbing her chin painfully in His strong, surgical-gloved hand. He relishes these games of cat-&-mouse, the rush of POWER in controlling completely another human being. The front of His trousers bulges, stimulated by His total domination of this helpless teenager from the Bible Belt, & by the humiliation He is subjecting her to.

“Look at me when I speak to you,” He orders, His voice never shifting from its almost inflectionless monotone.

Truman Gilmore lies on his back atop the covers on the other bed, groaning occasionally. The bondage device is still strapped across his face, the hard rubber ball between his teeth rendering him incapable of speech.

Snuff has his Levi’s unzipped & is slowly stroking his thick, dangling penis to ever-swelling erection as he listens to Mal’s intimate questioning of their so-sexy blonde captive. He stands behind her, & to her right, on the far side of the bed. She is as yet unaware of what he’s doing. Too mesmerized by her fear of Mal, the cold gaze of His eyes, to notice the faint rasping sound of Snuff’s zipper.

“Do you let boys ‘get into your knickers,’ you know, fondle your privates & push their fingers into you—down here—?” Mal stoops, His finger gesturing to the bulging furrow at her thigh’s junction.

She hesitates, failing to respond to His sexual interrogation.

Mal slaps her hard on the right cheek, jerking her head with the force of the blow.

“I told you that you wouldn’t be hurt. If. You do exactly what we tell you. Now. Nod or shake your head. But don’t you dare lie to Me or it will go very hard on you.”

Heather nods her head.

“Do you let the boys fuck you?”

She hesitates again.

Again He gives her a resounding slap.

“Do you like to be. FUCKED?”

By now she has the routine down pat. She nods her head to avoid punishment.

(Yeah. B.F. Skinner would be proud…)

[ 42 ]

Frank & Clarence Carter sit at a corner table in the motel restaurant, hunched over their steaming cups of java, absorbed in deep conversation while awaiting the tastebud-rush of generic diner fare, oblivious to the merry-go-round swirl of straight john clones, rednecks, retirees & the scammers & jammers flaunting leather & denim…

“& you think this kill might be the work of a still-active Zodiac & your postulated ‘family’ of slayers? Pretty wild theory, Frank, pretty damn wild. I read your Satan and Serial Violence… what’s the rest of the—”

“…An occult conspiracy…”

“Yeah. Been quite a while. Pretty controversial stuff, but I know it made you a bundle, right…?”

“It’s no scam, Clarence. Believe me. I’ve spent the best part of the last thirty plus years takin’ it all apart & seein’ how it works… This is no phantom clockwork we’re talkin’ here…”

“Okay, so I remember, it wasn’t all that many years back that not only the public but all save a few true believers in law enforcement thought the whole concept of ‘recreational killers’ & witchcraft & Devil cults & even the kiddie-porn-&-snuff underground was pure pulp Horror & boogieman B.S. So humor me with a quick refresher course in Hawkes 101…”

[ 43 ]

“So. You have had sex. With whom? Your boyfriends?”: She nods her head.

“With anyone else?”: She nods. Blushing furiously.

“With your cousin? With a brother?”: She shakes her head; then nods twice.

“With your brothers?”: Another nod.

“Anyone else?”: She nods again.

“Have you ever had sex with a grown man?”: Nod.

“Did you let your own father fuck you?”: She starts to nod, then shakes her head.

Mal eyes her carefully, considering her reaction. “He raped you?”

Another nod & head shake.

“Hhmm… Did your stepfather rape you?”

Heather nods & begins to sob softly.

“Is that why you were running away?”: She nods.

“Have you ever sucked cock?”: She refuses to respond.

Mal slaps her again. Even harder than before: She nods.

Snuff moves forward, circling the corner of the bed, coming into Heather’s field of vision. Just as Mal asks, “As big as this one—?”

Heather’s eyes nearly pop at the sight of Snuff’s hugely throbbing penis. Her face blanches ashen pale.

Mal reaches down, clasping her chin in His hands & pries open her mouth, tugging out the cotton wadding. “Remember, do exactly as we ask, & you shall not be hurt. Make one cry, & I shall make you wish you had never been born.”

[ 44 ]

“…the SFPD & the FBI & every other acronym we had involved in the Zodiac case freely admitted the likelihood of probable occultist motivations. Hell, Clarence, if you accept as fact, as most of us did, that His first actual ‘hit’ was the female stabbing victim at the library, near midnight on Oct. 30th of ’66, the so-called ‘Z-signature’ killing, & not the couple in Vallejo on Dec. 20th of ’68—by the way, that one was just minutes before the Winter Solstice, again, heavy occult stuff—then he started his rein of terror on All Hallows Eve of Year One, as the legitimate ‘religion’ of Satan according to LaVey would have it—”

“What’s this shit about ‘legitimate’ & ‘religious,’ man, we’re talkin’ mainline wackos here, & everybody knows that.”

“Beg to disagree with you, C.C., but ‘mainstream’ Satanism is a bona fide religion & quite possibly far less dangerous per se than a good many of your fringe-oid fundamentalists, as much as it kills me to admit it! Hell, there’s members of our own armed forces, officers & chaplains even, that are ‘card-carrying’ members…”

“You expect me to buy that crap?”

“Well, the FBI didn’t either—one of the many real reasons that they ended up canning my ass. Particularly after I came out in public & stated it in Satan and Serial Violence…”

“Frank, are you losin’ it? Everybody knows those dudes are into some mighty badass shit—”

“Nope. Sure, there’ve been a few lost souls who’ve found their way to infamy. But certainly no more on a per capita basis than any other religion that espouses a potentially extreme ideology. They’ve done one Helluvalot less Evil in the world for all their rhetoric than your average garden-variety tele-evangelist! In fact, at one point, Dr. LaVey himself supplied us with the name of a potential suspect, a First Church of Satan affiliate—but it was just another washout in the end…”

“Let’s drop it, man. I just can’t buy what you’re hittin’ me with.”

“Look, let’s just say for now that you’re an ass if you believe that Geraldo Rivera tabloid-TV shit they were tryin’ to boost ratings with a number of years back. It was a circus. Okay?”

“So, after the fifty dollar soapbox for pro-HELL, what say we wolf down this chow that’s finally coming, & hit the bloodhound trail?”

[ 45 ]

“HHHeyyy! Bro—! Feast yo EYES on wh’dwegot us he-uh—”

The four black punks are closing in on her fast, sure of themselves, sure that they can take her down with only minimal resistance… “Hhhmmmmm—looks lok sum hoochiecoochie white-ass TRIM!”

Julie does another quickscan of the shadow-black alleyway, assessing her chances, weighing her alternatives, sizing up the potential strengths & weaknesses of her opposition, trying desperately to gauge what tactical actions hardcore experience has taught her may yield the greatest possible odds in favor of SURVIVAL—

(this all sequenced in the split-second of an eye-blink—subconscious, streetwise, practiced in the ways of swift DEATH)

“Yeah, Yeah. H—HHhheyyy, Lit’l Mom-ma! Yo wanna PAR-ty…?”

(but this time, Julie knows the fear of the hunted, rather than the blood-thrill of the hunter)

Cold sweat trickles down the taut ridge of Julie’s spine, trickles down the smoothly rounded dome of her forehead causing the silky, dark fronds of her short bangs to cling to her throbbing temples, trickles down her cheeks & chin & neck, down between the budding mounds of her still-girlish breasts, down the curve of her belly, the droplets gathering in the dimple of her navel, swelling & trickling further down the tapering “V”-shaped outjut of her mons veneris, matting the sparsely curling pubic hairs, dripping into the already moist crevice of her sex, the soft, trembling flesh of inner thighs, mingling with the fear sweat trickling the ripe melon-globes of her so-perfectly rounded buttocks…

But with fear can come the numbing paralysis of the wounded prey, & Julie wills herself down down down past this layer of psychological stunning to trigger the rush of adrenaline from the primal, feral darkness within her that is the lair of the hunting BEAST—

Julie is forced to spend precious seconds fumbling in the paper sack, but she retrieves the objects that her instincts guide her to—

The cardboard-backed blister pack of razor blades, that she quickly rips open, tossing the remnants of torn packaging as inconspicuously as possible, slipping the plastic slide-casing that sheathes the blades into the tight slit of her pocket—

& the packet of sewing needles, which she fingers carefully assuring herself of the positioning of the sharp, bristling ends, she chokes off an involuntary ouch of pain when her skin is snagged & pricked on one tiny spear, drawing a droplet of blood, but she succeeds in tearing back the thin cardboard flap, exposing the rigid quills of metal…

All the while feigning retreat from the larger grouping of her stalkers, Julie sidles ever closer to the lone black “gangbanger” who stands spread-legged in the center of the alley, blocking her avenue of possible escape. She keeps the paper sack grasped tightly in her left hand, cupping the vicious surprise she clutches in her right, palm-downward, feigning a loosely outreaching posture of mock-helpless terror.

“OOOhhh, yeah, Sugah Tits, come t’ yo Lovuh Man—” the hulking baddboy says, waiting for her to come just in reach…

But, Julie, far from the fear-numbed victim she has played, dodges lithely as her assailant grabs for her, moving under his outstretched arms, then straight up, putting every ounce of her feline strength into one split-second jab into the youth’s exposed face, & connects— ramming the bristling row of bright, glittering metal thorns with that one desperate, perfect stroke, impaling both his eyeballs head-on, letting the cardboard slide & back & away, driving the needles all the way home… feeling the squish of fluids spurting from his multiply-punctured, ruptured orbs, like juice spritzing from a pair of very ripe, fork-jabbed white grapes…

The boy rears back in, tottering on his feet in the sudden shock of excrutiating blindness, clutching futilely at his ruined eyes. “OOOOOoooooHHHHHhhhhh! MMMMMUTHHHHHUUUUHHHHH FFFFFUUUCKKKKKUHHHHHhhhhh!” he screams in total, babbling terror—

Short lived.

—as the upthrust heel of Julie’s palm smashes upward, striking as she has seen Mal & her father do, to administer the executing stroke, as the impetus of motion is released in IMPACT, mashing the shattered upper lateral cartilage & septum that form the bridge of his nose, & the lower lateral & medial cartilages of the columella, ramming the nasal bone through the fragile floor of the brain cavity in a spurt of blood, terminating both olfactory senses & brain function almost instantaneously.

Julie recovers her balance as the youth crumples, falling backwards. Away from her.

This seventeen-year-old would-be rapist is coughing blood as his body jitterbugs, spasming to a silent swelling symphony in BLUE, his hands & feet tapping out some mambojive gris-gris rhythms on the pavement as he kicks it…

Julie scrambles for the looming promise of escape down the now-unguarded alley eastward, her high-heeled sandals slipping & sliding on the shifting layer of broken glass & refuse & assorted chunks of rubble, she teeters, one foot skewing out from beneath her, regains her balance, plunges headlong down the alleyway, gaining perhaps another sixteen? seventeen…? steps towards potential safety when her luck fails her, she trips over a bundle of oil-soaked rags…? a dead cat…? the remains of a rotted watermelon…? & pitches face-forward in the litter, skinning her knees & hands on asphalt, slicing them on brittle glass shards, rolling, saving her face from impact with the hard, pebbly tarmac, just inches from possible concussion & disfigurement…

She hears the rasp of zippers.

The groping touch of greedy hands upon her body, ripping off her halter top & short shorts, feeling & fondling her with clutching, painful eagerness, as the three remaining gangbangers take her down…

“—Dis fuckin’ cunt’s done wasted ou-uh brudthuh, man, dis cunt’s fuckin’ snuffed fuckin’ Clyde, man, I can’t fuckin’ beeeee-lieve dis fuckin’ goddamn jive shit, man!”

“Bitch, you gonna pay fo dat!” a voice growls from somewhere above her. “Yeah, Bitch, you gonna pay in blood—”

[ 46 ]

Conversation ceases when their orders arrive. & Frank digs into his usual farm boy breakfast: three eggs “over ’n easy,” a rasher of bacon, two slices of white toast, half a ruby grapefruit, & one coffee “black as my luck.” Picked that one up from Sanchez on my second(?), third(?) tour of lovely down home Mekong, but Sanchez always said it en Español—“negro con mi sweatie” or was it “sweetie” or some other beaner bullshit…?

(Frank doesn’t give a flyin’ “F” in any case…)

Just early mornin’ residue cloggin’ his brain cells, gotta flush it out, kinda like the body clockwork of a mental sitdown.

Frank digs the tines of his fork experimentally into the first pale white mound with its sunny-yellow center.

The four stainless spears—how long are they(?) maybe one-&-three-quarters inches(?) maybe two(?) Frank muses somewhere within the data-packed center of his cerebellum—stab through the crust sprinklings of salt & pepper, gouging deep into the yolk.

Frank’s trained perceptions hear the sssqqquuuiiissshhh as the runny yellow goo splatters outwards via the point of entry…

[ 47 ]

Truman Gilmore comes to on a bed in some strange motel room, at last breaking through the narcotic veil of Demerol, breaking through into a WORLD OF PAIN…

His right wrist is still handcuffed. The other manacle secured to the head of the metal bedframe via a length of chain looped through the closed bands of curved steel & padlocked through the third link before each end. He is facing towards the far wall at first, but, attracted by the noise from the television & the other, far more peculiar sounds, he rolls over onto his left side, allowing him to see the remainder of the room:

Truman Gilmore is shocked & appalled, yet perversely fascinated by the obscene act of obviously forced fellatio taking place between the wiry, ferret-faced man with the shoulder-length, dirty-blonde hair & scraggly Vandyke beard, & the young, innocent-looking girl chained to the foot of the other twin bed…

Heather hears the man called “Mal” rummaging around the room. But she doesn’t see what it is he’s doing. Her eyes are tightly closed, as if in some way this may serve to block out the terror, the utter degradation, she has been forced to endure by this pair of demented perverts who hold her in total domination…

Instead, her inner eye replays the terrible act of betrayal by the young girl & her “relatives.” Where is the girl now…? Heather wonders… & the horrible, slobbering, animal act that this filthy deviate, “Snuff,” is forcing her to perform on him brings back a flood of bitter memories, & a fresh flow of hot, briny tears:

…Her own stepfather, the stern, Fundamentalist Baptist farmer with the always-ready belt or hairbrush & the obsessive lust for Fire-&-Brimstone preaching, who had exposed his uncontrollable, far-darker impulses a year ago last May, when he’d returned from the field much earlier than expected, & “caught her with her panties down”—

Her mother had been off at some church women’s function. So she & her best friend, Maisey Evans, had ditched school after lunch, heading back to Heather’s house in leiu of attending classes. They were supposed to meet her two stepbrothers, Mark & Matthew, there, along with three of their buddies—all older than the girls & a couple of them were these really totally rad hunks, both seniors, & like sooohhh mature & all the other girls they knew would just be sooohhh jealous… Big plans of some grownup-type partying, drinking some beers with the boys & maybe even an afternoon of wild, uninterrupted hot’n’heavy making out & yeah, maybe even going “alltheway,” but she kind of doubted that she really would ‘cause she’d only “done it” a couple of times, & it wasn’t really all that great ’cause the guys’d just barely stuck it in & started slippin’n’slidin’ with a few fast strokes when they’d started breathin’ hard & moanin’, & then they’d just cum & gone & it was alloverwith before she’d even gotten started… & she was still really nervous & she was still pretty worried about those diseases & all you heard about & like makin’ a baby & all… But, jeeezzzusss, Maisey was such a little slut sometimes, even if she did love her, & Maisey just talked about screwing like constantly but she liked to say “fucking” ’cause it sounded so deliciously wicked & sinful & sexy she thought, & she was so weird ’cause she was always tryin’ to get Heather to like “do it” with some guy she’d just met or tryin’ to talk her into swapping with some boyfriend of hers who’d confided how he had a hardon for Heather… & Maisey had actually kidded her on the way there how as far as she was concerned, she’d be ready & willing to “put out” for all five of those virile young high school studs, if Heather didn’t mind her fuckin’ with her brothers… Yeah, big talk. & wishful thinking…

But it all went wrong. They weren’t there ten minutes when the guys all started acting really strange, whispering to each other & smirking & chuckling real nasty like they were telling dirty jokes…

Heather had been tricked. Maisey had already been fucking for Matthew & Mark, & the whole thing had been a setup from word one—she’d lied & told them what a whore their almost-virgin step-sister was, & she’d helped them plan her “seduction.”

Maisey feigned surprise & futile struggles when the boys grabbed them & tore their clothes off & groped & fondled them all over & slapped their bottoms & pinched & bit & kissed their privates…

Two of their buddies held Heather down while Maisey & the other boy watched as Heather’s own step-brothers took turns screwin’ “Sweet Lil’ Sis.”

They flipped a coin. & Matthew got first crack…

After their little “sex-circus” they planned to gangfuck Maisey.

But their plans came to an abrupt end when their stepfather stormed into the room & caught his boys having “knowledge of her” in a very biblical, carnal sense… Her younger “brother,” sixteen-year-old Mark, was lying atop Heather’s belly, furiously pumping out his climax, Pops charged in & pulled them apart as if separating a pair of shamelessly rutting dogs…

He whipped the five boys savagely with the buckle end of his belt, then chased them from the house, returning to deal with Heather & Maisey in a brutal bout of spanking before forcing both girls to submit to his raging sexual advances, spouting Hellfire-&-Damnation at them while he raped them repeatedly…this would soon become commonplace in Heather’s life.

The extent of this trauma on Heather Rylie, no one will ever know, but the intolerable nature of her situation certainly brought about radical changes in her personality…

[ 48 ]

Truman Gilmore stares at the depraved act of oral rape with unwelcome fascination & arousal. The shallow albeit painful wounds of his groin fail to chastise him to impotence. His penis stiffens, pressing excruciatingly against the fabric of his boxer shorts & trousers. He wants desperately to look away, but the serpent slithering sinfully into the young blonde’s mouth mesmerizes him…

As, indeed, that bestial act of incestuous rape unleashed for Heather a personal Hell of continued torments, so the events of that afternoon unleashed a very different Hell for its perpetrator, as if some long-bottled demon of lust, its perversity fermenting into ever more dangerously intoxicating potency, had at last found itself uncorked, spewing forth its foaming vileness …

Heather’s mother sensed but did not understand that her husband had undergone some terrible dark transformation. Instead of attempting to learn of its genesis, she simply burrowed deeper into veritable orgies of self-deprecating despair & futile prayer…

The limits of Heather’s own deceptively pink-&-frilly, girlish bedroom, her mother’s conjugal bed, &, particularly, the woodshed & the barn & stables became the boundaries of her Hell…

At first her stepfather had been content with stripping her naked & whipping her for her “seductions,” blaming her as a “Jezebel” for tempting the weakness of his all-too-mortal flesh into the ways of wickedness, then indulging those selfsame lusts by forcing the helpless girl to grant him the unrestricted access of her brutally battered vagina for the assuaging of his “demonic” appetites…

Increasingly more irrational in his obsessions, her stepfather told Heather that he had “seen the Mark of Jezebel upon her since the day that I entered into marriage with your mother— I have known you as a whore & temptress since you came beneath my roof, at the age of six…” No one who knew would have argued that her stepfather was a VERY SICK man. A child molester & rapist. A betrayer of his responsibilities as her adoptive father. But her shame & her abuse were the “special secret” that they shared. At least at first …

The man soon progressed to even more immoral practices—teaching his stepdaughter to perform fellatio upon him, using his Hell-&-Brimstone-shouting mouth & tongue to perform cunnilingus on the helpless fourteen-year-old girl. He forced her to masturbate herself while he watched. &, in turn, he taught her to “jack him off,” performing for him the secret, shameful act that he admitted to long indulging in, as he had fantasized of her sexually since she was a very young child…

The man was tormented constantly by the image seared into his lurid memories—the sight of his younger son screwing Heather like some young bitch in heat. It wasn’t long before he began forcing the girl & her two brothers to have intercourse or engage in bouts of mutual masturbation or oral sex while he watched, lewdly fondling himself until he spurted his filthy semen onto their writhing, sweating bodies, or he threw himself upon his stepdaughter’s belly & fucked her long & brutally. Neither were her brothers spared from this indignity—he forced them to engage in homosexual acts with him & one another while Heather was made to serve as spectator…

But the living Hell that Heather Rylie has been forced to suffer in the past is NOTHING compared to the screaming Blue Hell of torment that her helpless mind & body will be subjected to tonight…

[ 49 ]

Detective Sergeant Clarence Carter accompanies Frank Hawkes to the scene of the gruesome child-murder… It’s just an open stretch of scattered shrubs & wrecked car parts rusting away in the high humidity of mid-Florida. Bordered on the north & east by stands of slash & longleaf pine & saw palmetto. Far beyond, & to the east, Frank can spot the dark horizon of mangroves & tropical hardwood of the Ocala National Forest. Fenced on the south by staggering posts of grey, rotting wood, strung with spiked strands of rusty barbed wire.

The junkyard borders it to the west. A ramshackle tumble of battered, rusted-out cars & pickup trucks & vans, rusted bedsprings & the chipped white hulks of old refrigerators like kids’ fantasies of igloos beckoning with open doors…

The peeling sign out front simply read: SALVAGE. CHEAP.

A small, twisted streamlet trickles through the clearing, staggering past humped mounds of old truck tires & chiggerweed & the tufts of various grassy hummocks.

“I expected to deal with swarms of flying insects, but—?” Frank queries.

“They’ve been spraying intensively to keep down mosquitoes— Sometimes I wonder which is worse—the insects or the exposure to all that DDT or whatever? Then I remember the netting we used to have to use at night & the smell of repellant always on your skin & the itching fevered swellings all over when even that failed or you forgot—”

It may help alleviate the plague of flying insects, but the ground swarms with bustling trails of red ants & black & is pitted with their hills.

Frank follows a hunch before searching the actual death site. He walks the fenceline to the south. Elijah follows close beside him, zig-zagging as he explores the ground for the scent.

Staring at the sagging, rusted strands, Frank is reminded of the old Texas adage: a barbed-wire fence should be “horse high, bull strong & pig tight.”

None of the three mentioned criteria apply.

Daniel C. Strover Two-Line Wire interspersed with mismatched repairs in Hodge’s Rowel Spur—half-assed way to mend a fence, Frank shakes his head in wonderment at such stupidity. The wire is old. Even collectible. But both are quite common varieties. Beginner’s stuff, he notes. His keen eyes scan the wire-line. He finds at least one item of possible forensic interest—a scrap of denim, tangled in the spurs, darkly clotted with something that sure as Hell looks like blood…

Another artifact catches his interest. It’s a rusted but well-preserved Birdwing, nestled in a clump of kicked-up sod. He eagerly pockets his find, the vintage wire tightener is an excellent addition to his collection.

Clarence leads them to the spot where little Stephanie’s body was discovered. The area now trampled & pitted by a myriad of footprints. “Is it them, Elijah—?” Frank questions the dog.

The redbone hound sniffs the ground carefully. Then lies down & growls.

“Nope. Another goddamn dead end!” Frank shakes his head.

“Maybe the scrap of cloth you found will help out, at least,” Clarence says in half-hearted consolation.

[ 50 ]

Though she is certainly used to this form of sexual abuse, she is sickened & repulsed when the man called “Snuff” quickens the pace of his pistonings between her lips, spurting a torrent of disgusting, snot-like semen into her penis-engorged mouth, then smears it humiliatingly across her face with the length of his now-limp & rapidly deflating cock, while Mal & the Bible salesman both stare with obvious excitement.

Heather notices a plastic-handled toilet brush lying next to the lamp on the dresser. What is that doing there…? she wonders. Odd place to leave bathroom cleaning stuff…

Mal unzips His trousers. Quickly stripping them off, He folds them neatly & hangs them from a wooden hanger that He produces from one of the suitcases. His coat & shirt soon follow. These also He hangs neatly, careful to avoid wrinkling the fabric.

He drops His undershorts, exposing the thrusting length of His stiffened penis. Although fully erect, Mal’s prick is nowhere near the size of Snuff’s terrifyingly huge, horse-like phallus.

He is a big man. A physically powerful man. Well-muscled & very stocky. Despite His age—late-fifties—His belly is solid, without a trace of fat. The full inscription over the tattoo on His chest reads: “BLUE EVIL.” Despite her fear & revulsion, Heather cannot help but gape in fascination at the strange image of the demonic, tentacle-faced figure with the pitchfork & dangling noose. The rendering is truly exquisite in its design, its bold use of line & frozen motion, & in its subtleties of tint & shading, what seems a complete spectrum in every conceivable variation of the color BLUE…

But Heather has little time for speculation.

Mal reaches down, & with one deceptively easy motion, rips off her T-shirt, tearing the jersey fabric like tissue paper, exposing the ripe, budding cones of her firm & succulent young breasts. Snuff whistles appreciatively. & Mal’s powerful, micropore-gloved hands greedily clutch at the breasts’ pink, delicate flesh, pawing & squeezing them with studied cruelty, raising a squeal of pain from the helplessly violated teenager.

“Shut the fuck up, you little bitch. I shall not tolerate you disturbing our neighbors,” Mal warns her. The excited jerking of His penis at the sounds of her involuntary cry belies His words. & there is little chance that anyone would pay attention to one more squeal or scream over the background noise of televised violence.

He slaps her a vicious blow across the face to show the girl who’s boss; then clasps His left hand over her mouth to silence her, while His right hand savagely pinches & twists at first one nipple, then the other, deliberately bruising her tender flesh.

Heather struggles desperately, but to no avail. The welling scream strangled before it can leave her sperm-smeared lips.

Mal eases the painful torqueing pressure on Heather’s nipples, then releases His hand from her mouth. He thrusts His penis into her open, gasping orifice, telling her, “Open wide & say ‘AAAHHhhh!’ Bitch. Suck it like your life depended on how well you can make Me cum.”

Mal grasps Heather’s long, golden-blonde hair, tugging it like the reins of a horse, tugging savagely until her scalp shrieks with pain.

It is all that she can do to keep from sinking her teeth into His penis. She aches to do Him injury. To bite the head of the filthy, throbbing gristle off & spit it in His fucking face. But she knows how much worse it will go for her were she to try it.

Instead, she strives to utilize every erotic artifice that her months of torment enslaved by her stepfather’s whims have taught her. She cups His testicles with her still-manacled right hand, squeezing gently, pleasurably, while she strokes the rigid shaft, stretching the foreskin down then up in slow, taunting motions, masturbating her captor with her free, left hand, while she suckles on the vile, salty-tasting, cobra-like head of Mal’s eagerly thrusting cock.

Meanwhile, Snuff busies himself with unbuckling Truman’s trousers, tugging them down around his ankles, then pulls down the Bible salesman’s blood-stained boxer shorts as well. He offers some token resistance, but there is no fight left in him.

His own pitiful erection is embarrassingly exposed.

Snuff snickers contemptuously at the sight of the man’s tiny, childlike penis. “Goddamn! I had a bigger cock on me when I was nine or ten!” Snuff ridicules him. “Sure wouldn’t need t’ ask your wife if she was gettin’ much, would I…?”

Truman’s dark, wiry thatch of pubic hair is matted with crusts of blood. & the “666”, that Julie had carved shallowly into the flesh of his groin is still raw & oozing occasional droplets of new blood.

“Y’ like that young stuff, huhhh?” Snuff questions him, pointing at Heather. He begins to massage the Bible salesman’s stiffened penis with lewd frigging motions, then rubs a bit of cocaine onto it.

The man struggles futilely, overcome by sudden revulsion, attempting to free himself from the obscene, homosexual caressing of his privates. Snuff laughs raucously at his obvious distress.

“Maybe y’d like it better if Little Miss Hotass was doin’ this for y’…? Wwell now, maybe if y’re rreeall good, we’ll let you have some of her action, ehhh…?”

Snuff lets loose of Truman’s penis, & steps over to where Heather is kneeling on the floor, sucking & masturbating his companion.

“Heh, Bitch! How come y’ didn’t do none of that fancy shit for me…?” Snuff asks. “I could get real mad & jealous if y’re gonna carry on like some kinda fuckin’ slut & all, just ’cause He’s the boss…”

He bends down beside them, reaching out to grasp both of her breasts with excitedly trembling, gloved hands. Following Mal’s earlier example, he tears & pinches viciously at her fear-puckered nipples.

Despite His perverse delight in Heather’s helpless submission & His obvious arousal, thrusting the full length of His penis savagely into her throat, Mal finds Himself unable to ejaculate through such relatively normal mock-coital stimulations.

Frustrated, He pushes Snuff out of the way, & begins slapping at her firm, jiggling breasts. Unable to control herself, Heather bites down hard on Mal’s prick, drawing blood.

An unavoidable & soon-to-be-regretted mistake…

SUDDENLY THE LIGHT EMANATING FROM THE TV SCREEN CHANGES, BRIGHT COLORS FADE, MERGING TO A DEATHLY CYANIC BLUE:

[ 51 ]

The alley is black as Hell.

Black fuckin’ Hell-faced cocksuckin’ coons, a voice whispers in some very deep dark corner of Julie’s brain. & another voice whispers, it’s all just meat… & yet another whispers, this isn’t real, only a movie that we’re watching, just some hardcore stroke flick where some little cunt gets gangjumped by these three hopped-up spades… only a movie a movie a… all just meaT meAT mEAT MEAT… Julie’s flesh screams with excruciating pain. She’s lost track of who has done what to her & how many times. Can’t afford to keep score.

Gotta’ convince yourself this ain’t you that this is happenin’ to. SOME OTHER BITCH. & you’re just watchin’ them do her like you always do. But it is YOUR sex that’s ripped & bleeding from the fury of their assault. YOUR cunt that redhot iron poker of a prick is hammering. YOUR sex that they’re taking turns tearing at & tossing their rocks into. THEIR filthy black cocks that are inside you, pistoning & pumping & spurting their sperm like they’re pissing into you, YOUR scalp thumping against the pavement with each brutal thrust, YOUR back & buttocks that are sliced & shredded & punctured by shards of broken glass, bleeding from dozens, yes, dozens of minute gashes each an echo of that battered bleeding gash between your wide-pried thighs, YOUR mouth belly breasts legs arms neck face that are slick with their spattered semen… YOU are nothing but a PUSSY a CUNT another HOLE for them to FUCK off into… YOU are NOTHING to them but a BUCKET FULL OF CUM… a WHITE BITCH to make PAY for every slight they’ve ever suffered… & when they tire of using your cunt your mouth your asshole your… (?) to take their pleasure. THEN WHAT WILL THEY DO WITH YOU WITH THEIR KNIVES YOU KNOW THEY HAVE KNIVES & YOU KNOW THAT THEY WILL TAKE AN EYE FOR AN EYE & THEIR BRO’ CLYDE IS DEAD BUT YOU DON’T WANT TO LET THAT TAKE YOU OVER THE EDGE NOT YET NOT YET NOT YET…

[ 52 ]

As always, the pain comes just before the rain. Frank Hawkes rubs his aching left elbow with his right hand while he steers with his left—the hand that, after all these years, still looks naked to him without the gold wedding band. Funny how the barometric ache of his elbow always brings to mind his ex-wife, Judy Lynn. The physical pain beneath those old shrapnel scars is nothing compared to the aching emptiness that fills him whenever he contemplates his failed marriage & his “lost” family. Frank turns up the car stereo & fights back tears as he thinks about his son, Franklin Jr., & his daughter, Melissa Lynn. His love for the children is mixed with a terrible longing.

The Stingray has traveled Silver Springs Boulevard east past the new shopping malls & progressive projects, east on 40 toward Interstate 95. Frank & Elijah are headed for the coast. Then north to nowhere special, drifting where the winds of fortune will take them in their search.

The first drops of rain hit the windshield, & thunder rumbles & rolls over the flatlands of The Sunshine State, though the Florida sun is totally eclipsed by the tropical thunderheads.

“‘Looks like we’re in for a storm, Old Pal,” Frank says to the redbone hound sitting on the passenger’s seat. Elijah’s ears perk up, & he looks questioningly at Frank. Elijah doesn’t like thunder.

An annoying commercial for suntan lotion comes from the radio, & Frank changes the station, scanning the dial for some jazz. He settles for a news broadcast. A guy with a generic radio voice is talking about a big drug bust in Key West.

Franks lights a cigarette, then starts to turn off the radio but his finger freezes an inch away from the OFF button when the newscaster says: “In Miami, a spokesman for the Dade County police said today that they have no leads in the bizarre murder & mutilation of a young Miami woman. The body of the brutally butchered woman was discovered two days ago, hanging from a rope in front of a local coffee house. The victim’s name has still not been released.”

“How would you feel about a trip to Miami, Elijah?”

The hound growls at a loud crack of thunder.

“That’s exactly how I feel about it,” says Frank.

The rain is falling heavily now, violently beating upon the Stingray, & the day skips dusk & goes directly to dark.

A neon blob of light appears down the road, & Frank slows the car when he sees that the neon spells “MOTEL.” No other name, just plain “MOTEL.” He turns into the driveway & experiences a strong sense of déjà vu when he sees the rows of motel rooms. Then it hits him why the place seems so familiar. “Looks just like the goddamn Bates Motel,” he says, grinning at the irony.

[ 53 ]

Mal grasps Heather by the hips, lifting her completely off the floor while He unfastens the snap of her cutoffs, tugs down her zipper, & strips off the tightly clinging denim shorts, pulling them down over her ankles, removing them completely.

He could easily just pull off her flimsy cotton panties, but instead, He motions for Snuff to bring Him the switchblade.

He holds the girl suspended a foot or so above the carpeting while Snuff gleefully slits the fabric of her sweat-dampened underwear, cutting it away from her wriggling body to expose her naked, plumply-rounded buttocks & the soft, golden-blonde curls that form the “V” of her pubic triangle.

Snuff giggles crazily, & proceeds to gag her with her own severed panties, the dampness of the crotch forced into her mouth & pulled taut. Then the loose, cut ends are tied tightly at the nape of her neck. Heather mewls helplessly, revolted by the taste of her own sex within her mouth…

“Let’s put her on the bed,” Mal says.

Snuff retrieves the key to her handcuffs from a dresser drawer, & unlocks them. Mal lifts the girl, carries her to the bedside, then tosses her onto the creaking mattress. He leans over the bed &, grasping the lips of her sex with the fingers of His left hand, He tugs open her vulva to expose the steamy, pink inner folds of female flesh. He thrusts the middle finger of His right hand deep into the obscenely exposed hole between her legs, He pummels her savagely, fucking her with first one finger, then forces two… three… all four… into her vagina, while He rubs the blunt knob of His thumb lewdly against her tightly puckered little anus.

Heather shudders at the repulsive violation of her privates.

Mal’s penis jerks with excitement at the spectacle of the girl’s tight young sex slit splayed open for His every perverted pleasure… Suddenly, a puzzled look clouds the Medic of Mutilations’ face. He senses something out-of-sync. His “professional” curiosity is piqued. He leans in closer, parting her labia with His fingers, forcing open the mouth of her vaginal canal, exposing the coral-hued, corrugated flesh within to His minute inspection. He thrusts the first two fingers of His right hand as far up into her uterus as they will go…

“When was your last period?” He questions Heather.

Heather fails to answer, so He grasps her sex lips & twists & tweaks them savagely. “‘When. Was. Your. Last. Period?”

She starts to sob again. “I’ve missed three months,” she murmurs.

“By. The. Fucking. Devil,” He announces, measuring His words like spoonfuls of medicine: “I. Do. Believe. This. Little. Slut. Is. Preggers.”

“Wwhhatt?” Snuff asks.

“This. Bitch. Has. A. Bun. In. Her. Oven.” He says. “She is ‘with child,’ as the euphemism has it. Someone has goddamn knocked her up.”

Mal removes her gag for a moment, so she doesn’t have to mumble through her panties. “Are you sure…?” she blurts out stupidly, as if it was the worst of her problems. “I… I… was afraid I might be…”

Mal laughs, a cold, inhuman chuckle, echoing through the motel room. “I wonder which one it belongs to, eh, Snuff? Her stepfather? Or one of those two naughty young twat-hounds of his? Or some other schoolboy skirtchaser hot for a quick poke up her pussy, alas, failing to take any safeguards, casually spraying his stray sperm without regard for the possibility of actual insemination with his fertile outpourings & their logical if undesired outcome …”

“Shit! I’ll give th’ little bitch some outcum!” Snuff chuckles. “Ain’t nuthin’, I mean nuthin’, turns me on like th’ idea a’ stickin’ my big dick up some tight little teenage cunt that’s got a fuckin’ whambam bammmbeeenooo wrigglin’ ’round up there inside her box…”

“Shut up & tie her to the bed,” Mal orders.

His henchman quickly removes four lengths of cord from the opened suitcase, & binds her expertly spread-eagled, across the bed.

“&. Bring. Me. The. Razor.”

[ 54 ]

Leaving Elijah in the car, Frank slogs through the mud to the motel’s office, where he is greeted by a middle-aged woman who looks nothing like Norman Bates. In fact, she is a homespun composite of several female celebrities: she has Dolly Parton’s bosom, Barbara Streisand’s nose & Kate Smith’s hips.

She smiles, rests her breasts on the counter so that Frank can’t miss the deep cleavage on display in her low-cut blouse, & says, “Ain’t a fit night out for man nor beast.”

He nods, thinking that it would take a hurricane to hold back The Beast he is seeking. “I need a room for tonight.”

“I’ve got plenty of vacancies,” she smiles amid a batting of long lashes, “Monday nights is purty dead ’round here…” When she sees that he is not going to respond to her bored flirtation, she goes about the business of renting him a room (#7); her heavy breasts sag with the weight of her disappointment.

Once the transaction is completed & the room key is dangling in Frank’s hand, she asks, “Where you headin’?”

“Miami.”

“Shoot, I wouldn’t go there for all the tea in China,” she says with a twang in her cigarette-hoarse voice. “Too dangerous for me. Didja hear about that mutilation murder? Jeeee-zusss! I almost lost my lunch when I heard about it on the news! No, sir, I’ll keep my sweet buns right here in L.A.”

“L.A.?”

“That’s what we natives call it. L.A., Lower Alabama. Why, half the people I know hail from Ala—”

“Excuse me,” Frank interrupts, “but I’ve got some calls to make.”

“—Bama. Any calls you make will be added to your bill.”

“Right.”

“Number seven’s the last room on the left wing,” she tells him.

“& if you need anything, give me a ring…”

A minute later, Frank is sneaking Elijah into number seven. He shuts the door & the dog goes to the middle of the uncarpeted crackerbox & shakes the rainwater from his fur.

“Make yourself at home, boy. Just don’t piss on the floor.”

[ 55 ]

Heather thinks that Mal is planning to slice her up.

But instead, He adds: “& don’t forget to bring Me the shaving cream—time to properly prep her pudenda for My pleasuring…”

This strange request seems not to surprise Snuff in the least. He giggles again. Then says, “Yeah. Old Mal here, see, He likes His pussy either real cold or real young—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Mal warns him.

But, for once, His henchman disobeys, adding, “I guess Old Mal don’t quite get off on th’ fact y’re gonna pop a kid th’ way I do… Makes y’ seem way too grown up & all for His tastes! Yeah. Old Mal, He’s gotta real bad case’a short eyes! So we’ll just have t’ do our best t’ make your fuckhole look like some little schoolgirl’s for Him…”

The implications of this coarse, disgusting monologue make Heather feel sick to her stomach.

“Sssheeeittt! Y’ wouldn’t fuckin’ believe what He likes t’ do t’ babies when He can find hisself one, though!” Snuff giggles insanely.

It is all Heather can do to keep herself from vomiting.

Is there no end to their sickness…? she thinks.

All too soon Heather Rylie will learn that their degeneracy knows no boundaries…

[ 56 ]

Frank sits on the edge of the bed, lights a smoke, & picks up the ten-year-old telephone, crusted with the grime of uncounted unwashed fingers & faces. He finds Clarence Carter’s home number in his pocket address book, & makes his call.

“Hello.” An irritated Clarence answers.

“Clarence? Frank. Am I interrupting something?”

“Not really. I’m just kicking back with a beer, watching the fight on cable. Coupla welterweights dancing around the ring. Any minute now, one of them will do a Michael Jackson moonwalk… Coupla pussies.”

“I need a favor,” Elijah sits at Frank’s feet & rests his jaw on his knee. “I want all the info you can get on that coffee house murder in Miami, Saturday night. The mutilation thing.”

“You got it, man,” says Clarence, “Say, Frank, you’re not getting strung out on your Zodiac theory, are you? It’s a damn good theory & I tend to believe it, but you can’t go tearing around the county—”

“You have a friend in Miami Homicide, don’t you?”

“Captain Lardass Lucas.”

“Well, I’d appreciate it if you called him now. Call me back at this number—” Frank recites the motel’s phone number & the number of his room. Then adds: “I’d’ve rung you on my car phone, but it’s got a glitch. Need to get it fixed. But the FAX is still operational. You’ve got my number—hit me with anything hot—”

“Okay, Frank, I’ll get right on it. Say ‘Hello’ to Elijah for me.”

[ 57 ]

Mal lathers the girl’s lewdly bared pubic mound, then uses the straight razor to shave off every vestige of hair from her now totally naked privates.

Snuff collects the shavings, neatly packaging them in a cellophane bag. He seals it with a strip of transparent tape.

“Yeah. She sure does look like a young ’un now!” Snuff comments, reaching down to fondle the smooth, hairless flesh of her shaved twat…

Mal allows His leering henchman to push his fingers into the girl while He toys with her clitoris, tweaking & pinching at it as He has so-recently done to her nipples. The man seems incapable of any sex act that does not directly involve sadistic cruelty.

Heather tries to struggle, but Mal holds her tightly by her right hip with His free hand, forcing her to submit to their crazed assault upon her bald-shaved genitals. Both men take turns groping between her shapely bottomcheeks, violating her anus with their outthrust fingers. Heather wriggles & tries to flinch away from this new outrage, but her struggles only serve to whet their twisted lusts.

Both men withdraw their fingers from her brutally pummeled orifices.

“I want to see you play with her tits—” Mal instructs his cohort. “Hurt her. I want to see this little cunt squirm.”

Snuff wastes no time in complying, again sadistically savaging Heather’s firm, jiggling cones of flesh. Mal fondles His penis while He watches her torment & degradation for several minutes before boredom sets in & He must seek some new demented thrill.

“Why not offer our little playmate, here, some coke…? I would ask her if she wishes milk & cookies, but she’ll be lactating on her own, soon enough. If. There. Are. No. Complications. & we can both see what a splendid little cookie she has already started to share with us…” He says.

Snuff stands. Walks over to the dresser, & returns with his vial of cocaine.

Snuff opens it, & uses his gold razor to draw two perfectly heaped lines of the white powder along the ridgelines of her vulva.

Then he buries his face between her thighs, sucking the powder into his flaring nostrils, doin’ the lines while his tongue probes obscenely into her widespread slit.

The small quantity of remaining powder he rubs briskly into the moist folds & tunnel of her sex.

“Go ahead, Snuff. Stick your cock in her! I want to watch you FUCK HER UP THE FUCKING CUNT! STICK IT UP HER & FUCK THE LITTLE BASTARD FOR ALL THAT SHE IS WORTH! THINK ABOUT THE BABY SHE HAS WRIGGLING WITHIN HER WOMB, & PRETEND THAT IT IS YOU WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING IT IN HER!” Mal’s characteristic monotone has finally given way to a fevered snarl of unfettered lust.

[ 58 ]

Frank cradles the receiver after talking with Carter, then stares at the phone. After a moment of indecision, he punches the buttons sequencing a call to Judy Lynn.

His ex-wife answers on the fourth ring.

“It’s me,” he says. “How are the kids?”

“Missy has a cold & Frank Junior has a black eye. But they’re fine, really.”

“How’d he get the black eye?”

“Oh, he got into it with a couple of gang boys from his school.”

“Did he win?”

“You’ll never change, will you, Frank? Of course, your son won. He used those punches you showed him, he said. He’s so macho now I can hardly stand him. Just like you. All that macho bullshit.”

“Cheap shot, Sweetheart. So, how’re you doing?”

After a long silence, she says, “I’m making it.”

“Yeah? With who?”

“Fuck you, Frank. If you just called to harass me…”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve said that. Can I talk to the kids?”

“Missy’s asleep. You don’t want me to wake her do you?”

“No. How about F.J.?”

“Frank Junior’s still out with his friends—playing basketball over at the gym, I think…”

“Okay. Well, tell them I called, at least. Will you?” He fights to keep his voice from trembling: “And tell them that I love them very much.”

“I will.”

“Thanks, Judy. Bye.”

After a trip to the bathroom to relieve his bladder, Frank stretches out on the bed, closes his eyes, & waits for Clarence to call back.

He’s crashing back down off the peak of a caffeine jag that had him up all the last three nights—wired tight as any cranked-out meth-head—playing & replaying the mental tapes that were his past 88 hours since departing his homebase of the Windy City…

Within minutes he is asleep.

Dreaming. In black & white. Film noir a la Psycho:

Judy Lynn is in the shower, soaping her breasts, her arms, her belly…alone, humming a showtune, dipping her lathered fingers into her wet pubic hair, lower, deeper, closing her eyes now, no longer humming, but breathing faster, oblivious to the shadow moving on the shower curtain, moaning a little, the shadow getting bigger, letting the hot water wash down the front of her body, the soap suds gathering, unnoticed, at the gurgling drain, then the shower is swept open & a backlit figure stands with raised knife… a silver arc of blade… tempered steel meeting soft flesh… chook chook chook… Judy screaming… her assailant’s face coming into slow focus through the mist from the hot shower… Frank’s face, twisted into a rictus grin, leering at her as he stabs her again & again & again, her breasts bleeding from countless punctures & she screams, “NO, FRANK, NO…”

[ 59 ]

Mal allows her a moment’s respite after Snuff has orgasmed into her twice & finally unsheathed his still-stiff cock.

Mal walks to the dresser, returning with the toilet brush.

Heather’s eyes fill with absolute terror & sickened disgust when she realizes what this monster intends to do with it…

Mal grasps the cleaner just below the loop of the brush. Then guides the long plastic handle between Heather’s widespread thighs. Inserts the thick, rounded tip of it between the lips of her shaved sex. & forces the length of the filthy instrument inch by inch into the acutely sensitive tunnel of the young girl’s vagina. Thrusting it all the way into her until the tip of the handle batters excruciatingly against her cervix…& beyond…deep into her womb…

Mal rapes her brutally with the toilet brush while He grasps the length of His jutting penis with His left hand, holding it directly above her shaved slit, jacking Himself off in a positive frenzy of perverse excitement.

The crazed serial slayer’s face soon knots itself into a demonic mask of sick rapture. His eyes roll up, showing nothing but blank whites through His slitted lids,

“Oooohhh! FUCK! Oooohhh! FUCK! Ohhh! FUCK HER FUCKIN’ FUCK…!” He moans mindlessly, & begins to spew His semen onto the bald-shaved mound of her hideously violated genitals & soft, quivering young belly… His onanistically spilled seed splatters in sticky spurts across her naked flesh.

Mal tugs the brush handle from her bruised & battered sex.

Heather lies belly-up on the bed, legs wide-splayed, her ankles & wrists still cinched securely with lengths of clothesline. She moans & whimpers through her gag, writhing in agony as sharp bursts of pain stab her back & lower abdomen. The rumpled sheets beneath her buttocks are soaked with blood & small clots of livery tissue, as are her inner thighs & belly…

Mal thrusts His face down there, into the exposed hollow between her wide-open thighs, crushing His mouth to Heather’s pubic mound…

Once again,

they are forcing aside the frail thin membrane that separates REASON & REALITY from TOTAL MADNESS…

breaking through to the other side

INTO THAT ETERNAL HELL-WORLD OF THEIR SEEKING, A FLUID SEA/WOMB OF TORTURE & PERVERTED SEX & DEATH… THE ROOM SEEMS FILLED WITH CRASHING WAVES OF COLD BLUE LIGHT, THE SCREEN OF THE TELEVISION FLICKERING HYPNOTICALLY, SEDUCING ALL WHO WATCH INTO THE DEEPEST DEEPS OF FEVERED MELANCHOLIA, DEPRAVITY & …

[ 60 ]

He awakes with a jerk of panic, as if his body is trying to flee the bloody vision his mind dreamed up for him.

Frank sits up & looks around, seeing his dog curled on the floor of the low-rent room.

Frank’s pulse is racing, his breathing shallow & rapid.

The phone rings.

“Yeah?” He answers.

“I’ve got something for you,” says Clarence Carter.

“Go ahead.”

“The victim was 29-year-old Mary Gruber, a.k.a., Phaedra Flame. She was a poet, or is it poetess? real artsy-fartsy type, into all kinds of new wave art shit. She was mutilated & literally turned into a human piece of abstract art, according to Captain Lucas. Carved into her forehead was a number—‘seven. seven. three. four.’”

“Anything else?”

“No, that’s it.”

“Thanks, old buddy,” says Frank. “I owe you.”

“No sweat, man. I guess you’re bound for Miami now.”

“Yeah. I’ll stay in touch.”

“Later.”

“Oh. Wait. One more thing, Clarence, if it isn’t asking too much—”

“Yeah?”

“All this number stuff, this numerology bit with the forehead carving, a bit Manson-esque, isn’t it? Anyway, it just jogged a train of thought I’ve been mulling over for quite some while but haven’t had the access to through my normal contacts…”

“Oooohhh! Keeeeeee-r-ist! I can feel this one coming! Must be a goddamn doozie!”

“Well, it’s no cake walk. If you wanna bow out—?”

“No. I’m in, my friend! Allll thway innnnn, from what my gut instincts are screamin’ at me—” Clarence moans.

“Okay. I admit it’s a wildass theory. & I know it’s an ultra-longshot, but I’ve gotta play every possible angle…”

“So, what’s the bottomline, Frank?”

“Oh. Yeah. I’ve got this wildass theory that certain hints the Zodiac left point to the fact that He was born sometime within a minute-or-two either side of midnight on May 20th. The year is a big question mark—”

“Heh. Earlier you come on like you’re playing recruiter for the High Priest of Evil, ‘the Black Pope’ himself. & now you’re tryin’ to compete with the Amazing Kreskin, huh? Shit, man, next you’ll be trying to do palmistry readings on me!”

“‘No. Cut the bull, Clarence. I may be off base, but I’ve got some interesting data to back up my hypothesis—”

“Like—?”

“First, we know, without doubt, that the Zodiac & its signs were obsessions with Him. Right?”

“Sure. That’s belaboring the obvious.”

“Second, we found five astrological ‘Taurus’ symbols that He’d hidden in His letters.”

“Okay. Still with you.”

“Well, the too-obvious conclusion is that He was telling us He was a Taurus…”

“Why do you think He wasn’t?”

“Hah! Our boy was far too ingenious, too subtle for that. His fixation initially was tied up with the ego-bit of taunting us. Proving His ‘superiority.’ I never could buy that He’d be satisfied with such simplicities. He called Himself the ‘Cipher Slayer’ & prided Himself on the onion-skin layers of His game of Truth & Deception…”

“I admit your line of reasoning has merit.”

“Thanks, C.C.. Glad you’re willing to keep an open mind—”

Frank pauses for a moment. “Where was I—?” he asks. “Oh. Yeah. One fairly plausible explanation is He was telling us that certain ‘facts’ He’d related were ‘Bull.’ An interesting concept, as He usually seemed to ‘shoot straight with us’—psycho or not, He felt so superior I don’t think He felt that He needed to lie…”

“You’re saying that telling the truth, albeit riddled & concealed, was a part of His obsessive-compulsive behavioral pattern?”

“Yep. Oh. Another aside, while I think of it—our best psychological-profile boys in the Bureau all had Him ‘made’ as a sexual sadist, a far more elusive quarry than either a psychopath or a psychotic. I’ll spare you the ‘whys’ & ‘wherefores’ for now, just trust me.

“Now, if we ask ourselves the ‘why?’ as to how it relates to His initial & primary obsession with the Zodiac thing, one very strong possibility, perhaps the strongest possibility, is that there was something truly unique about His personal relationship to the ‘Scheme’ of things RE the astrology/Zodiac bit. Of course, if His name was ‘Zodiac’—but that’s too obvious, again, right?—”

“Or if His name began with ‘Z’—?” Clarence adds.

“You’ve got the program! But there’s another rather quirky thing that ties in with all of this, I think…”

“Yeah?”

“The doubling of postage. Generally He doubled the amount required to actually mail His taunting letters to the press—”

“That’s pretty weird!”

“Well, the most popular theory on that was He was consciously or subconsciously trying to rush His mail to us. Prioritize it, if you will. Particularly since He often wrote “RUSH” on the face of the envelopes—”

“Sounds like a pretty decent hypothesis,” Clarence says.

“Yeah. I know, but, Zodiac was too analytical, too controlled, too ‘rational’—if that makes any sense within the context—”

So. What’s your scan on it?”

“Aha! Double: twins: Gemini

“I think He was born at the very cusp of Taurus & Gemini, sometime so close to midnight as to blur the differentiation, perhaps even the official records may be at odds on it—I’ve seen far stranger things happen…”

“Not bad, Frank. Not bad!”

“Hence, His fixation, His obsession with the astrological, that is if someone—mother, father, grandparent, whatever—brought it to His attention very early on—”

“Identity confusion? A man perceiving Himself to have ‘two faces’? Interesting. Very interesting?” Clarence muses.

“Now, the rub is this: if we could somehow access a list of all males of approximate age with birthdates of May 20th or 21st, living in the ’Frisco area & outlying counties during that crucial timespan, say, through DMV records, Social Security, whatever…”

“WHOA! Tall order, Frank! I’m not even sure if those records would still exist—?”

“I said if—”

“But, wait, perhaps we could start by cross-ref’ing known Zodiac suspects, sex offenders—sadists & rapos & babyrapers; & the whole bit—yeah, & felons with forcible abduction priors…”

“The trail’s gonna be stone cold, C.C., we’re talkin’ over thirty years, here. But, Hell! With the level of technology available to NCIC & all of its sister spinoffs…”

“Heh. I’ll give it my best shot, partner.”

“G’night, Clarence, & God bless ya. Just don’t get your butt in a wringer the way that—”

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep my profile low. Take it easy—”

The phone clicks. The connection goes dead on the Ocala end.

[ 61 ]

Mal looks down at His left wrist, checking the time on His watch. Heather notices that it’s a ZODIAC brand. It looks old but carefully maintained. There isn’t the hint of a scratch on the blue-glinting crystal…

“Snuff. Juliette has been gone far too long. My vibes are very very bad about this—”

The man addressed gazes dazedly up at his boss. Snuff feels lust-drunk, giddy with his sense of POWER, ripped on the coke he’s ingested by benefit of his last good whiff, the lines he’d drawn along the smooth ridgeline of the girl’s shaved vulva, not to mention the quantity he’s assimilated via the mucus membranes of his penis, during his sexual contact with her…

“YEAH! whiff O’ quiff,” he giggles aloud, blitzed by the rush of stoned euphoria…

Mal grabs His henchman in that powerful, viselike grip He has previously exhibited, grasping him under the armpits, lifting him bodily & dropping him down onto his wildly dangling feet.

THHHHhhhwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwaaaPPPPPPPP!

Mal swings an open-handed slap to Snuff’s face—a quick bus fare back from ZONK CITY…

“Get. Dressed. Fast. Something. Is. Wrong. Very. Wrong.”

Mal flings His henchman’s crumpled Levi’s & T-shirt & windbreaker to him. “& do not forget your COBRA & your daughter’s switchblade, Yes. & be sure you take a silencer with you. I know you love to hear it chatter, but stealth is the keyword at tactical level when the situation suggests—Urban. Street-level. Confrontation.”

He hands Snuff the gathered weapons.

“Yes. Praise the Lord—” Mal says, grinning Evilly, “—for that survivalist/preacher fellow from Tucson, Mr. New Hope or whatever, the one who specialized in ‘do-it-yourself-kits’ for piece & quiet…

“Excellent. Really excellent. Silencers,” Mal says with unrestrained enthusiasm.

Snuff has dressed. Albeit hastily.

He takes the weapons, carefully secreting them.

“Now go find Miss Juliette. I sense she has gotten herself into some heavy problems.” Mal motions to the spread-eagled body of the naked teenager. “Heather & I can surely find some interesting way to entertain ourselves while you are on Search & Rescue duty…”

[ 62 ]

Frank hangs up the phone, then undresses for a hot shower.

His nerves are jagged again. Rushing. Every cell of his body sizzling with an adrenaline high of epic intensity.

He needs sleep if he is to carry his mission on to Miami tomorrow. He digs into his overnight bag. Finds the emergency vial his doctor has supplied him with. He hates using this shit. Legal, yeah, but he still feels like a goddamn pill-poppin’ hophead every time he must resort to them. More & more frequently of late. His personal prescription stash of downers: Noctec: Chloral Hydrate 500 mgs.: little orange “bullets” to put him down when the insomnia wires him past the edge of sleep…

Frank fumbles the lid off. Grabs a couple & chugs them with a swig from the bottle that he takes from his suitcase

Ol’ Jack Daniels, Good Ol’ Boy, Ol’ Jack—

Mickey’s gotta help me down. Mickey Mouse? Shit, no! M.I.C.K.E.Y., becaush we LOVE you!

F.I.Nnnnnn.N.

The shower does little to relax him. He is confused & disturbed by his dream of attacking Judy Lynn in the shower. The chook chook chook of the knife biting into her flesh is an echo trapped in his mind. He turns the water hotter, so hot that it burns his skin, turning it red. Closing his eyes, he sticks his face under the spray of steaming water & sees Judy Lynn’s blood mixing with soap suds, swirlin’ red & white, down the drain…

[ 63 ]

Snuff traces the path that he & Mal expected Julie would follow—through the alley behind the motel, taking a ninety-degree turn westward, then exiting in the gap between BILL’S ARMY SURPLUS & SUTTERS AUTO PARTS EXCHANGE.

No sign of his daughter.

He walks to the corner across from the RX.

Enters the drug store.

Waits until the three giggling, pimple-faced teenage boys finish deciding on their purchase. A pack of RIBBED TINGLERS in “A Rainbow of Exotic Passionate Colors.”

“I’m looking for a girl—she’s young”

“Hehhh. Sorry! We don’t carry those. But. Hehhh. Maybe those boys that just left could fix you up with something juicy—” The wired-out pharmacist quips.

“Yeah. Asssshole. & I’m a fuckin’ plastic surgeon! So, cut th’ fuckin’ crap—she’s about yeah tall. Long black hair. White halter top & short shorts…”

“OOOooohhh! That one! Sure. She was here but left. Maybe twenty-five. Thirty minutes ago. Bought her stuff & left. Little young for you isn’t she—?” the druggist cocks his right eyebrow suggestively & winks.

Snuff would love to shove this dickhead’s brain up his ass like a suppository. But he’s got to keep a lid on it. Cool his impulse to blow a hole through the dipshit’s head with a 9mm slug.

He spins on his heel, & strides post haste to the exit.

[ 64 ]

After showering, Frank wraps one of the dingy, threadbare towels from the motel’s bathroom around his waist, & retrieves his bottle of Jack Daniels from the rickety, varnish-chipped nightstand. He walks over to the equally beat-up but mismatched dresser, & fills the plastic cup by the water pitcher with an amber nightcap.

He shakes noticeably as he raises the cup to his lips. The knot in his gut is twisting, tightening. He knows what comes next…

No! I just need some sleep! Gotta get some sleep—

Frank fumbles another couple of Noctecs out of the bottle. He gulps one down with the contents of his nightcap. The other slips from between his fingers, drops like a miniature bomb, falling slowly slowly towards the hardpacked plane of barren concrete below, hits, bounces, & rolls across the dust-grimed floor, rolls out of sight beneath the bed…

Frank crouches. Kneels. Crawls after it, eager to recover his precious little 500 mg. payload.

His fingers just won’t cooperate. He grovels helplessly for several moments. Then tries to stand. Collapses on the bed.

The knot in his gut is never wrong, he can hear them—

Ghosts scratching at the door, tapping at the window, whispering in that ugly sing-song gook language…

Elijah’s ears perk up, as if he hears them, too.

After months of freedom from them, Frank now knows that his demons have tracked him down & are gathering for the assault. The war dead are massing just out of sight. Frank feels their presence, remembers their faces, smells their decay.

“Fuckin’ gooks,” he hisses, then downs another cup of sour mash, refills the cup. “Come on, you rotten bastards. You think you can take me? Come on!”

Elijah whines, then trots off to the bathroom.

Something stirs the air behind him, & Frank whirls around with his old survival knife clutched in his hand.

The demons are coming through the walls. The dead are rising from the floor. Frank slashes the air with his knife, dancing about the room like a martial arts maniac. The towel slips from his hips, his flaccid penis flopping as he does his demented defensive dance.

“Fucking gooks?”

The bottle of Jack Daniels shatters.

Elijah barks at his crazy master.

A Vietnamese boy with half his face blown away wraps his frail arms around Frank’s legs & tries to bite him, though his lower jaw is missing. “Get away from me, goddamnit,” Frank yells. He trips over a bloody, headless torso.

The demons take him…

[ 65 ]

The two jive gangbangers stand on either side of the young white girl lying on the rubbish-strewn tarmac of the alleyway. Watching the shadowy form of their bro’ humping her, his naked buttocks pistoning up & down into the hollow of her outstretched thighs & belly.

From his frenzied strokes it’s obvious that he’s getting ready to shoot his load again.

“C’mon, Man, c’mon, Wylie! Get yo ROCKS OFF in dis heah bitch! Sink it TO her, Man! Quit yo hoggin’ all th’ AC-SHUN—!”

“Yea-uh, bbbllooddd!— Get yo stones off so’s we can try us a litt’l FUDGE-PACKIN’ wid dis friggin’ white-ass honkie bitch!”

“Yea-uh, get down ‘n’ brown! Man, I digs dat TIGHT young JAILTAIL, yeauh—”

The needle-thin beam of red laser stabs out, sighting on the silhouetted skells, tracking in on the back of one eye-level, dreadlock-dangling cranium—

ffftt. ffftt. ffftt,

The gangboy’s skull frags under the dead-center impact of three 9mm dum-dum slugs.

The other boy just begins to pivot towards the sound…

ffftt. ffftt.

The slugs rip off the side of his face, tearing away fist-sized chunks of temple & cheekbone & jawbone with a sick sssssmmmmmuusshhhhh, like a rotten melon splattering.

“Yeah. Three fuckin’ niggers havin’ some fun. Pulped two of them niggers & then there was—”

Snuff stoops, kneeling behind the pistoning youth as he hammers out his climax in Julie’s battered little cunt.

Snuff grabs the boy savagely by the afro’d hair at the nape of his neck, tugging him out of the saddle, sensing him spasm his climax into empty air—

“EEEEEEEEoooowwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhwwwwwww!” he shrieks.

Snuff smashes him face-downwards into the asphalt, pulping his nose, ripping the flesh away from his lips.

“You got about six seconds to fuckin’ tell me what I wanna know— & I’ll let you fuckin’ live, niggerboy—”

Nothing.

“Nod yr fuckin’ woolly black head or I squeeze it off RIGHT NOW!”

Mr. Badass gangbanger nods—FAST!

The tip of the silencer is shoved into his quivering sphincter, giving him just a hint of what his companions had planned for Snuff’s already-ravaged daughter.

“Now. Nigger. What gang’re you runnin’ with—?”

“De Slik Shivs—”

“& who’re you bangin’ heads with—?”

“Cold Stones, Man, Cold Stones—jis don’ hurt me, Man!”

“Thanks! Jigboy—! Now, pack it where the sun don’t shine—”

Snuff squeezes off, giggling hysterically as the 9mm rips the kid’s fuckin’ guts out, the muffled ffftt of the silenced muzzle burst sounding like a big wet blood-bubbling fart…

“So I lied—so fuckin’ sue me!”

ffftt. ffftt. Two more just for good measure.

Snuff holsters the COBRA.

He helps Julie to her feet. Then retrieves her clothes from where the boys had tossed them. Then helps her pull up her short shorts, his hands sliding in the blood & semen drooling down her thighs.

He hands his daughter her switchblade.

Snuff searches in a nearby dumpster. Finds a rag. Soaks it in the boys’ blood. & scrawls a message in blood-graffiti on the wall of the nearest building:

s L i K s H i V Z S U K!

c 0 L d S t 0 n E z I z ki n G!

B L U e B 1 0 o d Z F u C K A lL!

Julie, meanwhile, has recovered sufficiently from her ordeal to slice off the four boys’ genitals & stuff them into one another’s mouths.

“SUCK DICK YOU BLACK MOTHERFUCKING STIFFS!” a staggering Julie snarls at the corpses.

Snuff frisks them. & pockets the .38 Police Special & the stiletto that he finds concealed & no longer needed…

Snuff digs into his pants pocket, & tugs out the container of blow. He sprinkles it across the butchery.

“We’ll try to make it look like some kind’a drug rip-off or gang thing—”

“Where did you drop the stuff you bought—?”

Julie totters about, scuffing with her feet until she finds the bag. “Here—”

Snuff walks over to where she’s standing, & scoops up the bag & his daughter.

He carries her down the dark tunnel to the first southward turn, then heads toward the motel in cover of full darkness…

[ 66 ]

…Into Devil’s Valley, the verdant concavity of spooky shadows & twisted trees, that dark hollow like an oozing wound in the earth. Nobody in Frank’s platoon knew who gave the name to the valley, but they all agreed that it lived up to its name. Devil’s Fucking Valley. Less than twenty klicks from Khe Sanh, & too fucking close to the DMZ.

They slog through the swamp of the valley’s floor, Shaw walking point. Thank god for Shaw. Shaw is a soldier’s soldier, a natural-born warrior & soul brother number one. & he is Frank’s best friend.

“This ballgame is fucked, man,” Shaw says as they first enter Devil’s Valley. “Boo-coo dinks. I smell ’em.”

“You smell your dick dripping gook disease,” says Garcia, who shows his affection for Shaw via such put-downs.

“No shit, man,” Shaw says. He is in no mood for Garcia’s bullshit. “We gon’ be in a world of hurt. Fuckin’ brass got they heads up they ass.”

“Tell somebody who cares, Bro,” Garcia says.

As the patrol humps into the valley, the word spreads from man to man:

“We fucked, man—”

“Shaw smells dinks—”

“Indian country, amigo—”

“Keep ya shit tight—”

“Devil’s Valley, man. Numba fuckin’ ten—”

Before he moves off to assume point, Shaw grins his patented, pre-combat grin, & says, “Don’t mean shit to me.”

As he moves into the deep shadows of the boggy valley, Frank senses the Evil of the place itself. To Frank, as to most other GIs in Nam, the war is neither good nor Evil. It is a wargame with the highest stakes, a game you don’t have to win; but if you are a loser, you end up in a body bag, stacked with other occupied bags at Graves Registration. But this valley is a crucible of Evil. You can see it in the twisted roots of a tree, growing with fungus, & you can see it in the way the shadows close in on everything. If you die in this place, the Evil can claim your spirit. If you take a hit here & live, the Evil can seep into the wound & poison you for life. How does that go? If I die in a combat zone…?

The entire platoon is wound tighter than a five-dollar wristwatch. Shaw’s nose is never wrong; if he smells dinks, you can bet that enemy contact is imminent. Frank moves through the thick vegetation, his M16 ready to rock & roll.

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…

“I’m freakin’, man,” Carver says in a loud whisper. “I got a real bad fuckin’ feel—”

“Stuff it, Carver,” Frank orders. Carver smokes a lot of weed, but he can always be counted on in a firefight. Carver claims that reefer calms him & improves his aim.

“Fuck me, L-T, we got to dee-dee this Devil Valley shit,” Carver says.

Shaw freezes beside a thicket of bamboo & elephant grass. He holds up a hand, freezing the whole patrol.

Frank watches Shaw, can see him listening to the jungle.

As Shaw glances back at Frank, an AK opens up on him from the left flank, dropping Doc Rock & Simmons the Cherry.

“Doc’s hit!” someone shouts over the automatic weapon’s fire.

Hardman chops the bamboo with the M-60 fire, taking out the first NVA.

Frank fires at the muzzle flashes on their flank. Then he directs Zenno to drop a grenade behind the rocks which form cover for the NVA ambushers.

Zenno calls his shot, “Eightballs, corner pocket,” then fires his M-79. With beautiful accuracy, the grenade whoomps behind the rocks & the ambush is over.

“Yo, L-T, that was just a kiss on the cheek,” says Shaw. “Dinks just feeling us out. Best is yet to come.”

Frank is on the radio, calling for Dust Off for the wounded & the dead. Doc Rock’s screams seem to fill the whole valley with the sound of human misery & death.

“Cherry’s dead,” reports Zenno. “Doc’s hit bad.”

“Shoot him up with morphine,” says Frank, once he has radioed for Medevac.

Shaw jogs over to Frank. “L-T, ain’t no bird gonna come down in this shit,” he says, pointing up at the canopy of trees,

“That’s why we’re getting the fuck out of this valley,” Frank says. “We’ll fall back to the LZ for Dust Off, then await further orders.”

“Shit, you know what they’ll be. Back into this fuckin’ valley.”

Frank nods grimly & lights a C-rat cigarette: Lucky Strike.

An ass-tightening sound echoes through the valley—the concussion of a mortar launched from its tube.

“Incoming!” “Incoming!”

Frank drops & hugs the earth, covering his steel pot with his hands. The earth suddenly shakes with a deep rumble, & Frank is lifted off the ground, his ears stuffed with the sound of explosion, his left elbow wet & burning with a deep ache.

When he opens his eyes, he sees the sleeve of his fatigues in shreds & covered with blood. His blood. He glances through the smoke & dust to where Shaw had been, & he sees the sight that will always haunt him

The whole right side of Shaw’s body has been turned into raw hamburger, his intestines strung out all the way down to his left jungle boot, & his face is a grinning skull with chunks of blackened flesh fused to white bone.

“Shaw!” Frank yells, though he can’t hear himself yelling because he was deafened by the explosion. “You crazy fucking nigger! Get up, man! Fucking goldbrick, GET UP!”

Then he starts crying, saying over & over: “I need you, man, I need you…”

[ 67 ]

THE DEATHLY BLUE LIGHT FLOODING FROM THE TV SCREEN TWITCHES LIKE A FEVERED PULSE:

“You two are both very very lucky. Very fortunate. I have lifted you both from this human anthill teaming with the unwashed legions of the unknown. From the rat race. Little white lab mice destined for the greatest of experiments. To join in My becoming, My transformation… You are now to be counted among the chosen. You have been chosen to serve Me as My slaves in Paradi(c)e.” Mal tells His captives.

“I have traveled The Road of the Beast for many years. I, who once was the student George Brittain. I, who once was known by My first nom de guerre of ‘Zodiac.’ I who have been ‘The Green River Killer’ & the “BTK Strangler” of Wichita—”

Mal pauses. Chuckles to Himself at some secret joke.

“—that is ‘bringing it all back home’ to the son of a bitch, isn’t it?”

Mal is bending now, Heather’s corn-silk soft blonde hair clenched in both hands as He leans into her face, His eyes staring into hers. She aches to avert his gaze. But she cannot. His eyes betray His absolute, cold, calculating madness. They force her into near-hypnotic submission. They are the eyes of the serpent willing the little white bird with its thumping pulse its only mind to stillness…

“Nothing in this world save Me can save you. Not those pathetic PIGS, those BLUE MEANIES with their pitiful tin stars & gumball lights & howling sirens. I have played them for the fools they are for the past three decades & more. For who is like unto the Beast? Who is able to make war with Him?” Mal taunts.

“Pray to Me. Pray to the Maldoror. Pray to He who is so near to His hour of Becoming.”

“Here is the wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the Beast: for it is the number of a man; & His number is six-hundred threescore & six—”

“Mmmmgghhhhhffffffhhhh…” Truman tries to cover his ears, cocking the right side of his head against his shoulder like a roosting pigeon, cupping his free hand, his left, over his exposed ear—miming the monkey “hear no evil.”

“Yes. They are ants. Pitiful crawling ants at My feet. Ants only who would make war with Me?” Mal transforms the final word into a question. “As the Zodiac, I all but told them who I was. But they were too stupid to grasp at My simple riddles, too stupid to understand that I was the CIPHER Killer & if they could see the real code, the hidden one beneath their big noses, ‘when they do crack it they will have Me’—”

Mal’s face is twisted into a malevolent monster mask, a t’ao t’ieh, hovering above the helpless victim of his twisted lusts…

THE BLUE LIGHT FROM THE TELEVISION WRITHES IN HIS DEVILISH EYES, DEVOID OF ANY HINT OR HOPE OF MERCY, ONLY THE LUST TO DOMINATE, TO VIOLATE, TO SAVOR THE SUFFERING OF THE LAMBS LED IN CADENCE TO A SYMPHONY OF BLUE TO THE MOMENT THE HOUR THE ETERNITY OF THEIR SLAUGHTER…

[ 68 ]

Frank opens his eyes & sees Shaw’s body on the floor of the motel room. The right side of Shaw’s body is ground meat. “Yo, L-T,” Shaw says, sitting up. “That was just a kiss on the cheek. Best is yet to come.” He reels in his slimy intestines, & tries to stuff them back into what’s left of his abdomen.

“I’m not out of my fucking mind,” moans Frank, pressing his hands to his head.

“No shit, man,” Shaw says, his skull shining through burned & rotting facial tissue. “A world of hurt.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Frank tells him.

“Yeah? What they gonna do, send me to Viet Nam?”

“Jesus.”

“The men send their regards, L-T. Say they sorry they can’t be here.”

“The men?”

“Fuckin’ A. Carver, Doc, Simmons, Zenno…”

“Zenno didn’t die there,” says Frank. “He was only wounded.”

“He’s dead now, bro. Devil’s Fuckin’ Valley, man. He’s one of us again. You will be too.”

Frank looks down & realizes he is naked. He grabs the survival knife from the floor & holds the blade in Shaw’s ruined face. “Get the fuck outta here. You’re not Shaw.”

“Easy, L-T. You wrapped too tight. What the fuck you gonna do? Shave my bones?”

“Get out!” Frank jabs the blade into Shaw’s remaining eye. Vile liquid sprays his hand.

“Devil’s Valley, man,” Shaw says with an odd laugh. “Back into the Fuckin’ Valley.”

Frank blacks out with the dead man’s laughter buzzing in his ears.

[ 69 ]

“Let’s get to it,” says Pynchon, once he is plugged into the mainframe & the IV is plugged into his arm. “I’m going to show this psycho who’s boss.”

Professor’s scrawny fingers tap dance over the keyboard. “I’m telling you, this guy is no pushover. He’s more powerful than he should be. It’s like he & Blue Devil potentiate—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Pynchon snarls. He is feeling the initial effects of Li Di 9: heightened awareness of all the senses, hyped edginess & irritability (these more pronounced in a man of Pynchon’s aggressive character), muscular tightness & an overall sensation of being coiled spring-like & ready to be shot into an alien world.

“Light my cigar.”

“You can’t smoke now. You won’t even be able to keep it in your mouth.”

“Light the son of a bitch!” Pynchon clamps his cheroot securely in the corner of his mouth.

Professor produces a scraped & dented Zippo. When he strikes the flint, Pynchon’s field of supercharged vision explodes with blue light.

The cigar tastes like rotted meat. Pynchon’s jaws clench & his teeth cut the cheroot in two. He tries to spit out the turd-like thing in his mouth. Fails. Then swallows it.

The taste left in his mouth suddenly turns sweet, turns blue…

“Okay, this is it,” Professor says in a faraway voice. He taps a plastic key. “Here you go—”

Pynchon is cannonballed into deep blue space, hurled across a great river-like void, a shooting blue star/atom. A triggered memory of parachuting into enemy territory flashes by like a blue wind moving at the speed of light. Now he is falling, sinking into purple plasma, glowing with biochemical light & he feels the presence of the other. He is a presence within the other.

ssssssssssssSlice is sleeping… dreaming… blue movie… naked girls overflowing his bed… body parts strewn in kaleidoscopic patterns of red & blue… a cartoon cunt snaps at him like an alligator… his erection laughs… belly laughs… ripples chiseled veins… demands a sacrifice of womanly flesh &… blood &… the wispy figure of a female spirit appears above him, watching him with cold cold eyes (?) holes (?)… out of reach… mocking him?… fuck her… can’t fuck a ghost… need flesh… blood… bone… something else here… now… what?… bad… bad feeling… doesn’t belong… who?… watching… violating… not Slicessssss

Slice sits up in bed, awake & alert to danger.

Nightmare?

He has evolved to a perpetual borderline state in which it is difficult to distinguish dream from reality, flesh from light, yet he knows the danger is real.

The other is here. It is not the one called “Professor.” No, this one is stronger…challenging.

Professor looks at the EEG tracings, suppressing his anger over the fact that Erebos hadn’t seen fit to provide the EEG equipment until that asshole Pynchon got involved in the experiments. Pynchon must be diddling Lucy Nation, he decides.

Then he sees Pynchon’s EEG tracings go wild, the little mechanical arms making frenzied markings on the rolling graph.

He glances at Pynchon.

Pynchon’s eyes flutter behind their lids, remaining shut. His body jerks against the stretcher, jumping a good two inches off the thin mattress, then banging down hard.

“What the fuck?” Professor snaps.

Nothing in any of the previous Blue Devil experiments has prepared him for this: Pynchon’s entire body dances violently on the stretcher, his limbs & head pounding an arhythmic drum cadence for almost a full minute.

During the preliminary briefing, Pynchon denied epilepsy, so why the fuck is he having a grand mal seizure?

He’s supposed to be taming the Beast called “Slice,” not fucking dying on this goddamn stretcher: Oh shit. Lucy Nation will have my balls for breakfast if Pynchon bites it.

Professor watches in horror as Pynchon chews his protruding tongue ’til it looks like a bloody sausage.

The convulsions become more violent, & Professor struggles to hold Pynchon’s body on the stretcher.

The back of Pynchon’s hand pops Professor’s mouth, splitting his lower lip. Ignoring the pleasant taste of his own blood, he yanks the IV needle from Pynchon’s arm, then jerks the jack out of the dermal patch at the base of his thrashing skull.

The convulsions cease, but Pynchon’s eyeballs are rolling around like marbles behind closed lids.

Savoring his psychic victory over the would-be invader, Slice proceeds to rape & pillage the mind & memory of Pynchon, the Erebos agent & assassin. What a stroke of luck. Slice gets a boner as he sucks up the valid data from Pynchon’s brain sponge. His volcanic hardon almost blows when he flashes on the vivid image of Lucy Nation, & he can smell her squishy fishmeat & taste her corrupt political power. She is the Mermaid, Female Principle Incarnate, & he is the Serpent…

Slice suddenly snaps to the immensity of possibilities provided by the spoils of Pynchon’s knowledge & connections to the vast network of the international underground power structures. His art-for-art’s-sake mutilations seem like small potatoes, blood spuds, compared to this whole new blue world opening up at his fucking feet. He shoots his wad, fucking the whole world as he visualizes Blue Doom on a global scale.

Professor snatches up the phone & punches 911, seeing no choice but to send for an ambulance.

Pynchon suddenly opens his eyes & sits up on the rumpled sheet of the stretcher. “Jesus, man, are you all right?” Professor stammers. “I thought you were in a fucking coma.”

Pynchon licks blood from his lips with his badly-chewed tongue.

“Heth noth fu wif vu, asth ho.”

“What?” Professor tries to make sense of what Pynchon has said. He’s not through with you, asshole?

Pynchon stands up, grabs the back of Professor’s head with both hands, & jerks his head downward & shoots his own knee up so that Professor’s face & Pynchon’s knee meet in a bone-shattering smash-up.

His glasses snap in two at the bridge & the left lens cuts the cornea of his left eye. Professor slumps to the floor & sinks into a state of semi-consciousness as Pynchon walks out the door.

[ 70 ]

Snuff carries his battered daughter as far as the rear service entry, leaving her in the shadowed doorway just beyond Room Fourteen.

He checks the courtyard for activity. There is a young couple over by the poolside. But they’re not watching what’s going on, they’re making out, hot & heavy, & they could give a shit less what the fuck he’s up to…

He strolls to the door. Casually. Knocks three times: short, brisk raps. Waits a moment. Then repeats the signal.

Mal raps once on the interior of the door.

“Snuff,” the man outside identifies himself.

The door opens just wide enough to admit him.

He emerges several minutes later with a wet, soapy washrag concealed in his right hip pocket & a plain khaki shift concealed inside his jacket. Snuff wanders back into the shadows. Wipes the splattered, sticky blood off Julie’s face & legs & arms. She slips the shift on over her bloodstained halter top & shorts.

“It’s like this—” Snuff explains to Mal. Recounting everything that’s happened since he found his daughter in the alley. In careful detail. Mal listens as Julie fills Him in on the events leading up to her assault, as well as the rape itself.

When she has finished, Mal queries father & daughter both, eliciting a wealth of minutiae they had previously forgotten to mention.

“You stupid little bitch,” Mal says, His voice never rising above a perfectly-modulated monotone, “you’ve jeopardized us all through your inexcusable carelessness—” His open hand lashes out suddenly, striking the young girl a vicious slap to the cheek—

Wwwwwwhhhappppppppp!

Backhanding her. Her head whips sideways with the force of His blow. But she doesn’t even whimper. She knows better.

Wwwwwwhhhappppppppp! Again.

“& you didn’t bring Me the duct tape I fucking asked you for—

Wwwwwwhhhappppppppp!

“You stupid little cunt—”

“Heh! Mal, she didn’t fuckin’ mean no harm. It wasn’t even her fault— She couldn’t help it!” Snuff protests.

“Not her fault, eh?” Mal says. “Not her fault?”

His surgical-gloved hand clasps Julie by her long, black cascade of hair, tugging upwards, dragging her from her feet into the air, her scalp shrieking with agony, her scream of protest choked off before it can escape her lips, her face held suspended mere inches from His own. His breath is hot, stale, acidic on her skin & in her nostrils. She can smell the musk of Heather’s pussy & the coppery reek of blood heavy on His breath. The dark pits of murderous fury that are His eyes glare into her own, terrorizing her to deceptive calmness—deadly & hypnotic as a diamondback rattler psyching a sparrow to total stillness while its venom-dripping jaws gape ready for the lightning strike that swallows whole & kills…

“You fail to follow the route you planned—”

“I. I thought—” Julie manages to whimper.

“You. Thought…?” Mal questions, His voice still dangerously restrained. “What? That you would forget all of those cautions I have labored so hard to train you to follow as second nature?”

“There were people fighting—”

“Julie, Julie, why do I even bother with you?” Mal whispers.

Her body jerks rigid with her panic. She forces her intended protest into silence. She has seen this mood in Him & she knows that one wrong word or move & He will kill her.

More terrible than any rage is the utter, disarming gentleness, the tender, consoling tone of pity that His normally expressionless monotone now betrays: “You fail to bring Me everything I tell you to purchase? You fail to follow an established plan? You attract these niggers? You fail to notice when they trail you? You carelessly discard evidence that can tie you to their deaths: not just one piece, no, oh no, you leave the pigs an empty needle packet covered with your fingerprints, with the very needles it contained impaling some dead darkie’s eyeballs, & a blister card that held razor blades, also covered with your fingerprints, in some alley with four bodies…?”

The young girl’s body hangs deadweight by her taut-stretched hair. Her feet dangle nearly a half-a-foot above the carpeting.

“Julie, Julie, & I suppose the packets both had price tags on them? With the name of this drugstore where they were purchased? & the clerks will remember you? Oh, Julie, perhaps I should simply put you down…? Is that what I must do to keep you from leading us all to ruin…?”

“Mal, DON’T!” Snuff begs. “I’ll get that shit from the alley. I can find it, man! Then they can’t—”

“Are you really as stupid as this little bitch of yours? NEVER RETURN TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME!” Mal suddenly screams into the terrified girl’s face.

He punches her in the solar plexus. She would scream now despite herself, but her bruised diaphragm is devoid of strength to force it from her lungs. All she can do is mewl & moan with the pain.

He tosses her to the floor, a crumpled heap of refuse to be dealt with later as it pleases Him…

Mal’s voice has returned to its customary monotone, control once more resumed: “No, Snuff, you will not return to the scene of the crime. You will take the stiletto & the .38 Special that you obtained from the blacks & you will take great care to dispose of the witnesses. All of them…”

[ 71 ]

Frank Hawkes feels it as soon as he drives into downtown Miami. It’s the same feeling he used to get in Nam whenever he entered enemy territory. It starts with a tingling in the scalp & a quickening of the pulse, followed by a fist clenching in his gut. This time the feeling is so strong that it reminds him of the way he felt entering Devil’s Fucking Valley.

He pops the cigarette lighter from the dash & fires up another smoke. No flavor. No enjoyment. Just the taste of hot ash burning his tongue. He has been chain-smoking through the last sixty miles—the last leg of his trip into Miami, & the only time he burns a chain of butts is when something has him wired tighter than a steel cable.

Burnside, the VA counselor, would tell him it was the aftereffects of his latest combat flashback; but Frank doesn’t buy that shit at all. Frank knows those things aren’t fucking flashbacks. No way in Hell. Burnside can take his diagnosis of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder & stuff it up his rear-echelon-motherfucking-ass.

“The war has left you with your own personal demons. The ghosts that you see are the ghosts of your past. It all comes down to guilt. The guilt you feel because a lot of your buddies died over there & you lived. The good news is that you can exorcise your demons by working through your guilt.”

“That’s bullshit, Burnside, those fucking things are real! If you’d been over there with us in Devil’s Fucking Valley, you’d know how real they fucking are.”

That was the way counseling sessions went until finally he broke them off & never went back. Burnside & the VA be damned. The fucking U.S. Government be damned, too, right along with all those ignorant wimps who ever called a Vet a baby-killer. Yeah, the venom is still there, curling like that fist in his belly. If it ever spews forth…

“Fuck it,” Frank says aloud. “Elijah, old pal, I have a feeling we are about to pick up a hot trail.”

His canine companion looks at him with doleful eyes. Frank spots a watering hole & parks in the lot, paved with cement & seashell. He leaves both windows rolled down so Elijah won’t get too hot in the Florida sun. He pours the faithful pooch a dish full of water from his old army canteen, & sets it on the floorboard on the driver’s side.

“Stay here, boy, I won’t be long.”

He enters the cool air of CAPT. JACK’S BLUE LAGOON COCKTAILS & OYSTER BAR, & takes a seat on a sturdy barstool. He orders a Bud from the tap, downs half of it, then goes to the pay phone next to the men’s room. A quarter buys a call to Capt. Lardass Lucas, Miami Homicide.

Frank identifies himself & mentions Clarence Carter’s name.

“Yeah, Carter called me. Said you’d be in touch. I wanted to brief you myself, but I’m tied up with some Internal Affairs bullshit, so one of my men will fill you in. Rios. He’s young but sharp.”

“No problem,” Frank says.

“Carter said I could trust you to keep any pertinent details confidential. You’re an ex-cop, you know how this shit works. C.Y.A. all the way. I’m covering my ass officially by stating that you’re aiding our investigation. By the way, I read your book on serial killers. Damn good, you know your shit.”

“Thanks.”

“So do me a favor, will ya? If you ever write a book on this investigation, don’t refer to me as ‘Lardass Lucas.’ My ass ain’t that big. Oh, yeah, & tell Carter I still got that coon dog. Haw, haw.”

“You got it.”

“Hang on, I’ll get Rios on the line.”

Frank takes another sip of chilled Bud & waits while the phone goes through a series of clicks spaced with dead air. Capt. Jack’s antique juke box kicks in with a Bob Dylan oldie, “It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry,” & Frank gets another little jab from the past—yeah, Viet Nam era, fuckin’ A, naturally.

He’s no Dylan connoisseur, but something strikes him as wrong about the music. Shaw had been into Dylan, HEAVY, before he bought the farm. Bone farm, not “Maggie’s…” he thinks with another wave of sadness rolling over him, echoing the wail of the ghost train’s whistle in the song… He muses for a moment, accesses the organized clutter of a near-eidetic memory, finds the appropriate file in some cobwebbed corner of his brain marked Rock Music: Hard: ’60s & realizes—I don’t think that one from his Highway 61 Revisited album was ever released on 45…? Must be pirate vinyl that Ol’ Capt, Jack, here’s spinnin’… & keys off of another odd connection: Frank’s sure that he remembers Shaw humming the eerie tune as they crossed the fused tangle of iron that had been a bombed-out rail line, & pausing for a moment he’d said, “Yeah, man, can you beeeee-lieve that Bobbie’s original workin’ title for it was ‘The Phantom Engineer’…weird shit, huh…?”

Then a smooth voice comes on the line. “Mr. Hawkes? John Rios. How can I help you?” Even with Dylan’s dog-calling harmonica wailing in the background, Frank catches the confident, business-like tone in the young man’s voice. “I need all the information you have on the coffee house murder. What I really need is a look at the file.”

“When would you like to see it?”

“I can be there in thirty minutes. How’s that?”

“Fine. I’ll be there.”

Frank hangs up, downs the balance of his brew, then goes back out into the hot sun, leaving the coolness of Capt. Jack’s & the sentiments of Dylan’s ’60s.

Twenty-five minutes later, he is shaking hands with Detective Rios of Miami Homicide. Rios is a dark, almost handsome man in his late twenties. Though he speaks with no accent, Frank thinks he has some Cuban blood somewhere in the family tree. “I read Satan and Serial Violence,” Rios says, “& I was intrigued by some of your ideas.”

“Yeah? Maybe we can shoot the shit about it over a beer,” says Frank. “You got the file?”

Rios opens a metal file cabinet, flips through the manila jackets, pulls out the appropriate folder, & hands it to Frank. “I’ll be in the next room if you need me. Got a shit pile of paperwork to do.”

“Thanks,” says Frank. He takes the file to the desk in the far corner of the small room, & sits down. He lights a cigarette as Rios leaves the room. Then opens the file on Mary Gruber. Before he begins reading the typed reports, he turns to the photos of the victim. His stomach does a back flip when he sees the bloody thing hanging from the rope, from a distance looking far more like a battered & hemorrhage-clotted tampon than anything that was ever even vaguely human…

I’ll never drink another Bloody Mary as long as I live.

[ 72 ]

The oily black ocean is a great undulating mass of liquid night, dangerous & vengeful, the deepest mystery of earthbound existence, ever in resistance to the quasi-mystic forces of the moon. Its dark waves lap at Hellraiser’s hull like hungry Stygian tongues. Though the yacht is moored at the deserted marina, it is occupied by a crew of two thugs, hired to guard the provocative body of its owner, Lucy Nation, who is below deck with a bottle of scotch & a gram of Colombian blow.

The thug wearing the navy blue knit cap spears the raw, bloody meat with a footlong hook, holds up the dripping chum for his partner to inspect, & says in a rumbling, salty voice: “If y’ was a shark, could y’ swim away from this?”

“Looks good to me, man. You know I like my meat real rare.”

“I feel lucky tonight, Pedro. We gon’ get us a big fuckin’ shark. Maybe a Great White motherfucker.”

“Stop runnin’ your mouth & throw it out, Skull,” says Pedro. He calls his companion that because he is never without his skull cap.

Skull tosses the big baited hook into the waves, holding on to the attached ropes. He loops the rope twice around his thick elbow & muscular upper arm, then turns a bottle of beer up to his mouth. He guzzles half the brew, belches, & says, “What y’ spoze th’ queen bitch is doin’ down there?”

“Who knows?” says Pedro. “None of our business what she does. Long as nothin’ happens to her, we get our jack. Who gives a shit what she’s doin. Be fuckin’ herself, all I care.”

Skull lets out another burp, & laughs, “Y’ wanna fuck her, Pedro. Y’ get a big woody evertime y’ come within ten feet of th’ bitch.”

“Shit, man, you the one sniffs her panties when she’s in the fuckin’ shower.”

“Har arrhh arrhh,” laughs Skull. “Y’ think she wants yr tight ass, don’t y’, amigo. Har harhh.”

“Shut your yap. You’ll scare the fuckin’ sharks away.”

Skull drains his bottle of beer, takes it by the neck & slings it out into the ocean’s swells. He pauses momentarily, listening to its hollow, glassy splash as it plunges into the brine, then bobs surfaceward amidst a gurgling rush of bubbles…

Yeah. No message in this one…just an emptied void serving as a sort of caesura or a simple exercise in tonal breath control, a prepunctuation for his words-to-follow: “Y’ can believe this. That woman is a maneater. I’m talkin’ cold-blooded. Y’ dip yr stick into that cooze, y’ll draw back a bloody nub. She’s fuckin’ Jaws, man!”

“You a sick motherfucker, Skull,” Pedro tells him. “You oughtta go back to your wrestlin’ scam, you know?” Pedro cups his hands around his mouth. “& in this corner, wearin’ the shit-stained trunks, the sickest hulkin’ fuck in the world…”

“That ain’t funny, y’ little spic. One more crack like that, I’ll shove yr fuckin’ head so far up yr ass—”

“Shhh. Somebody’s comin’.” Skull pulls a .357 from the holster at the small of his thick back & squints at the shape coming down the dock. Pedro now has a flashlight in one hand, a .45 in the other.

As the shadowy figure approaches Hellraiser, Pedro whispers, “Be cool,” & flicks on the light. The harsh yellowish circle of illumination thrusts into the darkness, punching a sharp hole of blinding intensity through the murky wall of near-invisibility, betraying the fluid glistening of the long, black leather jacket, the soulless stare of matte-black wraparounds, the dark bristle-brush ruff of punk-savvy close-cropped hair… Pynchon shields his eyes from the flashlight’s beam, holding up his right hand in a sort of greeting.

“Good evening, Mr. Pynchon,” says Pedro, flicking off the light. “We weren’t expecting you tonight.”

“How’s it goin’?” says Skull, wondering if that was blood he got a glimpse of on Pynchon’s shirt just before the light was turned off.

Pynchon boards the yacht without a word.

Skull begins to feel uneasy. Somethin’ ain’t right, he thinks.

“I’ll call down & let Ms. Nation know you’re here,” Pedro says, holstering his .45 & reaching for the cellular phone.

Skull keeps his eyes glued on Pynchon’s shadowy form. Still holding his .357, he uncoils the rope from his left arm & drops it to the deck.

The rope seems to hiss through Skull’s fingers as it slithers to the floor, thudding slightly as the loose end impacts with the deck. The only other sounds are the sloshing rhythm of the waves against the hull & the barely audible buzz of the just-lifted receiver…

“Hey, Skull, secure that rope, you’re gonna lose—”

Pynchon reaches inside his jacket, & comes out with a silenced 9mm Zombie.

Skull brings up the muzzle of his own .357.

ffftt. Pynchon’s Zombie spits—

A dark spot appears in the dead center of Skull’s forehead. He flops limply to the deck, hitting with a wet thump like a palate-hooked grouper, brain-bashed to still its frenzied thrashings…

Pedro draws his .45, but two rounds hit him in the throat, ripping fist-sized bursts of flesh from his neck, all but tearing his skull from his shoulders, his head connected only by stray strands of nerve & tendon & the shattered links of vertebrae, like some obscene parody of one of those red glistening candy-apples-on-a-stick…

His still-living brain expends its last few precious seconds worth of oxygen in the futile exercise of commanding fingers to raise the mouthpiece of the cordless phone to his blood-bubbling lips…

Neither coherent words nor the scream of soul-splitting angst that shrieks silently for release will form… He makes a gurgling sound. Then falls overboard.

“The tiburons will feast on taco meat tonight…” the words whisper in the canyons of Pynchon’s Blue-buzzing backbrain. Not trusting his own shredded tongue. A silent offering. To no one but the wild, dark demigods of sea & night…or perhaps—

…the moon burns silver, suddenly peeping through tattered shrouds of cloud curtain, the pox-scarred corpse-rind of her face leering Evilly…the moon burns red…for the faltering span of a split-second, the moon burns blue provoking the perverse…the phosphor-phantom of a blue witch writhes seductively, undulating to the rhythms of the surf, dancing the Seven Veils (Nnnohhh! these are the Six Veils of the Beast…) across the surface of the waves…

Pynchon slips the Zombie back into his shoulder holster, & heads belowdeck to Lucy Nation’s plush quarters.

[ 73 ]

Maldoror motions to the helpless teenager tied to the bed, & says, “Juliette, get off your clothes & take a quick shower. Then you & Heather, here, can entertain Me while Snuff is busy setting aright the mess you’ve made.”

[ 74 ]

7734

Frank stares at the number he has written on a cocktail napkin, trying to fathom its numerical significance.

“It probably means something to no one but the killer,” says Detective Rios, who sits across the table from Frank, sipping beer through the foamy suds atop his frosty mug. “We even had a numerologist run it down; but she came up with nothing that made any sense to our investigation. Just a lot of mumbo jumbo, New Age bullshit.”

“But it has to be significant, after—”

“Wait, Frank! Hold it a sec—” Rios stares down at the inverted series of numbers, facing away from him & toward Frank. Viewed from this perspective, the rough scrawl, 7734, suddenly betrays another meaning: hELL…

“Ohhhh, Keee-rissst! It’s so fucking simple, it’s pathetic, Frank! It’s the proverbial forest you can’t see for the trees…”

“What—?” Frank stares at Rios blankly.

“Hell, Frank, Hell! That’s what this crazy killer’s signature says. Just plain ‘Hell!’” He pauses for a moment, then adds: “It’s like some stupid kids’ graffiti or something…”

“Hell?” Frank asks. “But what the fuck does he mean by it—?”

“I dunno, Frank. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but then we’re dealing with some kind of lunatic, aren’t we…?”

“Look, you’ve got four murder victims with this number carved into ’em—”

“Actually, there’s five now, we pulled in what appears to be a related through NCIC—”

“Okay, let’s run ’em through from the top—there’s the Cuban cab driver, the couple butchered in their bed, & Mary Gruber, a.k.a. Phaedra Flame…”

“Yeah, & the new one we netted through an NCIC cross-ref of similar crimes. It wasn’t even in the jacket yet. I had just passed it along to Lucas— Sorry! Our stiff in this case was an Hispanic real estate broker. Houston resident. Very successful. Body washed up on the beach. Some jogger, a guy by the name of ‘Stan Simpson,’ nearly tripped over the corpse. Two Galveston County Sheriff’s Deputies were the first on the scene—” Rios notes Frank’s suddenly upturned eyebrow. “Heh, I know what you’re thinkin’. But it doesn’t look as though the local yokels bungled it. Even though he was Hispanic—”

“Yeah, guess I don’t have to read you the act on that one… Texas’ finest aren’t exactly noted for Equal Opportunity enforcement…”

“Gotta give ’em credit, they managed to keep a clean scene from everything I’ve gathered.”

“Fine & dandy. But as if you haven’t gathered already, I’m no fan of Lone Star justice…or the goddamn state for that matter, even if some super-secret outfit outta Dallas does pay the bills for my investigations…”

“Yeah? I was wondering—”

“How I paid my bills? But you were too polite to ask. Thanks, Rios, you’re okay in my book. In any case, the whole setup’s pretty weird. Hush hush. I’ve tried to double back & run a scan on who the Hell my ‘employer’ is, but it’s a seemingly hopeless web of cash payments of blinds & double-blinds & remail services & dummy corporations. I have ’em figured as some hothead splinter group of Fundamentalists, secretly funding this ‘knight in shining armor’ as a latter-day St. Michael, battling the specter of The Beast…”

Frank reaches absentmindedly into his shirt front, drawing out an oversized golden medallion on a chain, fingering the religious motif embossed on its surface. A vagrant ray of light from the spots above the stage strikes the winged warrior upon it just right, & the surface seems to blaze with the flame of righteous retribution, burning in defiance of The Darkness… “—but I’m afraid I lost my wings & halo a long way back,” Frank adds.

“& you kind’ve figure, what the fuck? the ends justify the means…? Shit, Frank, I suppose I should knock you for it, but I can’t get too riled up— I know what a pain-in-the-ass that bureaucratic funding can be…, &, anyway, you’re a private dick, now, so—”

“I hope you can understand what I’m up against,” Frank says. “You say you’ve read S&SV, but do you have any concept of what it’s like, I mean, following this friggin’ killer, actually, a family of killers, cutting a seemingly erratic path of bloodshed back & forth across the continental U.S., how many lives? how many lives, Rios…? & I’m the only one who’s stayed on their trail, connected the colored map pins of their mega-violence, always just a step or two behind. Always a few days, a few hundred miles too late! Thirty-odd years, man, thirty years & a job & a marriage & a family…& for what?”

Rios can sense the rumbling geyser of pain beneath the surface of Frank’s words, & seeks to steer them back to their original conversation: “Oh, yeah, the local metro boys think that this guy, Jorge…Jorge Sota, was murdered on his sailboat somewhere off the coast of Texas in the proximity of Galveston Bay. That’s a supposition only, as the boat hasn’t turned up yet.”

“Sorry…” Frank says, “& he had ‘7734’ carved into his chest?”

“Plus a couple of other really nasty twists—they’d severed the fingers from both hands, as well as his chota & his huevos…& they stuffed ’em in the poor bastard’s mouth, his privates, that is.”

“Was this Sota connected? I mean, the fingers & the genitals is a typical ‘message’ from the drug lords—”

“Or a political thing. Metro Houston is supposed to be covering both possibilities…”

“Okay. Looks like we’ve got four random slayings—one double homicide—all victims of your serial killer whose signature mark is ‘Seven. Seven. Three. Four.’ Or ‘hELL.’”

“Yeah, that’s about all we have,” Rios agrees. “That & the killer’s blood type—O positive—from the sperm deposits in the first female victim—”

“Pretty fucking thin,” Frank declares. “Heh? Didn’t the killer have sex with Mary Gruber? I thought the report—”

“That’s the weird part, Frank. See, she was butchered up so bad that proof positive of forcible entry will be pretty hard to establish, I mean, shit! You saw the report! He.…he cut himself his own custom cula, if you follow…? This guy’s a goddamn butcher, man! We got pubic hairs for a possible match-up. & we’ve got semen, but… it’s just too weird! The lab boys made a number of chromosomal changes, MUTATIONS in his DNA-patterning! & there was this unidentifiable blue serum in suspension with his semen…”

Frank is impressed with young Rios, & he is glad to have his help. The kid is sharp & he is likable.

“We’re still hauling in known sex offenders, pervs into S&M, rapos, peepers, flashers, recent mental releases, but ZERO so far, nada, all we’ve got is a big goose egg.”

The light catches Frank’s St. Michael’s medal again, prompting Rios to ask: “You’re not Catholic, are you, Frank—?”

“Nope. WASP, born & bred.” Frank says. “No. Not Catholic. Just superstitious, I guess. That, & it belonged to a war buddy of mine, Sanchez. Always used to say, ‘negro con mi suerte,’ black as my luck, en ingles, eh, Rios? Man, & if that wasn’t the goddamn truth, too…”

“That’s weird synchronicity, Frank, St. Michael is the patron Saint of policemen.”

“I’ve been told that—” Frank replies.

They are sitting at a table in Miami’s Seahorse Saloon. A country & western group mounts the bandstand. When they tear into their first shit-kicking tune, Frank says, “No offense, but how about we find another watering hole? As much as I normally dig those cryin’-in-your-beer tunes, I’m just not in the mood tonight. You know any clubs that cater to perverts? Sometimes it helps me get a line on something if I can absorb the right atmosphere. lt’s like ol’ Elijah pickin’ up the scent, you know?”

“There are a lot of hangouts that fit that bill,” says Rios, downing the rest of his beer. “There’s The Unicorn’s Horn, real popular with your flaming faggots, & then there’s The Black Hole, god knows what genius came up with that name! & the ever-popular Skin Divers’ Delight which has nothing to do with flippers & fins.”

“Hhhhmmm…” Frank muses.

“Oh, yeah, & the internationally infamous Bellmer’s Dolls & Club Cuir Noir, a chic leather bar for the mixed punk-&-perv set, & probably your best bet for the hardcore S&M & B&D crowd, with the upscale elite of the one-percenters, the badass biker pushers & enforcers. Plenty of coke & crystal meth & poppers, you know the scene, right?”

Frank laughs as they depart The Seahorse Saloon. “Might as well hit ’em all, eh, pardner?”

[ 75 ]

In the filthy hovel of his rented room in a Miami barrio, Slice delights in his control over the assassin. Pynchon is a pawn at his command. The New God’s dominion is absolute. All he has to do is concentrate, bring that blue fire in his mind into laser-like focus, & the zombie with a Zombie does his bidding. & the best part is, I feel what the zombie feels. His finger pulled the trigger but it was me blowing away those two chumps. & now I’m gonna fuck the luscious Lucy Nation with his cock, then we’ll cut her up & feed her to the sharks.

Slice’s penis is leaking a blue serum-like substance but he pays no special attention to this. His mind is in Pynchon’s skull, moving Pynchon’s strong body toward the lair of the rich bitch cunt aboard Hellraiser. “I’ll show you how to raise real Hell,” he says aloud.

“Ahh so oo ow to aise eel el,” Pynchon says as he bursts into Lucy’s stateroom.

She jumps to her feet, spilling her glass of scotch-on-the-rocks, & says, “What the hell are you doing here? You’re supposed to be—”

He gives her a hard backhand across the jaw.

The harsh slap echoes through the opulently appointed velvet-&-satin of the cabin like cheap sound effects in a Kung Fu grade Z quick flick with a budget one snow-jolt short of a full kilo…

She falls backwards over the bed, her legs sprawling aslant so that her transparent panties are visible in the soft light of the cabin. “You son of a bitch,” she hisses, “what’s wrong with you?” She rubs her stinging jaw & notices the blood stains on Pynchon’s shirt.

He is leering at her, unzipping his slacks, licking his lips with a hideous tongue.

“Look here, Pynchon, if you think this turns me on, you’re crazy. Now get your ass out of here right now…”

He pulls his cock out of his pants & pulls his pistol from his shoulder holster. Leaning over the bed, he probes the lips of her sex with the silencer-fitted muzzle of the Zombie.

In the barrio hovel Slice chuckles & says, “Juicy Lucy.”

“Dewcy ‘ucy,” says Pynchon.

Lucy knows she has only seconds before he sticks that gun barrel inside her. As a diversion she says, “I don’t want that, I want you inside me.” She cocks her knee as if opening herself wider in lewd invitation, then rams the ball of her foot as hard as she can into the soft, vulnerable glandmeat of his testicles. With her left hand she grabs the gun, bending it with such force that his trigger finger snaps with the unmistakable sound of breaking bone. The stainless-steel-nailed fingers of her free hand slash out, glinting coldly under the pale wash of the stateroom’s incandescent lighting, slicing five deep parallel gashes across the assassin’s right cheek, splattering them both in a hot shower of bloodrain droplets… The gun slips out of his hand, & he doubles up & falls on the bed. Lucy seizes it & rolls off the bed, landing on one knee & pointing the gun at Pynchon’s head.

Feeling searing pain in his groin & face & finger, Slice thrashes on his sweat-soaked mattress, holding both hands to his vicariously-injured crotch. He pulls back a little from Pynchon’s mind, & wills his pain to go away…

««—»»

Pynchon lifts his face to the woman with the gun, & an expression of confusion appears there. Through clouds of pain it dawns on him that this is no dream. It is a living nightmare. & in that dawning he becomes aware once again of the devastating presence within him.

This dawning is The Dawn of the Dead, not the rosy reassurance of morning. The Blue of mourning, he thinks… Then a blue fog blows in & blots out everything…

A thousand questions are running through Lucy’s mind. As much as she wants to kill this bastard, she wants her questions answered even more. She keeps the gun targeted on him as she picks up her phone. She knows her so-called bodyguards must be dead, so she has to call for backup, then call Professor. Maybe he knows what the Hell is going on.

Having isolated & disposed of his pain, Slice fingers his cock, this time noticing the blue discharge oozing from the tip of his penis, but he doesn’t stop to ponder this new phenomenon. He grins & proceeds to carry out his new plan.

“Don’t move,” Lucy orders. “Unless you want to die.” She calls an unlisted number. It is answered after the first ring. “Send the backup team to my yacht, & a cleanup crew. I think I’ve got a wet scene here.”

She watches in disbelief as Pynchon stands up on the bed & begins to masturbate. He rolls his mutilated tongue around his lips & makes ape-like noises. “Stop that, you crazy son of a bitch,” Lucy says sharply, holding the Zombie with both hands.

Pynchon suddenly leaps off the bed, flying toward her. She squeezes the trigger. There is an abrupt ffftt, & the slug hits Pynchon in the chest. He falls to the floor at her feet, crumpling as if in SloMo. Lucy backs away. Pynchon looks up at her with a warped grin, & crawls toward her legs, reaching for her. She squeezes off another shot. Ultra-close range: ffftt… Cool blue as dripping icicles.

The 9mm slug shatters the bridge of Pynchon’s nose, spraying fragments of bone/cartilage/flesh in an obscene rotten-tomato burst that flashes split-second reminiscences of total-grossout H.G. Lewis’ mega-gore, his face implodes as the 9mm literally blows his mind, the battered & foreshortened slug exiting via the back of his brain-pan, fragging the room with bloody rinds of skull & chunks of grey matter drenched in pools of crimson but eerily glowing with neo-Dayglo traceries of kinetic blue, sizzling & crackling on some subliminal wavelength of perception, far below the radar range of rational thought…

“Jesus Christ,” Lucy Nation whispers.

Then, regaining her legendary permafrost composure, she adds aloud (stoking her own bravado…?): “Shame about that jacket—top-grade Argentinean cowhide & the finest custom tailoring that dago craftsmanship can offer…” Lucy bends over the corpse of the assassin, tugging wistfully at the butter-soft leather of his right lapel. “…& I went & drilled a hole right through the motherfucker!”

Lucy lets go of the corpse’s collar & unbends, straightening herself until she’s standing upright, surveying the aftermath of the devastation. “Gonna be one Helluva cleaning bill for this goddamn bloodbath, too, you can bet your ass on that—”

She smooths the filmy, translucent fabric of her crumpled blood-spattered negligee with her slender, stainless-steel-nailed fingers, acting out a subconscious ritual of tidying…

“Sort of a new wrinkle to what you said Rupert told you the other day, about ‘Whenever you’re around there’s a shitstorm brewing… & something about a goddamn bloodbath when he doesn’t see you…?’”

At the moment of Pynchon’s death, Slice pulls all the way out, having no wish to experience the flight of the assassin’s soul. He stands & goes to the dirty mirror on the wall. No sweat that he underestimated Lucy Nation. He will deal with her in person. She saved him the trouble of killing Pynchon, didn’t she?

He studies the face in the mirror. Blue splotches have appeared on his face & chest. One of the splotches on his face is raised, tinted bluish-purple like a particularly vicious blood blister. He touches the blister with a fingertip. No pain. I’m changing on the outside, too. Good. A God should look like a God. Fucking A!

[ 76 ]

Hawkes & Rios stumble into Metro-Dade Police HQ, trying heroically to avoid broadcasting an APB to the night-watch staff that their current operational capacity is a readout at DUI equivalent. Frank checks his Rolex. It’s 11:02. In double image.

Rios is faring only slightly better.

Both feel the urgent need for showers & a change of clothes. They reek of smoke & sweat & beer. But that’s no problem. It’s the sense of bone-deep dirt, a stale sliminess like morning-mouth but crusting every inch of skin of hair of nails: the festering psychosomatic pus that their passage through the gauntlet of local sleaze pits & kinko clubs has induced by contagion. Sodom & Gomorrah Revisited. In rainbow neon. In a slithering ever-midnight fastlane of black leather, freshly oiled & spiked & studded. In a sideshow riot of freaks & geeks & carnal carnies & hype hucksters & rat-brained rubes of every unimaginable perversion & persuasion…

In their passage has also been seeded a bonding. Somewhere along this six-lane psycho highway between the signposts of Aphrodite’s Bearded Clam Dive & Rattan Ranch & Zorba’s Greek Escorts, the false skin of formality has been shed—

“Drop the ‘Mister’ shit, will you— Makes me feel like an old man. Call me ‘Frank’ or ‘Hawkes’ or ‘Hawk.’ Anything but ‘Mr. Hawkes’…”

“Sorry…Frank.”

[ 77 ]

Rupert leads the rube, this cracked-out Heavy Metal wacko in his badboy black leathers, down into the subterranean pleasure pit of Mermaid’s Inn. “I’ve gotta attend to a recent checkout—” Rupert tells this high-wired hearse-heaping handjob artist.

He motions to the brute with the shaved head & mascara & purple eyeshadow who just flowed out of nowhere. He looks like some demented, skull-shaved gene-splice between G. G. Allin, Marilyn Manson & Genesis P-Orridge… “Hey BellaDonald, show our own Mr. Death, here, to THE CHRIS WILDER ROOM, okay—”

“Man, that’s pretty fuckin’ tacky, Dude, y’know, like I can dig this shit! Y’knowwhatImean…?” so-eloquently articulates this self-styled theatric Mr. Death. Death Burns. Satanic Deathrocker of the chart-bustin’ thrice-gold-record’ed Wicked King Wicker, lead singer & composer of such family (Manson, maybe…?) favorites as “Cum-on BA-B Lite My Pyre” & “Na-Palm Nannies” & “Burnt Orphans O-vr & E-Z.”

(a classic punk, straight out of The Undertaker & His Pals)

“Yeah. Tacky. That’s choice. Real choice.” The brutish BellaDonald giggles in a glass-shattering falsetto, “P-unnn-yyyyy! I like that almost as much as the one Rupert always tells me: ‘Is it live? or is it Mammary-wrex…?’ He just can’t go in the JERRY BRUDOS ROOM without wisecracking about it—”

“Don’t tell me, Dude— that’s where y’ do all yr tit-jobs, ain’t it—? Brudos wz th’ fucker that kept fuckin’ up his plastic knocker paperweights. Right? Like I’m not fuckin’ stupid, I mean I’m inta this shit. I read about it…”

BellaDonald leads the crack-snapped lead six doors down the corridor, & opens an iron door on the left. They seem to wade through oceanic depths in the slow-pulsing flicker of cobalt blue light.

“There she is, the girl of your dreams—” the brute says, pointing to the skinny little Cuban cooze dressed in a white cheerleader’s outfit. The sweatshirt is emblazoned: “BLUE DEVILS.” The pleated skirt is the shortest the fastlane-jaded Mr. Death has ever seen—the flared hemline doesn’t even come close to covering her barely hair-fringed pubes. Her wrists & ankles are manacled. She’s chained with her limbs forming a crude “X” suspended from floor to ceiling.

“Hey, Bitch, you always hang out like that—?” Mr. Burns is quite elated at his sudden flair for double entendre.

“SsssEEEeeittt! Dude! Where th’ fuck you getcher extras—Fidel Castro Junior High—? I know that little twat sure ain’t gettin’ paid scale! & she goddamnwell as fuck ain’t no Tom Savini F/X special!”

“May we recommend—” says BellaDonald, & gestures like some brain-burned maitre D’ to the small table just to the side of the spread-eagled youngster. The circular top is made of translucent blue glass. & the pedestal is a slender & seductive mermaid, sculpted from a single chunk of polished bone. There is a silver tray on the table, with an even half-dozen tubes of SUPER GLUE.

“Go ahead, Kid—get yr fingers sticky!”

“OOOoohhhhhhhh! Holy fuckin’ SHIT, Dude! I’ve always wanted to do some little prick-teasin’ groupie… JUST LIKE THAT—”

“No fuckin’ wonder you fuckin’ charge six big bills for this!” Death says, lifting the girl’s sweatshirt up around her outsplayed shoulders, exposing her small, budding breasts with their large, dark, fear-swollen nipples.

“Some guys start with their lil’ sweetheart’s mouth or eyelids,” Rupert comments. (He’s just entered the room unnoticed in all of the excitement.) He pauses for emphasis: “Other guys like to start by gluing her cunt lips shut.”

“Now, there’s some glue sniffin’ I could really get into!” says badass Mr. Death.

“Had one guy with a real knack for it—managed to seal & peel some sixteen-year-old runaway I think it was forty-six or forty-seven times, him & a coupla buddies slidin’ it to her in between…”

“That’s what y’ call ‘RAW SEX’ by friggin’ Jeee-Zusss n’ Mary!” BellaDonald quips to the rube.

“Hhheeeee. Hheeeee. HHhhheeEEEEE!” Death Burns is comin’ apart at the seams, the eggshell of his sanity cracked as a stoned Humpty Dumpty. He’s got his hand down deep in his leathers, playin’ pocket pool with that jutting cue stick.

“Yeah, ‘RAW SEX’—” the brute echoes, giving Mr. Looneytoons in Leather another deliberate push off that narrow brick wall of SANITY…

Rupert continues, “…before she finally kicked from the shock & trauma! Fuckin’ amazing shit happens around here!” The girl screams. An Ella Fitzgerald imitation. Very convincing. Authentic although purely accidental. So piercing that the blue glass top of the table shatters…

“I’d start with her mouth,” BellaDonald advises sagely.

The room flickers, a chuckle of savage shimmering blue…

[ 78 ]

The two detectives, private & public, have just collapsed into the chairs in Rios’ office when the phone starts jangling angrily. “Yeah. Rios,” the public detective answers.

The voice on the other end is loud enough that Frank can catch the gist of the conversation via the bleedthrough erupting from the receiver: “This is Lucas. Any luck?”

“No Captain, the evening was great orientation for Mr.…uhhh, Frank, but a washout on any solid leads—”

“Hold on. Are you sittin’ down…? One of my boys just turned some hopped-up perv who rolled over when we threatened nailing him with Possession With Intent To Sell & letting him unjuice cold turkey. He’s total ‘no-dice’ as a suspect in the homicides, but copped to having frequented some sub-subterranean sleaze pit that we’ve caught whispers of from time to time, but NOBODY in Vice has ever zeroed in on with a ‘confirmed’ status.”

“Heh, Captain, I haven’t heard you this wired since—”

“If it’s true, it’s BIG, Rios, REAL BIG—”

“Some sex club? A bar? Shit, Captain, Frank & I must’ve hit every dump in this city, tonight… I mean, just how big is BIG?”

“Rios, ever hear of some place named ‘Mermaid’s Inn’—?”

“C’mon, Cap, that place is some freakin’ legend they whisper about to spook the new recruits…”

“Mermaid’s Inn…?” Frank mumbles to himself, “Mermaid’s Inn…? Where in the Hell have I heard that name before…?”

“Rios, I’ve got a gut feeling on this one. & you know my gut feelings. I think we’ve got a live one on the hook this time…he’s just got too much. & it may be cliché, but where there’s smoke there’s usually fire…”

…& why in Blue Blazes do I feel like someone just walked across my grave…? Frank ponders.

[ 79 ]

AN ENDLESS, MIND-SHATTERING SCREAM ECHOES THROUGH THOSE PORTIONS OF THE MATRIX THAT ARE DEFINED IN SHIMMERING WALLS & UPTHRUST CRAGS OF NEON-FLICKERING COLD BLUE ICE…

& somewhere within the MATRIX, the cold analytical “fingers” of an unknown “someone” begin to riffle through the “pages” of data, accessing the knowledge banks belonging to the man known only as “The Professor” or “Professor Punk”…

This is a soulless Limbo-world of “pure” info/data… A repository for the billions upon billions of “info-blips” that a previously physical or mental system of storage was responsible for maintaining… In many ways CHAOTIC & UNUNIFIED… That is, before the genesis of MATRIX… A world defined in terms of Man’s convenient jargonese: RAM. BYTES, MEGABYTES. GIGABYTES. PIXELS. AIs…

(or did it, in some inexplicable fashion already exist…? A world totally devoid of conSCIENCE, truly beyond GOOD & EVIL… A world existing by common conSENSUS only because MAN has created it to transcend the limitations of his only-partially-tapped, only-partially-explored BRAIN & if the collective science of MAN has yet only mapped a portion of that which is possibly the most truly human, the human BRAIN, then what strange dimensions may yawn open through these opened gates of the MATRIX, new gates even to the realms of Heaven or of hELL

7734.

Some things simply happen. Some things must forever remain unexplained. Some things must simply be accepted or rejected—for to seek out the reason or reasons behind them can lead only to confusion, or, if prolonged beyond the limit that Reason dictates logically for their attempted interpretation, into shrieking gibbering coprophagous uri-dipsic mindlessly babbling INSANITY—

7734.

fugue (fug), n. <Fr.> 1. in music, a polyphonic composition constructed on one or more short subjects or themes, which are harmonized according to the laws of counterpoint, and introduced by the various instruments or voices in succession with various contrapuntal devices.

2. in psychiatry, a state of psychological amnesia during which a patient seems to behave in a conscious and rational way, although upon return to normal consciousness he cannot remember the period of time nor what he did during it; temporary flight from reality.

7734.

Les 120 Journees de Sodome (The 120 Days of Sodom), the notorious masterpiece of sexual & moral perversity was penned by Count Donatien-Alphonse-François de Sade—for the annals of history known simply as “the Marquis de Sade”—on a roll of paper some twelve metres (thirty-nine feet) long during his incarceration in the Bastille in Paris, expressing the inspired madness of the rage & boredom building within him during the seven-odd years spent in a succession of penal instituions—ironically, legend has it that those selfsame twelve metres of paper had originally been supplied to him for the purpose of cleaning himself of excrement…

7734.

blue, n. (M.E. blew, blewe; Fr. bleu; O.H.G. blao, blue; A.S. blaew, in deriv. as blaewen, bluish.)

1. any color between green and violet in the spectrum;…

4. the sea.

9. a sailor.

10. (pl.) a sailor’s blue uniform. (Slang.)

the blues; (a) (short for blue devils.), (Colloq.) a depressed, unhappy feeling; (b) a type of Negro folk song, characterized by minor harmony, slow jazz rhythm, and melancholy words; (c) any imitation of this.

blue, a.; comp. bluer; superl. bluest. 1. having the color of the clear sky or the deep sea.

2. despondent; melancholy; low or depressed in spirits; as, she looked a bit blue last night.

4. austere or puritanical in morals or religion; overstrict; as a blue Covenanter; also, calculating or prescribing a severe code of conduct; rigorous; as, blue laws.

6. having a purplish color; livid, as the skin from a bruise or from extreme cold or fear.

8. pale, without glare or redness, as a flame; of the color of burning brimstone; hence, suggestive of the flames of Hell; baleful; as, the air was blue with oaths.

9. Indecent, obscene; as, blue stories. (Slang.)

blue devils; (a) low spirits; melancholy; (b) delirium tremens or its hallucinations.

7734.

dev’il, n. (ME. devil; AS. deoful; LL. diabolus, the devil; Gr. diabolos, the devil, lit. a slanderer, from dia-, through, across, and ballein, to throw.)

1. (sometimes D-) in theology, (a) the chief Evil spirit, a supernatural being subordinate to, and the foe of, god and the tempter of man; Satan (with the) he is typically depicted as a man with horns, a tail, and cloven feet; (b) any of such subordinate beings who reside in Hell; a demon.

2. a very wicked person,

Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? —John vi. 70.

3. any great Evil

To be tax’d, and beaten is the devil. —Granville.

5. an unlucky, unhappy person; as that poor devil has had a hard time.

6. anything difficult; a thing hard to operate or, control, etc.

between the devil and the deep; between equally unpleasant alternatives.

the devil’s tattoo; a monotonous, rapid, drumming, as with the hands or feet.

7734.

AN ENDLESS, MIND-SHATTERING SCREAM ECHOES THROUGH THOSE PORTIONS OF THE MATRIX THAT ARE DEFINED IN SHIMMERING WALLS & UPTHRUST CRAGS OF NEON-FLICKERING COLD BLUE ICE

(hip acronym for “Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics”),

VIBRATING ON DEMONIC WAVELENGTHS OF THE SUB-or-SUPER-CONSCIOUS, IT FORMS THE DEVIL’S TATTOO, THEN THE FIRST CHORDS OF AN INSANE DEATH SYMPHONY JOIN IN, HINTING OF SWELLING OCEANIC BREAKERS OF EBB/FLOW/EBB BEYOND THE CONCEIVABLE RANGE OF TONES & SHADES & TINTS OF BLUE, THE POINT & COUNTERPOINT OF A DEVILISH DUET ECHOING & ETCHING ITS FORM WITHIN THE CANYONS OF ARCANE PROTECTION AROUND THE CITADEL OF PROF. PUNK’S DATA REPOSITORY…

(perhaps released through the agency of Prof. Punk’s own formula—the BLUE DEVIL serum, Li Di 9…?)

7734.

Professor Punk tosses & turns on his cot in the lab. His uneasy sleep is tormented by strange nightmarish jumpcuts & juxtapositions of text from his dictionary program & “SERIALK” & flashbacks to his early days at UCLA, when his lifeline had been tossed into this surging SEA of BLUE of pain-pleasure of sex & torture & mutilation & death-the-mystical-doorway into the womb of the succubus into the place where Hell invades earth, marked by human spillage exploding entrails sacrificial cannon fodder smoldering gore headless torsos…glory of war &

(ONCE AGAIN—how many times? how many times…) He explodes in a deathless profusion of semen & blood & the succubus sucks him dry, his soul shriveling geometrically with each thick spurt & beat of pulse—

the endless ringing of a telephone somewhere in the swirling storm-tossed BLUE SEA of the DEVIL SERUM progression waves crashing across his pounding skull like some atrocious atomic-blasted atoll rocked by the shockwaves of unleashed fury—Li Di 1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…

THIRTY YEARS & MORE DISSOLVED INTO THE SWIRLING BLUE MISTS OF HISTORY OF PAIN & DEATH IN THE PURSUIT OF A SINGLE OBSESSIVE EXPERIMENT…The Nine Hells…

the endless ringing of a telephone somewhere—

Prof. Punk plunges surfaceward through the nightmare tides of his own private oceanic Hell of BLUE… & he is washed up on the beach or beachhead (?) of chill & crumpled sweat-soaked & semen-stained sheets, reaching groggily for the sound of his incessantly ringing phone—

His hands fumble with the receiver, almost dropping it before he can raise it to his ear—

“Hhhuuul1lOwhhhhh…?” he groans.

Prof. Punk pauses for a moment, letting his mind reel with shockwaves of revelation, his face blanching grey-white as his soiled bedsheets, his hands & arms shuddering like a petit mal has seized him, his bare toes tapping a devil’s tattoo of sick sweating terror—

“P.P.P.YNCHON? D.D.D.EAD— (?),” he stutters, disbelief acid-etched into his gaunt & angular features—

LOOKING MORE & MORE LIKE A HOLOCAUST VICTIM WITH EACH SECOND TICKING ECHOING RAUCOUSLY FROM HIS BATTERED TIMEX JITTERING & PULSING ON THE CHIPPED GREY METAL TABLE RIGHT BESIDE THE CRADLE OF THE PHONE & AS HE STARES AT THE TICKING TIMEPIECE LIKE SOME INFERNAL INCENDIARY DEVICE IT BEGINS TO MELT & DRIP IN SIZZLING DROPLETS OF BLUE SLAG…

[ 80 ]

Schuyler from lockup is a real piece of work. Frank sure as shit hopes he’s not one of Miami’s finest. His gut wobbles within his bulging khaki shortsleeve like twin jeep tires bouncing at his midriff, He must be six-foot-four. Maybe three-seventy-five worth of mostly excess baggage. The seat of his trousers reminds Frank of two midgets fighting in a gunny sack.

But the shiny black truncheon that’s hanging at his waist means business with a capital “B”—for BIG. BAD. BRAIN-BASHER. The goddamn thing must be the size of an axe-handle.

When Schuyler turns to face Hawkes & Rios, the buttons of his shirtfront threaten to pop at any moment. His flushed face & mean, squinty little pig eyes & unruly thatch of Aryan-white hair make him look like a cross between a shaved, psycho Santa & some stock bullyboy from a Nazi extermination camp grown gargantuan on a surplus of greasy sausages & Bavarian bock beer.

His blubbery fist fumbles with his key ring, finds the correct key, & inserts it in the lock of the holding cell.

“Get the lead outta yr ass, you FUCK!” he bellows to the emaciated hype in the metal cage. “IT’S VISITIN’ TIME AT THE ZOO—”

[ 81 ]

Thunder in heaven, lightning in Hell.

The New God moves between the two, testing his new powers, bridging opposite extremes, picturing himself as a great constellation in the blue/black heavens—burning holes in the firmament & shortcircuiting natural power sources & causing Hell to leak into heaven. Blue lightning flashes jagged daggers across the sky. & Slice sprouts a boner. He sees the future. His future. The past is the rotting corpse of humanity. The present is his murderous hardon, giving direction & heading for release. Slice—the name he keeps because he digs the symbolism—is in a rapture of heavenly/Hellish BLUE. His vision slices the invisible fabric & reveals the future: countless stars dripping blood as heaven burns red in a great bloodbath.

Slice stares at the purple-tinted moon, finding meaning in the patterns of pockmarks & craters. The moon is his messenger, killing is the message. He closes the vintage ’60s blue sharkskin raincoat that he salvaged from a nearby Goodwill outlet over his boner; then moves on, into the Miami night, half-remembering half-scenting the way to Mermaid’s Inn, the pheromones of fear & feeding-frenzy released in turn by prey & predators drawing him unerringly onward like a primal magnetic force, like the pull of moon on tidal waters & the creatures lurking within its cold, cruel depths…

[ 82 ]

Schuyler slams his prisoner down into the straight-backed interrogation chair. “Got some’a the big shots here to see ya’, puke face, so listen up & lay yr scam on ’em so’s I can tuck ya’ in t’night ’stead’a some big-tit bimbo nurse down in th’ infirm’ry—”

“You’re dismissed, Schuyler, until further notice. Go read your stroke books or something,” Rios says, staring the brutal giant square in the eyes. “Just get the Hell out of my face before I forget you’re supposed to be on our side…” He gently pats his shoulder-holstered S&W “Distinguished Combat” Magnum, hoping to make himself perfectly clear. Like the conservative cut of his light tan suit, this little beauty is a work of understated reliability & excellence—a conventional double-action six-pack in the strong yet compact “L” solid frame, with a four-inch blued steel barrel, & packing its deadly, non-reg, .357 hollowhead payload.

Frank positions himself directly across from the hophead, who’s sitting on the opposite side of the fake-woodgrain formica table, letting his gaze wander everywhere except into contact with the detective’s piercing stare.

“If you’ve got something to tell us, pal, you’d better square with us, & fast; otherwise I turn Killer Kraut loose with you & just call out for the boys with the body bags—dig?” Frank pauses a moment, letting his words sink slowly through the rapidly fading haze of smack. “Like the song goes, ‘It’s now or never…’”

[ 83 ]

Professor Punk pounds his pud, trying to summon the succubus for the purpose of acquiring supernatural guidance through these dangerous times. He has not forgotten Slice’s vow to “do” him. He has already shit-canned the idea of running away. If Erebos didn’t track him down, Slice & his mind-fucking powers certainly would. Either way, he would be a dead man. Either way, he is a dead man. A dead man still breathing. A dead man still waking from his own personal repository of nightmares & dreams. A dead man still walking. Still shooting up. Still shitting. Still pissing. Still…

…still feeding on his fellow men: like any other plastic/plastique ZOMBIE or DEMON in this endless-loop replay of outtake footage cut (NO. Sliced…) from BEYOND the BLUE EXTREME, from some Romero/Argento classic that never filmed… Either way… His best bet is to throw up defenses against the Blue Devil Killer. Perhaps, lure the son-of-a-bitch into a trap & destroy the monster.

Prof. Punk needs a sign from the succubus. He’s already dropped a cube of Sandoz-pure. But the succubus still won’t come to him.

Maybe if he does a little carving on himself, his blood will attract her. Nothing to lose by trying, & the pain would be kinda nice, sure as Hell. He takes the ritual sword in both hands & uses the point on his naked thighs. The pain & the sight of his own blood gives him a new erection. Then he stares into the candle flame in hopes of seeing the succubus appear.

[ 84 ]

“Shit, man, that fuckin’ place’s a Hell hole,” the emaciated smackhead confesses to Hawkes & Rios, “& I know Hell holes, beee-lieve me…”

“Can you take us there?” Rios asks.

“Oooohhhh, nooohhh, man, y’ don’t wanna fuckin’ do that!” he moans, “No fuckin’ way, man, if they find out I took y’ there, man, they’ll like fuckin’ do me, y’ know…?”

“Listen up, punk,” Rios warns, “you’ve got two choices—either take us there, or we turn you over to the DA, & with your rap sheet, Mr. Jones, they’re gonna lock you up & toss away the key! No snow for you this Christmas, just a Halloween with no tricks or treats, & more cold turkey for Thanksgiving—”

They’ve been giving him the slow sweat, &, though they’ve only been at it for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, the junkie’s starting to come unglued. Can’t take the stress. Not without his number. He’s got the shakes. Bad. Real bad.

“Okay, okay, man, like don’t fuckin’ say I didn’t fuckin’ warn y’ about this fuckin’ shit, y’ know…?”

“Time to shit or get off the pot—” Frank tells him.

“I only been there a coupla times, y’ know, & like there’s always all this shit happenin’, y’ know? Like shootings & stabbings &…&…the other, shit, man, the other shit…” A trembling Mr. junkie Jones (Jones? sure? an a.k.a. if Frank ever heard one…) breaks down in a predictable flood of needlehead tears, sobbing & choking with whacked-out, momentary remorse, then continues his endless loop of hopelessly rambling discourse: “Like, man, I mean y’ wouldn’t fuckin’ believe it, man, more shootings & stabbings there than—”

“Let’s check it out,” Frank interrupts this nowhere-land monologue. “I think I’ve heard of Mermaid’s Inn, but for the life of me, I can’t remember where I’ve heard of it.”

“Okay, Frank. I’m in. But, from what this guy’s told us so far, I think I’m due to take a leak first. & I’d do the same if I were you! &, for God’s sake, if you’ve got to take a dump, better go now—”

“Huh?”

“Well, I’d advise you not to drain your lizard in the men’s room, there. Sounds like you could catch incurable VD just by looking at a toilet seat.” Frank laughs as they exit the interrogation room with their handcuffed prisoner in tow.

“We’re borrowing him, Schuyler,” Rios tells the guard. “We promise to bring him back in one piece…”

“You can do whatever the fuck you want with that junkie shitface for all I fuckin’ care,” he replies.

[ 85 ]

Slice enters Mermaid’s Inn.

Past the iron-shod door with its fisheye lens.

No money in his right palm. Instead, the bloody sigil of Baphomet that he carves into his flesh there is his rite & right of passage. (He senses the intricate lines of its configuration with visionary clarity, carving it with the unfailing precision of the true artiste…)

As on his previous visit, the air is thick with smoke tendrils of cannabis & hashish & opium, the scent of rum & absinthe prickling his expanded senses, the stink of sour sweat & stale blood a far less subtle essence…

The smell of pain & death & Evil is a tangible thing that fills the head with reeling visions of the Gates of Hell thrown open…

The air swims with flickering BLUE light

Sunglasses hide his wide-open eyes; the raincoat hides his erection. He is sure that his cock has grown a good three inches since Blue Devil first invaded his body & began the transformation. Man into God. Stud into superstud. Goddamn, if it grows much more, I’ll have to tie the beast to my leg.

He is tempted to go downstairs for some bloody recreation in the catacombs, but decides instead to go on up to Professor’s lab. This time it’s business before pleasure, though it is becoming more & more difficult to distinguish between the two. He recognizes Rupert the house dick, & moves through the crowded room, zeroing in on the fat fucking chrome dome son-of-a-bitch.

“Yo, Rupert,” he says as he approaches the man dressed in familiar plaid pants & blood-spattered tie.

Rupert’s mouth forms an ‘O’ of surprise, & he reaches a hand inside his coat. Slice catches Rupert’s wrist before the dick can pull his cannon out of his shoulder rig.

“Let’s go for a ride in the elevator,” Slice says. His voice is a deep rasp. “Be nice & I won’t fuck you up. This time.”

Rupert uses his key to open the elevator door. Slice pushes him into the box-like compartment, then follows him in.

“Butchered any kids lately?” Slice inquires, smiling. Rupert shakes his bald head, hoping that’s the answer Slice wants.

“Why not? A man needs his recreation, right?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Rupert’s mouth is dry as dust-choked cotton.

“You know, it’s not easy for me to stand here talking to shit like you. It takes real effort & a lot of fucking energy to stay down here on your scum-sucking level. I know you can’t understand this with your underdeveloped maggot brain, but I am fucking God. Take that any way you can.”

Slice grins. Rupert notices the splotches on his face.

“You’re good at that, right, Rupert? Taking shit any way you can? Taking the lives of little cunts you lure in from the street. I know all about you, you fat fuck. All about your snuff flicks, your side business. Well, Rupert, I don’t think you’re worthy of killing all those sweet young cunts—”

Rupert stares at this man-monster, Slice, a look of total disbelief written in bold print across his newspaper-pale face. “So who the fuck do y’ think you are? Fucking Robin fuckin’ Hood, or Zorro or some shit—?” he snarls under his breath.

“They’re wasted on a pig like you! You don’t know how to commune with their dying souls. You can’t appreciate that killing is like fucking. Death is the ultimate fuck—”

The elevator yo-yos to a halt. Rupert is weighing his chances of survival if he goes for his gun. Maybe Slice wants him to go for his piece, maybe that’s why he didn’t disarm him. Or maybe he’s so crazy he’s fearless. The maniac’s running his mouth like a speed freak. The elevator door slides open.

Professor Punk jumps to his feet, naked & holding a sword in both hands.

Rupert goes for his gun. He gains a split-second of surprise as Slice/Pynchon’s mnemonic data banks ID it as a Chinese Type 64 assassination pistol: the bulbous, nose-heavy construction of its barrel with the integral silencer a dead giveaway.

Real dead.

Rupert loses his serendipitous split-second lead by fumbling the selector bar in the upper portion of the slide back from extreme left into its right-hand position—disengaging the bolt from the lugs in the breech, opting for blowback semi-auto vs. ultra-silenced…

Slice slams his elbow back into Rupert’s face, then spins around to snatch the .32 special-chambered out of his fat fist.

The gun spits three times, close range

Three of the .765 X 17mm rimless cartridges hit Rupert’s forehead. The low-velocity loads may trade a bit of ass-kicking for assassination silent, but they sure as fuck pack enough wallop in-tight, ripping open triple black holes in his bulging brow. Their impact smacks him back against the side of the elevator, & the house dick slides to the floor, leaving a blood-slime trail on the thin wall…

Slice spins around to face Professor Punk, who stands like a statue of a beaten warrior, ready to surrender his sword.

“Professor…” Slice levels the gun on the naked man’s genitals. “Good to see you.”

Prof. Punk makes incoherent sounds with his mouth. The sword slips from his hands & clatters to the floor.

“Get dressed,” Slice commands. “Your frail body disgusts me.”

He slips into a long lab coat. “What do you want?”

“More Blue Devil.”

“You’ve already had more than any of the other human subjects. If you take any more, it could kill you.”

“Bullshit, Professor. I was born for this stuff. Don’t you realize what’s happening here? What I’ve become? No, of course you don’t. Your mind is almost as weak as your body. I know where the formula came from & it sure as Hell wasn’t your little mind.”

“Y-Y-Yes, but it could still be fatal if—”

“Don’t waste my time,” Slice raises his voice. “Load up a syringe & sock it to me.”

Professor does as he is told. Slice sticks Rupert’s gun into the pocket of his raincoat. Still five shots left…

“Who would’ve imagined such an evolutionary leap would come from a chemical formula? Yeah, ‘living better through chemistry,’ as the flower-power punks appropriated. But this leap is totally consciousness-expanding— this is a leap from man to God! But I’ve reached a plateau, & I need to continue the transformation—”

Professor retrieves his last ampule of the secret Li Di 9 serum from its repository in the battered Coldspot fridge, racks up a nearby needle-&-plunger rig, takes Slice’s arm & injects the blue liquid into his vein. “This is the last of the batch,” he says.

“You will mix up a new batch. Immediately. As long as you are useful to me, I’ll let you live…”

“I’ll start right away.”

“Of course you will. How long will it take?”

“I can have it ready in two days.”

“I’ll be back. & don’t try any tricks with me. I can probe your mind at will, & I’ll know if you’re up to something.”

“How well I know,” says Professor, still holding the empty syringe in his bony fingers.

“Get rid of that pile of shit,” Slice tells him, pointing at Rupert’s body. His blood has pooled on the elevator floor.

[ 86 ]

“Say, Rios, there’s something I’ve been wondering since I was a kid. How in the Hell would you fuck a mermaid…?” asks Frank, in a jovial mood for the first time in days.

Rios unlocks the passenger door of his Plymouth, then looks across the top of the car at Frank. “Any way you want to, as long as you don’t get finned…”

“Hah-hah-hah, that’s good,” laughs Frank, “but I’m not sure I could get past the scales & the fish smell.”

“Heh, fish is fish—” Rios adds, as he opens his car door, &, donning the long tan trench coat that had been folded over the seatback, he retrieves the Luigi Franchi SPAS Model 12 that he keeps secreted beneath the seat.

Frank whistles admiringly. “Nice!”

“If you want stopping power in a close-range confrontation,” Rios says, “this is one sweet little baby twelve-gauge. Eight-round autoshot. At forty meters, it’ll spread a charge to about nine-hundred mm, & you can slam out a good four rounds per second with fifty-percent more punch than a .32 pistol… Shit, Frank, with standard buckshot loadings, you can put forty-eight pellets per second into a one-meter target… & it’ll take solid slug as well as plastic-walled CS gas containers that’ll range to one-hundred-fifty meters…”

Rios attaches the short-range shot spreader to the muzzle.

“Can’t beat this little gadget for shooting fish in a barrel—” Rios quips. “We’ll blow the scales clean off ’em.”

A minute later they are on their way to Mermaid’s Inn.

[ 87 ]

Back aboard Hellraiser—the yacht has been cleaned up, painted & the bullet holes in the walls have been patched up since the slaughter of Pynchon & her worthless security guards— Ms. Nation picks up the phone, & calls Professor Punk.

“Yeah?” he answers in a tired voice.

“Professor, you were supposed to call me.”

“I…I’ve been busy making a new batch of Blue Devil. I lost track of time.”

“You’ll lose more than that if you aren’t careful,” she says. “Have you had any contact with our quarry?”

“No. But I’m sure he’ll probe my mind before he shows up.”

“Well, you know what to do as soon as you finish your work on the formula.”

“Yes, of course. I just hope to Hell it works.”

“It has to work, Professor. You do your part, we’ll do ours.”

“Right.”

Lucy hangs up the phone & lights a cigarette. She exhales smoke & smiles to herself. The plan calls for Professor to heavily medicate himself with a hypnotic drug to induce deep sleep. Should Slice probe his mind while he is drugged out, Slice will learn nothing from Professor’s conscious mind, & therefore won’t know about the trap set to catch him when he comes for the Blue Devil. What Professor doesn’t know is that Lucy’s men will inject him with extra medication after he is asleep. He will be given so much of the drug that he will be in a light coma. No way Slice can learn anything from a comatose mind.

[ 88 ]

Rios parks the Plymouth on a nearly deserted stretch of pavement in the midst of Little Havana. In a maze of razed buildings & tiny shops with iron-barred windows. It could be most any inner city. Except for the distant roar of surf & the scattered silhouettes of palm trees swaying beneath the tropic moon.

Perhaps it is some odd trick of optics. But tonight the full moon seems to burn with a cold blue nightmare radiance.

“End of the bus tour, boys,” Rios says. “Welcome to the war zone. From here on out it’s a long hike into Hell…”

They pass by a few stragglers. A group of bandits barely out of grade school closing a crack deal with some shark-faced Latino pusher. Two parrot-gaudy putas bumping & grinding to a Walkman blaring salsa rhythms, shaking ass at every male who passes by. A ragged wino puking on the pavement of the sidewalk. Teen entrepreneurs from Midnite Auto stripping the wire wheels off a purple-metal-flaked Chevy, while the streetside Casanova within is rockin’ n’ rollin’ the shocks off his lowrider, humping his way into the homestretch with some un-virgin Mary or Maria, a señorita of obviously very easy virtue. (Ergo, both driver & passenger are getting screwed…)

Mr. Jones doesn’t know what’s happening for sure, but he knows he needs to fix before the cold sweats & cramping hit him. Frank carries his kit like a hidden carrot. The junkie can sniff the promise of sweet oblivion. Great motivation. He hauls ass down the alleyway as fast as his rubber-legged gait can carry him, his balance hampered by the stainless-steel cuffs that clasp his wrists behind his back.

Hawkes & Rios follow, trailing cautiously just a few steps to his rear. The butt of the Luigi Franchi is slung from a strap beneath the concealment of Rios’ trenchcoat. He holds his stubby-barreled Smith & Wesson outthrust in a two-handed, combat-ready stance. Frank carries his razor-honed survival knife in his right hand, & the weight of his “Dirty Harry Special” holstered against his heart is a constant reassurance if real stopping power is required. They stumble onward through the seemingly endless rat warren of littered alleys, the occasional echoing clang of a bumped trashcan or the clatter of a kicked bottle or tin can breaking the tense silence. The stench of rotting garbage & human waste is thick as steaming menudo in the day-heat & humidity still bleeding from the potholed asphalt.

A sudden furtive movement in the shadows, & Rios swings into a frozen shooting stance, his index finger quivering on the trigger.

“Steady,” Frank whispers, his own free left swiftly forcing Rios’ gunhand groundward—it’s only some starving little street kid scrounging supper from a dumpster…

[ 89 ]

Professor Punk puts the tray containing six vials of Li Di 9 into the small refrigerator & says, “All right, motherfucker, come & get your six-pack of Blue Devil.”

(Of course, his speech is rhetoric, as the motherfucker to whom this is addressed is not yet present.)

He rolls up the sleeve of his lab coat & shoots himself up with the hypnotic drug, just as Lucy Nation told him to do. He is very tired, his neck & back ache, & he welcomes the chance for uninterrupted sleep.

He isn’t sure that the sleep medication can prevent the maniac from probing his mind; but at least he feels confident that Lucy Nation’s hit men won’t allow Slice to get to him.

Slice expects the Blue Devil to be ready tomorrow, so he’ll probably attempt the probe tonight— What will he think if he can’t get into my mind? Will he think he is losing his power?

Professor feels the relaxing rush of the hypnotic wash over him, & he walks over to the cot & lies down.

Staring at the ceiling, he thinks of the succubus & his penis rises to a semi-erect state. Sleep creeps over him, & his mind becomes a reflecting pool of black light.

A big man in a flowered shirt & white slacks enters the lab, bends over the sleeping Professor, & injects a full syringe of the hypnotic into Professor’s vein.

“Sweet dreams, asshole,” the man whispers.

[ 90 ]

The alley seems an endless black path through Limbo, trapped somewhere just between the world of everyday events with its rational roots in predictable phenomena answering to the Laws of Physics & the Hellworld of Tartarus, that vast place of gloom & eternal torments…

It reminds Frank, also, of that second thrust ordered by the brass at GHQ—the second thrust doing night recon deep into the too-lush tunnel of jungle trail that encroaching wall of vines & verdure scanned in the visionary glow-patterns of infrared…

“Shit!” Rios curses, “I’ve got some really bad vibes, why in the fuck did we forget to suit up with Kevlar Second Chances—”

Getting my mythologies mixed up, Frank thinks, trying valiantly to calm the jitters, seeking to banish that memory in a complex mantra of useless data— “Limbo” is a concept of the Roman Catholic faith, the word itself Teutonic, meaning “border” or “the place between” or something…

“I dunno, man, like I ain’t really sure,” Jones says, “but I got this feelin’—”

But Rios is the first to confirm a sighting—just ahead, a fisheye lens leaking the barest beam of feeble blue illumination into the pitch-black of the alley.

Just as Frank muses, the Greeks had it all quite different—yeah, according to the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, first we’d’ve spent a thousand years in Elysium as shades, then headed back to earth to inhabit other bodies, after chugaluggin’ a round from the River Lethe to wipe out all our former memories…

Rios unlocks the handcuffs from the junkie’s wrists, & hands him a flash roll of bills to wave. Jones snatches the cash in his tremor twitching left hand, & raises the open palm of his right up before the thin ray of quick-strobing wan blue light…

or face the dread Judge Rhadamanthus, if we were counted among the guilty…

The Demon Sigil of Baphomet glows in delicate purple traceries upon the junkie’s outthrust palm.

Rios quickly holsters his Distinguished Combat Magnum. “How d’ya like that—” he whispers to Frank, “the old ballroom blacklight stamp bit—wonder if they’ve got Grateful Dead posters hangin’ for decor…?”

But Frank is still drifting in the wash of free-associations—in the adamant-walled hall of Hades, lit up with the flaming waves of the river Phlegethon (sounds like a down-home spittin’ contest, don’t it…?), then a whippin’ by the furies before your own personal torment is selected & they toss your ass through the gate of Tartarus & down into the pit of sufferin’ sinners…

Rios rouses Frank from his self-indulgent reveries with a fleeting tap on the forearm, & the brawny detective barely manages to slip his survival knife into its ankle sheath before the iron door of the Mermaid’s Inn swings slowly open…

[ 91 ]

Frank glances down at his Rolex, as he & Rios enter Mermaid’s Inn with their guide. 11:59. Hard to believe it’s been less than an hour since Rios got the call from Lardass Lucas, the thought flashes. How in the Hell could we have done everything we have in only fifty-six minutes…? That just isn’t fucking possible!

He stares at the clock’s face for what seems a span of several moments, then realizes the watch has gone haywire, frozen in the split-second approach to midnight. The exact read is 11:59…:59…

& the sensation hits his head & heart like a sledgehammer—“Devil’s Fucking Valley,” he mumbles.

“What?” asks Rios.

They descend a steep flight of steps as if into the Pit…

Frank’s eyes dart around the big barroom, searching for ghosts or demons. Not since he was in Devil’s Valley has he felt this sense of impending Evil. Not even in the scenes of mayhem & murder that his quarry, the man-monster that he terms “The Beast” has left in the red wake of His passing.

The sensation is so utterly overwhelming, that Frank’s initial impulse is to turn tail & get the Hell out of here, but he can’t allow himself to lose face in front of Rios.

“I’m getting bad fucking vibes from this place,” he tells the young cop. “Just like I had in a Hell hole in Nam. It’s uncanny, man.”

He is forced to lean in close to Rios in order to be heard above the babbling Babel of the motley crowd, this madhouse of the damned where the jumbled snatches of conversation seem at first to be mouthed in the slur of unnumbered tongues…

“I’m not surprised, M… Frank. From what Captain Lucas told me, & from what our, uhhmm, partner Jones has spilled, it sounds like the scum of the earth come here for R&R.”

They make their way to the bar through the swirling smoke of cannabis & opium & hashish drifting like seafog, drawing more than a few furtive stares.

Surprisingly, Frank’s Texas-oil-baron-clone outfit blends into the general milieu with almost the chameleon-blending powers of a true lounge lizard basking in the tainted air of some sleazy casino in Reno or Atlantic City. Just another rich freak seeking out the fulfillment of his sickest fantasies.

Instead, it is some instinctual distrust leaking its scent from Rios’ subconscious or the way his trenchcoat fits him or his cop’s eyes slithering barely concealed hatred that causes heads to turn.

They order three beers from a bartender who looks like a living corpse. Frank is so struck by the surrealistic quality of the place that he thinks he must be on a movie set depicting a barroom in Hell. “These people can’t be for real,” he says. “They look like extras from Night of the Living Dead.”

“Heh, man, y’ain’t seen nothin’, yet, man.” Jones swivels his head back over his left shoulder & whispers to his two companions. “Wait till you see Barnacle Belle’s act, dude, it’ll like blow y’r fuckin’ MIND, man, like it’s fuckin’ sick, but the special effects are fuckin’ GREAT. It gets real fuckin’ bloody!”

“They ought to close this goddamn place down.”

“Well, they’d have to find it first,” Rios says, “something tells me we didn’t just luck out with our buddy, Jones, here just sniffin’ his tracks back to this pit. No. Frank. I’ve got this really weird feeling that the Mermaid’s Inn wanted us to find it tonight—”

Frank starts to mouth a quick dig about Hispanic superstitiousness, but catches himself before he can articulate it—he knows that what Rios says is the bald truth. In its place he merely groans out, “Devil’s Fucking Valley…”

His head throbs & aches with its Evil presence.

“& then, too, the legend has it that its owner is so well-connected to big money & politics that the MPD brass has adopted an unofficial hands off policy,” Rios explains. “The rumors also mention hidden rooms where high-paying customers come to watch young girls get snuffed.”

“You believe it?”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s possible.” Rios takes a big gulp of brew to wash the sudden taste of foulness from his mouth, “I don’t want to believe it.”

“Well, I’ve seen more than a few films…” Frank says. “The snuff action hardcore…” He pauses, his facial muscles twitching with the intensity of his constrained emotion. “There are outlaw biker gangs that fucking specialize in it. Even do up custom orders. Name your preferred age, race, hair color, gender & perversion… & they’ll do you one to fit your most depraved desires. But NOTHING. NOTHING like the scale we’re talking here—”

“You buy that?”

“Rios, I can smell death. I can taste death. I can hear the whimpers & the screams of the tormented like a hound can hear one of those hyper-pitched whistles. Yeah, This is it. This is the real shit, Son. The corner of Dead & Gone Streets—”

“Shit, Frank, lay off, man, you’re givin’ me a case of the goosebumps.”

“Any idea who owns this place?” asks Frank. The bad feeling is not going away, but he’s trying as hard as he can to level out & ignore it.

“Some corporation, maybe. The locker room talk they spook the new recruits with has it that Erebos owns it.”

“Who?”

“Erebos Enterprises, I think it is. They’re supposed to own a Hell of a lot of valuable real estate all over Florida. In Texas, too. So I hear. Oil wells, publishing companies. I would bet a month’s pay that it has ties to the wonderful world of illegal drugs.”

Frank nods, secretly thankful that none of his demons have showed up yet in this Evil inn.

A ship’s bell sounds out the midnight hour. The room hushes. & a tiny click & whir as Frank’s watch suddenly jerks back to life, the second hand spinning to 12:00:… & on past due north to 12:01.

“Now’s when y’get’ta see Barnacle Belle, man! Check this shit out!” Jones whispers. The lights begin to dim. Above the din of catcalls & loud music, Rios says, “After her routine, I’ve got to go. I’m too much of a night owl when I have to work the next morning.”

Frank nods. He’ll be glad to get the Hell out of this place.

But when the blue velvet curtains sway open, there’s a new act tonight: Two huge aquariums have been set up flanking centerstage. Even from the distance at which they stand, they can see the water boiling with bright quick flashes of metal-hued scales, & the light in the room flickers through a spectrum composed solely of nuances of neon-brilliant BLUE…

A tall, skeletal man costumed as a magician or an undertaker stands directly between the two aquariums. He bears a studied resemblance to H.G. Lewis’ Wizard of Gore.

The symbolism is lost on Frank & Rios, but Jones (who’s obviously a man of cultured sensibilities) immediately notes this visual tribute to the films of the notorious “Godfather of Gore.”

“Fuckin’ A. Man. I seen this flick, I know I have, but where’d th’ friggin’ fish tanks come from, man, like I’m reeealll sure those weren’t in the one I seen, or did I f’rget this part or did I just fuckin’ dream this shit or somethin’? No. No. I did see it, man, I fuckin’ know cause I wz with ‘Sadie th’ Lady’ & she got so fuckin’ bummed watchin’ th fuckin’ thing like she went down t’ th fuckin’ john in it wz th’ Presidio Plaza I think, y’know, like in SF, man, like we were like livin’ down in th’ Haight, man, back then &…well…y’know, like where wz I fuckin’ ennyway, huh? & of yeah, she goes down’t th’ fuckin’ John & fuckin’ ODs on me man, like she fuckin’ OD’d th’ BIG ONE, man, like Slab City, fuck, man, that’s what fuckin’ happened, I missed th’ fuckin’ ending, man!”

Jones is scratching at invisible insects crawling on his scrawny, pock-marked flesh. He’s wiping at the snot drooling from his left nostril with the back of his right hand… & his feet are beginning to drum the Devil’s tattoo as the shakes start to rip through him…

During the momentary distraction, the crowd has gone over the wall TOTALLY— phasing from stone silent to eagerly whispering to hungry yelps & growls to blood-craving crazy howls in a mere span of seconds. Two young girls, unquestionably natural blondes as evidenced in their current starring role as “totally nude live performers,” have been lowered slowly towards the raised platform of the stage from somewhere unseen above. They may be merely actresses— or kidnapped college coeds or highschool honeys highjacked for Midnight Grand Guignol at Mermaid’s Inn.

They are slung from rusted chains. Manacles chew into the soft flesh of their pinioned wrists, as their bodies’ weight tugs their upraised arms into excruciating contortions, separating from twisted shoulder sockets, tendons creaking & popping like bent & snapping twigs. Their ankles, also, are manacled.

Their faces are obscured by domino masks of waxy black leather.

But their mouths are left unbound to let the shrieking soprano of pure terror echo excitingly through the tavern, rousing a standing ovation of jutting erections in sick appreciation.

The girls are lowered to just inches above stage level.

The man in the undertaker’s outfit produces a single long-stemmed rose from the folds of his coat. The flower has been dyed a brilliant cobalt blue. He whips both girls savagely with the thorny branch until the blood flows freely from the scourge marks criss-crossing their pale, tender flesh of naked breasts & backs & buttocks.

Despite his revulsion, Frank finds that he cannot tear his eyes away from this obscene, sadistic spectacle. But Rios is unused to such casual brutality & keeps glancing away.

The chains clank & creak as unseen pulleys hoist the two girls upward, swinging them agonizingly into alignment above the churning water of the aquariums.

Bright scales flash as the emaciated emcee tosses a knife-gouged, squealing, squirming baby piglet into each huge fish tank. & razor-toothed jaws like sprung bear traps snap shut to rend & tear the still-twitching meat to bloody scraps in the span of an eye-blink.

The crowd shrieks in frenzied blood lust.

“Oh, Holy Madre de Dios!” Rios gasps as the truth of the scripted situation strikes him. “Those are fucking PIRANHAS—Frank!”

The big detective’s first instinct is to draw his “Dirty Harry Special” & shoot his way through the crowd in an attempt to rescue the helpless young captives.

Rios sees the fleeting motion of his gun hand, trapping Hawkes’ right wrist in a restraining grasp. “No, Frank, don’t do it, man!” Rios hisses the warning beneath the near-deafening roar of the howling, catcalling perverts. “There’s no fuckin’ way you can make it past this pack of wolves! Be cool, man! Maybe there’s some other way!”

[ 92 ]

Frank turns his head away from the spectacle of the two screaming, struggling blondes suspended directly above the Piranha tanks. The carnivorous fish are thrashing the water’s surface, metallic scales glittering, their red-gold sheen tinged black-to-silver-blue in the flickering BLUE light pouring from hidden spots above…

He is hyped beyond the normal edge of perception in the rush of epinephrine jolting his system to Full Battle Alert. Time dilates, each throb of pulse each motion each sensory impression exaggerated, drifting through the processing centers of his brain in slow flutter, each thought encapsulated like film frames rolling through EDIT at a mere two frames per second. Each creak of tendon each shifting of underlying musculature & dermis each slow bellowing of breath each eye blink flickering registering in Frank’s aroused consciousness, perceived as separate, non-integrated segments of the experiential whole as he swivels his neck to scan the remainder of the room…

His eyes come to rest on a big woman with long, blonde hair. She is sitting at the other end of the bar, alone. Something about her rivets Frank’s attention. Her face is heavily made-up. Her hair is obviously a cheap wig. Her shoulders too wide. Her hands look like… man’s hands—A fucking transvestite, Frank thinks.

She pulls something from her bra. Stands up. & walks toward the elevator door, in spite of the sign on the door that reads: NOT IN SERVICE. Her gait is decidedly ungraceful, distinctly masculine.

In her hand is one of those round elevator keys.

Frank is about to ask Jones where the elevator goes, but things get crazy before he can get the words out.

Two men in dark clothes converge on the transvestite. One of the men suddenly reels backward, clutching at his throat. Blood gushes through his fingers. The other wiseguy whips a Beretta Model 81 from his shoulder rig. But before he can get off a single shot from its ass-kicking, thirteen-round magazine, the man dressed in women’s clothing lashes out at his throat with a shining blade. The gun drops from his slackening fingers.

The man in black folds, disappearing from Frank’s line of vision.

“Rios…” Frank says as he hits the young detective on his right shoulder blade with the back of a big, slab-like hand, not taking his eyes from the scene of the assault. Frank is sliding off the barstool, moving quickly toward the knife-wielding man in the blonde wig.

A woman sees the man drop to his knees, his throat slashed & pumping blood, & she opens her mouth to scream. But her face is a frozen mask of surprise & terror, the sound drowned completely beneath the blood-curdling SHRIEK of twin throats voicing the soul-shattering agony as their squirming flesh is ripped chunk-by-fist-sized-chunk from their bones in a splashing, watery Hell of razor-edged jaws slashing…

Frank clutches the sides of his skull. The SHRIEK is like a chainsaw whining & chittering through his tormented brain… At the edges of his field of vision, demonic shapes are beginning to caper, chittering obscenely. Oh, shit! Frank tells himself, not now! Not fucking now! He swings toward the sound, pulling his .44 Magnum from beneath his jacket, that barrel looking about a yard long, pumping off four rounds as he swings his arm in a slow arc—

The left aquarium explodes in a rain of fragging glass & a raging flashflood of churning white-water & black blood & bare-stripped bones & flopping fish flesh & gnashing, gashing jaws… roaring out into a group of Hong Kong hardcases with slicked hair & grey silk suits, partying & looking for some sick tricks, but now painting the town red…

The twin head-shots rip open the gore-meister’s head in an explosion of blood & brains that rivals that legendary scene from Cronenberg’s film, Scanners…

The right aquarium shatters, also, doubling the deluge of water & man-eating fish that gushes across the stage & roars in a torrent of destruction through the nearby spectators— jagged shards of flying glass bristle from sliced flesh, the fury of raging water is dark with blood, its force knocking people from their feet, upturning tables, smashing bottles & glasses, starting a stampede, the stronger trampling the injured in their panic, & everywhere the snapping, bear-trap jaws of blood-crazed piranhas, gasping their last in a final orgy of savagely ripping kill frenzy— Chaos breaks out in Mermaid’s Inn.

Frank charges through the gawking geeks separating him from the fleeing knifer, sending more than a couple sprawling, using his massive frame to batter his way through…

The man with the slit throat hasn’t kicked it yet. The need for retribution fires him with one last burst of strength. He crawls to his knees clutching the retrieved Beretta, the wobbling, walnut-gripped pistol coughing savagely & spitting spent brass cartridges as he empties all thirteen 9mm shorts into the nearest bystanders.

A punk in skintight leathers tries to dodge the first hail of bullets, but dives directly into a chest-shot that would have slammed into Frank…

The man with the knife is bolting for the side exit, his tight blue dress hampering his movements.

The room reeks of cordite.

“Frank, what the Hell’s going on?” Hawkes hears Rios’ voice close behind him. He points at the man in the blue dress fleeing toward the exit. Another guy with a gun raises his weapon & snaps off a shot at the knifer. As Frank runs after his quarry, Rios draws the Luigi Franchi, brandishing the autoshot dramatically, & shouts: “Police! Drop it?’ Then blows off two warning shots into the ceiling. The man who has just fired his pistol looks dumbly at Rios, then drops his gun.

As the near-deafening bark of gunfire echoes through the barroom, the cross-dressed killer swings, drawing his own pistol from somewhere beneath the folds of his dress.

The self-silenced whoofs five times on blowback, spitting a deadly volley of .765 X 17mm slugs that chops his unknown attacker in the gut & groin, dropping the man like so much dead weight. Another of the special Chinese-import bullets smashes into Frank’s exposed chest.

Rios stares in horror as he sees his partner hit…

But Fate & the gift of an old war buddy save Frank’s charmed ass—the impetus of the slug discharged by the low-velocity, rimless cartridge is blocked by the golden St. Michael’s medal dangling from his neck. Hawkes rolls with the hit. The medal is ripped loose & clatters across the floor.

His assailant tosses the now-empty pistol. It crashes against the wall & rebounds, but the noise it makes is drowned in the roar of Rios triggering off a couple of twelve-gauge shells from the Luigi Franchi. The shots are too-hasty, shy of their rapidly moving target. The attached shot spreader fans the deadly hail of pellets out in a wide burst of devastation.

Dust & splintered concrete erupt from broad, gaping craters in the wall.

Stunned by the bullet’s impact, Frank loses precious seconds, allowing his quarry to escape through the side exit.

The massive epinephrine rush that is jagging Frank’s every cell has him wired to near-superhuman stamina, & he quickly recovers, lurching to his feet in pursuit of the knife-wielding weirdo.

As he jogs into the alley, Frank chambers replacement bullets for his four spent rounds. He has a clear shot at the running man in the blue dress. He could easily put a slug between the guy’s shoulder blades. Instead, he shouts: “Stop or I’ll shoot!” His booming voice echoes through the narrow alley.

The man with the knife halts, & turns to face Frank. A scant ten yards separate them. A strong sense of unreality overcomes Frank. He is in a movie now, facing down Norman Bates in maternal drag.

“Drop the knife,” Frank commands, reverting to his generic cop voice.

The guy smiles at him, bats his false lashes, & suddenly Hawkes’ mind is jolted with a blue bolt of lightning—he feels the guy’s leering grin inside his mind, feels those false eyelashes tickling his own eyelids, feels himself losing control of the situation & of himself, wanting to squeeze the .44 Magnum’s trigger & blow the crazy fuck to Hell before the crazy fuck sends him to Hell, but his trigger finger won’t respond to Frank’s wishes. His gun hand is swinging around in slow motion, & in the time it takes for the muzzle of the gun to rest against his temple, he knows his adversary, knows that this man in blue drag is the killer of Mary Gruber & the others, & he glimpses Hell behind a wavering veil of blue.

“Devil’s Fucking Valley, man,” Slice says as he wills Frank to squeeze the trigger.

A gunshot rings out, echoing deeply, bouncing off the walls of the littered alley.

“Freeze!” shouts Rios, the stubby, blued barrel of his Smith & Wesson smoking from the warning shot he has just fired.

Slice’s mindlink with Frank is broken. Frank slowly pulls the “Dirty Harry Special” away from his head, a part of him still wanting to kill himself, wanting desperately to blow away the veil that separates him from Hell everlasting. The demons from Devil’s Valley are cheering him on.

Slice spins away & darts into the darker throat of the alley.

Rios aims his “Distinguished Combat” at the blue blur disappearing into the darkness, but he doesn’t shoot.

“Frank, are you all right? What in the Hell was that all about?”

“That was him,” Frank says, his voice sounding distant. “That was your fucking killer.”

[ 93 ]

Snuff does an unhurried walk-by of the “gangboy” murder scene, scoping the mouth of the alley with a fleeting glance:

No fuzz yet, he notes.

Just past & across the street is the drugstore. Snuff cases it quickly, giving it a practiced once-over to reaffirm his previous impressions, & wanders on down the street.

Still open. No apparent customers at the moment. Old building: probably a service door at the rear. On his earlier visit, he thinks he noticed a faded sticker for some burglar alarm firm stuck to the lower right-hand pane of the glass double doors at the entrance. But he doubts if the system’s turned on. Probably an old foil-tape & alligator-clamp wirejob, with the plastic-coated leads run to a dry cell battery in the crawlspace or storage room above the pharmacy.

No sweat. Even if it’s on, it’s more than likely local only.

The traffic, both vehicular & pedestrian, has slowed considerably since Julie’s ill-fated visit & his subsequent follow-up perhaps forty-five or fifty minutes ago. He checks his watch. It’s 11:23.

He crosses the street at the next corner. Walks west for four or five blocks, keeping a close eye out for graffiti scrawled on the brick sides of buildings, board fences, sidewalks, street signs, & bus benches. His hunch seems well-grounded. cOLd StOnEz turf judging by the preponderance of their crudely spray-painted signature.

Good. Real good.

Snuff spots a rundown apartment complex, closes in for a close-up scan. The boogie-boogie rap shit is booming its jungle jive from ghetto-blasters beyond the sometimes-curtained windows of both floors. He enters the parking lot beside it, checking the cars for a likely choice of punk-mobile.

He passes by several, & selects a battered, red ’73 T-Bird with DMX & Wu Tang Clan stickers plastered on the spiderweb-shattered rear windshield. Locked. But the driver’s window is open just a crack. Snuff snakes his GTA-helper through the window. The noose at the end of the slender, weighted strand of wire expertly snagging the button of the latch on his second try. A quick jerk, & it pops upward. He tugs on the handle, swinging the door open, & slides onto the seat. He shuts the door. Firmly. Quietly. Then hunkers down & reaches up under the dash. Nine seconds, & Snuff has it hotwired.

Piece of fuckin’ cake…!

He slips on the full-face, “generic Black” Halloween mask, one of several favored disguises that Mal carries in His attaché case. Then rolls his black ski mask up like a knit cap & pulls it down onto his head, half-covering his ears. We all looks de same to ’em, he giggles to himself. He takes a last quick scan of the parking lot’s perimeter, assuring himself that he’s free from opposition, then eases this boogie bomb out into the street.

Snuff steers the red T-bird conspicuously into the alley behind the drugstore. Pulls up just beyond the building in a dense mass of shadows, & kills the engine. The layout is just as he’d imagined it. A dented & rusted rear service door with an audible-alarm box mounted on the wall above. He uses the flat, credit-card-sized metal plate from his jacket pocket to jimmy the simple latching mechanism. There’s a slide-bolt as well, he can guess from the strategically-placed bolt heads at just-above chest level. He gives it an experimental twist of the doorknob, but no dice, they remembered to throw the bolt…

No sweat—from the same pocket as his lock-pick, he carefully removes the small vial of ninety-nine percent sulfuric acid that Mal had given him. He opens it—taking great caution to avoid spilling even the slightest droplet on his surgical gloves—& pours it onto the already-rusted bolt heads. Then waits several moments for the solvent’s action to take effect. He aligns his carbon-steel chisel. & a few sharp blows with a stray brick sheer off the thoroughly corroded bolt heads. Pays to come prepared! & nobody but nobody prepares for all possibilities the way that Mal does…

He tosses the chisel. Mal instructed him to if he had to use the acid. No fingerprints: wiped. Shoplifted: hence, untraceable.

[ 94 ]

After a restless night of demon-haunted dreams, Frank digs his old flowered swimming trunks out of his suitcase, dons them, & heads down to the motel swimming pool. He wears a comfortably frayed Chicago Bears T-shirt because he doesn’t want anybody gawking at the big, ugly bruise on his chest, his blue & purple tattoo from last night’s gunshot to his medallion. God bless you, St. Michael. Maybe I’ll become a fucking Catholic after all.

There aren’t many swimmers or sunbathers this early in the morning, so Frank has his choice of deck chairs. In fact, there are only three other people at poolside—a teenage girl who is just beginning to fill out the top of her bikini, a balding man with a worm-white pot belly & a smelly cigar, & a woman with a deep tan & the high-definition muscles of a feminine bodybuilder. Unlike a lot of women bodybuilders, this one has not—Frank is glad—pumped away all of her breasts. Her long, copper-colored hair is the perfect accompaniment to her richly bronzed skin.

He stretches out on a reclining chair, across the pool from the bodybuilder, so he can watch her from behind his sunglasses, hoping that such a pleasant sight will help him take his troubled mind off the maddening events of last night’s debacle at Mermaid’s Inn. She is wearing an imitation snakeskin string bikini & a pair of bugeye designer mirrorshades, in what seems the season’s fashion statement—cool, iridescent cobalt blue… Her eyes (whatever color? he ponders) are hidden behind her hip mask of sunstaring indifference, so Frank can’t be certain if she is watching him. Though his well-honed cop instincts inform him that she has taken more than a passing interest in him, as well. Sure, some sweet young things get off on middle-aged guys in the early stages of physical decline, but Frank doesn’t think this is the case here.

His scalp tingles & his gut suffers that familiar twinge that he gets whenever someone has just made him as a Fed…

(yeah, dream on Frankie baby, that’s been more than a few years, but you can’t forget ever, can you, you can’t exorcise what once was from the reality of what now is…?)

…or private dick. Or that sense he gets when he is dangerously close to a subject he is tailing. Just as he is telling himself that his instincts are out of whack & over the hill, it comes to him that he is under surveillance. She is stationed with her suntan lotion, beach towel & straw bag so she has an unobstructed view of his motel room door (she wouldn’t expect that he would use the surfside door, probably didn’t expect him at the pool), & Frank is willing to bet that if he’d come out of his room & made straight for his car, she would’ve whipped a cover-up out of that straw bag, slipped it on, & jumped into her own car (he wonders for a split-second what make & model this sleek, hardbodied little number must be driving…?) to follow him.

He is no longer interested in trying to relax by the pool. He wants to test his theory. See if he is going paranoid or if he can flush her out of her bathing beauty guise.

Since he has just settled in the deck chair, it might appear suspicious if he gets up & leaves, so he decides to smoke & pretend to be enjoying the sun & the cool, salt-edged breeze off the ocean. Behind his aviator’s glasses he watches her pour suntan lotion into her palm, & apply it smoothly to her long legs. Frank can smell the coconut oil as her hand runs along her sleek, muscular thigh & over her knee…

Who the Hell can have a tail on me? Paranoia. Strikes deep. Into your life it will creep… Paranoia & wishful thinking, maybe. Yeah, I wish some sexy babe like her would follow me! Shit! But this ain’t some 007 James Bond extravaganza a la Hollywood sex-&-violence wet dream—& I sure as Hell ain’t any Sean Connery or David Niven or Roger Moore or…

No longer willing to give odds on being under the woman’s surveillance, Frank finishes his smoke & thinks back to the killer in the blue dress, & tries to make sense of the way the killer entered his mind, the way he took control of Frank’s will. If Rios hadn’t fired that warning shot, I know I would’ve pulled the trigger & blasted my brains right out of my skull.

Of course, he hasn’t said anything about the psychic invasion to Rios or anyone else. Frank is not quite sure he believes it himself. Maybe it was some kind of weird stress reaction, brought on by the hairy situation & all the close-range gunplay, & the fact I nearly bought a lead chest implant of the terminal variety…? Shit, I’ve been in boo-coo firefights & nothing like that ever happened before! Not that I’m too certain it’s the kind of thing you get two shots at—a .44 Magnum to the brainpan is generally a onetime thrill…

No way in Hell it was my imagination. Fucking A, no way…

After the mind invader disappeared into the thick darkness of the alley, Rios asked Frank why the Hell he was holding his .44 to his head. Frank, unable to think clearly after having his mind violated, mumbled, “Trying to confuse him.” Rios didn’t press him for further explanation, but wanted to drive him to the emergency room just to make sure that there was no internal damage from the gunshot to his St. Michael’s medallion. Frank refused. “I’m fine,” he insisted. “Just sore.”

Flipping his cigarette over the wooden fence surrounding the pool, Frank feels a deep ache in his chest. Feels like an elephant footprint. Shit, if I were to have a heart attack now, I wouldn’t fucking know it ’til it was too late.

He closes his eyes & relishes the sleepy feeling he gets from the warmth of the sun. The scent of coconut oil is suddenly stronger, & he looks up to see the woman in the snakeskin bikini standing over him. She is holding an unlit Virginia Slim in the V of her brown fingers, & she’s smiling. “Hi,” she says in a purring voice. “Got a light?”

“Yeah, sure.” He sits up straight, whips out his flashy, 24-kt. lighter, & opens it with a practiced flick of his thumb. The woman holds the filter to her lips & leans over, offering Frank an unforgettable view of her fine, firm breasts, oiled & gleaming. She touches the tip of her cigarette to the lighter’s flame, then inhales deeply, sensuously.

“Thanks,” she says, smoke streaming from her mouth & nostrils. The sea breeze whips the smoke away.

“Nice tan,” Frank comments. His cop instincts come back on-line, & he suspects that she’s after something more than fire for her smoke.

“Thank you,” she purrs, still smiling. “But it fades so fast, I wonder if it’s really worth the effort.”

“Oh, I’d say it’s worth it.” Frank pops one of his Marlboros from his half-crumpled pack, & lights it. “You on vacation?”

“No, I’m here on business.” She crosses one arm under her breasts, causing the coffee-colored mounds of flesh to blossom upward in the cups of her scant top.

“What business would that be?” Frank finds a stirring in the crotch of his swimsuit & he hopes she doesn’t notice that one of the printed flowers there appears to be spreading its tropical petals.

“I’m a rep for Olympic Iron, you know, the exercise equipment? I have to make the rounds of all the local health clubs & spas to convince them that they should be using our hardware.”

“Yeah? I knew you’re a bodybuilder.” He uses this comment as an excuse for blatantly running his eyes over her terrific body.

“I was a bodybuilder.” She corrects him. She takes another draw on her cigarette. “But I got bored with it. I found it was interfering with my vices.”

Frank chuckles.

He is about to invite her to pull up a deck chair & join him, when he sees Rios entering the pool area. “Aw, shit,” he mumbles.

“Pardon?”

“Looks like I’ve got company,” he nods in Rios’ direction. “A business associate.”

“Uh, too bad.” She glances at Rios. “Well, thanks for the light. Maybe I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah. Maybe we could have a few drinks.” As she starts to walk away, Frank asks, “What’s your name?”

“Cherry.

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not. What’s yours?”

“Frank. Frank Hawkes.”

“See you later, Frank.”

[ 95 ]

Snuff tugs the ski mask down over his face, & enters the service doorway.

He watches them from his vantage point, peering through the grimy glass pane in the stockroom door. The obese black woman is still perched atop her stool like some garish, bloated parrot in her red-&-orange-patterned muumuu. Her bandana-wrapped head still buried in her Weekly World News. The frizzy-haired druggist is filling pill vials, gluing on labels & mixing up some medicine.

Snuff chills out, invisible because he believes himself so, his own biorhythms slowing, syncing with those of his intended victims, his pulse & breathing in tune with theirs, offering no hint perceptible of his presence: street-wise & slaying-savvy, the perfect urban predator.

When he finally chooses to make a noise, it is on his terms, serving his purpose in the greater scheme of his survival.

John B. (“Johnny”) Farbenkt, D.P.M., thinks that he hears a scurrying noise in the storeroom. “Goddamn rats! Again! I thought we’d gotten all the little bastards with the traps & the strychnine—”

He sets down his forceps & the bulk bottle of Dexedrine that he’s been using to carefully dole out Mrs. Washington’s refill prescription for her chronic narcolepsy.

“I’ll fix the little bastards, yet!” Johnny snarls, & picking up the metal baseball bat he’s stashed under the counter for just such an emergency, straight-arms the swinging door, storming into the back room. A fatal mistake. Snuff grabs him from behind, pinning him in a half-nelson, smashing him face-forward into the concrete floor.

The baseball bat clatters hollowly, rolling to a stop against a stack of HUGGIES boxes.

“Make one sound, & I’ll fuckin’ kill ya,” the intruder warns.

Johnny lies on his side, groaning, as he spits blood & broken teeth. His final act.

Snuff covers his victim’s head with the faded blue denim cushion from the manager’s office desk chair. Using it as a crude but effective silencer. He draws the stolen .38 Police Special, shoves it deep into the pillow, & fires the first two shots into Johnny’s skull; then, repositioning the pillow, fires two more through the druggist’s heart…

[ 96 ]

“Yo, check it out,” says the scrawny young man, flipping his head so that his dreadlocks seem for a moment to be writhing snakes growing out of his skull, Medusa-like. “White bitch at six o’clock—”

“Dumb-ass trim, swishing her shit on our turf,” remarks his muscular companion. “She askin’ for it.”

“Shit, man, she looks like a shitkicker to me. I ain’t givin’ that bitch dick.”

“Saaayy, look again, KoKo. That ain’ no cunt, that’s a muthuafuckin’ faggot!”

KoKo grins. His dreadlocks dance over his shoulders as he nods his head. “You right, Bro. He wants to be a woman, we help him out.”

“Naw, jus’ scare ’im, man. I don’ wan’ no faggot blood on me. Might catch that killer shit.”

“Don’t you ever listen to th’ news, Abdul? It’a be cool long as you don’t fuck him up th’ ass or drink his fuckin’ blood.” KoKo’s hand dips into the pocket of his raggedy-ass 501s, & comes out with his ebony-handled switchblade. For a split-instant, the flickering blue moonlight plays across the figure carved into the dark, palm-worn wood: a man in tall top hat & antique, naval officer’s tunic & tailcoat— Baron Samedi, Lord of the Graveyards…

“C’mon, Abdul, we trim his ass ggooodd…”

“All righd, then, but don’ le’ ’im bite you, man.”

Slice in drag knows immediately what the two niggers have in mind. Don’t have to be a mind-reader to see that, he jokes to himself. Of course, he could read their jive-ass minds if he wanted. But his brain is still humming from its brief invasion of that cop’s troubled head, in the alley behind Mermaid’s Inn. The link lasted only seconds, but that was long enough to know that the cop was looking for the Beast, & that he had experienced some weird fucking shit in Viet Nam. This Porky Pig cop is haunted by some bad demons. Slice is thinking about the porky’s Devil’s Valley when the hip-hop fudgesickles do their cock-of-the-walk shuffle in his direction.

“Heyyy heyyy, momma, you be lookin’ for some dark meat?” says KoKo, his knife hand behind his hip.

“Look like a momma’s boy t’ me—” spits Abdul. His right hand is sporting a pair of shiny brass knuckles.

In the city distance, sirens wail the cry of the jungle, & Slice pictures flashing blue lights converging on Mermaid’s Inn. A blue light flashes in his brain & he suddenly sees these two jungle bunny crackheads can help him elude the porky police. “You want to see what I’ve got under my dress? Come on, I’ll give you a free peek—”

“I know what you got, cocksucker,” says KoKo, “an’ I’m gon’ chop it off.” He presses the release button on his switchblade, & six inches of stainless steel flick out, reflecting red & blue neon from a buzzing beer sign.

“Oooh, you’re turning me on, Chocolate Man,” Slice says in lisping falsetto.

“This muthufuckuh’s crazy, man,” Abdul tells KoKo. “Let’s let ’im go. I don’ like this shit.”

“Chilllll, blooodd, this won’t take long,” says KoKo, his jaw & his mind set.

Standing in front of the caged window of a darkened pawnshop, Slice begins slowly to lift the hem of his blue dress. “Come on, boys, I’ve got enough for both of you—” As KoKo steps to within arm’s reach of the queer in the blue dress, he holds up his switchblade. “This turn you on—?” Slice bats his false lashes, smiles sweetly, then zips his blade out of the scabbard on his thigh, & rakes it across KoKo’s throat. “This turns me on, you nigger piece of shit!”

KoKo’s eyes are almost as wide as the gaping gash in his throat. His blood splatters on the sidewalk, sounding like somebody just tossed day-old sludge from a coffee cup, coming down all at once with a sharp splat! KoKo drops his switchblade, & his hands fly to his fatal new tattoo.

With the precision of a skilled swordsman, Slice lunges with his heavy dagger, & the heart-seeking blade finds its mark in KoKo’s chest.

When KoKo hits the sidewalk dead, Abdul decides to retreat, turning on the heels of his stolen state-of-the-art running shoes, & hoping to a suddenly significant god that the scientific design of the shoes will give him an extra bounce of speed—just enough to save his life & whisk him away from this maniac in drag.

But Slice, even in his tight dress, is far too quick for him. He hooks his left arm around Abdul’s throat as he jabs the knife into his back, expertly severing a section of his spinal cord.

Abdul goes down in the street, thinking he’s been slugged in the back with a fist. When he tries to roll over & get up, he discovers that he can’t move. & he’s praying to that suddenly significant, deaf-eared Allah of Crackhouse Losers, praying to save a soul he’s long-since bartered for a little glass pipeful of Rock…

Slice grabs Abdul’s ankles & drags him up over the curb, across the sidewalk, & into a narrow alley. The sidewalk rips most of the skin off the left side of his face.

“I need your clothes,” Slice says, rolling the flopping, flailing crackhead onto his back. “You don’t need them anymore—”

Abdul tries to speak, to beg for his life, but he can’t make a sound, not even a grunt.

Slice pulls the dress over his head, then peels off the stuffed bra. He undresses the unmoving man. “Wish I had more time to enjoy your death,” he says, “but the cops will be here soon. You know how it is, I’m sure.” Slice dons Abdul’s sleeveless shirt, & steps into his leather pants. “Not exactly my style, but neither was the dress, so, what the Hell!”

He kneels over Abdul’s body & says, “Later, blood.”

Abdul’s throat sports a big bloody grin…

[ 97 ]

“Wha’z goin’ on deah?” The obese black woman mumbles, barely stirring from her position hunched over the tabloid. The sound of the four muffled gunshots pffling behind the closed door of the storeroom finally draws a lazy gaze in that direction. “Joh-neee? Joh-neee? Wha’z y’all doin’ back deah wid alldhat fool racket, boy…?”

No answer.

She waits a few more moments, & eventually lowers her bulk from the stool, waddling back to see what that fool is up to.

As she rounds the corner of the perpendicular leg of the L-shaped counter, Snuff lunges upward from his crouching position, slicing her throat from ear-to-ear with the stolen stiletto. The woman clutches at the gurgling ruin of her neck, & her assailant takes the opportunity to flick the knife closed & pocket it, then picks up the metal baseball bat, smashing her repeatedly in her fat shins until she tumbles into a blubbery heap on the floor. Again & again he raises the bat, crashing it down upon her skull, battering her face to a bloody pulp, splitting her skull open like a burst melon.

When he has sated his lust for destruction, he wanders back to the storeroom, returning with the pillow. He holds it over her mouth, strangling the last wheezing breaths of life from her blood-filled lungs. Then he forces the gun barrel up tight against the slight depression in the pillow’s surface that marks her mouth. He squeezes off two quick shots, angled slightly upwards, aiming for the roof of her mouth, so the entry pattern of the slugs rip through her brain pan, splattering blood & brains across the walls of the pharmacy.

Snuff sidles to the front door. Locks it with the key he took from the dead druggist. Tapes a hasty, Magic-Markered sign in the window: “fAmilY EmERgEnCY bE baCK in 2 HouRs.”

Snuff rifles the drug supply. Using a doubled brown paper sack, he collects the dexies, some percodan, a shitload of valium, & an assortment of other pharmo-goodies. & some of the strychnine, with more than rats in mind. He punches open the register, cleaning the drawer of cash, checking under the drawer & netting almost a dozen twenties & a half-C-note for his extra trouble.

Snuff bags a fresh supply of hypos & surgical gloves. Then he rips out the phone lines. &, just before exiting, he “accidentally” drops the stiletto, & sprinkles the contents of a small cello packet randomly across the murder scene: hairs torn from the scalp of a young negro male (dead these several months, an “unsolved” from just outside New Orleans… a few stray ashes of cannabis & a bit of nose-dust, just a few false leads, a few “red herrings,” another of Mal’s favorite tricks.

[ 98 ]

Dressed in a lightweight grey suit & conservative tie, Rios approaches, a boyish smile splitting his face. “Morning,” he says. “I hope I didn’t scare that fox away.” His eyes follow the movements of Cherry’s supple, near-naked rear.

“There ought to be a law…” Frank’s voice trails off as he too watches the Olympic Iron woman walk to the other side of the pool.

“Yeah, though we’d all be arrested.”

“No doubt.” Frank looks up at the Latino cop. “What’s up, amigo?”

“Your guy in the dress left a trail of bodies last night.” Rios tells him. “It appears that he killed two black hoods & stole the clothes off one of them. We found his dress but not the wig. He’s one bad hombre.”

“That? No other leads?” Frank glances across the Caribbean blue of the pool at Cherry, who is stretching out seductively on her reclining chair. The teenage girl is swimming laps like an Ester Williams munchkin.

“Nothing.” Rios pulls up a deck chair & sits down two feet away from Frank. “The weirdest part of this already weird case—even with a couple of dozen cruisers & God only knows how much other heat, well, Frank, not one of Metro-Dade’s finest could pick up so much as a peek of the infamous Inn…

Rios is speaking in a whisper, his face is pale, & he is obviously unsettled by the strange turn of events. “Frank, did you ever see that horror flick, The House That Disappeared? This whole thing is just totally unreal, man. Spooky.” He seems to wait for the jibe he knows Frank will aim at him. But it never comes.

“I gotta ask you, Frank. What in the Hell was going on last night? I run into the alley & see you holding your gun to your head. You sure as Hell didn’t learn that move at Quantico!”

“Did you put that in your report?”

“No. It was too goddamn crazy. I didn’t want Lardass Lucas on my ass, chewing me out for not finding out what the Hell it meant. I got in enough hot water for uhhhhh…losing our prisoner, Mr. Junkie Jones, ex-hophead! Yeah, & for not making you go to the hospital.”

“Thanks, Pal,” says Frank, tossing his second butt over the fence & onto the sand. “For now, this is between you & me. I’m not the most stable ex-cop you’ll ever meet, but I’m not nuts. I swear. What happened to me last night will sound crazy as Hell, but I promise you, it really fucking happened. The guy in the alley somehow came into my mind. He commanded me to put the gun to my head. I would’ve pulled the trigger if you hadn’t interrupted him. Believe, me, amigo, if it wasn’t for you, I’d’ve been dead meat. I was mindfucked…”

Squinting in the sunlight’s glare off the pool & the sand, Rios remains silent.

“That’s not all,” Frank continues. “While the bastard was inside my head, he was reading me like a fucking book, learning everything about me. He said right out loud ‘Devil’s Valley.’”

“What the Hell is Devil’s Valley?”

“The name of a Hell hole where I had a bad experience in Nam. Where I got these scars—” He holds up his hand, bends his arm to show Rios his damaged elbow, “& where I got the St. Michael’s Medallion & lost a shitload of buddies. It was number one bad scene of my T.O.D.”

Rios stares blankly, not knowing quite what to say.

“Anyway, amigo, that psycho was reading my mind.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t just some kind of flashback or something, maybe…? Or maybe a stressed-out imagination…? I don’t mean to pry, Frank, but are you sleeping okay?”

“Positive. I know what I heard—there’s nothing wrong with my hearing.” Frank lowers his voice & confides, “It’s like he was probing me for weaknesses, like a mental recon. & he found one: Devil’s Fucking Valley.”

“Maybe it was hypnosis?”

“No. It was something a Hell of a lot more powerful than hypnosis. But it wasn’t just a one-way street. While our minds were…joined, I learned some things about him, too, but it was all jumbled, like… I don’t know…like he was dominating me but some of the stuff in his mind sort of leaked over into mine.”

“So what did you learn about him?”

“Unfortunately, for the most part, the images were too surreal, too confused or maybe just encoded & illogical for me to fully grasp—”

“Yeah?”

“Well, he thinks he’s some sort of God or something. A superior being who loves to kill… who lives to kill. For a second or two, everything went blue. I got flashes of some of his victims, One of them was Mary Gruber hanging on a rope.”

“What do you mean, everything was blue?” Rios brushes a buzzing horsefly off his pants leg.

“Like I was seeing with his eyes, like everything he sees has this weird blue tint—like a movie filmed through a blue filter, you know what I mean?” Frank pulls another cigarette from the pack. His hands tremble. “I tell you, Rios, this guy ain’t human. He’s…more than human. & whatever he is, he’s powerful as all Hell…”

“You’re right, Frank. It does sound crazy.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I didn’t say that.” Rios stares into the blank mirrors of Frank’s aviator’s glasses, trying to read the secrets that lurk behind them. “I know you’re not nuts. It’s just too incredible. Not just the part with this mind-fucking psycho killer. No, Frank, it’s this whole weird freaking scam—I mean, we’re talking an entire, multi-leveled tavern & all of its inhabitants… just… just… disappearing like smoke in the wind… Can you imagine Lardass Lucas’ reaction to this story?”

“Goddamn, Rios, that’s why I said this is just between you & me.” Frank’s voice rises in anger, then he immediately looks around to see if anyone else is looking at him.

He lowers his voice & keeps his anger in check. “I’m telling you all this because I believe it’s the truth. & because your investigation is hamstrung. All right? You have your information now. What you choose to do with it, ain’t my problem.”

“Heh, take it easy, Frank! I appreciate your taking me into your confidence. It’s just that I don’t know what the Hell to do with it. Do you know this guy’s name? Do you have anything that would help me get a line on him?”

“I don’t think so. It’s all so jumbled in my mind…” Frank has a faraway look in his eyes, but Rios can only read the blank, blinding stare of sunlight flashing off the convex mirrors of his glasses.

“Well, if you’re able to sort it out, let me know.” Rios reaches out & puts a hand on Frank’s shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Won’t be okay until that motherfucker is put away.”

“You think he’ll come after you now?”

Frank shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I got the feeling that I was about as important to him as a fucking ant on the sidewalk. I don’t believe he’d go out of his way to step on me.”

Rios stands. “Thanks for the information. If anything new comes up, give me a call. Lardass has a pile of paperwork for me today, so I’ll be riding my desk.”

“Oh, yeah. By the way, say ‘Thanks!’ to that buddy of yours…what was his name… Clarke? …in Maintenance? Anyway, he did a Helluva job fixing my fax & cellular.”

“I’ll pass it along. He said it was nothing really, he couldn’t find anything physically wrong with it. Just one of those weird glitches you get sometimes with electronics. Something answering to unexplainable ripples in the realm of the sub-or hyper-physical, the deux ex machina, the god or ghost in the machine…”

“Rios, I think you’ve been overdosing on sci-fi! You’re starting to sound like some mad scientist out of a sci-fi movie…”

“Sorry, Frank, guess this spooky shit’s getting to me, too.”

“Rios? There’s one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“This guy is not Zodiac. Don’t ask me how I know, ’cause I can’t fucking explain it. I just know. I guess like old Elijah, I know the scent of my quarry, & this is another Beast entirely…” Rios nods, glances one last time at Miss Olympic Iron, then walks to his car.

[ 99 ]

Keeping to the shadows as he traverses the seedier sections of the city, Slice stops by an overflowing dumpster near a liquor store, & he tosses the blonde wig into the heap of refuse. A police patrol car glides by, & he ducks behind the dumpster till the cruiser disappears around the next corner. Then he resumes his southerly trek to his rented hovel.

An intense itching begins in his groin, quickly spreading up his belly & chest. His first thought is that the stolen clothes are infested with lice; but when his face begins to itch, he decides that his itching is unrelated to the dead nigger’s clothes. He scratches his jaw with his long, ragged nails. But the scratching provides no relief to his Job-like torment. His failure to reach Professor Punk & the Li Di 9 is forgotten for the moment—he can think of nothing but the terrible itch crawling over every inch of his skin, now, like ants or termites burrowing into his hyper-sensitive flesh.

The streetlights are ringed with blue haloes, & the windowglass of storefronts is rippling with blue illumination, & the blue aura seems to cause his eyeballs to itch.

Slice suddenly realizes that there is one part of his body that is not tormented by this itching: the small of his back where the blood-soaked cotton of the nigger’s shirt is cool & damp & soothing against his skin.

He ducks into the next alley, pulls off the shirt & rubs the bloody cloth against his face. The itching stops where the blood-damp material touches his skin. Then he removes the shirt from his face the itching once again attacks his flesh. I’m itching for blood…

[ 100 ]

Snuff drops the cordite-reeking .38 Police Special into a nearby dumpster, then makes a swift but orderly retreat to the parked T-Bird, hotwires it to rumbling life, & throws it into reverse, tromping down on the gas as he does so. The big red bomb rattles backward down the alley, kicking up litter in its hasty exit. Snuff deliberately sideswipes the brick wall lining the cramped corridor, the sheet metal screeching, sparking a miniature blaze of shooting stars, as paint scrapes & metal shavings pare away from the left fender & door panel…

Leaving evidence of its hasty exit on both wall & auto.

[ 101 ]

Frank takes a long drag on his smoke, his bruised chest filling with pain as it expands. Having unburdened himself to Rios, he feels only a little relief. The truly frightening vision he somehow received from the mindfucker remains unspoken. It came as he was holding the muzzle of his .44 to his temple. & it haunts him—terrifies him—now as much as it did last night. The vision is worse than anything he saw in Devil’s Valley. & it is eating away at his sanity. Frank has never been a very religious man, & he has never viewed the Bible as much more than poetic history. But what he saw in the mindfucker’s psyche makes sense only in a biblical frame of reference—but there is more, so much more to the complexities of this flash-viewed apocalypse than the pitiful limits of any one philosophy—possibly even that any score of philosophies—can encompass in their religious rationale. He saw—& still sees the haunting after-image like an acid flashback—the awesome figure of the Anti-Christ (for want of a better catch-phrase concept…) transfixed upon the monstrous, towering figure of the Redeemer, suffering even as He had suffered, & in that very crucible of suffering transformed into The Great Beast who shall bring about the reign of Satan & the end of this world as we have known it…

So absorbed is Frank in his inner reveries, that he fails to notice the Satanic-looking homeboy watching him from the beachfront side of the hurricane fence, watching him from among the gathering of long shadows cast by the white-hot ball of sun still riding the low swell of early-morning zenith & suspended just above the surge of surf. This shadow amongst the shadows is tall & lean, vaguely Asian in appearance—this impression no doubt accentuated by his downturned mustache & sinister, spade-shaped thrust of goatee, & by his severely backswept dark hair, tied at nape into a long, almost waist-length queue.

His eyes are hidden behind matte-black bugeye shades. & his wardrobe looks more like leftovers of some Miami Vice or Scarface villain than stock beach party-boy attire: a T-shirt emblazoned in bold, graffiti-esque scrawling, “buTThOlE sUrfERs,” & long black leather duster coat.

Two gulls dive for the same choice tidbit among the waves. They converge in a mad fluttering of wings & raucous cries…

[ 102 ]

When he finally reaches his building, he smiles at his good fortune. A sacrifice for his bloodbath has been practically delivered to his doorstep. The Latin whore who lives one floor above him is climbing the dim stairs just ahead of him. Her skintight miniskirt makes it clear that she is wearing no underwear, but Slice is not interested in her sex. Like blue lightning, he strikes her from behind, cupping one hand over her mouth, & placing the point of his knife against the curve of her back. “Come with me,” he whispers in her triple-pierced & heavily studded ear. He hustles her into his rented room (which he never locks because it contains nothing of value to him), & half-carries her to the bathroom.

Fungus rules the throne room, growing in cracks, covering edges, creeping in corners, permeating the tiled water closet with the odor of an earthen-floored cellar.

In deference to the blade at her back, the woman does not struggle as he pushes her face against the filthy mirror over the yellow-stained sink.

Even though the itching is distracting to him, Slice has no trouble sliding into the whore’s mind: Yeah, & she prays to the Virgin Mary that this psycho is just some crazed geek into WS or enema games or bathroom boffing, but it looks like Santa Maria’s on call-forwarding… He slips the knife in her hand & steps back, his hands free to scratch his itching body while his mind occupies the woman’s mind/body. His skill has increased to the point where he has rudimentary voluntary control over his motor reflexes while he is invading the being of another. His nails dig into his crotch as the whore uses the knife to cut her scant clothing from her body. Through her eyes he watches her in the mirror, sees the blade slice the thin cloth off her bosom. A final burst of the whore’s resistance flashes through the blue haze, then fades forever…

Completely naked, she turns from the mirror, walks over to the tub, & aligns a mildewed vinyl stopper over the drain, then steps onto the cool porcelain. She stands, her eyes dazed & inward-focusing, & she begins to carve her mind-captor’s psychopathic signature into the soft, yielding surface of her flesh, seemingly oblivious to the searing pain of severed skin & nerves. 7734. 7734. 7734… over & over & over her possessed hand guides the gleaming blade, tattoos of black blood welling across the tortured topography of human canvas, art for art’s sake, Slice leers to himself from within this mortal framework bent to serve his sick, sadistic purpose…

When every reachable inch of her body bears his mark, Slice at last tires of this so-artistic game of cat-&-mouse—

The whore lies down on her back, her naked buttocks crushed damply against the smooth, cool porcelain…he lets the sensation intrude for a moment, toying with her… She settles her head against the sloping swell of the tub farthest from the stopped drain. Her hand raises the blade up to her jugular. She whimpers once as the blood shoots in pulsing spurts over her chest & spatters on the porcelain in an obscene parody of some Jackson Pollock masterpiece of Abstract Expressionism…

Before she grows too weak, the mind that guides her self-mutilating hand forces her to perform a series of deep-thrusting punctures of her wrists & the creases of her arms, drawing a warm bath of her own blood… &, with a sudden rush of inspiration, Slice wills her to tug taut first one breast & then the other, shearing the fleshy mounds away in a torrent of spilled blood… &, even as she dies, even as her last gurgle of death rattle spews from between her gasping, blood-drenched lips, his/her hand guides the blade between her open thighs, the tip penetrating, the edge severing soft flesh, as she excises her own vagina, lifting it up in solemn offering to this New God who has chosen her tainted flesh as the vessel of his sacrament…

As orchestrated by Her Master, the New God, her death is peaceful, a delicate point-&-counterpoint to her previous, prolonged suffering, her soul passing into terminal sleep.

Slice withdraws from her passing, & returns fully to his body which is shivering with death chills mingling with the throes of his blue-spewing orgasm. He strips off his clothes, climbs into the tub, slips & slides his body under the dead whore, & wallows in the warmth of her soothing blood. His itching immediately subsides everywhere that the blood touches. He turns & twists in the slick bath, holding the corpse above him so that the blood can trickle down on him. He groans in pleasure at the suddenly absent itching, & his hooded serpent again dances a bone-dance of delirium.

When the congealing blood begins to cool, he stands up & turns on the shower. Hot water washes the woman’s blood from his hair & skin as he steps over the legs of the corpse, being careful not to trip over her. The jets of water begin to sting his flesh, like a heroin hophead, supersensitized in the fading of his fix… Thinking the water is too hot, he turns on the cold tap. The stinging does not subside. It intensifies, burning, stinging, itching unbearably. His fingernails begin a frenzied scratching, raking & clawing at his sickly, pale-olive skin. His scratching merely increases the ferocity of the itching but he cannot stop, the compulsion is far too overwhelming. Even when his nails start to rip & shred away his flesh, he cannot halt the obsessive scratching. The skin comes off in small strips at first, but soon whole chunks of flesh are peeling off & plopping onto the tub.

“What the FUCK?” he gasps in horror. But horror quickly transmutes to awe as Slice sees what lies under the flayed fabric of his old flesh. Not bothering to turn off the shower, he jumps out of the tub, & stands in front of the mirror. He claws at the prickling facial tissue & is transfixed by the emerging face of smooth cobalt blue.

“My God,” he says to the thing in the mirror. “My Holy Fucking God!” & He is correct in His divinely inspired exclamation…

He is the New God. & His is The New Flesh…

[ 103 ]

Snuff circles the block once, scanning the apartment complex, sniffing the wind for the scent of trouble, listening for any commotion beneath the rumbling roar of that ghetto-blastin’ rap crap…

He noses the T-Bird into the home stretch. Kills the engine. Removes the Halloween mask & once-again-rolled knit cap. Stuffs them inside his windbreaker.

& makes his slow, smooth move for Hell Motel to rejoin the torment games with Mal & Julie & their two captive playmates…

[ 104 ]

Frank stands outside the door of Room 126 of this slightly seedy motor hotel. The pink stucco’s peeling: not a lot, about as much as the skin on his nose (forgot to pack the zinc oxide, again, he thinks…). He takes a quick perimeter scan. The coast seems clear. He inserts the tarnished key into the lock, listens as it clicks & the damp-swollen wood of the door creaks open grudgingly at his insistent push.

Elijah gives a single, brief bark of welcome, stifling any further outbursts when his master raises his right index finger to his lips signaling “silence.” Frank squeezes through the gap, retrieves a sturdy, undyed leather leash from the dressing table, & snaps the catch-slide over the brass ring on his mascot’s matching collar. “Wanna do a little cruisin’, Chum?” he asks rhetorically. Elijah maintains the silence his master has cautioned, but his tail wags like a madly clicking metronome.

Frank does another quick scan before exiting. Then he & his dog shag it down the breezeway, hang a right at the end of the building, & head for the strand of beach beckoning just beyond. He could probably have requested dispensation for his canine companion from the desk clerk. No doubt a small security deposit guaranteeing compensation for any “accidents” would have found then both bid welcome. After all, he isn’t staying at the Hilton. But sneaking the dog into his room is just an obsessive habit perhaps subconsciously based more on trying to beat the odds against being caught than upon any rational motivation. Just a pleasantly guilty little vice like smoking too much or jaywalking or stealing hotel towels or cheating on your taxes…

Burnside, his VA counselor, had hit the nail on its proverbial if overused head when he told Frank: “Based upon the childhood experiences you’ve related to me, I’d have to guess this idiosyncrasy of yours stems from your mother’s unwillingness to allow you to keep your pet dog…what was its name…? Oh, yes, of course, Elijah Blue! Right? Where the Hell did you ever come up with a name like that from, anyway, Frank…?” He had paused as if expecting an answer but had received none. “Yes, as I was saying—to allow you to keep your dog inside the house, specifically, in your bedroom; hence, this somewhat irrational though relatively inoffensive behavior is a subconscious form of rebellion, ‘replaying old tapes,’ as we are want to say…”

The sand shifts & scrunches beneath the weight of his one hundred-ninety-seven pounds racing the now-unleashed hound down the still as yet uncrowded beach. The private eye revels in this rare moment of totally untroubled exercise & relaxation, man & beast both churning forward at full-tilt, both kicking up wild flurries of dry sand grains in their passage, zigging & zagging past the few hearty sun worshippers already indulging themselves at surfside—

The cry of gulls, the booming of the waves, the wet whisper of the salt-edged breeze, the buzzing drone of swarming gnats & sand fleas: these calming sounds all serve to lull his hair-trigger senses in a synergistic glow of sweat & elevated heart-rate & laboring breath where the only reality is inward-focused upon the machine-like pistonings of the next stride & the next & the next…

For the first time in days the details of his manhunt are temporarily forgotten, as are the taunting, haunting visions in electric blue that have washed constantly across his conscious since his ill-fated encounter with the mind-fucking slayer known as “Slice.”

& the man in the matte-black bugeye shades & the black leather duster coat fades into the shadows, unnoticed by both Frank & Elijah. But they are noticed. He watches their every movement, as does The Watcher who views the scene through the vantage of the mini vidcam mounted just above the bridge of the Satanic homeboy’s nose, within the frame of his sunglasses, broadcasting on tightly closed frequency through a CCD-linked sub-micro transmitter integral to the broad plastic band of the glasses sloping back across his left temple.

“Chan,” the voice inside the watcher’s brain whispers, “Just keep them within range; we will track them on close-up pan, so keep a good distance, don’t take any risks on being spotted, not yet…”

[ 105 ]

Professor Punk awakens to a tidal wave of nausea. He manages to roll onto his stomach & hang his head off the edge of the mattress just as the tsunami of vomitus spews forth with explosive force. For several eternal seconds, he fears that he is drowning in the expelled contents of his stomach. But finally he is able to breathe, & he groans in misery & disgust. His head is throbbing with raw pain, & his eyes quiver with each pulsebeat, causing the dim lab to waver with each of his painful spasms.

“Uuuhnnnnn…” His groan seems to come from the depths of his gut, twisting upward through chest, & rasping against his raw throat.

His mind is full of half-formed questions. His skin tingles, then the itching begins with a vengeance. The itching further clouds his mind, & everything goes dark.

When his eyes open again, he’s standing over the sink, splashing cold water on his face. A glance into the mirror fills him with horror—superimposed on his face is the face of a demon with sleek, blue skin. Then his pain & horror recede to a backroom of his psyche, & he is possessed by the Blue Demon:

Open the metal cabinet. Pick up the scalpel. Walk to the door. Open it. Keep the scalpel out of sight. Man in a flowered shirt coming out of the chair in the far corner of the room—wait ‘til he is close enough…now slice his throat. Good. Very good. The key. Get his elevator key. Back into the lab. Stuff your pockets with the blue vials. That’s right. Take the elevator to the first floor. Speak to no one. Up the stairs. Go outside. Head west. Look for a taxi when you reach the street. Keep walking… Half an hour later, you’re in a taxi. You give the driver an address you don’t recognize. The sunlight hurts your eyes, so you close them…

“Here you are, Mac,” says the taxi driver. You tell him to wait for you, then you enter the Little Shop of Costumes & Theatrical Supplies. You buy the latex makeup kit, false eyebrows & man’s conservatively-styled wig. The shopkeeper gives you some strange looks, but you ignore him, & return to the waiting taxi. Then on to your rendezvous with the demon of your dreams…

[ 106 ]

“Just in time for the fireworks,” Mal says, as Snuff enters the motel room, pushing the grimy, weathered door with its peeling green paint firmly closed behind him.

The wiry, bearded slayer’s smug, Cheshire-cat grin seemingly threatens to split his face from ear to ear. “Strike two,” he giggles.

The leatherclad boys of Metallica are torturing their axes into a frenzied, apocalyptic speed metal wail on MTV. Blue light pours from the television set, illuminating a bareassed naked Julie kneeling beside the farthest bed, fellating & fondling the Bible salesman while the Hell-blue pools of her eyes are fixed on the emanations of the cathode gun blasting her retinas at thirty-rounds-per-second…

Mal holds a brown electrical cord in His left hand. His thumb & index finger clasp the plug in a snake-handler’s grip, pinching it just behind the viper’s head with its twin brass prongs like glittering fangs. This is no ordinary extension cord. It has been specially modified to suit their single-minded purpose. In His right hand Mal grasps the rheostat that is wired into it. & the remaining six feet of cord dangling from His fist have been carefully separated with a straight-edged razor blade, with alligator clamps attached to the wire ends.

Snuff’s eyelids twitch with tics of uncontrolled excitement. The crotch of his Levi’s bulges, tentlike. He quickly strips off his windbreaker, folding it over a nearby chair, & he lays his custom webwork holster with its silenced Cobray 9mm & the pair of Velcro’d three-cell magazine pouches on the dresser.

“Goddamn single sockets…” Mal says, stooping to tug the lead from the dresser lamp out of the wall plate. He plugs the twenty-five foot extension cord in its place.

“Just like the Fourth of fuckin’ July, right, Mal—?” Snuff looks like one very hungry tom, licking his lips & whiskers with nervous anticipation.

Mal closes in on the helpless little blonde tied spread-eagled to the bed. He sets the rheostat between her open thighs, the cold cord trailing across her naked belly. The gaping jaws of the alligator clamps expose scorch-blackened teeth as the Medic of Mutilations prepares to administer His own brand of shock therapy.

[ 107 ]

“Let’s go for a ride,” Frank says to Elijah.

A clipped, eager bark signals his approval.

Frank slides his .44 Mag out of its holster, sighting down that long, deadly, blued barrel, his big right thumb giving the cylinder a quick spin of that six-pack Wheel of Fortune—double-checking he’s not rolling with any empties. He pockets a handful of spare Teflon-coateds just for good measure.

“Headin’ for the combat zone,” he adds, “we’re gonna see if we can’t pick up the trail where Rios & the junkie entered the alley with me, okay, Pal?” Elijah utters another approving bark.

Frank reaches for his pack of Marlboros lying on the dresser. He picks them up, taps out a last lonely cigarette, & curses: “Awwwwwhhh, SHIT! Outta smokes! Better pick some up, & maybe a pack of luncheon meat for you, huh?”

The Stingray slips & slides through the fastlane traffic, Frank darting quick glances at the choicest flesh-flashes of jiggling thigh & breast & backside among the milling throngs of near-naked, beach bunny vixens. All that dark-tanned, tropic-oil-glistening skin so incredibly distracting… That he fails to notice the tail he should be worrying about—that coffin-black-lacquered Porsche Targa dog-tailing him about half a block behind. The one with the Satanic homeboy slouched at the wheel. Nor does Frank notice yet another vehicle trailing even farther back—a metallic-bronze Jeep Renegade.

Hawkes pulls a smooth fade to the right, emerging from the stream of cars in a blur of gunmetal-silver & a flurry of loose gravel slithering from beneath his tires. He eases to a stop in front of a convenience market. Bails out, & clears the distance between himself & the swinging glass doors in less than a dozen long-legged strides.

He grabs a package of Oscar Mayer olive-loaf slices from the meat cooler, beelines for the counter, & says, “Two packs of Marlboro soft-packs, please—” as he whips out his wallet & slaps down a crisp ten-spot & a fiver on the fake-butcher-block formica counter.

The acne-scarred Cuban clerk gives a disinterested shrug & slow-scans the bewildering array of pigeon-holed packs. He hauls out three packs of Camels, & tosses them down beside the fresh-faced Hamilton. “Yeah—?”

“No. I said. two packs of Marlboro soft-packs.”

Frank’s own sunglassed, slow-boiling image is reflected in the quicksilver glare of the clerk’s mirrorshades.

“No, man…, you said—”

This punk is wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned “RUSH” under an unbuttoned K-Mart-special Hawaiian sportshirt that looks like a disordered bamboo-jungle in lurid shades of blue & red…

Frank suddenly flashes on the word “RUSH,” keying back to the Zodiac letters marked “RUSH TO EDITOR,” & the flickering blue jungle stained in blood red: he hears the whispers of the war-dead filtering through from the other side, feels his anger rising rising, tries desperately to fight the psychic undertow, & somehow slides into a bizarre S-of-C connection that raises gooseflesh with its startling juxtaposition of intertwining concepts—

Scorpio Rising… & Lucifer Rising… (Two occult-influenced oldies by ’60s biker-savvy badboy, experimental-art-film-director, Kenneth Anger—the latter starring Bobby Beausoleil, lead guitarist for Magick Powerhouse of Oz… Manson-cohort, & future participant in the Gary Hinman murder…). Frank feels the silver chord of his Reality link spiraling into a Hell-BLUE tempest-rift of utter weirdness, & struggles to stay ashore the rapidly eroding sands…

“So, wad’you want? Heh?”

“TWO! PACKS! MARLBORO! SOFT-PACKS! YOU! STUPID! FUCK!” the ex-Army-Lt. bellows, more from the desperate need to shatter his own train of thought than in response to its catalyst, the inattentive & ill-mannered Cuban clerk. Frank gets what he asks for this time. & more…

He grasps the brown paper sack containing his purchases in trembling fingers, picks up the four Washingtons, folds them into his wallet, pockets the spare change, & exits without another word.

He doesn’t see the punk flip him off. Doesn’t hear him grumble his parting “Fuck you—” Not that Frank gives a shit, anyway.

The swinging doors slam shut behind him, the glass rattling, threatening to shatter at the seismic-shock intensity. Frank swings into the cockpit of the Vette, & burns rubber out of the parking lot, fishtailing, lurching into the traffic flow.

[ 108 ]

Slice is reeling him in now, giddy with anticipation, picturing the four-eyed egghead flopping on the planks of the pier like a dying fish. Got my hook in his fucking brain. Bringing him down to the dark waterfront. Down to meet his unmaker… Professor’s fingers crawl into his pocket to fondle the vials of Blue Devil.

Slice cracks a reptilian grin. Blue Devil coming down. Then the queer sensation of being in two places at once as he watches Professor Punk step onto the pier & sees his own dark form through Frank’s eyes, slouched against a starlit backdrop of night sky & sea—like looking at yourself looking at yourself down a hall of mirrors in Hell… Hell… Hell… Hell… Hell… Hell… Hell… Hell… Hell…

Professor Punk’s mind is long past balking. His conscious mind has been reduced to a shadow of itself, walking those twisted nightmare streets, trapped within those two-dimensional distortions of unreality within the silver screen flickering The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari…only this flick is straight-snuff in deathly shades & tints of BLUE… Yet he has just enough awareness to understand what is happening to him…to understand that he is taking a last walk down a long pier to Hell… Hell… Hell… & that his death is waiting at the end of the pier, the walk itself a condemned man’s last plodding steps down the Hellish hallway of sea-sprayed darkness. He has known the touch-kiss the intimacy of death before, & hence he fails to truly fear it. After all, he is a man reborn through his acid-etched ritual of sex & death, nine candles & the ceremonial katana blade paying blood-homage to her, the succubus…a snaking tendril of white smoke, billowing, expanding, languidly forming itself into the shape of a lithe woman, her fingers swimming toward his thighs as smoke becomes supple flesh—Wordsmoke whispers from her perfect lips, a solitary puff: “Professor…” & she touches his thighs with a delicate spider kiss…

He senses, as if vicariously, the hollow drum-cadence of wood echoing beneath each footfall; the rough boards snagging at the rippled soles of his shoes. It reminds him of a hundred grade-Z zombie movies, seen since childhood, & his mind flashes with the illogical phrase: “Dead man comin’ down…”

[ 109 ]

The seared-pork stink of frying human flesh permeates the motel room at this moment. The alligator clamps, secured with strips of micropore, chew cruelly into Heather’s stiffened nipples, but the pain she suffers from their metal-toothed bite is nothing compared to the utter agony as electrical current jitters through her tits, scorching grey-green burn marks into their tender flesh.

Truman lies on the other bed, gripping the rheostat, giving the helpless girl jolt after excruciating jolt at the urgings of his captors. Whenever he eases up, Julie digs the tip of her switchblade into one wounded kneecap or the other, prompting him to increase the voltage… “Juice the bitch, Bible-boy,” her father urges, his huge erection thrusting lewdly as he fondles & pinches at the naked flesh of his daughter & the captive man alike.

Heather writhes in Hellish agony, twitching like an epileptic as the electrical charges rip through her, triggering involuntary muscle spasms. The plastic drop cloth from Mal’s shopping list covers the bed beneath her, protecting the sheets & blanket from any “accidents,” should the young girl lose control of her bladder… or other bodily functions…

Wired past the point of all control, Snuff scrounges in Julie’s suitcase, &, finding what he wants, returns with a tube of K-Y Jelly.

He offers the tube to Mal first.

Excited by the sight & smell of blood & torment, the once-Zodiac obliges. He lubes up His lurching penis, yanks the cord from the wall socket, then forces young Julie face downward across Heather’s thighs, & penetrates her, anally, from the rear. Snuff follows suit, rolling the helplessly naked Bible salesman over onto his side, forcing the fat man to submit to his brutal act of sodomy…

[ 110 ]

Something nags at Frank’s mind as he steers the Stingray toward Little Havana. Something flickering just beyond the borders of rational perception, as his anger cools in the sunlight & sea breeze. Something dark & troubling… On a sudden impulse, he reaches back with his left hand, tugs his wallet from his pocket, &, while he drives, lays it open against the leather-covered wheel, & unfolds the four bills the clerk gave him—Bingo! The third bill down has something written across old George’s mug: the numbers “666.”

Something barely glimpsed for a single split second as he received them. Something hitherto unheeded in his anger. Something filed away in the mnemonic storage banks for future sorting. & the future is now: Frank flips the bill over, almost losing all four as a sudden sea-blown gust threatens to rip them from his fingers. & everything goes BLUE again, as he stares down at the arcane graffiti neatly block-printed across the back: “NO ONE BUYS OR SELLS WITHOUT THE MONEY OF THE BEAST—APOCALYPSE.”

Gooseflesh ripples across his skin. His face goes pale. & he barely misses ramming the Vette into a Miami City Bus.

Elijah lets out an ear-splitting, tormented howl…

[ 111 ]

Slice’s fingers creep into his pocket & close lovingly around the smooth cylinder of an empty vial of Li Di 9. & the smooth handle & sheathed blade of his bootknife send a cold chill thrill up his spine, a tingle of near-orgasmic rapture. Ahhh, once he has the vials of Blue Devil, the Professor will no longer be needed & I’ve been so looking forward to your death for sooo long now, Proffy Punky baby, so fucking long…

“So good to see you, Old Friend,” hisses Slice, flicking his tongue over the smooth ridges of his lips. He holds out his empty hand, & Professor fills his itching palm with vials of Li Di 9. Once the vials & the bag of theatrical supplies are put snugly away in Slice’s pockets, he wordlessly instructs Professor to turn his face upward so that his throat is offered to the God of the New Flesh. He grips the man’s hair with his left hand, exerting physical as well as psychological control upon his intended victim.

DON’T KILL HIM. The voice startles Slice, & for a few seconds his will & his control over Professor waver. Professor Punk’s body trembles & his bladder turns loose, pissing his pants.

WE MAY NEED HIM LATER. The voice, Slice determines, is coming from within himself. Another effect of the Blue Devil? His will re-asserts itself, & he gets a firmer grip on Professor’s mind, slipping his knife from its scabbard with his right hand, touching the blade to the offered throat… NO! The blade comes away dry.

[ 112 ]

The wailing banshee shriek of police sirens rips the relative night quiet of the seedier outskirts of Quincy, Illinois. The throbbing road hum of cross-country rolling semis, the occasional squeal of brakes or the screech of tires, furtive snatches of laughter or a sudden cry or the frenzied jabber of angry, arguing voices: all of this dissolves to nothingness in the wailing warning of Law & Order’s harsh imperative.

Inside of motel room Fourteen, flesh still slaps flesh, but Maldoror stands amid this scene from The 120 Days of Sodom. He places the index finger of His right hand to His lips, a signal for silence perhaps better suited to some priggish Sunday school teacher than to the Sultan of Serial Slayings. But it is a gesture totally in character for this as-yet uncanonized Patron Saint of Paradoxical Perversity.

“No cause for concern—” He says, the sirens’ shriek leaving little room for misinterpretation. “as the radicals & anarchists of the ’60s used to caution, ‘Sit tight for thirty hours,’ & the pitiful piggies should have nearly expended their energies in the fury of their tail-chasing shenanigans & fiddling & farting around like so many tanked-up tigers & Little Black Sambos churning little but dust & butter…” He laughs. But there is no hint of humor in that flat, monotone outburst. More the warning snarl of a rabid dog than any emotional conveyance vaguely approaching the humane or human.

Maldoror holds the straight-edge razor up to catch the flickering blue radiance out-rushing from the television.

“Roll the girl over onto her belly, Snuff,” He commands, pointing to the burned & battered teenager.

[ 113 ]

The long scenic drive & a half-dozen chain-smoked cigarettes prove enough to mellow out his latest case of the jitters… Frank detours by way of the precinct station, & a call by the Desk Sgt. to Lardass Lucas nets a quick verification of his approved involvement in the investigation. The officer in Property retrieves the abandoned blue dress, & Elijah snarls savagely & lets out an eerie howl when he whiffs the scent of the mind-fucking killer, Slice.

“Sorry,” Hawkes apologizes, “Ol’ Elijah, here, seems to have taken one Helluva instant dislike to our mystery slayer, I guess, huh…?

“Any problem if I cut just a scrap from the inside hem, so I can give my hound a refresher scent if the trail gets scrambled…?”

“Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt. Okay—” the petite, straw-thatched young policewoman answers.

“Thanks. Thanks a lot, Ma’am,” Frank says, sizing her up surreptitiously. Her nameplate says “OLAFSON L.,” but he files her mentally under “H.H.H.”: for “Heidi with a Hammill Haircut.”

[ 114 ]

“Sorry to bother you,” Professor Punk says in his characteristically clipped speech, “but I need a favor.”

“Go on,” she tells him.

“I’m looking for an old friend & colleague of mine,” he says. “If I could enlist the aid of your spook network, I could locate him much quicker. His name is George Brittain. He possesses certain talents I need in dealing with Slice. & the whole project, for that matter.”

“At this point in the game you want to bring in an outsider? What is this shit, Professor?”

“The man is a genius in His own right. I’ve known Him for many years, so He wouldn’t really be an outsider. Hell, He was working with me when I first envisioned the concept behind Blue Devil.”

“Why am I getting the feeling that there’s something you’re not telling me?”

“I can’t answer that, Lucy. All I know is George Brittain can be a tremendous asset to Erebos. Without him, I’m afraid I can’t promise total success of the project.”

“You’re jerking me around now,” she says angrily, “& I don’t like it. If this project fails, you’ll live just long enough to regret you ever met me.”

“Don’t you think I fucking know that?” he says. “All the more—”

“Do you want my trackers to find Him for you?”

“No. At least not quite yet. But I’ll need some quick cash for some…uhhhhh…supplies… I’ve gotta play a couple of hunches. But I should soon have some valuable info that will help them.”

“Tell you what, Prof,” she says, the anger no longer clouding her voice. “Keep me posted. When you’re ready, I’ll alert my network. But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. Right now my fucking trackers can’t even find your fucking mutant in your own backyard.”

“Thank you. You won’t regret this.”

“I sure as Hell better not regret it.”

[ 115 ]

“Nnnnooohhhhh! Please! God! Please! Anything but that! Not back there—!” Heather tries to scream in protest, but the saliva-soaked panties gagging her mouth prevent her from articulating her frenzied plea for mercy. “It’s so SICK—so UNNATURAL…!” Instead, her words are garbled into a totally unintelligible groan.

Snuff has untied the cords that bound her to the bed frame, &, leaving her ankles unfettered, he cinches her wrists tightly together. Then he & Mal roll the futilely struggling blonde over onto her naked belly…

& the very worst of Heather’s previous nightmares returns to torment her reason, ripping at the strained moorings of her sanity, threatening to drag her down into the riptide of babbling terror that slurps & sucks within the primal sea of Chaos so close, so very close, to the churning surface between her limbic backbrain & conscious mind… How long ago—? Less than two weeks? How can that be possible—? It seems so long…so very very long & yet the memory assaults her as if it were just occurring—

[ 116 ]

Frank finally locates the exact spot where Rios had parked his Plymouth last night. Daylight streams through the bustling street, &, with the festive rainbow of brightly colored garments worn by its primarily Hispanic inhabitants, all aura of the sinister has vanished with the rose & saffron fire of daybreak, with the blazing sapphire of mid-morning sky. Even the little shop across the street touting its complete inventory of Santeria supplies seems quite innocuous.

He parks as close as possible, locks the Vette & sets the anti-theft alarm. No reason to take unnecessary chances. Then he & Elijah head for the narrow mouth of the nearby alleyway.

But his trusty cop-sense continues to fail him—the coffin-black Targa noses to the curb a full block away, unseen by the normally wary & sharp-eyed Hawkes. & he fails to note the Evil image of the black-bugeye-masked Chan speaking into his cellular phone.

Frank removes the scrap of cloth from his coat pocket, & gives the dog another whiff. Elijah sniffs around experimentally, then sits bolt upright, refusing to budge.

“Hhhhmmm. Looks like that’s a deadend for the moment,” he muses. He digs into the other outside pocket, & pulls out a driving glove he’d swiped from Rios, sealed up in a Ziploc Baggie. Frank unzips the bag, holding it open so Elijah gets a snootful of concentrated Rios’ scent.

The redbone gives an excited yelp & beelines for the alleyway. The two partners plunge into the shadowed defile, both hyped to follow the trail left by their buddy, &, with a kiss from Lady Luck, perhaps locate the infamous Mermaid’s Inn, &, perhaps, bring their quarry, the Beast, to bay…

[ 117 ]

The mirror returns his reflection as if it wants to get rid of it as soon as possible, spitting the distasteful image back to its outlandish source. The latex on his face has been applied unevenly, giving his face a freakish facade, certain to draw unwanted attention. But then, Slice is no makeup or special effects artist.

GOTTA DO BETTER THAN THIS, SCUMBAG, says the voice in his left ear.

What the fuck?! Who is that? He looks behind himself, then glances all around the room. The woman’s naked, mutilated body is on the blood-soaked mattress, just as it should be. No way SHE said anything. She’s got a mouthful of fucking intestine. Who said that?

YOU LOOK LIKE A FUCKING REJECT FROM NIGHT OF THE FUCKED-UP DEAD. LIKE A RETREAD GETTING READY TO BLOW OUT BIG TIME…

Who are you?

WHO DO YOU THINK I AM, YOU ANUS? GET THAT SHIT OFF YOUR FACE & START OVER. WE’VE GOT PLACES TO GO. PEOPLE TO DO…

It ain’t that bad, You can’t see the New Flesh, that’s the main thing, & it’s dark out. Who’s gonna see?

IT’S GONNA GET A LOT FUCKING DARKER BEFORE WE’RE FINISHED, MR. HYDE… Slice begins peeling the latex mask from his face. Blue pebblelike flesh is revealed as each piece of latex comes off. Beautiful, isn’t it? WORDS CAN’T BEGIN TO DESCRIBE IT, ZIT SUCKER. DO IT RIGHT THIS TIME. THAT FUCKING WHORE YOU DID IS STARTING TO STINK. & WE’VE GOT MILES TO GO BEFORE WE SLEEP.

I know who you are… OF COURSE YOU DO, SHIT STICK. YOU’VE ALWAYS KNOWN ME … But I was never sure… WELL, YOU CAN BANK ON IT NOW, HEMORRHOID… You shouldn’t talk to me like that. I’m the New Flesh… I’LL TALK TO YOU ANY WAY I WANT TO, SCOURGE OF THE EARTH. WHO DO YOU THINK MADE YOU WHAT YOU ARE?… Blue Devil made me what I am. Not you … THE MOON IS BLUE, BUTTFACE. WHERE DO YOU THINK THE FORMULA FOR BLUE DEVIL CAME FROM?… The one called “Professor”… BULLSHIT, ASSLICK. BLUE DEVIL IS MY FERTILE SEED. & YOU ARE MY FUCKING OFFSPRING. NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP & FIX YOUR FACE…

With encouragement from his unseen companion—the voice in his left ear—Slice re-applies the latex skin.

A fly lands on the nose of the corpse on the mattress, & crawls into the black, blood-crusted cavern of her nostril, looking for a good place to lay her eggs. It scuttles down the back of her throat, stopping just inside the ragged piece of intestine lodged against her uvula… The fly lays her eggs there.

[ 118 ]

Heather’s stepfather is standing over her as she kneels submissively on the hay-strewn floor of the stables, leering & laughing dementedly as he recites a meaningless babble of biblical phrases, & lashes her naked backside with his heavy leather belt…

“We’re going to do something NEW today, you horrid little Jezebel! Something NEW to punish you for your filthy, whorish sins—!” His mouth is flecked with foaming spittle, & he drools onto her quivering, lash-marked back as he rakes at her bare flesh with his dirt-caked nails & forces her face downward in the hay & dust, trying to mount her from the rear…

[ 119 ]

Elijah scampers forward, his nose close to the ground, sniffing the still-fresh olfactory evidence of Rios’ relatively recent passing.

The alley is a typical clone of urban accessways across the nation, undistinguished in its slovenly sameness: the one- & two-story tall tunnel broken only by periodic crossings with still-other similar alleys & unfamiliar streets; on both sides, seemingly endless rows of dented & battered doors, the grey or beige paint chipped away, exposing the oxidizing metal beneath; equally battered dumpsters & stained & crumpled aluminum trashcans spill their waste like regurgitating metal mouths; a scree of generic litter—plastic, paper, glass, & decaying garbage—shifts uneasily beneath their collective six feet; the stench of rotting vegetables & fruit & corrupted, maggot-riddled meat & the ammonia-tang of urine & the musk-stink of feces, both animal & human, ripe in the rising dayheat, the air swarming with a countless multitude of droning flies…

Teetering piles of wooden packing crates & pallets are stacked haphazardly beside a number of the sheet-metal doors & corrugated garage lift-gates, all along the alley.

Every few minutes, Elijah pauses, craning his neck to stare in the direction from which they’ve traveled. “Something the matter, Boy…?” Frank asks his mascot. But each time, just as his nerves begin to tingle, his companion moves on, as he once more takes up the track.

Suddenly, the dog seems puzzled, sniffing in circles, unable to follow the scent which should still be strong. He does this for several moments, then gives up, & sits motionless, waiting for orders from his master. Frank gestures for him to move on, & both proceed forward, seeking for some clue to guide them in the right direction.

They travel perhaps thirty or thirty-five feet, when Elijah pricks up his ears, & turns, snarling viciously. Frank trusts his companion’s keen senses. He swings around, drawing his long-barreled “Dirty Harry Special” in a smooth flash of blued steel…

Strung out across the alley in a loose firefight-wedge are five Asians attired in basic gang-punk black: harness-strap boots, tight-fitting pants & motorcycle jackets or leather duster coats over muscle T-shirts. Their hair is shoulder-length & glistening with oil. All wear matte-black wraparounds or bugeye mirrorshades. They look like recruits from Japan’s bosozoku, the “violently running tribes.” Or from similar street gangs or biker packs endemic to modern Hong Kong or Manila or…

One major point of interest sets them apart from the faceless swarm of the young savages. All are toting Chinese Type 64 Silenced submachine guns. Unusual equipment. Quiet & lethal. & their almost-ten-inch barrels are all leveled in Frank’s direction. Taking any further speculation on the subject from the realm of the academic to the arena of the tactical… He can see those thirty-round magazines jutting downward just in front of itching trigger fingers—one-hundred-fifty rounds of 7.62mm ammo against his six-pack of big, ass-kickin’ .44 Magnum loads…

They are eager. Smiling. Giggling among themselves (no doubt booted up on blow or crystal meth…)

He does a hyper-quick assessment of the situation: the only thing going for him is their current long-range status: the weapon-accuracy & penetrating power limited severely by distance—despite the bonus of their own outsized 9.6-inch barrels, the vented design of the silencers lowering bullet velocity to subsonic—

& he reads these punks as overconfident & trigger-happy—they’ll squeeze off way before they should…

“Ooohhhhh, sssshhhitttt!” he murmurs beneath his breath, his bruised chest searing pain at the impact as he ducks & rolls for the cover of a fortuitously nearby dumpster. Just as the yellow-orange of five muzzle-bursts flares dimly (the silencers, efficient flash-hiders, as well…). Just as the spray of lead hail begins to fly… Just as the patch of potholed pavement on which he’d been standing a split-second before erupts in disintegrating shards of asphalt…

Frank fires twice even as he rolls—lucky? or well-aimed?—one strikes true, & the second man on the left crumples as it perforates his chest, rupturing lungs & heart in a spray of blood…

The prolonged volley of incoming bullets gouges pockmark craters in zig-zagging rows scant inches behind him, kicking up a razor-edged whirlwind of glass splinters & ripped shreds of cardboard & paper, clanging & clattering against the sturdy metal of the dumpster, denting & ricocheting but failing to penetrate his cover.

Frank immediately rechambers the two spent rounds.

He hears a howl of pain, swings, & sees Elijah knocked sprawling by the impact of one or more stray hits… The dog lies totally still: dead? or unconscious? lying in a pool of his blood.

“OOOOHHH! FFFFFUCKKK!” He bellows in blind rage, breaking cover in a blaze of return fire, swinging into the two-handed combat stance, outstretched arm angling in a tight “V” towards his attackers, the thundering cannon-barrel of the .44 at their apex, as he squeezes off all six rounds. His anger throws his aim, & four shots go wild… but—

The point-man takes a headshot—his skull exploding in a burst-tomato splattering of blood & brain…

& the farthest on the right stumbles to his knees, tossing the spent magazine, slapping in a fresh one…

Frank’s trigger-finger jerks automatically, & he hears the firing pin click on an empty cylinder…

No time to reload.

He takes a dive for the dog, scoops up the limp, unmoving animal, rolls, gains his footing again, bent-double, & makes a mad dash for the dubious cover of several heavy wooden packing crates stacked against the far side of the alley, incoming bullets tugging, ripping at the cloth of his pants legs & jacket sleeves, creasing his flesh in half-a-dozen places…

[ 120 ]

“Fuck! Uncle Mal, I’m starving to death!” Julie whines. “Can’t we go get a hamburger & some fries or something…?”

“Shit, yeah. We been so goddamn busy all day we ain’t had a bite t’ eat since breakfast—& that was, what? eight o’clock this mornin’?” Snuff says, scratching the wrinkled sac of his scrotum absentmindedly. “I been too wired up t’ really notice, y’know? But my belly’s startin’ t’ growl.”

Their comments meet with silence. Except for the voices arguing from within the television, except for Dennis Hopper groaning, “MMMaaaaa- hhhh-mmm-eeeee!” as he clasps an inhalant mask across his mouth, sucking amyl nitrate down in greedy lungfuls, reveling in the intoxicating scent & taste of pears…except for the whispered moans of a brutally violated Isabella Rossellini (in this scene from the movie critics labeled “The Hardy Boys Go to Hell”)…while the soundtrack croons “Blue Velvet” & “bluer than velvet was the night…”

The room stinks of sweat & sex & fresh-spilled blood & the betrayal of bodily functions beyond containment.

“Will you. Change the channel. Please. Who watches this crazy shit? Lunatics—?

“Nobody is going. Anywhere. Call out for a pizza, Snuff. Use the phone next door, in your room. Ring up the nearest Domino’s. They deliver fast. & they are reliable. Now that you mention it, I could use some victuals, too. Sausage & pepperoni. A Large. & a couple of quarts of Coke. Don’t forget. Extra ice.”

[ 121 ]

Frank’s accelerated heartbeat jackhammers through his aching chest: the deep-bruised musculature of his pectorals, the damaged nerves, his ribcage all shrieking PAIN with every bellowing of breath,

He crouches behind the flimsy haven offered by the stacked wooden crates. His own body shielding that of the blood-soaked Elijah. He digs the handful of ammo out of his pants pocket, chambers in six rounds, & clenches the remaining five casings between his teeth, the acrid, metallic taste of brass mingling with his bitter saliva.

A total of eleven shots left: then he’s a sitting duck in a rigged shooting gallery.

His chest hurts like Hell, & he’s bleeding from at least four or five flesh-wounds. He wastes a precious moment striving to gather his mental & physical resources to a last-ditch peak—

He hears the cross-talk of the approaching assassins: they speak some shared Asian lingo to confuse their quarry. With that strange, uncanny clarity experienced at the razor edge of waiting death, Frank’s mind does a slow spin, analyzing all available data. The words sound familiar, yet he finds he cannot understand them. His own knowledge is limited to a scattering of key words & phrases in a number of the Asian dialects—his near-eidetic memory retaining many chance “throw-away” scraps of reference, both from his army days & his years with the FBI—as well as a somewhat rusty comprehension grammar of Vietnamese—the basics learned as part of the army’s survival crash course in native culture for its officers deployed there, the balance picked up “on the street” during his three tours of duty—& a characteristically lower proficiency in production grammar acquired via the same means…

But the punks who stalk him speak another tongue entirely—whether Japanese or some Filipino or Chinese dialect he can’t be certain. The rhythmic & tonal patterns of the language seem too guttural & singsong to be the former: Japanese is notable for its crystalline musicality & lyricism. He listens carefully, hoping to pinpoint even a single telltale word—without luck in the short span of seconds he dares to waste in contemplation. But his deductive reasoning suggests Cantonese: the primary dialect of Hong Kong, most likely source of black market Chinese weapons like the Type 64 submachines & the assassination pistol he encountered at the Inn last night…

Not that it makes a tinker’s damn right now, as the muffled chatter of the three remaining selfsame imported arms erupts again.

This time far far closer. This time there is no shield of metal to protect him. Only flimsy wood. Being drilled & chewed to splinters by the swarm of 7.62mm lead-termites…

Frank assesses the only slim chance of survival for himself & Elijah (he can’t allow the likelihood of reality to sink in…not yet not yet…) is a kamikaze firefight —hoping against hope to hit at least one more, trusting to his expert marksmanship & the superior accuracy of his pistol—then an abrupt break down the alley, running a quick-sprint of evasive zig-zags, & praying to Lady Luck that she will save his heretofore charmed ass…

He takes a quick glimpse over his shoulder to scope out his escape route, & stares into the flared muzzle of a twenty-inch barrel that, from his vantage, looks like a cannon-mouth. It might as well be. At a max of seven yards away, the 5.56-mm ammo spit out by the Singapore SAW (“Section Automatic Weapon”) light machine gun will turn him into human Swiss cheese. The moon-faced punk grips the fore & rear pistol-grips of the “Tommy Gun”-type weapon like he is in love with Death, & his right index finger toys with the trigger. The immense hitman grins, then bursts into demented laughter. He’s built like a Sumo wrestler in a King Kong-sized black leather jacket. His eyes are masked behind matte-black wraparounds, & his long, trailing mustache & inverted spade-shaped goatee glisten with stray spittle…

He may be crazy as a shithouse rat, Frank thinks, but he’s the one holding the trump card… as he stares at the disposable plastic drum magazine that holds one-hundred rounds.

“See you in fuckin’ Hell, Pig—” the giant laughs; Frank reads his body language: his muscles tensing for the kill.

[ 122 ]

Always keep plenty of change on-hand, Mal frequently cautions. Pay with exact change if possible: the less time spent in transactions, the less time they have to remember your face…

A now-clothed Snuff answers the knock on the door of Room #12. He wears his windbreaker, the COBRAY slung in its left pocket, within easy reach, against the long odds it’s the Man & the ambush that the luck of the draw says someday must come. “Who is it?” he queries like any crime-concerned John Q. Citizen might do.

“Pizza delivery,” the kid says, his voice slightly muffled through the thin wood of the door.

His right hand is gloveless. Instead he uses an old jailhouse trick that has been a favorite of Mal’s since His early days as Zodiac—the fingertips of the exposed hand are coated with a thin layer, a false “skin” of airplane glue, leaving five big “O’s” in the print dept. He must only be careful to avoid leaving palm-print latents. (& he’s carefully wiped the talcum traces left by removal of the latex glove with the motel hand towel casually draped across his still-gloved left—eliminating the chance of “printing” the pizza box with any portion of his ridgeline pattern…).

He turns the doorknob with his fingertips. Says a quick “Hi” to the kid in the red-white-&-navy webwork baseball cap with its company logo for ID to reassure in a world grown paranoid of strangers.

He asks the total. Takes the box & paper sack from the delivery boy, eases the door shut with his toe, “Just a second, let me get y’ the money—” Then sets them on the seat of the generic turquoise naugehyde motel chair just to the left of the door. “Here y’ go, son. Here’s a coupla bucks for yr trouble, okay?”

His change is exact. Plus the two-dollar tip that blends him into the mental background. The main thing, Mal always stresses, is not to be remembered…neither as a piker nor a glad-hand…

“Thanks, Mister,” the kid says, already beelining for the car to maintain his frenzied schedule of so-efficiently routed stops.

Snuff swings the door shut behind him. As ever, playing out that complex of scrupulously orchestrated moves that Mal insists upon—a justly-paranoid attention to detailed minutiae that has kept Himself & His companions free to roam the highways of America in their secret campaign of murder & mayhem these thirty-odd years…

He opens the door between the adjoining rooms; the lock took only a matter of seconds to jimmy when they first arrived.

Yet another rule of the road on Death Highway—always leave your options open: yeah, the fox digs two doorways to his burrow…

[ 123 ]

The King Kong-sized punk with the SAW stands frozen in a gelled split-instant of indecision, his huge index finger wrapped around the trigger. His eyes flicker upwards from his intended victim, his mental focus wavering…

Distracted by the sudden roar of exhaust & churning tires of a vehicle careening down the narrow alley like a Chiroptera ex-tartarus…stray trashcans clanging & clattering on impact, stacked boxes & crates toppling, smashed to splinters in its frenzied progress…

Frank levers sideways, trying to clear the immediate line of fire, his crooked left leg thrusting like a coiled steel spring, & he stakes his life on his quickdraw target practice, aiming in two-handed combat mode even as he catapults himself sideways, striving to clear the machine gun’s immediate line of fire…

[ 124 ]

“I am the demon from the bottomless pit here on earth to create havoc and terror. I am War. I am Death. I am Destruction!” Mal recites in typical monotone. Finished, He downs a gulp of icy Coca Cola from one of the flimsy plastic, motel “guest cups,” takes another bite from His slice of pizza, munching away, His lips red with tomato sauce. He swallows, then adds: “A very interesting, very dedicated young man wrote those words over two decades ago…”

He pauses for a moment, the silence prolonged & deafening. Julie finally takes her cue (though she’s heard this familiar rhetoric before…), questioning with her mouth still half-stuffed with cheese & crust: “Who was he, Uncle Mal—?”

“David Berkowitz, The .44 Killer. The ‘Son of Sam.’”

Truman Gilmore lies on his right side, moaning softly through the muffling leather of his bondage gag, facing away from the stocky man who sits beside him on the farther bed. Julie & her father sit across from Mal on the bed nearest the door, listening dutifully as they devour the spicy, meat-covered pizza. Heather is sprawled motionless behind them on the plastic dropcloth-covered blanket: whether she is unconscious or dead is a matter open to speculation…

“Yes, an interesting young man, with an interesting group of friends.

“I knew ‘the brat,’ before he became famous. Not well. &, of course, he never would have recognized Me. After all, I was robed & wearing the Mask of the Lord High Executioner at the time, & I was putting the ‘Count Zaroff’ knife, the knife of Spring-Heeled Jack to quite good use, carving up some Alsatian cur for the sacred rites of the Twenty-Two Disciples of Hell: drinking its blood & savoring its primal power…

“Untermyer. Interesting park. A place of Power, long established. Since the ’40s, if memory serves Me correctly. I have been known to frequent it on rare occasion. Very rare. Like fine brandy. The experience must not be overdone. Must be savored. Too much attention since Berkie’s time, though… alas.

“Yes. & I knew the true ‘Sons of Sam,’ as well…

“Such enterprising amateurs. Alas. & alack. But ever so careless. But, then, you know the Children, of course, don’t you, Snuff? They first befriended you as a child of the streets yourself in the height of the Haight, as one might say…

“Before I took you in. Or took you to the Inn…”

[ 125 ]

The sudden panicked shouts & muffled chattering of the Type 64s are nearly drowned out by the loud barking stutter of the SAW & the repeated thunder of his .44 Magnum ringing in Frank’s ears.

He triggers all six rounds, as much homing in on the sound-source of his assailant’s gunfire as truly sighting on his intended target, shooting even as he slams sideways attempting to evade the incoming stream of 5.56mm slugs blasting craters in the wood & asphalt at a cyclic rate of 520 rounds per minute…

Frank is fortunate. Very fortunate. In the dilated hyperreal eternity of blurred motion that follows—

His first shot punctures the heavy leather jacket with a sickening, nanosecond-spanning POP! & blows a gaping hole through the Asian gangboy’s bulging gut in a spray of blood & shredded flesh.

The wrist-jerking recoil of the .44 kicks the barrel up just a hair, & the second shot smashes a fist-sized entry wound through King Kong’s chest—accompanied by another rending POP! the snapping bones of his shattered ribcage crack like tinder-dry branches, & the chrome zipper slanting down across his right breast frags, a tiny section chain-whipping a deep, bleeding furrow over Frank’s left cheekbone, just below the bottom rim of his aviator’s glasses.

Delayed action—the lumbering giant lets out an ear-splitting bellow of pure pain, like a wounded rhino…

Frank senses his left pant leg tearing as either ricocheting slugs or asphalt shards lay open more shallow gashes in his thigh & shin…the pain is a dull flash stifled in the intensity of his survival-focus of his finger squeezing the trigger, the tendons of his wrists straining to steady the recoiling revolver, fighting against the bone-shuddering force of energy expended in the discharge of the Magnum loads.

The third shot drifts upward by another hairsbreadth, dually perforating heart & lung.

The fourth enters the giant punk’s armpit, & exits via his shoulder, shattering both socket & collarbone, the massive damage caused by the impact of the .44 Teflon-coated bullet nearly severing the thick, muscular limb from his body in yet another eruption of fountaining blood.

The two remaining shots go wild.

No great loss, Frank flashes, as his opponent stumbles a few paces backward, chaotically strafing the sky with machine gun slugs, & topples like a brick shithouse hit by a wrecking ball… The gun clatters to the pavement, silencing its stuttering fusillade.

[ 126 ]

“It is so hard to accurately attribute the very genesis of one’s own true awakening.

“Of course, I had known the pleasure of bringing death. But I suppose it must have been that one single film, with Mickey Hargitay in his role as ‘The Crimson Executioner’ in the Bloody Pit of Horror. Ah. How I identified with his physical prowess & perfection, & with his aesthetics of so-cleverly refined torture. I believe it must have been the line in the newspaper ads that credited it was ‘based on the writings of the Marquis De Sade’ that first caught My attention. I went back each evening for almost a fortnight, staring in amazement at the sheer genius of its perversity, dreaming the dreams of the Lord High Executioner…

“Listen to Me, you Bible Fuck—” Maldoror’s hand whips out, clenching Truman’s jaw painfully between His vise-like fingers, twisting the captive’s face in His direction. “Listen up—”

Then He returns to His rambling discourse:

“& to think how those pitiful piggies credited The Phantom of the Opera, the 1924 silent-film version, the one with Lon Chaney…in reference to My July 8, ’74, missive to the San Francisco Chronicle…

“What did the blue meanies think? That I was some hideously deformed monster, masked to conceal My shame?

“But then. They overlooked so many clews beneath their noses. That’s why I chose to rub them in their own boo-boos, as one might say to a dog…even if it was capable of coherent speech.

“Ah. How I do love a good riddle or a cipher or a puzzle…

“They missed the truth because they fixated upon their own fallacies. Instead of upon the infamous secrets contained within that Hell-spawned film. Had they seen the prologue with its slowly unrolled scroll: ‘My vengeance needs blood!’ credited to the Marquis de Sade… Had they heard his demonic laughter booming out in peals of godlike pleasure amid the raging thunder… Then only would they have fully understood My own paraphrasing:

‘(signed) the Red Phantom

(red with rage)’

“Ah. Even now I can quote those haunting words of inspired Evil verbatim. I long ago learned each line each phrase each subtly orated inflection & nuance:”

(suddenly, Mal’s voice casts off its normal monotone, & transforms itself into a deep, theatrically solemn recitation):

“On this fifth day of December, in the Year of Our Lord Sixteen-Hundred & Forty-Eight,

By virtue of the power vested in us by Our Noble Sovereign,

This tribunal sentences you, The Crimson Executioner, to Death…

You will die by one of the very instruments you devised to torture & kill your innocent victims…

You dared to take into your own hand the Laws of both God & Man…

You set yourself up as both Judge & Executioner…

You caused inhuman suffering…

& took Life not from any sense of Justice, but for Hatred & Self-Satisfaction…

You showed no Mercy to your victims…

You’ll never kill me! I’ll return & be avenged!

I am The Crimson Executioner!

(ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!)

This day shall be written in BLOOD!

No man can judge me—I am the Supreme Law!

I shall have my REVENGE!…

May the Dust of Time not erase from the mind of Men the infamy of THE CRIMSON EXECUTIONER!”

[ 127 ]

Frank hears screams & gunfire still echoing from up the alley, from the direction of the three remaining assassins. He struggles to his knees, first noticing the blood-soaked fabric of his pants legs, then wincing as the searing pain of torn flesh & flayed skin registers among the overload of sensory input. His skin feels chill & damp, his head reels with momentary vertigo, & his stomach is struck by a sudden, convulsive wave of nausea.

He barely manages to choke back a churning flood of vomit, willing himself not to puke, not now, not yet… His throat burns as he coughs, & his mouth is filled with the bitter taste of bile.

He looks up to witness still more carnage: three bodies mangled on the pavement—the “point man” he’d headshot & two other ambushers (the one with the leg wound, too, though he’s unrecognizable in his current condition)—obviously all crushed beneath the wheels of the metallic-bronze Jeep Renegade, still idling, effectively blocking the eastern access to the alleyway. Another of the remaining opposition lies bullet-riddled on the asphalt.

The last of the living badboys is holed up behind Frank’s former hiding place across the alley, trading bursts of gunfire with a grim-faced Cherry, who’s leaning from behind the opened driver’s door, a cordite-smoking Sniper-version Galil rifle cradled expertly in her grasp. The weapon is an SOTA, high-precision variant based on the Israeli assault standard: immediately identifiable by its heavier barrel & telescopic sight clamped to the side of the receiver by a massive (& quickly removable) bracket.

Frank realizes he’s lost his five teeth-clenched cartridges in the heat of the fray, &, instead of searching for them, he retrieves the dropped SAW, & uses it to chop the legs out from underneath the gunman with its last remaining burst of ammo.

The sleek, copper-haired ex-bodybuilder slides out from behind her makeshift shield. She’s wearing a loose, billowing “Harem” style jumpsuit in camel-colored, open-weave cotton, cinched at the waist with a tasseled rope belt. Quite surreal, considering the circumstances. Particularly in combination with the finishing touches of her wardrobe—spike-heeled suede half-boots, cobalt-blue bugeye mirrorshades & 7.62mm Galil… She does a careful all-points check of the fallen assassins. “All dead,” she says, calmly, “except for your clipped pigeon…

“I’d finish him, but I figure you want to goose this shitbird for any enlightening information—?”

“Well, since when did you join the Eleventh-Hour Cavalry?” Frank quips, maintaining for the moment his tough-guy veneer, even as he turns, trembling, & stoops to check the vital signs of the injured Elijah. His hair is matted with still-flowing blood, swarming with a host of buzzing flies. He’s inert, unconscious, but Frank is able to detect a faint pulse & the slightest rise-&-fall of breath. Closer examination reveals a bullet-shattered right foreleg, & a shallow flesh-wound where a second slug must have grazed the rear of his skull.

Cherry stands beside him, momentarily flashes a brass badge, & identifies herself: “Frank, I’m a PI, licensed through the State of California. I couldn’t tell you that before…

“What can I do to help…?”

“Do you have a blanket—or anything to wrap him in? He’s suffering from shock.”

“Yeah. I’ll get it.” The girl is fast on her feet, & she wastes no time. Frank is so absorbed in tending to his injured friend, brushing the flies away from his wounds, that he barely realizes she’s gone before she’s back, toting an army blanket. They use it to swaddle the wounded dog, & Frank exercises extreme caution as he lifts him, carries him to the Jeep, & lays Elijah on the rear floorboard in the space between the two parallel bench-seats.

“Get him to the nearest vet, Cherry, quick, I’m afraid we’re gonna lose him…”

She notices the trembling of his stern jaw as he speaks, notices the hint of gathered tears trickling from beneath his blank stare of his mirrored glasses, but all she says is, “Sure. Pronto. Count on it.”

“Thanks. Thanks, Cherry,” he says, hobbling toward the last living punk, sidestepping the forward-lurching vehicle. “I’m gonna find out as much as I can before the cops show…”

[ 128 ]

Mal pauses for a moment, His face that has become a mask of snarling Evil suddenly returns once more to disarming blandness, a mirror of His voice’s segue to monotone.

“Have you ever been to Ocean Castle?” He asks, His train of thought seemingly as erratic as His voice is controlled…

“Ha. As they say: ‘Sticks & stones may break My bones, but whips & chains can hurt Me…’

“‘Son of Sam’? Never into wordplay are they, those cops? Son of a dog? Sons of Guns, I’d say. 22, the number of Hell’s Disciples. It was the Charter Arms Bulldog .44 they all used. It all began in ’66, issuing in the new Age of Satan. A logical progression. To the secret key of Abrasax/Abraxas. Yes. That. & the known key to the cosmic: 365. Oh. Yes. They even missed the inversion, eh? DOG become GOD…? GOD is DOG… As well as the substitution cipher: yes, ‘Sons’ are ‘Children,’ are they not? Berkie wrote, ‘Kill for my Master.’ ‘I turn children into Killers.’

“‘Son of Sam.’ Son of (P)SA(L)M.’ The Twenty-Second Psalm. Sometimes called ‘The Cursed Psalm.’ Listen. To. The. Silences. The Dead speak in silences & whispers. The twelfth verse: ‘Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.’ Yes, Bulls. Are. The. Blue. Pigs. Verse sixteen: ‘For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands & feet.’ Following a four-verse progression: verse twenty: ‘Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.’ DELIVER. MY. DARLING. FROM. THE. POWER. OF. THE. DOG… BULL-DOG. & The Twenty Two Disciples of Hell… Yes. 22 doubled is .44… The Power of the Dog slew their darlings, their daughters… The Zodiac has twelve points. The compass is a sixteen-bladed star with thirty-two points (directions). ‘Compass’: ‘Thirty-two. Less. Twelve. Is. Twenty… ‘Compass’: ‘to grasp mentally; understand; comprehend; to surround; to besiege; to beleaguer; to purpose; to intend; to imagine; to plot; to contrive (something harmful); to bring within one’s power…”

“Yes. Of course I know. I am the expert on these things. You might even say that I got in a ‘guest shot or two’ in the heat of things. Look for the Water Signs. Yes. While the blue meanies were just fiddling & farting around, as usual…

“Berkie & his ‘siblings’ did so love their ciphers, too. Good boys & girls, all, but careless—such a waste of brilliance…

“Ah. Zodiac… How the occidental mind is limited… They never even supposed the connection, did they? That the Year of the Beast, was also the Year of the Horse in the Chinese Zodiac—the Year that I came forth as ‘The Pale Horse, Death.’

“Nor did they connect the ‘Zodiac’ with the Aztec calendar, the Round of Death, those diurnal sacrifices required to assure that the Cross of the Earth & the Circle of the Sky shall keep their bloody proper balance…”

[ 129 ]

Frank towers over the wounded Asian gang punk huddling on the ground next to the bullet-pitted dumpster. Close up, his ancestry is evident—the delicate facial bone structure, the characteristic epicanthic folds & the pale, flawless pigmentation of his skin mark his Japanese origin. He has lost the anonymous mask of his matte-black wraparounds. They lie on the asphalt perhaps ten feet away from him, the left temple broken off either during the battle or during their fall. Not that it matters. Only a brief flash of semi-academic interest that flickers through the ex-Fed’s mind as he walks over, picks them up, & returns to the subject of his intended interrogation.

“See these, you little Fuck?” he asks.

The youth totally ignores him. Frank stoops, his huge left hand out-thrust, seizing the hitman’s slender jaw, applying near-shattering pressure, sensing the bones give beneath his grasp, sensing every ridge & curve & indentation of teeth & mandibles, sensing the excruciating pain his prisoner is suffering, twisting his head up so his eyes are fixed in the cold silver mirrors of the detective’s stare…

“See what I can do to these—?” There is a sharp snapping sound as his right hand crushes the heavy plastic frames & lenses into an unrecognizable mass of tiny, sharp-edged shards.

“You, know, Asshole, I can do this to your fuckin’ jawbone just as easy—” He holds his cupped palm upright, blood trickling from numerous small lacerations, displaying the devastation, leaving no doubt what damage his strength can do…

The punk maintains his wiseguy silence despite his obvious pain & the intimidation of further violence.

“But, then again, you might not be able to talk if I did—so try this instead…” Frank suddenly rams his cupped palm into the man’s face, puncturing his perfect flesh with a hundred jagged fragments, shattering the bridge of his nose with the force of the straightarm blow. Blood spurts from his flattened nostrils, spraying Frank’s hand & coat sleeve, bubbles from between his clenched lips, trickles like crimson tears from the countless tiny pricks of his impalement…

An image of the blood-soaked, unconscious Elijah rushes through his epinephrine-wired brain… & he senses Shaw & Carver & Doc & Zenno & the others, shadows clustering just behind his tensed shoulders, urging him on… for an instant, the crimson transforms to black & the tunnel-world of Frank’s focus flickers BLUE as his rage taps some secret tainted place deep within his soul… The rage carries him along on a tsunami wave of violent, churning blue, & he lifts the punk one-handed, as easily as a straw-stuffed scarecrow, smashing his skull & spine against the battered dumpster. There is a loud clang as flesh meets metal. & another. & another.

His free right hand frisks the pockets of the punk’s leather duster coat, extracting exactly what he needs—a gravity knife. He flicks it open, exposing its razor-honed, six-inch blade.

“You’ve heard of enko zume, the ‘shortened finger,’ haven’t you?” He allows no time for a response. “But of course you have! You’re familiar with the rite of punishment inflicted by the Yakuza…”

Fear suddenly leaks through the mask of dazed indifference posed by his interrogation subject. “You know the fuckin’ score, you goddamn Nip Bastard—” Frank snarls, dropping the wounded man to the ground, giving him a vicious kick to his gun-shot shin with the pointed toe of a lizardskin Tony Lama. He squats on his heels, grasping the man’s left hand in his own, smashing it flat against the metal of the dumpster. He carefully lays the opened gravity knife on the asphalt. Then draws out his trusty survival knife from its ankle scabbard.

“You can do it now, or you can do it later, Prick,” he warns, his voice low & calm & controlled. Then screams into his prisoner’s face: “WHO THE FUCK SET YOU ON MY ASS? WHO ARE YOU WORKIN’ FOR, YOU SONUVABITCHIN’ COCKSUCK—?

“It’s one at a time until you spill it…”

[ 130 ]

“& I can see little Charlie’s face even now: bearded, so like Rasputin, eh? Nice touch, the swastika carved into his forehead. The ancient Sign of Luck. Derived from the Sanskrit: ‘su’/‘well’ & ‘asti’/‘it is’… Sun Sign if right-handed. Symbol of Kali & the night & magick if left-handed…

“Little Charlie said it so well, but the piggies never really listened, did they. Not even at his trial, when he told them outright:”

(again the perfectly controlled voice of Maldoror seems possessed by another’s—this time the rantings of Manson, jailed some several thousand miles away—yet so tone-perfect is the mimesis, that one would swear it is indeed him who speaks…):

“‘What about your Children? You say there are just a few? There are many, many more, coming in the same direction. They are running in the streets—& they are coming right at you!’”

(& Mal’s voice resumes its inhuman monotone…). “Ha. Little Charlie surely knows the number of the Beast… & so much more…”

[ 131 ]

Frank pauses, allowing the punk adequate time to respond—if he’s smart… The ex-tackle’s huge, scarred left hand exerting wrecking ball pressure on the comparatively female-delicate hand crushed against the filth-stained, bullet-dented metal surface, the joints & digits paling to a sickly whitish yellow, the tips & nailbeds unnaturally flushed, as circulation is constricted. No indecision shows in the cold silver mirrors of his stare. & his interrogation subject sees only the hard black pebbles of his own pupils, the pallid flesh trembling over pain-tensed facial muscles, the perspiration-soaked strands of coal-black hair clinging to his forehead, shock-sweat, glacial cold, pouring forth from every pore, pouring from the shuddering jut of his chin in what feels a saline waterfall of voided fluids, reeking with the pheromones of still-silenced FEAR…

But Frank is momentarily awash on a sea of indecision. No quibbling of moral qualms. No. Only tactical dynamics. CYA over which blade to employ in forcing a fast confession of facts…?

“Now, Asshole,” he snarls, “NOW or NEVER—”

His right hand lowers the survival knife to the pavement, next to the punk’s own weapon. The clatter is magnified, echoed in the lethal stillness… Frank grasps the breast of his captive’s T-shirt, straining the damp fabric taut, then yanks savagely, ripping the black cotton jersey in a fine spray of sweat droplets, ripping with a deafening roar like a hardwood plank split by an overheated buzzsaw… He wraps his right hand with the damp black cloth. Uses it to wipe his prints from the gravity knife’s handle.

Sirens wail in the distance…

& so does the punk as the razor-honed blade shears off the top digit of his left little finger, loosing bright jets of splattering blood, quick brush strokes painting hematic ideograms of pain across the grimy white vertical plane of the dumpster…

“No balls,” Frank mutters, “Shit! The traditional approach to enko zume calls for the offending Yakuza to hack off his own joint… ‘though nowadays, a friend generally holds his hand steady while someone else performs the actual amputation…

“So much for tradition, ehhhhh…?”

Grudgingly, Frank must admit this kid’s got stones, despite his accusation to the contrary—he hasn’t spilled his guts yet…

As if in perverse answer to his thoughts, Mt. Fujiyama erupts from the pit of the punk’s shock-stressed stomach, spewing a stinking lavaflow of half-digested, greasy pork noodles & bitter bile…

“GODDAMN!” Frank bellows, flicking bits of vomit from his jacket with the knifeblade.

“Gonna talk yet, Fuckhead? I’m countin’ down, & this is the Reader’s Digest condensed version of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo—

“five… four… three… two… one…”

[ 132 ]

…blue meanies never even guessed the full number of My Zodiac kills, the number of My collected slaves. They sat on their fat asses & never did as I instructed them. My tenth letter, dated April ’70 explained it all quite succinctly. But. No. They never asked their constituents & newspaper readers to wander around ’Frisco wearing some nice Zodiac buttons just like the peace symbols & ‘BLACK POWER’ slogans. I told them it would cheer Me up considerably. But. Alas. So I used a .38 & put down one of their very own sitting in a car. &, again, the pitiful piggies were so thick they even failed My simple bit of wit: I shot the frigging pig in the 600 block of Waller. Pig. Waller. 600 block. & I even included an altered Phillips ’66 road map pinpointing the peak of Mt. Diablo. Their main trouble seemed to be a total lack of any sense of humor. No true appreciation of this grand cosmic blue joke they call ‘existence.’ Needless to say, they never cracked My little two-line cipher which—”

“Heh, Uncle Mal, quick! I think she’s doin’ it, already—” Julie cries out, her voice urgent & excited, daring to interrupt His discourse. A momentary dark cloud passes over the face of Maldoror, but blows away as He senses deep within the archetypical blue mandala slowly spinning in His Hellish psyche the cross & circle turning slowly, whirled by the maelstrom Winds of Limbo, wailing for yet another tormented soul…

Yet another slave to serve in Paradi(c)e… but first there must be the Time of Summoning… in a dimensional rift where Earth & Sky & Sea merge into one great killing field, one boiling Primal Chaos, one eternal circle of the mystic ruling signs that knows no boundaries & awaits only for those guided by the inner vision to release this force of transformation… like a serpent shedding its old flesh, the world must change… like Nidhoggr… like Quetzalcoatl… like Ouroboros… Yes, the World Tree shall shake & let loose the serpents upon this ignorant imperfect world, summoned by the Great Beast the Maldoror…

Maldoror raises the “Count Zaroff” blade, the blade He believes to be the blade of Spring-Heeled Jack, & blue flickerings pouring from the television’s screen twist & writhe as if possessed with their own Life or perhaps the very Ghost-spirit of Anti-Life…

He lowers the blade until it points to the south, & intones the sacred litany: “Hail Satan, Lord of the South…”

He repeats the gesture, pointing eastward. “Hail Lucifer, Lord of the East … “ Continuing the invocation as proscribed by The Devil’s Doctrine…

[ 133 ]

Frank is impressed. Though in his present subzero rage, the gutsiness softens his hard-hearted resolve about as much as a prolonged dip in a vat of liquid oxygen.

His unwilling snitch is down by all three joints off his left little & ring fingers, & he’s two-out-of-three on the middle one as well. The asphalt looks like it’s littered with blood-soaked Vienna sausages… Not exactly the Good Housekeeping recipe of the month…

He’s done his share of screaming but no squealing up ’til now.

He’s passed out twice, albeit briefly. Hawkes zapped him back from nowhereland post haste. Like steel calipers his huge thumb & index finger dig into the pressure points of the punk’s left shoulder, just above the clavicle—a segue of excruciating pain jolting him ’round to Reality City…

“So far about all we’ve got here is your name, rank breath & cereal… uhhh, noodles… & it looks like most of that hit the dirt already, huh, Scum Suck?” Frank acts as if he has all the time in the world to continue with the questioning. Tetsuo’s too far gone with his own internalized agony to notice the rising accrescendo of police sirens & the chop chop chop of cop copter blades.

Frank pins the demolished stump of the assassin’s left hand flat against the face of the blood-smeared dumpster, pressing the razor-honed blade of the gravity knife gently against the soft flesh just above the knuckle bone, drawing a tiny trickling line of blood that is lost amid the flow of crimson tide.

“The…guys…I…work…for…Mermaid’s Inn…last night…some guys…you…killed. Yeah…worked for…my boss man. They…fuck your ass…big time…motherfucker… So…so…fuck this shit, man… So…you chop my fingers…?

As the blade begins to slice flesh again, the punk shrieks: “…FUCK YOU ANYWAY, THEY CHOP YOU FUCKING DICK & BALLS OFF, PIG! THEY CHOP YOU FUCKING EARS & TONGUE OFF, YOU DIRTY FUCKER PIG! & THEY FUCKING CUT THAT DOG-MEAT YOURS INTO FUCKING MONGOL HOT-POT…”

Frank is beyond rational response. The reference to Elijah punches his final button, & he hacks off the punk’s remaining digits without even a pause for further interrogation. Laying the gravity knife on the tattered heap of the former T-shirt, he grabs his survival knife, gives the punk a couple of vicious body slashes, & swaps knives again.

This time Frank shifts his hold on the youth’s arm, twists him into a bear hug, clenching him from behind. “You know about the Miranda, don’t you? SURE! Anyway, Ass-Fuck, you have the right to remain silent—FOREVER…”

Frank pauses, grasping the punk’s undamaged right hand, forcing the knife into his grip, fingers wrapped around the handle, marking this potential “EXHIBIT A” with Tetsuo’s own palm- & fingerprints… “BUT FUCK THIS FUCKING ‘ATTORNEY’ BULLSHIT—THIS IS FOR ELIJAH YOU SONUVABITCH!”

Using both the punk’s hands to grasp the knife-hilt, Frank helps him to do the one honorable thing considering the circumstances—the six-inch blade rips deep into his lower abdomen, from left to right opening his belly, cutting him a horizontal slit, then slicing upward, metal grinding against his sternum, spilling his intestines in a rush of blood…

“Seppuku. Good choice. The knife’s hardly a wakizashi, but—” the ex-Fed comments, as he drives the blade up underneath the breastbone, heading for the heart…

“—if it feels good—do it!”

[ 134 ]

“Yes. Premature. But it seems this is her time.” Mal presses His surgical-gloved fingers to the semi-conscious girl’s neck, gauging the carotid’s failing pulsebeat with an expert precision born of professional training in His early intended role of physician, as well as countless practice in His thirty-odd years in the field…

“Julie. Quickly. I shall allow you the pleasure. Select how you wish to do her. But make haste.” Young Juliette already stoops above their recumbent victim, her long black hair trailing like raven’s wings across Heather’s deathly pale naked arms & breasts. The Medic of Mutilations continues: “As you well know, the circumstances must be properly controlled if her passing is to have meaning, if she is to join our slave legion awaiting in the Blue Hell of Paradi(c)e…

His protege’s lips are parted, her breath taut, her cheeks flushed, her own pulse rate elevated. Her soft pink tongue darts out, compulsively flickering across the coral-tinged, puckered flesh, wet & glistening. She hesitates for just a moment, then fumbles with the knot tying the saliva-soaked panties that still gag Heather’s mouth. “Daddy, can you tear me off a piece a’ tape—?” she asks.

“All out. Y’ didn’t buy any.”

“Aaawww, FUCK!” She curses, not wishing to press the point about the duct tape any further, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut. “What the Hell…” she whispers, pulling the gag loose, pinching Heather’s nostrils shut with the fingers of her left hand, while her right wraps itself around her throat, tightening, throttling the senseless girl, applying all her strength to the task, exerting ever-increasing pressure to her trachea, clamping her windpipe closed, until the girl’s face purples & the bruises form a necklace of dark amethyst about her throat.

Heather’s body gives a last feeble convulsive shudder.

Julie’s lips twist into a smile of wicked delight.

She presses her own mouth to the dying girl’s, giving her the kiss of death, savoring the essence of her escaping soul.

HER SEA-BLUE EYES BURN WITH THE LOOSED FIRES OF HELLISH BLUE, ECHOING THE BLUE LIGHT WRITHING FROM THE TELEVISION, FLICKERING, POURING FORTH WAVE UPON WAVE OF DEVILISH ILLUMINATION, DEVOID OF ANY HINT OF HOPE OR MERCY…

[ 135 ]

“Goddamn!” Frank Hawkes curses, letting the dead-weight of the punk drop to the asphalt. He lays the torn scrap of jersey with the rest of the T-shirt. Picks up his survival knife & awaits the coming shitstorm of heat the close keening wail of sirens signals. He hears the stirred wind & chop chop chop of copter blades… But it is a rippling flicker of BLUE from above & beyond that distracts him. He stops what he’s doing & gazes upward, staring at the sun just long enough to burn a painless patch of microscopic holes into his retina. In the blink of an eye he forgets what he has just done, & he is unaware of the solar tattoos branded upon the inner walls of his eyeballs.

The skull beneath his skin commands an outer grin…

[ 136 ]

“It has been several hours since we first heard the sirens. The search will probably go door to door for at least several blocks in either direction. I believe we should prepare for a visit by the local constabulary: i.e., the pigs.”

In Truman’s pain-dulled eyes, a bright spark of hope glitters among the charred last remains of his sanity. His brain has hit near-total burnout. Life, until this morning, has been filled with peace & prosperity & niggling little secret sins, all the more intensely pleasurable for their clandestine thrill.

But since his ambush & deliverance into bondage, the very harlot halls of wicked Babylon & Sodom have seemed to throw open their gates to tempt & torment him with perverse & seductive visions… Truman’s helplessly unfaithful eyes spill a hot flood of tears as he flashes on the very real possibility he may never see his wife, Bertha, & the kids & their kids, the grandkids, ever again in THIS life… The phrase “this Veil of Tears” flickers through his consciousness for a second-long eternity then dissolves into the wavering haze of lachrymose dewdrops & Demerol… But now, the past seems an eternity away. Now all that remains is a memory dwindled to the perspective of an ass-backwards telescopic lens, now all that remains is the shrieking torment of shattered kneecaps further savaged by the tongue & blade of this young Lilith, his bleeding groin carved with shallow letters spelling “hELL,” & the numerals, “666,” & his forced complicity in these fiends’ crimes of rape & sodomy & torture… Surely he has already died, & through some gross miscarriage of divine justice he has been cast down into the bowels of Hades’ pit…

“We must prepare for the eventuality of their visit.” The inhumanly controlled voice of this archdemon known as “Maldodor” cuts through the veil of self-referential reproaches at paths chance-followed, & the tiny flicker of rekindled hope.

“Miss Julie, try to be discreet. Change into some garments that do not flaunt your too-seductive charms.” He glances at her, as she curls naked on the bed, using the dead girl’s cooling body as a pillow. There are red stains on her chin & breasts—whether these are blood or pizza sauce makes little difference. The deep purple-black of bruises mars the creamy flesh of her breasts, her tapering belly, her inner thighs, & the pert globes of her bottom cheeks. Minor lacerations on her back & buttocks & thighs & shins still ooze miniscule droplets of blood or are crusted with rust-brown scabs—the stigmata of her own ordeal. “We need no repetition of your earlier escapade,” He muses.

The stocky serial slayer feels His groin tightening with renewed lust—her young flesh so infinitely more alluring for the marks of violence displayed upon it, & the presence of death, the sight of Heather’s defenseless corpse juxtaposed with Julie’s still-living, breathing nudity causes the dangling serpent to rear its Evil head anew.

But there shall be time enough for the milking of its venom, all the time that Hell can offer…

“Make haste. You. Wanton. Little. Cunt. Put on the plain khaki shift. Take the ice buckets from both rooms with you. Fill them. Bring the ice to Me. You will need to make several trips, no doubt…

“Snuff. Help Me lift this dead bitch. We’ll keep her wrapped in plastic. Carry her into the bathroom, & lower the whole mess into the tub. That shall do until we can spend a little time to dally with her. & she is a dilly just made to dally, isn’t she? Use a washcloth & clean her up. Stick to business, too. No time to play your wicked little games right now. No ‘Doctor’ games. No ‘Toad-in-the-Hole.’ No ‘Cat-&-Mouse.’ No. Just wash the muck off of her. Then help Me with the Bible Boy. We’ll move him in with her. Chain him to the commode. & I’ll give him a stiff jolt of Demerol to keep him out of trouble.”

Snuff helps Him hoist Heather’s deadweight, scooping her up with the layer of protective plastic wrapped around her. They carry her to the bathroom, & lower her carefully into the makeshift porcelain coffin. “We shall use the ice to keep her body cold. It will slow cellular deterioration. Keep her fresh as a lily. It will also serve to confuse the time of death, should we find it necessary to quickly dump the remains…

“Always use every means at your disposal to confuse the so-called ‘experts.’ 99% have no ability to fully abstract. Save for a handful of the most gifted, they merely follow the seeming thread of logic as dictated by their uninspired textbooks, slavishly following the dictates of yet other ‘experts.’ They invariably overlook the true MO of the artistic slayer, failing to think it through with any real intelligence. Just as they did when we committed the Presidio crime, the cabbie killing. I wiped the taxi clean of prints. Not that I left any wearing My surgical gloves. Then I ‘accidentally’ printed the vehicle with the blood-smeared right hand of that Mex we did in Tijuana. We put it on ice. Then I walked it back across the border, plastic-wrapped inside a frozen packet of Guaymas shrimp…”

“Yeah, & the rest of him made chow for the rats—” Snuff adds.

“—& curs once we butchered him properly & left his bits in some deserted alleyway. In any case, their ‘evidence’ certainly removed Me as a viable suspect. A stroke of genius, I must admit…

“Yet again, they let Me slip between their foolish fingers. I used their own forensics experts to prove Myself innocent, so I could continue My Zodiac doings without threat of molestation…”

[ 137 ]

The police copter hovers above the scene of slaughter. Trash whirls in a cyclone summoned by the blur of its revolving blades.

“DROP YOUR WEAPON. MOVE SLOWLY TO THE ALLEY’S CENTER. WITH YOUR ARMS RAISED.” The voice booms from the on-board PA system.

Frank knows the score. He lets the knife clatter to the asphalt. Reaches for the sky, & does a slow shuffle for mid-alley. Chances are there’s an M16 zeroed in on him, even now, the copilot’s finger tickling the trigger. He can sense the red dot of the Laser Aiming Sight as if it were the burning focus of a magnifying glass raising smoke, drilling into the flesh of his lower back & pelvis… & Frank feels the swarm of flies settling upon his inert form, upon his clothing, the exposed, bloodied skin of his cheeks, the nape of his neck, the shallow wounds on his left thigh & both shins & forearms, feels them crawling through his sweat-soaked hair, tiny pinpricks of pain sear where their salivated digestive juices cauterize his flesh…

“YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY POLICE.

“LAY FACE DOWN ON THE GROUND. SPREAD-EAGLED. HANDS & LEGS OUTSTRETCHED. YEAH. DO IT SLOW & EASY.

“GOOD.

“PALMS UP…

“OFFICERS WILL BE WITH YOU ANY MOMENT TO ASSIST YOU.”

[ 138 ]

“Judging from the commotion down the way, I should say we shall indeed receive visitors, & soon. Julie, you know what you are to do. Snuff, throw on this cheap-ass bathrobe of yours—” Mal tosses the flimsy garment to His accomplice. “—put it on over your undershorts & T-shirt to cover up those goddamn tattoos of yours. Use only the bathroom light. No lamps. No flashlights. Understand?”

Julie carries the suitcase they both share back to “their” room. The door closes behind them. George Brittain, the Maldoror, carrying His attaché case, crosses to the small writing table, pulls out the plastic chair facing the door, sits down, snaps open the case, & lays out several folders, marked “MARKET SURVEYS & QUARTERLY SALES REPORT,” a dog-eared copy of the Go Rin No Sho, an English translation, & a Webster’s Abridged. Visible inside the case, a silenced MAC 10 is strapped in place within its custom-fitted sling, along with spare clips. His attaché case, like an illusionist’s top hat, contains all these things, & more, because HE WILLS it…

He sets to work, calm & unflustered despite the urgency of the situation. Still wearing His micropore gloves, He lifts out a delicate-looking pair of very sharp, straight-bladed surgical scissors, a sheet of smooth paper bearing rows of His own likeness centered in neat little rectangles (the backgrounds of most in a variety of colors to render the closest match-up with originals, plus one group shot in black & white), a pair of tapered-tip tweezers, several plain wood toothpicks, a cellophane packet, & a small vial of acetone. He digs into His wallet, pulls the driver’s license belonging to Truman Gilmore.

“Helps when You own a commercial photocopy business, doesn’t it? Particularly since the advent of Color Xerox,” He chuckles to Himself. “Nor does it hurt to have invested One’s true income in a failing medical supply firm, & hardware store, etc.

“After all, the illicit import of drugs has always been a most lucrative enterprise, at least if managed judiciously…

“Oh, yes, & then that’s not to mention the contractor’s license I maintain under My… hmmm… Shall. We. Say. Christened. Name…?”

With a precision born of surgical training & the monomaniac focus of an existence lived out in justified paranoia, He snips away, excising & trimming one of the self-portraits as perfectly as if it had been done by a machine. He checks the fit over Truman’s picture, finds it passable, then lays it near to hand while He opens the vial of acetone. He lifts the picture with the tweezers, held in His left hand, while He dips the tip of a toothpick in, & spreads a thin film of solvent to just inside the outer edges of the paper. The rear surface has been specially treated with a plastic film, so that it bonds neatly to the driver’s license when He presses it carefully into place.

He then selects several rectangles of thin, clear plastic laminate, holds them up with the tweezers for comparison to the glossiness of the license, identifies the closest match, trims it, & fuses it into place over the picture.

He returns His implements & supplies to His attaché case, & removes a cigar, while the bogus photo dries a moment. As a further precaution, He flips the first of the four cylinders of both locks three times to the number “61” & back to “110,” activating the trip setting of the detonation device—60-40-cast RDX-TNT, a large charge, with the addition of a rather unique custom-blended incendiary. The case is His own custom creation. If the combination “1966” is hit, or if someone should attempt to bypass the lock & pry it open, then the cleanup crew can peel them off the walls or pavement. The explosive can also be triggered via the sub-micro sending unit hidden inside His pocket calculator—making a very effective antipersonnel bomb…

He peels the cellophane wrapper from the Te-Amo maduro, strikes a light, & begins to puff away, clouding the room with the reek of the dark Mexican cigar. Confident in His precautionary measures, Mal holds the doctored driver’s license up at arm’s length, marveling at His own handiwork. “Cheerio, a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Truman P. Gilmore,” He quips.

[ 139 ]

“Exactly what in the Hell’s going on here, Hawkes?” questions Captain Lardass Lucas of Miami-Dade Homicide. “I’ve heard of Viet Nam flashbacks, but—”

“Well, you see, Cap, I always go around pickin’ gunfights with every gang of machine gun-totin’ slants I can find—kinda reminds me of The Seven Samurai, y’ know…?”

“Cut the wiseguy crap, Hawkes! I could book you & throw away the fucking key for this caper—so you’d better spill it & fast—”

“Okay. Okay. So I’m fuckin’ pissed. & I’m fuckin’ wired. & I don’t know whether my goddamn dog’s alive or fuckin’ dead. So excuse my lack of proper respect for your boys’ timely intervention here… I mean, SHIT! I just missed gettin’ myself fuckin’ blown to Perdition, so let me spell this out all nice & easy, okay—

“Elijah & I were tryin’ to sniff out the location of the goddamn Mermaid’s Inn, when these stiffs bushwhacked us for no fuckin’ reason that I can make head ’r tail out of…

“I dropped a couple of ’em. They shot my dog. I shot a couple more. They pinned me down back there behind those buzz-sawed crates. King Kong there attacked me from behind. He must’ve been awful slow or I was awful lucky—I nailed his fat ass with at least three, maybe four, shots. I blacked out. When I woke up, Elijah was gone & all but one of ’em that were still up when I went out were down. Squashed flatter’n freeway bugs, on a grille. Must’ve been some kinda’ hit & run vigilante that saved my butt.”

“Hawkes, I don’t buy that load of shit any more than I would a deed of sale to fuckin’ Disney World or the Orange Bowl. But go ahead. I need this shit. Make my fuckin’ day—what happened to that one—?” Lucas asks, pointing to the punk with the knife in his gut & all five fingers of his left hand missing.

“Well, it’s like this—I guess he must’ve been up on dust or something, actin’ real freaked out, y’ know? He started screamin’ weird Nip shit, & tried to drop me with that greasegun of his, but I grabbed King Kong’s Gatling Gun & blew his legs out from under him. But, SHIT! Cap, he just kept on comin’ like he couldn’t even feel it. He’d dropped his gun in the fracas, though, & pulled that friggin’ knife of his. I ran outta’ ammo, so I whipped out my good ol’ army survival knife & gave him a coupla’ decent slashes. Must’ve sent him over the edge, y’ know? Next thing I know he’s hackin’ off his own goddamn fingers joint by joint, & when I tried to intervene, he dropped down on his knees & did the hari kari bit…”

“Yeah, & I’m Dick Fuckin’ Tracy, too. & you’re Friggin’ Mike McGurk, huhhh? You think I buy this load of horseshit, you’re fucking insane. But for right now, just consider it lucky I picked up your description when the call on this mass murder shit came in, & I fucking insisted on handling this personally. Got ’em to hold off questioning until a copter could fly me out to the scene PDQ. Or you’d probably be headed for lockup on a possible set of Murder One charges. Got it, wiseguy? & count yourself lucky you had the rec from Carter. It just bought you some breathing space, capishe?

“I’m letting you walk for now. On your own recog. Okay. Just no more of this Lone Ranger/Dirty Harry shit. Okay? Don’t you dare FART without filing a flight plan with me—upwind or downwind I want to know which way th’ wind’s blowing. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Now let’s get you to the nearest hospital to take a look.”

[ 140 ]

The knock comes. Just as Mal predicted. Snuff switches on the bedside lamp, throws on his robe, & answers the door, rubbing his eyes just enough to project the proper role of rudely awakened sleeper.

Two uniformed police officers greet him. The pair look grim-faced & tired, irritable, their arches no doubt aching from past investigative hours standing on unyielding concrete.

“Yeah?” Snuff grumbles, his own surliness a con-smart bluff of Mr. John Q. Umbrage, Ticked-off Citizen Un-extraordinaire…

“Sorry t’ bother you,” the tall, gaunt one with the hangdog hound face says, flipping out his wallet with the I.D. peephole prominently displayed. “Police officers.” The bags under his eyes seem as dark as the plastic framing the identifying photo. “There’s been a crime committed in this area. We’re going door t’ door. Have you seen or heard anything suspicious in the last few hours…?”

“I was asleep.” Snuff launches into his verbal retroflex with measured ease: “Sorry. Been a tough day. Long drive. Been out like a light. My brother-in-law & me… & my daughter—” he points over his shoulder to the far bed. “—we just drove in from Guthrie. Oh yeah, Oklahoma…” (He mentions the town listed on Truman’s driver’s license, praying to his own deity, Lord Satan, that neither of these cops is intimately acquainted with the area in question. What he doesn’t need is some flatfoot reminiscing about the good ol’ days back home in Bible thumpin’ country. Hell no, anything, but that…

“Your daughter—shouldn’t she be home goin’ t’ school?” The second cop asks. He’s a beet-faced mick with a gnarled, tough-guy face & full-blown rum-blossom nose. His nametag reads “O’MALLEY.” “She ain’t playin’ hooky is she now?”

“Look here, now, offcer. You raise yr kids as y’ see fit ‘n’ I’ll raise mine. My Sarah’s fifteen. She goes to her Bible school. ‘n’ that’s the only schoolin’ she needs at her age. I ain’t havin’ my daughter truckin’ with no homey-sexurals ‘n’ no drug-dealin’ rock ‘n’ roll Divil wahshippers. She’s gettin’ th Loh-uhd’s schoolin’ from her Sabbath lessons…”

The tall cop (“RICK CALDWELL”: his ID stated, but Snuff can only think of him as “DEPUTY DAWG”) stares down at his partner with a disgusted look that translates as: you HAD t’ ask, didn’t ya, as if we didn’t have enough grief with this goddamn assignment already without some religious nut spoutin’ his crazed philosophy of child-rearin’…?

Miss Julie lies on her side, nestled under the covers, facing away from the minor commotion, cradling her daddy’s silenced 9mm machine pistol, ready to blow their asses to Kingdom Come. If things get hinky, they will be done…

[ 141 ]

“Looks like you’ll live, Mr. Hawkes. The wounds were all superficial. You’ve lost some blood, of course, but just under a couple of pints. Thanks to your weight & physical condition, a transfusion wasn’t indicated. I gave you a shot of wide-spectrum antibiotic & a mild arteriolar dilator, as well as topical application of norepinephrine as a vasoconstrictor to keep that damaged tissue from further bleeding.

“Heh. Not exactly standard procedure, but Cptn. Lucas already warned me he doubts you’ll follow doctor’s orders & take it easy—something about a wounded dog, I believe…? Says he’s trying to contact the nearby veterinary hospitals while I treat you…” He realizes his last remark is upsetting his patient, & he quickly switches subjects: “Your system is stressed but you’ve got a constitution like a Bear. Heh, that’s a joke, Chicago Bears, your hometown team—right…? Ever play football pro…? You’ve got the build…well not these days, I mean you’re no glandular case or anything, but in your prime…?”

“Nope. Varsity. Kansas State. Class of ’64.” Frank tries to maintain his cool with this nosey young dumbfuck of an emergency-room medic, Wellsley. All he wants to do is get the Hell out of here & see Elijah; see if his canine companion is alive or dead.

“DR. WELLSLEY, EMERGENCY ROOM, STAT. DR. WELLSLEY, EMERGENCY ROOM, STAT. PATIENT WITH MULTIPLE SHOTGUN WOUNDS HEMORRHAGING.”

“Sorry. ‘d love to talk some more. You’re a regular Dirty Harry, aren’t you? Seven of ’em.…?” The man is nearly out the door already, stepping briskly, at a near-trot, the generic pale green fabric of his baggy pants legs & the back hem of his shirt flutter in the draft from the air purification system. He catches the door frame for a moment, looks back over his shoulder, & says, “Oh yeah, nearly forgot. Drink plenty of OJ, OK? Eat a steak or maybe a box of raisins…? It’ll do you a world ‘a good, okay?”

[ 142 ]

Again, Truman Gilmore is down & out in Demerol City, his existence a grave-black Bardo, his rnam-shes mindlocked in a Transitional State flickering somewhere between “Moment of Death” & the clear light of “Experiencing Reality”— But this time, his prison is not the trunk of a Delta Olds but the restroom of a cheap motel, where he is chained & padlocked to the water closet, the chain wrapped in towels to muffle any potential scraping should the sleeper wake & offer protestation of his bondage… But this time, the clear light of “Experiencing Reality” is the blue knowledge of the sapphire’s secret heart…

[ 143 ]

“I’m afraid, Mr. Hawkes, that you’re going to have to make a very difficult decision—” Dr. Weinberg says, “your dog, uhhmnn…” he checks the notes on his clipboard: “…yes…Elijah, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, what’s—”

“There’s no easy way to put this. In my opinion you have only two choices. You see, the right foreleg has been completely destroyed by the perforation wound of the bullet. The joint is multiply fractured, &, with the force it struck, well, when it exited, it took a good portion of the fragmented bone along with it.”

“Naw. Naw. Completely destroyed? I don’t buy this, man! You guys can fix anything these days! Splints? Bone graft?…something?” Frank’s voice trembles, at least a full octave higher than normal, & his facial muscles have suddenly begun to tic, & he can see Shaw’s flesh-stripped face staring at him from the shadows just beyond Weinberg’s shoulder. Grinning…

“No, Mr. Hawkes, the truth is, this is veterinary medicine, & although I fully appreciate the pain you’re suffering at your small friend’s injury— you must remember, he is a dog, &, well, we just don’t have all the same options we would with a human victim with similar injuries—”

“Look, you asshole, I don’t fuckin’ care how much the fuck it costs— got it?”

“Mr. Hawkes, I understand—”

“The FUCK you understand… you don’t understand a goddamn thing, do you…? That’s my goddamn best fuckin’ friend, there, not just some fuckin’ mutt!”

“I will have to ask you to refrain from the use of such…expletives…this is a veterinary hospital, & I will not allow such vulgar street talk. I simply won’t have it!

“Now, may we continue in a rational discussion…or—”

“Okay, Doc. Sorry. It’s just—”

“Believe me, I do understand… & you must understand that I can only present the facts, & I won’t sugarcoat them. The options are, as I said earlier, extremely limited: we either remove the leg—”

“Awwww, Christ, no, there—”

“Or we can euthanize him. Two options. &, for the good of your pet, I suggest you waste no time in making a firm decision…

“Of course, you’re always welcome to get another opinion. But, again, I cannot overemphasize the need for a timely decision. Your dog is no doubt suffering a great deal of pain, despite the local anaesthetic, & the treatment we’ve already given to him for the associated shock. He lost a good deal of blood, & if we’re going to try to save him, we can’t waste a moment in beginning with the surgery…

“It is a very difficult decision, I know, Mr. Hawkes, but the best interest of the animal must be paramount. We can give it a try, but I must forewarn you, we still may lose him. There can be no guarantees. There are simply too many variables, too many unknowns until we’ve completed the amputation & have allowed time for his condition to, hopefully, stabilize…

“After all, you don’t want to see him suffer, do you…?”

[ 144 ]

Sitting in his darkened lab, Professor Punk pours a shot of tequila, & downs the fiery liquor in a single gulp, chasing it with a slug of ginger ale. He feels only minor relief that Lucy has agreed to set her spooks on Brittain’s trail. Of course he is gratified that Slice spared his life, but he is more than a little puzzled. The last mind-link was different from all the others. He was aware of a third presence during that link, but he can’t make any real sense of it. Whomever or whatever it was, it had some control over Slice. Professor hasn’t told anyone of the last mind-fucking Slice gave him. Lucy’d be pissed if she knew, & he doesn’t want to become the target of her anger. Only a fool would want the most dangerous woman in the world on his ass. Professor trusts no one in Erebos. He knows the players too well for that.

The one man in the world he feels he can trust is out there somewhere, living His unique philosophy & exploring the darker regions of death. “Where are you, Brittain? Who are You now—? You shed Your role of Zodiac, I know… So, what fucking mask do You wear, now…?

“I think I know You by Your secret signatures, Your mark upon their merely mortal flesh…

“I’ve watched & waited so fucking carefully these many many years… But, like Hawkes, I always seem one step or more behind Your shadow… How the Hell can even Lucy’s trackers find You—?” he asks of the silent darkness.

Yeah, even Prof. Punk must occasionally wax eloquent…

ONCE IN A GODDAMNED BLUE MOON…

[ 145 ]

He puffs a gust of stinking blue-white smoke out into the September night air. (No. It is well beyond midnight… & now it is the night air of October that His exhalation pollutes…).

He is George Simon Brittain, &, as His domineering maternal grandmother—the palmist, the astrologer, the early devotee of Spiritualist teachings who had later developed an obsession with Revelations, the Apocrypha & the dualistic Gnostic “heresies” of the Valentinians & the Carpocratians & Cainites—foretold so often to Him, He is the Magus reborn & reborn & reborn again to alter the destiny of Man & of the very stars…

He is the Zodiac. The Maldodor. The Wearer of the Twelve Masks. Lord High Executioner of The Circle of Twelve. He is immortal & invincible. His body is but a robe of skin, to be shed as the serpent casts off His old self, to be worn until this existence ends & the next cycling of the spheres calls forth His final manifestation, served by the slaves He has collected in the many turnings of the cosmic wheel.

He is in control.

He knows no fear as He confronts these pitiful blue meanies these blue pigs with their Tin Man badges.

He is the deathless Wizard. He is Z, the Last of Letters, & the Cross of the Material World & the Circle of the Spirit World. He is the joining of Gemini & Cancer. He is the twin, twining snakes of the caduceus… (albeit interrupted but invoked none-the-less…).

These blue pigs, then, are but figments of His imagination, puppets who fill the roles of actors in His opera His motion picture.

He dreams them all. They are His nightmares, even as He surely must be theirs…

Prison bars could never hold Him. He would realize them into nothingness…

He is the true ethical nihilist—

They hold no power over Him…for they are nothing.

“May I help you, gentlemen?” He asks these hallucinatory piggies, puffing another cloud of Evil-smelling smoke in their direction.

His voice is totally controlled, cold & clinical, the surgeon’s scalpel severing their will to dominate Him with their meaningless uniforms & badges of office. They are now His patients, as He, the collective-conscious father figure of the psychoanalyst bids them lie upon His couch to recount & recant the meaning of their dreams…

He is the Supreme Ego. The Headshrinker who shall shrink their very souls to nothingness if He so desires to do His thing & collect them for His Legion of the Damned to serve Him in the Blue Hell that soon approaches…

They are naught but smoke in the wind.

& it is He who puffs forth the gusts of gale & He who draws the smoke forth from the fire of purging…

[ 146 ]

The slanting rays of Florida sun flash from the mercuric-silver mirrors of Frank Hawkes’ shades, the frames an aura of blazing gold. The sleek Stingray weaves its way through downtown Miami commuter traffic, & the Kenwood is tuned to some strange station, just now playing Blue Öyster Cult’s “Veteran of the Psychic Wars.” If the serial crimes investigator only recognized the music, it would, no doubt, raise gooseflesh in its eerie synchronicity…

Abruptly, the cellular beeps, signaling an incoming message. He cradles the plastic receiver to the contours of his ear & chin, & answers: “Yeah? Hawkes—”

“Frank. This is Clarence. How y’ doin’, buddy? Lucas called. Hear you had some kind of shootout at a bar the other night?”

“Not good. Not good at all, Carter. When did you talk with him?”

“A.M. call. Around seven.”

“Well, then, you haven’t heard the half of it—Elijah & I were ambushed late this morning—a gang of sl…uhhh…Asian hitmen. Elijah nearly bought it. He’s gonna lose a leg—”

“Sorry, Frank. Nothing else—?”

“Nope. & we’re both lucky. All things considered. We’d both be dead if it hadn’t been for this well, uhhh, bodybuilder chick named ‘Cherry.’”

“What?”

“Some kinda private dick…-less from California. & I’ll tell you this, man, she’s got more balls than she does curves. & that’s sayin’ something… She saved both our asses, There’s some really weird shit goin’ on down here, C.C. Listen, you won’t believe half of it…

“Well. Lardass said it was gettin’ hot down there. & I’ve got some hot news for you as well.”

“Yeah?”

“Your hunch on the Zodiac. The bit about His birthdate? You were in luck—files are still intact, for the most part. Centralized in San Fran Homicide. Toschi & Armstrong, of course, have long since retired. But still alive, I think. Most of the other IOs have put themselves out to pasture, moved on to other divisions, or they’re deceased.

“But I aced it, Frank. Made contact with an officer in Records. He was a clerk back when you were involved in the investigation. Needless to say, he remembered you. Thought you were a most likable young hothead. But said he never made you for a Company lifer. Too much the outlaw even then, I guess…?

“He drew blank on the Taurus/Gemini cusp thing.”

“Shit! & I was so fuckin’ sure—”

“Hang on, Frank. Let me finish—”

“Okay. Sorry, Clarence.”

“But the concept intrigued him. &—”

“Yeah?”

“— he tried another angle—he played a wild hunch & tried the same parameters, but switched the focus to a Gemini/Cancer cusp DOB. ‘II,’ The Twins, paired with the two opposing sixes that are Cancer’s astrological notation seemed to sync neatly with Zodiac’s apparent fixation with numerology: 6/21; 6/22; II/69—”

“Did you just say June Twenty-second…?” Frank gasps.

“—& he came up with a minor Zodiac suspect who was born either a split-second before or after the stroke of midnight, depending on which records you believe. California DMV lists it as 6/21/1940. But His school records say 6/22/1940—”

“Holy shit! 6/22 is my goddamn birthday, too…”

“Heh? Some weird coincidence, huh…” Rios says, duly unimpressed by this latest fluke of fate. “Anyway, His POB’s listed as L.A., CA. Only copies of His birth certificate are available. There was a fire in the records section of the county hospital in the winter of 1959: the original was destroyed.

“George Simon Brittain. His mother had numerous arrests on D&D charges as well as a jacket for soliciting raps. Father was George Nicholas ‘Nick’ Brittain, Sr., a merchant marine who flew the coup immediately following Pearl Harbor. I smell ‘draft dodger.’ Before he split, though, he managed to rack up a hefty file of A&B beefs & a coupla counts of wife-beating. All charges dropped. No record of divorce proceedings.

“Raised by His maternal grandmother, some kind of occultist wacko. George Jr. did extremely well academically, but was noted as a ‘loner’ with ‘poor social development & skills,’ ‘moody’ & ‘withdrawn.’ She moved to the Frisco area from L.A. when He was in sixth grade. Regular gypsies for the next coupla years: Tiburon, Anchor Bay, Berry Creek, Whispering Pines, Sutter, Paradise—”

“Whispering Pines & Paradise…? I wonder…” Frank interrupts.

“& Vallejo.”

“Oh. Jesus H. Christ!”

“Yeah. I thought that would pop you, Frank. Some minor scrapes with the law as a juvie.”

“What kind?” Frank asks, just braking in time to miss a lane-swerving Lincoln. By a hair.

“My connection managed to pull in a few favors. Did a grave digging act with the buried juvie jacket. He was pulled in on Suspicion of Arson, Suspicion of Cruelty to Animals, Suspicion of Shoplifting. Zero convictions.

“Grandmother moved back to the LA area in the middle of His sophomore year. Near Riverside, to Lakeview. Stayed ’til mid-summer, then back to Frisco. Finally settled in Antioch. She lived there ’til she died on November 2, ’73. Not that far from Lake Berryessa, Vallejo, & within eyesight of Mt. Diablo.”

“Whoa…”

“Yeah. Okay, He graduated from high school in ’58. Enlisted Navy. Did His stint & received an honorable discharge in early ’62. Drifted for about a year & a half. Used the Vet Bill to enroll at UCLA. Fall ’63. Exceptional marks, Med school & philosophy. Dropout. About three months prior to graduation. Puzzled the Hell out of His profs. May have followed in His daddy’s footsteps, shipped out as a merchant seaman. Believed to have spent considerable time in Baja California, Yucatan & the Caribbean, uhhhmm, yeah, in particular, the Virgin Islands… possibly Haiti… He may have made contact with Process members at Xtul, there in Yucatan—”

“Fits well with His occultist background, huh? Neat work, C.C.!”

“That isn’t the half of it, Frank. Reappeared in the Vallejo area in mid-’68. Set up shop as an automotive salvager. At least that’s what His IRS’ filings claimed. Owned a couple of trailers in various isolated locales, plus several possible apartments under AKAs. Chief residence was listed as His granny’s. But He apparently spent very little time there. He owned at least four or five driveable cars. From His DMV records. But neighbors mentioned even more. Mostly older models. Mostly Chevys. He was a movie buff. Spent a lot of time at some theater with a Zodiac painted on the domed ceiling. Also hung out at an after-hours bar called the ‘Zodiac,’ a biker hangout, down on West Capital Avenue in Sacramento. In fact, He was picked up at a nearby club for questioning following a tip regarding the ‘Friday the Thirteenth Killing’ of a young nurse who was last seen there—”

“Yeah. I remember that one. We tried to link it as a Zodiac slaying but results proved inconclusive. I always had a gut feeling on it, though.”

“Okay. Catch this— He was wearing a shoulder-length wig, sunglasses & a hacked-up denim jacket emblazoned ‘SATAN’S CIRCLE’ when questioned. His hair was actually short & neatly combed. Sans wig, He made a damn good match for the San Fran October 18, ’69 wanted poster of the suspect in connection with Presidio cabbie slaying near the corner of Washington & Cherry. He washed out as Zodiac when His prints were a total mismatch. His handwriting also was a bomb. He claimed He just hung out there pussy-hunting. Brought in a fancy-pants lawyer & threatened to sue if they didn’t get off His case.”

“Shit! I remember Him! I read the report, Man, Clarence, I can still see those eyes staring up at me out of the photo. I was sure we had Him when I saw it—”

[ 147 ]

Prof. Punk sits at his compact computer keyboard. He punches in the seven-digit access code, “SERIALK,” & taps his fingertips nervously while he waits. He looks even weirder than his bizarre norm. He’s wearing a red-painted Lexan police-style “riot helmet” with visor, gear that he conned from one of the SEC-squad boys in trade for 15 minutes in the Juan Corona Room of the catacombs.

Prof. has made a few adjustments, customizing the rig to suit his very special requirements. The interior surface of the helmet is now triple-layered in lead foil, glued in place with fifth-generation super-cyanoacrylate. The exterior—the once matte-black dome & once-smoked translucent visor—is painted with vermilion, red mercury sulfide, the pigment hand-ground by the Prof. with his mortar & pestle from a single chunk of the mineral cinnabar; upon this field of red are numerous arcane symbols scrawled in the black form of the chemical compound. A fine webwork of platinum/ mercury-amalgam threads is suspended over pins of the same material protruding precisely three inches above the helmet’s surface, & electrodes connected to its “lateral polar axis” feed in the high-voltage current that sizzles & crackles in a blue aura of electrical discharges.

A trailing collar of triple-layered lead foil dangles from the rim of the helmet down his shoulders & upper torso. & a matte-black cable housing fiber optic leads is jacked into the dermal patch at the back of his neck—to the spot known to Zen adepts as “The Jade Gate”— linking his mind D/C into the computer Matrix…

This quasi-scientific, quasi-magickal apparatus is his only hope of eluding the mind-fucking probe of the psycho Slice.

Once the helmet is drawn over his head & secured in place, Prof. Punk’s mind is locked within a scratch-built sensory-deprivation chamber that, if his calculations are correct, will serve to deprive the Blue Devil Slayer of access to the depths of the outlaw scientific genius’s brain…

When he felt Slice’s mental probings last fade, Professor swallowed a sugar cube laced with a “hit” of Sandoz-pure lysergic acid

(long ago he found the hallucinogen to be synergistic with the residual Li Di formula in all its permutations flowing through his veins, enabling him to expand his consciousness into never-before explored & non-Euclidian dimensions…),

then stripped, aligned & lit the blue votive candles, assumed the lotus posture, & let his conscious mind dissolve in this true Philosopher’s aqua regia, flowing into a trance-state, regressing down into the dark depths of the reptilian backbrain into the very core of Kundalini, the Serpent Power…

His motor reflexes working on preprogrammed autopilot, he picked up the ritual blade & carved the Glyphs of Summoning into the naked flesh of his thighs, calling forth his inamorata/mentor, the succubus, who suggested this possible solution to his problem…

The only reality that now exists for PP is the world within the computer:

the screen rolls up, scanning the filenames in alpha sequence:

past

“BTK Strangler”

“John Reginald Halliday Christie.”

“Dr. Neill Cream.”

“Fritz Haarmann.”

“Edmund Emil Kemper III.”

“Peter Kurten.”

“Leonard Lake.”

“Henri Desire Landru.”

“Pedro Alonzo Lopez.”

“Henry Lee Lucas.”

“Charles Chat Ng.”

“William Palmer.”

past

“Dr. Marcel Petiot.”

“George Joseph Smith.”

“Peter Sutcliffe.”

to perhaps the most notorious: not because of the confirmed number of His kills, but because He has never been brought to Justice, the secrets of His taunting cipher codes as-yet unrevealed after more than thirty years, only their surface “shells” of information “broken,” despite His promise they would divulge His true identity if only the law enforcement community could crack them:

to

“Zodiac.”

[ 148 ]

A little jolt of mainlined meth serves to drag Bible Boy back from beyond the veil of mist & tears into a world of suffering. The womb of darkness expels him forth, & he awakens, drenched in chill perspiration, a strangled cry of pain seeking exit from between his gag-stuffed lips.

“Guests could not stay long. I am afraid. But I am certain they did miss you.” The face of Maldoror leering above him looms huge & owlish in the distortions of his drugged perception.

He lies in a stinking pool of his own shit & urine, curled in a fetal posture on the cold linoleum tiles of a long-worn-out bathroom floor, his wrists chained to the base of the commode.

“Oh. Yes. Truman P. Gilmore. Touter of Testaments. I shall fill your mind with wonders of which you have no conception… I shall make My testament to you. Yes. You shall be honored above all men. For you shall know the opening chapters & shall share in them as My fourth disciple. Bear witness, Mortal. To The Books of the Great Beast…”

[ 149 ]

“—Only thing that threw me was He was using some kinda phony biker alias: ‘Nick the Noose’ Nicholas. Yeah. & now I can see the fuckin’ connection. He was originally ID’d as ‘Simon (Si) Legrand,’ a security guard. His boss gave Him the highest praise. Then He closed the loop on that AKA back to His real name. Copped it was ’cause of His juvie. But, like you said, C.C., Sacramento PD lacked probable. & some witch/bitch broad & a kid up in the Haight alibied Him, right?”

“Yep, you got it, Frank. & they lived on Oak, only about a block away from the Process crashpad. I know you know the inside skinny on the Process’ Church of the Final Judgment—you covered them in S&SV. But I had to do a bit of boning up. I reread your chapter covering the DeGrimstons’ tripartite cult—with its basis in christ-satan duality. Much as Satan was originally perceived in the Old Testament as the prosecutor of men in the court of yahweh’s justice, so, in Process philosophy, christ becomes the judge & Satan the executioner.”

“Yeah, you did your homework, Clarence. Robert DeGrimston fueled the fires of Armageddon with his rhetoric aimed at hastening the Second Coming. ‘My prophecy upon this wasted earth & upon the corrupt creation that squats upon its ruined surface is: THOU SHALT KILL.’ Manson is only one of many who eagerly embraced this philosophy. Our nemesis, Zodiac, seems to have at least paralleled this line of reasoning.. But I believe this was no matter of chance. Whether He was ever a member of one of the three Process subsects—the Jehovahs, the Lucifereans & the Satanists—is something we may never know. The three groups could be categorized simplistically as: Puritans of tyrannical bent; Libertines who advocated free sex & freedom to indulge in drugs; the Blood-&-Thunderers, who apparently reveled in violence, destruction, living sacrifice, & Devil worship.”

“Yeah. A philosophy that would very neatly embrace the Cainite & Carpocratian teachings that Brittain’s grandmother became obsessed with! Ironically, Gardner, my Records’ contact, was into philosophy himself, in his earlier years, & had toyed with the idea of becoming a prof, before the financial realities sidestepped him into police work. Okay. So he was more than happy to flaunt his own area of expertise for my benefit.

“Frank, both sects were libertine christian-heretical spinoffs of Gnostic belief. The Gnostics were religious dualists who believed that matter was Evil & only the spirit was good. Salvation hinged upon acquiring the esoteric knowledge, or gnosis. These were only two among many, many splinter groups, each following their own centrally-linked philosophy—

“The Cainites had apparently entirely abandoned jesus, &, instead, reinterpreted the Old Testament, perceiving yahweh as Evil, since he had created this imperfect world. They exalted Cain, the Slayer, Eve, Judas, Esau, & the Sodomites, whom they believed were bearers of a secret knowledge that they were privileged to share. They even had gospels named in their honor. All of these proto-Gnostics had been punished by a jealous, irrational creator—Hystera, the Primal Womb. True perfection, &, hence, Salvation, could only be attained by breaking every law of the Old Testament. This violation of biblical canon was, therefore, their solemn religious duty. They invoked ‘angels’ whenever they committed one of their iconoclastic acts. They believed that one must follow this course of taboo-breaking through the ongoing cycles of an Evil existence, until they had sinned strenuously enough to buy their way to Paradise!”

“That sure fits our Zodiac profile, doesn’t it, Clarence—”

“Oh, you better believe it, Frank. & the Carpocratians flourished in Alexandria, Egypt. Now they revered Jesus not as Redeemer, but as an ordinary man who was to be exalted solely because his soul had not forgotten that its origin was to be found within the sphere of the unknown perfect god. They totally rejected the imperfection of this created world by identifying with spiritual reality. They laid claim to communicating with demonic spirits, & held power over the material world due to their ‘demonic connection.’ Like the Cainites, they believed that their transcendence could only be achieved by sampling every conceivable experience, even the most sinful. Hence, since this could not be attained in a single lifetime, they espoused the doctrine of the transmigration of souls— i.e., reincarnation! & they were practitioners of magick… Oh, yeah, by the way, many of the Gnostics identified the Twelve Apostles with the twelve signs of the Zodiac, & deified the celestial wheel!”

“Whoa! Carter! You are on to something, here—

“Anyway, back to Brittain per se. For now. They had to let Him walk. No choice. It must have been at least a year later that I saw the report. & it wasn’t like He was the only suspect we had. No way. Over 2,500 good leads. But they all washed. One reason or another.”

“Frank, my contact got wired after reviewing your occult theory in light of the June 21?/June 22? DOB. He checked with a Berkley prof who purports considerable knowledge of the arcane. He pointed out that our boy was born on the Summer Solstice, which was one of the events which opened the ‘doors between the worlds.’ He pointed out, too, that the reversed 6s or ‘69’ of Cancer is positioned on the wheel of the Zodiac directly adjacent to ‘N’ for ‘North.’ If you view that sideways, it becomes a ‘Z’… How d’ya like that…?

“He didn’t run an astrological chart on Brittain. Not his thing. However, he consulted a coupla reference books, & suggested a high probability we will find one or more of the following present in His chart: Mars, Saturn, Uranus, &, most surely, Neptune in the Twelfth House of Cancer. Whatever the Hell that means? He claims it would yield a predisposition for a morbid, secretive, eccentric, reclusive individual fascinated by the sea & the occult, with probable psychic abilities, chaotic & vengeful leanings, who may be subject to bizarre fantasies, self-deception & addictive habit patterns, & might expose Himself to risk through treachery or violent response to feelings of persecution… Whew!

“Other strong possibilities would be the presence of Scorpio Rising as His ascendant sign. In which case, add to His description, ‘sarcastic, skeptical, quick-witted, mechanical skill, will strive to high attainments through subtlety & strength of will or by force, & He will have a penetrating gaze…”

[ 150 ]

“I did it, Lucy. I can’t fuckin’ believe it,” Prof. Punk babbles hollowly into the mouthpiece of his cot-side phone.

“What? Not much. Just the last crack split open in the zero level of the Zodiac code! Bear with me. Okay? I uhhh had to free-associate a bit. Expand my perceptions beyond the tunnelvision that mindlocked the top cryptographers of the CIA, FBI, National SEC Agency, & Naval Intelligence—”

He pauses momentarily. “Yes. Of course. That Salinas-area couple broke the initial three-part multiple-substitution cipher. But. No one realized it was simply a ‘drawer’ full of further ‘keys’ necessary in decoding the final eighteen-letter cipher. They all thought it was some ridiculous little anagram spelling out Zodiac’s true name? A bit simplistic, don’t you think, considering? Of course, I do have an advantage. I am perhaps the only living person to the know the answer before beginning its deciphering…

“Why the Hell would I tell you that, Lucy? Knowledge is power. But it’s also fucking dangerous. Okay?”

Another pause. While he listens to the boss lady, he stares at his riot-helmeted reflection in the lather-&-water-stained shaving mirror above his sink. Blue sparks still crackle above its red-painted dome. He’s jerry-rigged a linkup for the receiving portion of the phone: the ear piece is unscrewed, the wires spliced & considerably lengthened, allowing him to insert the lead in the computer jack-hole drilled through the helmet’s surface, & reconnected to the speaker’s gadgetry, now mounted within, scant inches from his ear.

“In any case, I had a sudden flash of inspiration. You see, my old colleague, George Brittain, is, or more correctly, was, the Zodiac.

“NO! I’m NOT CRAZY—” he bellows in indignation.

“He’s the only person I’ve ever met who proved my intellectual equal. No. Shit. He was superior to me. But He had some very bizarre obsessions. His mind was forever submerged in the darkest regions of the occult. He was convinced He was the reincarnation of Simon Magus. A religious prophet. & sorcerer. He also was a necrophiliac &, I believe, an extreme pedophile. Although that term seems most inadequate in His case. There was no love in Him toward children. No. I suppose that ‘pedomaniac’ is more correct. He was driven by a perverse need to use them in grotesque acts of sadistic lust. It held a magickal significance to Him. Yes. He was obsessed by learning the full nature of the crimes of the notorious Gilles de Rais. & by the writings of de Sade. He believed that He had been both of them in previous cycles of incarnation. He was tormented by fleeting visions of those lives. He had once possessed that knowledge. But had forgotten all but vague whisperings in His last rebirth.

“I’m digressing, though. I remembered another obsession of His— He could play word games, particularly Scrabble, hour upon hour. It just came to me. So I set up a word-manipulation program to mimic the ‘letter-trading’ that the game consists of. But, instead of using the seven ‘trading’ letters, I substituted six, taking my clue from the three-part letter & the total of eighteen letters in His associated cipher that purported to expose His name, if cracked. You see, Lucy, the biblical “666” of the Beast appears, in one form or another, again & again in His letters—”

[ 151 ]

“’n’ I’m tellin’ ya’ sure as I stand here, Caldwell, I never seen such a’ nest a’ loonies in all my years,” the beet-faced cop harangues his partner.

“christ, O’Malley, the world’s chock full of those religious nuts these days—”

“Na. Na. That ain’t who I’m talkin’ ’bout. Na. Well, yeah, I am, but it’s th’ other one that really bothers me.”

“Him? Th guy with th’ ceegar…? Shit, He’s just yr avr’g asshole saleman. Bought a goddamn Ford Edsel from some shithead looked just like Him…sonbitch took my goddamn money ’n run, y’ c’n bet yr goddamn ass on that, th goddamn shithead sonbitch…”

“Na. Th only thing He’s ev’r sold is a king-size line a’ shit t’ ya’, ya’ blindfuckin’ flatfooted copper. How in jesus ’n’ mary am I ev’r gonna save these achin’ feet a’ mine ’n’ save a fortune’s worth a’ shoe leather sittin’ at a nice safe desk sergeant’s job ’til I get that pension check with you stumblin’ along with me, I ask ya’, heh…?

“Trust me, pal, ya’ know I got a sixth sense f’r this shit.”

“Shit, O’Malley, His driver’s license was a match with the vehicle registration— Truman P. Gilmore.”

“Plumbin’ salesman, my ass. I’ve seen that sunuvabitch somewhere. Mug book? Th post office wall? America’s Most Wanted? I’ve seen His moon-faced mug somewhere, I never f’rget a christdamn face, I don’t. Yeah. ’n’ that deadpan voice a’ His gave me th’ heebie-jeebies. That ’n’ th face, by god, it rings some kinda bell. He ain’t foolin’ me. Na. I’ve jotted down th’ dirty bastard’s license numb’r, ’n’ ya’ can bet I’ll check this scam out as soon as I can run Him through NCIC.”

“Sonbitch, O’Malley, we don’t have enough shit t’ worry about with six goddamn murders? No. I’ve gotta be stuck with a shithouse crazy partn’r who thinks he’s goddamn J. Fuckin-Edgar Hoover! Christ!”

[ 152 ]

“—Well, Clarence, I believe that Zodiac believes all this hocus-pocus. & if He believes strongly enough, which I’m certain He does, the course of His entire life will have been colored by His perceptions. & that’s no bull…

“So where is He now?”

“Officially? Deceased: a freak fire at one of His trailers. It was way out in the boonies. By the time investigators explored the debris, the body was charred totally beyond recognition. Nothing but ash & dust in the wind.”

“So, He covered His ass, huhhh? When did the tragedy occur?”

“Around midnight on April 31st of ’75.”

“Midnight, again?”

“Yep, Frank, & that’s Walpurgis Night, May Eve, the High Holy Celebration of the witches, neo-paganists & Devil worshippers…”

[ 153 ]

“—Also, I always thought that the cutout eyes glued to His card dated ‘WED. OCT. 28, 1970,’ mailed to reporter Paul Avery, held some secret significance, as echoed in the phrasing ‘from your SECRET PAL I feel it in my bones, You ache to know my name, And so I’ll clue you in…’ On the face of the card He’d written ‘14’ & ‘4-TEEN’: half of 28. A direct reference, I’m sure, to His habit of doubling postage, another clue. Nothing. Believe me, Lucy. Nothing in his letters was random. Each word. Each semantic inflection. Each turn of phrase. Each misspelling. Each reference. Was calculated precisely to impart the wholeness of His secret tauntings. Nothing was simple. Most of His clues were multi-faceted. So I knew from the beginning His choice of the word ‘pal’ was significant. & I figured the ‘eyes’ referred to ‘I’s.’ Now the root derivation of the word ‘pal’ is English Gypsy in origin, meaning ‘mate’ or ‘brother.’ Of course, so many of His clues pointed to things English. No surprise, there, right? How much more direct could He be in His flauntings? English: Brittain? The interested citizen who suggested to the San Fran police that His ‘RUSH TO EDITOR’ referred to a ‘Mr. Rush,’ couldn’t have been more correct. However, who could know, except me, His confidante, that He believed Himself to have been the little-known but infamous Simon Rush, a fin-de-siécle London wizard who knew Crowley & Mathers & the members of the OTO & the Golden Dawn, & who frequented the notorious Hellfire Club…”

He pauses again. This time to regain his breath.

“I’m rambling again. Anyway, the eyes or ‘Is’ were most significant, so I tried, among other juxtapositions, adding an ‘I’ to the end of ‘pal,’ & came up with an interesting choice: ‘Pali,’ the sacred language of the Theravada Buddhist canon, now not spoken but used solely in written religious works. A secret language. By Hell, I’m glad I’ve got my dictionary program. By the way, there were fifteen eyes on the card. This is important, Okay? Brittain loved wordgames & any kind of puzzle. In fact He collected them. Crosswords. Chinese wood puzzles. Rebuses…”

Another pause as Lucy evidently questions him.

“You know, those puzzles consisting of pictures. Like, say, a classic one, though juvenile in concept—juxtaposing an image of a stick of butter with a pair of wings. ‘Butterfly.’ Simple, eh? I suddenly became convinced that this card was a departure from His usual verbal pyrotechnics. Oh, yeah, Lucy, ‘rebus’ comes from the Latin ‘res’ or ‘a thing,’ & ‘rebus’ is the ablative plural…”

Momentary silence.

“Bear with me a moment. Okay, Lucy?” Prof. Punk says, carrying the ruins of his phone over in front of his computer keyboard. “Why don’t you boot up your tube, Lucy, & I can show you what I’m leading up to on-screen…”

He keys to “DICTION” & punches up “a.b.l.a.t.i.o.n.” Then allows another moment for her to boot up. He quick-scans the word, then punches back to his ‘second screen’ displaying a detail from his “ZODIAC” program: a computer-image of the ‘Paul Avery’ card, a doctored Halloween card… “With me? Okay.” He can envision the portion of her Giger print sliding back—biomech removed, exposing terminal.

In any case, ‘ablation,’ in medical terms means ‘the surgical removal of a part of the body.’ In chemistry, ‘the removal of whatever is finished or no longer necessary.’ In geology, ‘the melting of a glacier, the wasting away of rocks, etc…’

Prof moves his cursor to point at the section of the card which shows a skeleton with its genital area covered by a pumpkin. “Ablated, right?” he asks the unseen Ms. Nation. “If you excise the correct portions of a pumpkin, what do you have, Lucy? Yeah, the eyes of a jack-o’-lantern.” He moves the cursor to the group of nine eyes peering out of the knotholes of a board. “I would? Huh? See how He’s written in white ink, ‘PEEK-A-BOO’ to the left of that odd eye, the one peering from a teardrop- or vulvate-shaped knothole, the only one with a dark background? Then, along the right border of the eye, he’s written, ‘YOU ARE DOOMED!’” It must be some after-effect of the LSD & Li Di 9, because, suddenly, every object or image that Prof stares at seems to glow, surrounded by a flickering blue aura.

“Now, Lucy, if Brittain, the Zodiac, intends this card to be interpreted as a rebus, then I think He’d have left some message in a previous missive that this would be the case.” Prof punches to another image, with the notation, ‘JUNE 26, to CHRONICLE.’ & the footnote, ‘SEE MT. DIABLO MAP, INCLUDED.’ Four letters back. Okay? Still with me, Lucy?” He waits for her response.

“See—He mentions his earlier school bus threat. But He deliberately misspells the word, making it ‘buss,’ as in ‘buss fuse.’ So the message is ‘re’ a ‘bus.’ At least, for the most part, right? In this letter, He also misspells ‘annihilating’ in the phrase, ‘by anilating a full school buss.’ So, He has ablated the letters ‘N.I.H.’ ‘IN.?’ ‘North?’ A sideways ‘Z?’ ‘I.?’ ‘Ialbadaoth,’ the Evil male Gnostic demiurge? ‘H.?’ ‘Hystera, the Cainite sect’s female counterpart—the female demiurge…?

“No. I haven’t had time to think through that portion, as yet…”

[ 154 ]

The eyes of Maldoror loom huge & hypnotizing as they stare down into those of the drugged Bible salesman lying on the motel bathroom floor. His head bobs with the fury of His exertions, but His eyes hold those of Truman in their psychic grip, like a serpent capturing a bird within its deadly thrall, willing it frozen, willing it a victim incapable of all normal response to flee… Unlike the hypothetical bird, however, Truman Gilmore is also chained & physically restricted from any chance intervention or distraction that might lead to his escape…

“Yes, You Pitiful Bible Fuck, for every event that has pushed the human swarm beyond some new threshold in its imagined destiny, for every ‘milestone of civilization,’ there has been a far greater impetus toward The Day of Final Judgment, a yawning of the Hell Gates as The Lords of Apocalypse let their waves of laughter boom like thundering surf against the soft sandstone that supports your dreams of a genteel world…

“Mankind’s knowledge but serves an exponential increase toward Armageddon, until he now subverts the very structure of this House-of-Cards existence toward his own destruction. Mankind?” The timbre of Maldoror’s voice shifts sardonically each time He utters this final syllable. “Mankind? Even your pitiful terminologies but serve to deceive your perceptions. Consider, instead, My Word: ‘Mancruel.’ This dream is My Dream, & in My Dream the world is Nightmare. Semantics. Consider them. They are the First Principles. A Word is a Name. & a Name is the Key to the Essence of any form or concept within the Dream. ‘Night’ has its roots in the Greek ‘Nyx,’ Goddess & personification of the Nocturnal. Though the Sanscrit ‘nakti’ or ‘nakta’ lies deeper yet. Ah. Bible Fuck. But the Key of ‘mare’ is deliciously ambiguous. Linguistic parallels always point to Silver Keys of Meaning to unlock The Hidden Doors of Perception. ‘Mare’ is taken to mean within the context ‘demon’ from the Anglo Saxon ‘mara,’ an incubus. Consider ‘mare,’ though, as the root of ‘maritime,’ whose core unyields the Latin ‘mare,’ the sea. &, yes, the Anglo Saxon feminine ‘mere’ or ‘myre,’ of ‘mearh,’ a horse. It is the night-sea & the night-demon & the night-horse; the dark- or female-side, as the Tao would have it, of The Pale Horse, Death, of whom I am born. Sea & Demon & Horse are One. The Mermaid. She who is the Essence of Female. She who leads us deep into the Realm of Death. Common myth embodies her as a lovely nymphet with warm, luringly bared breasts & human torso & the lower extremes of scaled piscine suppleness & cold, wet, stinking promise. Think. She symbolizes ‘CUNT.’ ‘Cun’ means ‘to know.’ ‘Cunnus’ in Latin is the vulva. The final ‘T’ is but a guttural ending which renders it suitable to the Anglo Saxon tongue…

“Do. You. Enjoy. My. Little. Pun…”

Mal rides the chilling corpse of the dead Heather as the slain girl’s flesh rocks upon its bed of ice in its bone-white coffin/vessel of plastic-lined porcelain. His once-again gloved hands grip the edges of the tub as He thrusts his stiffened length, His bared ‘bone’ into her dark depths while the liquid slapping sounds of waves of flesh-on-flesh of flesh-in-flesh echo all around Him like the rush of tidal rhythmings through the secret caverns of the sea…

Sea. Nightmare. Death. Sex. All are One to Him…

Resonations of the Single Truth…

“You see, don’t you, You Bible Fuck, that ‘EVIL’ is ‘LIVE’ is ‘EVIL.’ That ‘EYE’ is ‘I’ is ‘EYE’ is ‘I’ is ‘EYE’ is ‘I’—

“That I was born to kill…

“That ‘Z’ is ‘N’ is ‘Z’ & ‘Z’ is the Terminus, the Ending of All Things That Now Are…

“That My birth into this World of Pain & Death was prophesied? That I am the catalyst that shall bring about the ‘Demon & Beast’ & ‘The Second Coming’ that Yeats, member of the Golden Dawn perceived:

“‘Yet I am certain as can be

That every natural victory

Belongs to beast or demon…

Turning & turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, & everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned…

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming!

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

& what rough beast, My hour come round at last,

Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?’”

In all of this George Brittain, the Maldoror, quotes Yeats verbatim, His normal monotone again replaced by a voice of resonant timbre, at once oratory & oracular, conjuring the words from His mnemonic depths, save in the next-to-last line, where He substitutes the word ‘My’ for ‘its’…

Then His voice segues to inflectionless inhuman scalpel-coldness: “& yes, Truman Gilmore, Bible Boy, there is. More than one. Bethlehem. Indeed…”

[ 155 ]

Frank sits on the edge of his motelroom bed, his head bowed, his big hands grasping his throbbing temples, the pain washing over him in crashing waves of flickering blue torment. For the first time in many years the full weight of emptiness crushes down upon him—lost comrades-at-arms, lost job, lost family—like a new arriving lifer at Hell State Pen as he watches the outside world seal itself away forever behind him, like a muck-jumper cleaning out a shithouse well who hears the sudden cyclone blow away the roof, & the walls come a’tumblin’ down…

The words of an old Eagles’ song triphammers through his thoughts, a segue playing out again…again…again:

“One hand holds a Bible, the other holds a gunnn…”

“…a life upon the road is the life of an outlawww mannnnn…”

His world indeed flickers blue, & the chill laughter of his old army buddies’ phantoms fills the room with swelling breakers of despair, pounding against the inside of his skull, mortar shells exploding in the mental rift of Devil’s Fucking Valley…

A voice of blue whispers deep deep down within his brain.

Frank’s left hand lifts his .44 Magnum from the bedside table, sensing the weight of its long barrel, flicking the cylinder so it clicks & spins like the Wheel of Fortune, as the demons of his past caper & chuckle amid the gathering shadows …

Zenno… Doc Rock… Simmons the Cherry… Carver…

& always the charred & grinning skull of Shaw taunting him to join them for the last battle beyond the quivering edge of the ab-real zone of time & matter…

His mind’s eye sees the dollar bill laid flat. The words written out across its surface: “NO ONE BUYS OR SELLS WITHOUT THE MONEY OF THE BEAST—APOCALYPSE.”

& remembrance whispers: “Money is the Root of all Evil…”

& the fragments of the song whisper: “…one hand holds a Bible…”

But his right hand is empty, balled into a fist of impotent rage & self-recrimination…

“…the other holds a…”

& the deep blue whispers: “No. Mammon is not the Root. No. I am…”

& the voice of blue whispers deep, so deep in the pit beneath where the day residues draw forth the buzzing swarm of a million flies, down where the serpents slither, & the blue whisper resonates & transforms itself into the image of a shark’s gaping mouth which unfolds itself & becomes the mermaid, the archetypical Woman/Creator, Hystera, the darkside Sophia, dreamflesh flows into a blooming Venus’s flytrap, again unfolds, becomes a woman like a blooming flower, dancing, clad in veils, a thing of living smoke & cobalt, & her dreamflesh becomes a single Word & the Word is carved within the vibrating heart of an immense star sapphire of three-hundred-&-sixty-five scintillating planes or facets, & the shark’s mouth & the mermaid & the Venus’s flytrap & the Dancing Woman of the Veils & the Star & the Word are One… & thrice the One Star the Five-pointed Star that is the Sigil of Baphomet whispers the True Name given to the crystal…

& the Word is:

“ABRASAX.”

& the Name is:

“ABRAXAS.”

& the word is:

“ABRASAX.”

& at its utterance the countless serpents of the blue pit hiss & twine & swallow their own tails in supplication…

[ 156 ]

“—But, He also misspells ‘promised’ by substituting a ‘C’ for the ‘S.’ He inserts an extra ‘A.N.’ in the phrase, ‘so I punished them in an another way.’ His last misspelling in the message is the extra ‘L’ at the end of ‘untill.’ He also mentions: ‘I shot a man sitting in a parked car with a .38’ & in regards to His school-bus bomb, that ‘You have untill next fall to dig it up.’ It could be significant that in the October, or fall card, He uses the peculiar ‘4-TEEN.’ He’s also drawn two eyes onto the skeleton just below & to the right of the number. I think it safe to assume Zodiac suggests many times in His messages— ‘I am the days.’ If that is the case, then we further prove His coding by the logic leap: His last letter was four months & two days earlier. We have ‘four’ in His deliberate ‘4-’ reference. October is the tenth month. The same portion of the puzzle says ‘TEEN’ or ‘ten,’ with a leftover ‘E.’ There are a number of ways to approach it, but the answer is always the same— ‘4. Minus sign. TEEN.’ equals ‘negative six,’ the sixth month, June, already passed. Subtract the two ‘eyes’ or ‘Is’ or ‘days’ from the round image of the skull, & the entire equation equals ‘June 26th.’

“By the way, did I mention that Brittain scored in the ninth stanine on all of His SAT categories. In fact, He scored in the top 99.9% on several, including Pattern Recognition & Spatial Relationships…? One of His major intellectual strengths lay in abstract reasoning.”

Prof. Punk hesitates again, as she questions him or comments on his discourse. “Of course. How else could I unravel this…?

“Okay. Now. From here on out, it gets curiouser & curiouser, as they would say in Alice…

“The puzzle becomes a veritable maelstrom of whirling, interrelated references as we follow the thread of logic & let it pull us where it will—

“Zodiac/Brittain perceived Himself as Death who rides a pale horse. From the Book of Revelations. Self-referential. Particularly as He used the Gemini-like doubling as one of His leit motifs or ‘signatures.’ I never saw the card itself, mind you, but it is reproduced in Robert Graysmith’s excellent true-crime exposé, ZODIAC…

“The first Death figure, the one original to the card (the other was glued on), as you can see, depicts a grinning skeleton with right arm crooked, hand raised, & its palm marked ‘14,’ giving the ‘OK’ or ‘all right’ sign with forefinger touching thumb, the other three fingers upright. Across the pelvic area of the skeleton, a large pumpkin with four prominent ribbed sections has been glued. Above the pumpkin are visible a total of twelve ribs. I think there’s some biblical wordplay suggested there, perhaps referring to Adam & Eve, etc.…? In any case, the Freudian interpretation should be simple— ‘Pumpkin’ or ‘Punkin’ is a term of endearance frequently used in addressing very young girls. Right? Okay. So this symbol is juxtaposed straddling the groin of a grinning Mr. Death. & I already commented on Brittain’s twin obsessions—necrophilia & sadistic sexual contacts with children, particularly, but not restricted to, little girls. I may be reading too much into this one, but the four-ribbed pumpkin below the twelve exposed ribs seems to echo His ‘4-TEEN.’ As in ‘4 to teen.’ In both cases, a case can be made for it implying the preferred age-range of His intended victims of His sexual psychopathology, ehhh…? Taking this logic leap one step further, the positioning of the skeleton’s legs, with the pumpkin above, seems decidedly vulvate-referential, as does the distinctly crotch-like angling of both arms. In fact, it keys me back to a couple of twisted boys I went to junior high school with. They used to crook their elbows, then giggle suggestively as they clasped the furrowed ‘lips’ formed at the juncture, with the soft, downy hairs on their arms, the whole thing was a very crude but effective imitation of a young girl’s ‘peachlike slit’ as the Victorian pornographers often called it—”

[ 157 ]

“Yes. You Bible Bastard…” Maldoror groans as He spins out His savage lust thrusting deep into the shaved sex of the corpse of the slain teenager. “Yes more than one Bethlehem, yes, yes, ‘the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, & everywhere, the ceremony of innocence is drowned…’ ‘Surely the Second Coming is at hand; the Second Coming!’”

Laughter rumbles from the bellows of His heaving chest, deep terrible & chill…

“Ahhhhhh, ‘That twenty centuries of stoned sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rough & rocking Beast…’

“Ahhhhhh, ‘turning & turning in the widening gyre, My Hour come round at last, spins the terror-web of The One True Beast, then on…shapes shift & Names may transform, things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mare Anarchy & The Serpents are loosed upon this stinking World… then on to Bethlehem down 666 the Road of the Beast, at long, long last to split this tired husk of World as ready to be reborn…’

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh…” Maldoror throws back His head, moaning in sick pleasure, baying like a rabid DOG (or GOD…?) at the pox-scarred corpse-rind of Her silver face, at the red & festered wound or eye of Hell, or, perhaps, in some opium-sweating dream, at the yawning cuntmouth of the Whore of Babylon, at Her yawning void burning BLUE, flickering hypnotically, provoking the perverse, seducing all who watch into the deepest deeps of fevered melancholia, depravity & morbid lust… THE ROOM FLICKERS BLUE AS MALDOROR RUTS LIKE THE BEAST HE IS UPON THE SAVAGED CORPSE OF HEATHER RILEY, THE ROOM & SOMEHOW BEYOND THE ROOM SOMEHOW WITHIN THE DEPTHS OF THE ICE-FILLED MATRIX HIS GROANS & THE SLAP OF FLESH-ON-FLESH & WET LIQUID SOUNDS OF SEA MINGLE WITH HIS CHANTING, HIS CONJURING, HIS RESOUNDING & REVERBERATING ECHOES—

“‘turning & turning in the widening gyre, this World shall end in ICE & FIRE, ‘EYE’ is ‘I’ is ‘EYE,’ things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mare Night Mistress Governess of Anarchy & The Serpents are loosed upon this CUNT-HOLE this stinking SHIT-HOLE of a World…”

[ 158 ]

Frank jumps forward, startled by a sudden cool touch upon his neck. He pivots his torso, swinging his pistol in the direction of the unseen intruder, his finger poised, curled around the trigger.

In the split-instant before his finger tenses, a hand traps his thick wrist in midair, skillfully exerting pressure on critical nerve centers, inducing total paralysis of his fingers, thumb & palm.

“Whoa, Frank!” The voice is cool & honey-soft, yet edged with an inner strength that matches the iron-hard grip.

“Christ, Cherry! I nearly blew your goddamn head off?”

“No. You didn’t…”

“How the fuck—” he catches himself in mid-sentence, “Ow! Excuse my French, huh…?”

“—did I get in here? & no, you don’t need to excuse yourself. Heh. I ain’t no Virgo, dig me, Sailor…?”

Cherry lowers Frank’s immobilized arm, controlling him, puppet-like, then releases his wrist, & lets the gun drop gently onto the bedcovers. “Quite a rod you’re packin’ there,” she comments, motioning to the .44 Mag but glancing at his groin. “You know what the Freudians say about these things, don’t you…

“Big man, big gun…?”

She reaches out her cool, slender fingers brushing away the tears from his injured cheek. “I’m sorry about Elijah. I did what I could.”

“Shit, Cherry? I can’t believe everything you did for me. Goddamn, you saved my butt & his, both. What the Hell can I do to make it up to you?”

“Nothing. Well, almost nothing. But, first, you said I saved him, too…?”

“Yeah. He’s in real bad shape, Cherry. The Doc had t’ am… amputate, but he says there’s every reason to expect Elijah will pull through. Says he’s never had one with a gunshot wound before, but he’s treated hit-&-runned dogs who lost a leg & seemed to adjust okay, & even live a fairly active life—” A fresh flood of tears trickles down his cheeks, & his chest is wracked by sobs. “—but I guess there won’t be any more runnin’ down the beach together…”

Again, he clasps his throbbing skull in his hands, feeling the pain & emptiness clawing in his gut.

Her hand trails across his trembling cheek, his neck, brushing against his chest, she begins to unbutton his shirt, pulls it open, strips it from him, exposing his sweat-stained white T-shirt.

He starts to open his mouth, but her fingertips press softly against his lips, begging him to silence.

The big man trembles, the gentleness of a woman’s touch like a cattle prod applied to his bare flesh after so long… Yeah, more than his share of one-nighters, but those always a mere act of desperation expressed by two lost souls passing, usually performed in a drunken daze of hunger, using in a mere frenzy of coupled bodies with only the hot harsh need of rut, more akin to devouring each other’s flesh in the kill-need of wild wolves or some physiological & psychic vampirism than in anything denoting compassion or tenderness…

How long since he & Judy Lynn had twined their bodies lovingly in a true joining of the flesh & soul untainted by the bitter seeds of suspicion & festering hate, that darkside flipside of the Janus’ face of love…?

Somehow, Cherry is naked beneath him before his fugue passes, & he thrusts into her with every intention of slow, easing entry, but she crushes her pelvis up to meet him, drawing him into her fiery, contracting depths, somehow the second skin of a condom bagging his length, “girding his loins,” to wax biblical about their sudden, contradicted act of Genesis.

For some unknown reason, the phrase, vagina dentatae flickers forth, a term conjured from memories of a long-forgotten Psyche class.

Just as Cherry looses a deep & throaty moan, just as her nails rake bloody furrows across his shoulders & his back—

Stigmata of their secret little Passion Play…

Low cries. Wet slapping sounds. Sheets flapping like the wings of gulls. While the room light dims & the scene is awash with exaggerated shadows, & wave upon wave of rippling sapphire & ultramarine & cobalt radiance crest & break across churning flesh & the white dunes of the sweat-soaked bedding. & perhaps the clicking sounds, far off, echoes of crustaceans’ gnarly shells, flexing their raised claws…grinding their mandibles in hunger…

[ 159 ]

“—Knowing you, Lucy, you’ll probably get all juicy when I tell you that the boys then used those pathetic prosthetic quims to fuck off in! Yes. Indeed. They took turns screwing each other’s crooked elbows! Bizarre…? Oh. Yes. & the ‘OK’ signal of the right hand mimics the same vulvate shape as the position of the joined legs.”

He stops a moment to catch his breath. Then continues….

Prof rambles on, recounting the various definitions, experiencing Gestalten, making split-second free-associations & logic leaps…

[ 160 ]

His system wired beyond the limits of merely mortal by the massive jolt of adrenaline triggering the residual Li Di 1 still harbored within His system, Maldoror lifts the plastic-wrapped corpse of Heather Riley like a ragdoll, lays her fouled remains upon the bathroom floor, spread-eagle, the shaved gash of her vagina torn & bleeding, gaping from between her opened thighs like the gasping, fish-like mouth of some perverse demon. He steps to where Truman Gilmore lies, coiled in mock-fetal posture, babbling like a lunatic. He kneels, & grasps the right-hand manacle that secures the Bible salesman to the commode. His gloved hands pull at the hinged metal as if it were a wishbone, then He breathes a single word into the lock: “ABRASAX,” & the handcuff clicks open…

Mal tugs His captive’s arms behind his back, gives the manacled left wrist a vicious twist, eliciting a strangled cry of pain, then snaps the right cuff closed, cinching Truman’s hands at the small of his back. He jerks him upward from the floor—250-plus pounds of tortured flesh hauled bodily upward without sign of obvious exertion on the part of the captor, the Bible salesman’s strained tendons creaking & popping like dry kindling wood as he dangles face downward above the obscene spectacle of the blonde girl’s ravished corpse. Mal lowers the moaning fat man down until his shattered kneecaps are crushed against the plastic-covered tiles, until his own carved & blood-smeared groin is flush with that of the deceased, until his weight grinds the pitiful, snail-like thrust of his child-sized penis into the shaved-hairless wound of dead Heather’s sex slit, until the residual cocaine dusted upon & within her mons serves to irritate his already stimulant-enflamed organ of generation, until the coaxing fingers of Maldoror stroke & torment his shrieking body into the motions of primal ocean, until Maldoror’s fingers milk & tickle ever-so gently at his shriveled scrotum, until Maldoror thrusts a micropore-gloved index finger past the Bible Fucker’s sphincter, violating his semen-smeared, already-violated anus, until this further stimulation of his prostate pushes Truman beyond the limits of sane response, & then, the iron-hard length of the Maldoror enters him as he enters her, & the Beast grows three backs, Life locked within Life within the depths of Death…

[ 161 ]

Frank props himself up on one elbow, leans over to the bedside table, picks up his pack of Marlboros, & offers a cigarette to Cherry before he taps one out for himself. He flicks a flame from his lighter, drags deep on the smoldering smoke, & lets out a sigh.

“Oh, Poor Baby, you took one Hell of a beating today, didn’t you?” she asks, stroking the tangle of hairs down the center of his chest, running her fingertips ever so gently across the great livid bruise there, & eyeing the cross-hatching of bandages on his limbs where the slugs had plowed shallow furrows in his flesh. “—even though you scragged the bastards…”

“Naw, that was from last night’s fracas,” he says, “but, shit, you don’t know anything about that goddamn mess.”

“You might be surprised to know what I’ve learned via the grapevine, already.”

“No shit? Where?”

“Heh, Stud, you may be a great lay, but you’re also my competition, okay? I don’t divulge my sources, never. Professional ethics & all that shit, but the bottomline is: you blow their cover you blow their value. Forget it. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“By the way, Frank, I’m not sayin’ this to rub it in,” she says, as her hand drifts much lower down the slope of his abdomen, “but that Mr. Macho six-gun self-image very nearly got you blown to fucking Perdition, today, you know that, don’t you?”

“I gotta admit it, Cherry, I’ve never been in a fix like this one. Never. Not outgunned that goddamn bad! Shit, I was, what?… six for two-hundred-fifty…? Shit! Even in friggin’ Nam the odds were never that bad. Never. That’s…uhhh a what? one-to-forty ratio?…no…more like one-to-forty-one-&-a-half, right…?

“If it hadn’t been for you…”

“Look. Frank. I’ve been up against more than my share of these hired killers for the drug mobs & heavy-porn traffickers, yeah, & the outlaw one-percenters, too. These guys play for real, Frank. No second chances here. Not except for your charmed ass… These punks have the money to equip themselves. Shit, have you seen some of their armories? We’re talkin’ ground-to-air missiles. One-shot rocket launchers. Mortars. Assault rifles & submachines up the ass. Hell, I’ve seen biker hideouts tricked out with bunkers sporting friggin’ 30mm Hughes Chain Guns they must’ve stripped off what? Helicopters? Better holster that badass little pea-shooter of yours & get yo-self a gun, Stud, something with maybe twenty-five or thirty rounds—dig?”

“Well, I never thought I’d be saying this, but I think you’re right. It is a war of escalating weaponry, isn’t it?”

“Frank, seriously, it’s too late to turn back. Whoever you pissed off is playin’ for keeps & you’d better get with the program unless you wanna be doin’ pushups under the daisies…

“I mean, you’ve gotta be like the boy scouts, Trooper— be prepared… or be nada. Zero. How the Hell do you think I came through without an extra crease in my crotch, huh, Big Man? My Renegade?— it’s tricked out with bulletproof glass, reinforced doors to resist anything up to heavy armor-piercing. No-blow tires. The whole schmeer. & I tote heat when I’m in a war zone. What’d you think of that Galil of mine, huh? Nice?”

“Yeah. But—”

“But nothin’. Don’t be an ass. You think those skells are gonna give up? FUCK. NO. So you got six. So what? Death is cheap these days, Baby… Every punk is ready to play hitman. So these guys were slants. So? You’re talkin’ the friggin’ opium trade & the big bucks stuff—your basic smokable meth, ice, China White, the whole bag, Frank. Most of your real SOTA lab stuff, your latest designer mindblow, it’s mostly all synthesized over in Hong Kong in their “black labs,” then moved in through a very sophisticated import network. You keep totin’ that Dirty Harry dinosaur popgun & it’s gonna be Obit City for you, Dude…”

“Keeerrriiisssttt, Cherry! You’re startin’ to sound like a naggin’ wife, already…”

[ 162 ]

“Another thing about that added pumpkin is what it hides. In a previous letter, Brittain taunted the police: ‘Hey pig doesn’t it rile you up to have your no(z)e rubed in your booboos?’ Besides the obvious wordplay suggesting ‘rube’ whose meaning is roughly, ‘country bumpkin,’ & is used among carnies as slang for ‘sucker,’ there is the incorrect, ‘z’ spelling of ‘nose,’ & the deliberately childish, ‘booboos.’ & bang, here we have the semantic connection of “pumpkin” & “bumpkin,” as well as ‘BOO!’ with ‘PEEK-A-BOO’ & ‘booboos.’ No accident. I assure you. Okay? Now, using the hint of childish terminologies, the pumpkin hides the skeleton’s ‘pee pee.’ I don’t have to tell you, Lucy, who both Brittain & you know with the initials, ‘P.P.’! Could He have been leaving clues by naming known associates, or ‘KAs’ in the lawman’s lingo? Odd, too. Did you know that ‘pee’ is an obscure word meaning ‘to look with one eye?’ Weird enough for you?

“The next one is a piece of cake! The four ‘MOs’ all refer to ways of snuffing a victim. The missing candle, which must be there to transform the pumpkin into a Jack-o-lantern, might be said to have been snuffed. You don’t know this, Lucy, but Brittain’s protegé was a young street urchin, nicknamed ‘Snuff.’ How’s that for following the pattern?

“Now, let’s logic leap to the side of the card with the other skeleton— First off, the positioning of the Death figure is all-important. It was pasted on overlapping the original punchline of the ‘joke’ card—”

The cursor once again darts to the section in question—

‘…But, then, why spoil the game?

&, farther down, toward the lower right-hand corner

Happy

Halloween!’

“Lucy, do you notice how the ‘H’ in ‘Happy’ is juxtaposed just above the ‘a’ in ‘Halloween,’ so that it spells out ‘Ha Ha Ha,’ leading off in three separate directions? It is, of course, part of the original message but most apropos to Brittain’s sense of humor. Okay. The main point of this is the skeleton’s legs are most peculiarly askew— the left femur obscures the letters ‘pp’—hardly a coincidence, ehhh? That’s twin references to my own initials. & I was Brittain’s coworker & confidante.

“See the eye in the ‘vulvate’ knothole, the one circled, lip-like, by the ‘PEEK-A-BOO’ & ‘YOU ARE DOOMED!,’ seems to be staring at the ‘4’ in ‘4-TEEN.’ The curved side of the ‘D’ in ‘DOOMED’ is odd—exaggeratedly bowed, pointing arrowlike to the word ‘BOO!,’ & the strand of spiderweb that the left fingers point to also points at the same word. Okay. Remember how I mentioned the possible mimicking of black dialect on the flipside of the card? Well, how about this? ‘BOO’ is one hype term for ‘heroin.’ & it is of black origination. I think the ‘e’ the skeleton’s right fingers & the tip of the exclamation mark both point to should be added to the ending, forming ‘heroine.’ But which heroine? Lucy, you know the old phrase, ‘which witch is which?’ or is it ‘which which is witch?’ I can never recall. Anyway. My insider knowledge allows me to cheat, here. Remember the four ‘MOs’? They might be said to be forms of rough justice, right? Okay. At the time that the letter was written, Brittain & Snuff were both shacking up in the Haight with this witch, a jailbait chick who went by the name of ‘Justine.’ The word ‘Justice,’ by the way, is suggested also if you consider which letter was out of place in the acrostic— ‘Just S.’ Get it?”

[ 163 ]

“Yes, You Pitiful Bible Fuck,” Maldoror says, His voice leveled, totally in control despite the fact that He is engaged in sodomizing the subject of His verbal humiliation. “For every event of consequence there is some catalyst. Take My own dedication to the destruction of human life, My penchant for the perversion of innocence, for instance. Now. I’m certain you would say, quite pompously, ‘Nothing could warrant such total inhumanity, such single-minded, even obsessive, determination to break every societal taboo, such an onslaught of anarchic devastation.’ But, Truman Fucking Gilmore, you would be wrong. Dead wrong…”

[ 164 ]

“—Tell you what— I’m like a kid in a toy shop when I walk into a gun dealer’s. When I see the latest thing…well…I just can’t help but pop the bucks for it. Right now that damn Galil’s it. Perfect for what I need. But. I do get tired of some of my toys. I’ve got just the thing you need, Frank—”

“SHIT! F’rget that quip about a ‘naggin’ wife,’ Cherry! Don’t tell me—with that high-pressure spiel, you must’ve worked yer way through P.I. prep school sellin’ Kirby vacuum cleaners, right…”

“Smartass! Talk about high-pressure—” She reaches down, grasping his testicles in a playful & suggestive squeeze. “Mr. Hardguy, I’ve got this 5.56-mm Steyr AUG bullpup—have you seen one? Four interchangeable barrels—squad machine, rifle, carbine, & submachine. It’s a beaut. Four guns in one. Let you have it for, say, seven hundred? Six-hundred-fifty rounds per minute. You’ve seen ’em, haven’t you? Real smooth lines—big molded plastic stock, that huge trigger guard that fits your whole fuckin’ hand. Cutting edge stuff. Futuristic…

“Naw, I’ve seen those goddamn weird lookin’ bastards—goddamn Austrian foreign shit, look like some kid’s Buck Rodgers spark-gun or somethin’, I’d feel like a goddamn geek haulin’ one of those crazy things around.”

“Heh. It’s your funeral, Frank. Not straight enough for you, huh…?

“Say, wait a minute. How about a fifty-round magazine? How about a three-round burst with an extreme spread of one meter at a range of five hundred meters? & a caseless cartridge that won’t cook-off in a hot chamber?”

“Oh, yeah. That HITP shit? I read about it. ‘High Ignition Temperature Propellant,’ right? Solves the over-heating problem you get with conventional nitrocellulose. Pretty wild stuff, yeah.

“But it’s another goddamn foreign bastard isn’t it? German, right? Heckler & Koch—”

“—G11,” Cherry adds. She notes the sudden spark in his eyes that belies his deprecating comments about ‘foreign’ weapons.

“Nice straight lines,” she kids him, “solid lookin’ son of a bitch, too. The meat of the mechanism is the circular breech block with the chamber bored through it. It revolves around the central axis, & the cartridges feed from the magazine above it. The whole bit’s shrouded by a plastic casing— which forms the butt, pistol grip & low-powered optical sight/carrying handle. The reticules are battery-illuminated for night firing. The barrel & mechanism recoil about an inch inside the casing, which absorbs the kick with buffer springs.”

“Yeah? But how about the ammo?”

“Well, I’ll admit it’s a bit ersatz, but I picked up a full thousand rounds with it, & I haven’t used but a couple of hundred, tops, & I’ve got a contact that can get you all you need, no sweat…”

“How much?”

“Shit, Frank, consider it a present. I just don’t want to see you getting scragged by the next hit squad. You can have it for five hundred with the ammo. Hell, I’m not usin’ the damn thing anyway. I’ve had my fun with it.”

“Fuck it. You got a deal, Lady,” he says, as he rolls over on top of her sleek belly again, insinuating himself within the moist juncture of her thighs.

[ 165 ]

“—& the first, the favored ‘MO’ is ‘FIRE,’ that ablates ‘ICE.’

“Lucy, I could keep spinning His logic thread far longer—”

“Please…don’t you think you’ve bent my ear enough on this—I’ve got business to attend to… What’s your point, Prof?”

“Okay, you’re missing some of the best stuff, but let me get to the crux of the matter. Once I fully analyze the balance of my data, with my insight on His use of Scrabble-type substitution scam, I can create a message fully encoded, that only George Simon Brittain, the Zodiac, can translate!

“One last piece of the puzzle—”

“Prof…” Lucy moans.

“Hold it. I’ve just gotta lay this on you—Zodiac was a movie buff. Remember? Okay. Well, The ‘SECRET PAL’ that begins the message on the card could clue as ‘GEORGE PAL,’ the well-known Hollywood producer— ‘George’ being the ‘SECRET,’ the first name of George Brittain. Six letters each, Another substitution—”

Blue sparks sizzle & crackle above the red-painted dome of Prof’s converted riot helmet. “Lucy. You’ve got to get me out of town. Fast… It’s that goddamned Blue Devil psycho. It’s that fucking fly in the ointment. Li Di 9 went haywire & opened a two-way channel—he’s going to plunder the knowledge I’ve just gained. I know it. The only thing that’s holding his brain-rape at bay is an arcane pseudo-science gadget I’ve rigged up: based on a fusion of alchemical principles & a spinoff on the latest electrical headache suppressors—those crazy looking portable gizmos with the battery packs wired to electrodes held in place by a band around the patient’s skull. Unless you can find me a safe haven outside his effective mindprobe radius—”

He fidgets as he listens to her response.

“No. It’s empirical. No proven scientific theory seems to apply. I can only take a SWAG based on the apparent exponential increases his power seems to demonstrate: he’s acting as an ‘energy vampire,’ absorbing the dissipated energy of each victim whose life he takes. At the rate he’s slaying, I’d better relocate at least a couple of states away. At least until your men can locate him & put him down. With extreme prejudice.”

[ 166 ]

The confines of the motel bathroom echo to the slap & squelch of flesh-on-flesh of flesh-in-flesh sheathed.

“I was born of mortal flesh, even as were you. My father was a seaman. In that, I find the root of cosmic humor. A seaman. A semen. When I first learned the word I was astounded for weeks at its subtle shades of suggested meaning. George Nicholas Brittain was the rogue who sired Me. My damn dam was a madam of very easy virtue. A tart. A slut. A whore. To be quite plain. Mr. Semen I never knew. He departed in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Never to reestablish spousal relations with Mother Whore, Mary, or as Grandmum always called her, ‘Mary the Magdalene.’ Hence, I was stunned by the connection when first I saw The Gospel of Mary the Magdalene nestled there among her shelves of texts.

“Ah. To get to the point. I only lived with My mother ’til the age of four. But I was a most precocious child. Due to My genius. I remember much, so much of what transpired. My memory has served Me well, but, alas & alack, the flipside of this metaphoric coin has much tormented Me with suffering enough for an hundred lives.

“Mother had quite a weakness for men in uniform. As many as were willing to pay her. Not to say she was averse to fucking other men. No. She was a round-heeled pro. But it was this special trade she sought to service. Military men. Bus drivers. Service station attendants. Utilities workers. Civil servants of every rank & classification. Firemen. Yes. & cops. Pigs. & pig-fuckers. They paid. She laid. I even saw her take it out in trade.

“She was of that majority who believe the kiddies know nothing of what they see or hear. That treat all kiddies as if deaf & blind. She carried out her liaisons in the same room with Me. Yes. After all, I was only a child. & we had but one bedroom in the hovel we inhabited. She earned much. But it went, alas, for Demon Rum. Or whatever she could swill. Pig Bitch. I suppose I must have been two or three when I first remember watching her suck & fuck her endless string of ‘Uncles,’ her johns. I was terrified at first by her screams, feigned or otherwise. But it wasn’t long before I began to comprehend some link between this obvious distress & the men’s spewing curses & moans of pleasure. Some of them were certainly rough trade. Their things all looked like monstrous sausages to Me—some pale white; some like bologna meat; some dark as pepperonis; some mottled & speckled like those great greasy dago links they dangle in their stinking, crowded delis. The first time I saw her sucking some guy off, I thought he was strangling her with a bratwurst or something. I beat at his naked thighs & buttocks trying in vain to save My slut of a mother.

“The bastard laughed & beat Me senseless. Just for good measure.

“When I awoke, I cried until I felt My eyes would burst.

“Yes. In her drunken state, she took in a good deal of rough trade who preferred to beat her black-&-blue before ‘taking her down’ & fucking her. Some used their fists. Others favored belts. ‘Different strokes for different folks,’ as they say. I soon learned that blood & pleasure are inextricable…”

[ 167 ]

“Hang on a minute, Cherry, let me up for air!” Frank groans, “Shit! I didn’t realize how late it’s gettin’ already… I’ve got a call I have to—”

“There’s a phone right here, Studmuffins. By the bed. Or don’t you remember…? You’re not gettin’ away from me that easy!”

“Yeah. Right. But this one’s private. As in ‘eye.’ I’ve got my sources, too, y’ know…” Frank’s slipping into his trousers even as he speaks, tugging on a T-shirt, & heading out the door, barefoot. “I’ll be right back, Ms. Hotpants, just gonna use the pay phone, don’t panic…”

[ 168 ]

“I want the son of a bitch out of this town. I want him out of my face. & I want it yesterday. Now, you get the brass off their fat collective ass & give the dick a one-way ticket out of town. Pronto. He’s getting too nosey. He’s getting too close to my sweet little thing, here. Comprendé?”

Lucy Nation taps her long, glistening nails on the glass surface of her desktop as she talks into her phone. “You’ve got solid grounds to kick him the fuck out of this state—let alone the city. Hell. He’s just been involved in a six-man homicide. Stop quibbling. Of course it was self-defense, even that gunslinging lone wolf isn’t crazy enough to initiate a shootout with a half dozen machine gun-toting Hong Kong killers…

“Never mind how or what I know. I’ve got a SEC network that’d make the CIA blush like a bunch of parochial school virgins. & speaking of blushing, my indiscrete friend, if you don’t do exactly as I tell you, & I mean exactly, copies of those pics I have of you with those little grade school nymphets of yours will find their way into the hands of every tabloid journalist from coast to coast, not to mention our City Prosecutor’s office & the State Attorney General.

“So what if I supplied them to you? If your brain wasn’t stuck in your zipper, you wouldn’t be compromised, now would you? It was you who fucked with them…” Lucy’s smile fades. “This whole thing with Hawkes appears to have been a very grave error on my part.

“See—despite what you may have heard, I am human. Still.

“Yes. But a demon at heart. Don’t doubt it for a single instant, Sweetmeat. Screw with me & I’ll eat your fucking soul. Make book on it, asshole—”

[ 169 ]

“—She fucked in front of Me. No pretense. Her gaping, prick-stuffed cunt looked like nothing so much as a great, raw & diseased & battered wound. & the way the men rammed those huge sausage-things into that pit between her legs sickened Me, yet drew My fascination uncontrollably. & I couldn’t have been more than three when I first watched some brute of a mick policeman bugger her fat, flailing arse…

“Yes. Pigs. He was one of the same group of pigs that often called on her for service. Forests of great, thick hairy legs & buttocks all crowding in to take a poke at the ‘pig-whore’ or just to cheer their pig partners on. I hated all of My ‘Uncles’ but I hated the meanies in blue the most. They seemed, by far, the vilest, cruelest lot. & I feared & loved the sense of power of domination they exuded. All of that goddamned blue serge. Like the sailor’s suit My father had left behind, yet somehow different. Yes. Indeed. They were the cruelest lot. How I wished so hard that I could hurt them. But nothing in My wildest nightmares could have prepared Me for Skull Man. I didn’t realize it then. He was the bald one. The cadaverous, emaciated looking one. The one who was so nice to Me at first & brought the Little Georgie Porgie sweets. Skull Man. The. One. Who. Made. Me. Touch. My. Mother’s. Slimy. Thing. After he & his friends had. Fucked. It. My mother had a hooker friend, ‘Aunt Babs,’ the one she brought home to do her lezzie & her three-way things with for men who got off on that. Skull Man. He visited her often. Oh yes. & soon he began bringing along that fucking goddamned Alsatian of his.

“Yes. I can read your thoughts, You Bible Fuck.

“For. That. Oh, yes. For. That… The thing would slaver & bare its horrid fangs all the while it fucked her. She & her slut-friend ‘Aunt Babs.’ That bitch was positively wild for dog meat. There was nothing. Nothing she wouldn’t do to get one in her. Nothing. I hate those foul goddamned fucking beasts. But I’ve had My share of their blood, too. I’ve had My vengeance for their sins. & the terror & the sleepless nights of sweating feverdreams they’ve brought Me. I taught The Children to sacrifice them. ‘My vengeance needs blood,’ as The Bloody Pit of Horror quoted the Marquis…

“Yes. & that pig cop bastard would use his billyclub on her. He would beat her. Yes. But then he. Used. It. On. Her. Or should I say. In. Her. Like a dildo. To the grip. His blue buddies thought that quite a hoot. Do you know. How. Long. One of those things is…?

“&, of course, as you have no doubt guessed, Skull Man had a bit of a fondness for young boys. He wasted no time in teaching a sprat like Myself how to masturbate him. & his bloody fucking cohorts. They called Me ‘Little Jackie.’ Or ‘Jack-ee,’ I suppose. In retrospect.

“But that was not the worst of it. No. As one might say, ‘not by a cunt-re mile.’ You see, Aunt Babs had this daughter, Kathie, who was quite young… Several years older than Myself. Most likely three-to-five-years older. & more experienced. At. Most… Oh. Pshaw. You shouldn’t look so shocked. Bible Fuck. It betrays your filthy little mind. & you’ve not begun to hear the tale told—”

[ 170 ]

Frank sits in the Vette, in the darkened motel parking lot, using his “pay phone.” He no sooner gets Rios on the line, than his young contact at Metro-Dade apologizes, & transfers him…

It’s Cptn. Lardass Lucas, & his mood seems singularly vile: “Hawkes, you’ve become persona non grata here in Dade-Miami, in fact, you’ve raised such a fucking uproar that the high-hat brass want your charmed ass ENTIRELY OUT of OJ-land, capishe…?”

“Wait a minute, Lucas! I’ve got an injured dog that can’t be moved…not for at least, another couple days—”

“Look, Hawkes, I can sympathize with you. I guess I know how important your pet is to you. But two bloodbaths in less than twenty-four hours was more than they could hack—”

“Christ fuckin’ Jesus! It was your local psychos who started this goddamn mess, not me! It was your local psychos who very nearly saw me six feet under & who shot my fuckin’ Elijah’s leg th’ fuck off & creased his goddamn skull—”

“It’s a tough break. I know. But there’s no two ways about it—you’re outta town or you’re inta jail. & they’ll file on multiple First Degree Homicide—”

“That’s fuckin’ INSANE!”

“Yeah. But that’s th’ program, Son. Y’ play. Or y’ pay. Capishe…? No fucking negotiating. I can arrange for Rios to take care of Elijah, keep him company while he’s still at the vet’s. Hawkes, this is an order from on high. & I do mean high! The very top of this shit-heap we call a bureaucracy. Two hours & outta here. I’ll personally see to flyin’ Elijah to you as soon as he’s okay.”

[ 171 ]

“—Now. I have no idea the value of those thirty silver coins that Judas Bitch of a mother sold her to them for. Or, for that matter, what monetary weight My own damn dam placed on the suffering of her tender & angelic seed when she fed Him to the chicken hawks in demon-blue serge. But sold us they did. No doubt bartering like flesh-peddlers at the block in the Evil days of Tunis or Algier…

“The girl, of course, was terrified in the presence of five strange men, all drunk on cheap beer & whiskey. Yes. Bible Fuck. I was afraid, too. But even then, at the age of four, & younger, I had learned the thrill of fear that transcends all else that transforms He who can master it into a God of Darkness walking among mortals…

“But, I digress. My mother put a 78 on her battered Victrola, some hot jazz saxophone—Coleman Hawkins’ ‘Body and Soul,’ I’m quite certain. It would have served her perverse humor. Yes. The girl, Kathie, was obviously terrified. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. But she kept silent. Even when Aunt Babs told her to ‘Do a nice little strip for the men, now, Honey. Do it nice & slow & show them all what a naughty little tease you are. Take off all your clothes & let them see it, Baby Doll.’

“Her slut of a mother had trained her well…

“She did it like a pro. With that ingrained sense of rhythm & motion & timing, with all the child-coquettish wonder of a tap-dancing Shirley Temple, but swaying her torso & gyrating her tiny hips & buttocks, doing a lewd bump-&-grind, a midget Gypsy Rose peeling it down to the raw skin while those five fucking pigs hooted & whistled & clapped their hands, spewing obscenities & offering lewd suggestions as to what abuses they might subject her. Almost. Innocent. Young body to. Her slender body glistened wetly with the streams of her spilled tears.

“I know you won’t believe Me. But even at My tender age the Hellish scene set a flush to My cheeks, arousing the frail limits of My infantile sexuality to new dimensions that alternately confused, embarrassed & delighted Me… Later I may deign to inform you, Truman Fucking Gilmore, of each lurid detail. But then, I must save some luscious, sordid little tidbits to taunt you with at greater length…”

[ 172 ]

Frank slams through the motel room door, nearly bursting the wood from its creaking hinges in the fury of his passing, startling Cherry who lies naked beneath the sex-stained sheets.

She whirls, whipping a silenced mini-Uzi from her large jute handbag lying beside the bed. Catching herself just as her finger squeezes down on the trigger…

“FUCK! Don’t do that to me, Frank! I almost blew you—” She bursts into wicked giggles as the word exits her mouth, explosive, almost orgasmic in its intensity of tension release. “I mean, if you want me to blow you, Frank, just step over here, Sailor, & I’ll use my fucking mouth instead of the gun barrel to do it—” Cherry ‘O’s her mouth lewdly, trailing the moist pink tip of her tongue across her puckered lips, tempting Hawkes to take her at her word.

The next sound is the sharp rasp of his zipper tugging downward…

[ 173 ]

“—Let Me suffice to say that Skull Man lifted Little Kathie onto the kitchen table &, standing her upright, began slapping the bared cheeks of her bottom & pinching the immature niche-cleft of her sex ’til she cried out in anguish. The others warned him to show some care as they didn’t want him marring their little prize just yet with bruises & welts, etc…. The blue veins in his naked scalp twitched with suppressed fury. Incensed by their censoring his intended pleasures, Skull Man instead chose to degrade her as thoroughly as possible before subjecting her to more physical abuse, commanding her to expose herself in the most extreme lewd & lascivious postures his deranged mind could contrive, all the while caressing her perfect, heart-shaped little angel-face—cheeks, chin & cupid-bow lips—as well as the more. Intimate. Portions of her body…

“While Mother & Aunt Babs accommodated the pig fucks by unzipping them & stripping off their trousers, kissing their huge, stiffened pricks & stroking them as they watched the child display herself for their prolonged amusement…

“As a finale to the spectacle, he made her squat with her legs wide-splayed. When she was properly, I should say ‘im-properly,’ positioned, he groped between her legs, trying to force his fingers into her vulva & her anus… He prodded & probed, but to no avail…

“Kathie writhed & moaned in obvious discomfort & humiliation… Mother chided him, ‘F’r Chrissakes, y’ gotta get her ready, first, Dick-f’r-brains, or y’ll never get yer fingers in th’ cookie-jar.’ She went back to the bedroom & brought him a big jar. She unscrewed the lid, & dipped her fingertips inside & they came out all slick & shiny looking, all covered with the greasy stuff she called ‘Vaseline,’ the stuff she always kept in her bedside table…

“His left hand cupped her bare pubis, while his right reached around behind her… Kathie let out a high-pitched groan of apparent torment as Skull Man’s long, bony fingers at last penetrated her twin orifices… Her deep blue eyes rolled up ’til you could only see the whites, seemingly inward-focused. Her mouth gaped open & drooling saliva mingled with her drying tears. But Aunt Babs & her salacious ‘Uncles’ must have long since broken the girl to this form of abuse, for rather than struggling to extricate herself from Skull Man’s unnatural violation, Little Kathie straddled his hand, ‘riding bareback,’ sliding her body up & down up & down on his up-thrusting digits…”

[ 174 ]

Although he has already spilled his seed into the redheaded PI’s receptive, circled mouth, & throat, Frank’s jutting manhood still aches for more. & Cherry is more than willing to tend to his libidinous desires. Her soft hands caress his lower abdomen, exploring the forest of wiry hairs & the so-sensitive flesh of that terrain. His grey-blue eyes burn with lust & something beyond mere lust, the something the flame of righteous anger boiling away the very fluids of his throbbing brain, leaving it a sun-scorched desert whipped by the hot howling winds of violent & deranged desire.

Cherry sheathes the rearing serpent in a second skin, a thin membrane that ripples sinuously with every twitch of pulse-beat.

She opens herself to him, begging him to enter the mystic cavern of her womanness. Frank crawls between the fork of her thighs, intending his entry to be slow & gentle, but the heat of her fuels the fire of his anger, quite irrationally, & he batters at her gateway like the ram-horned figurehead of some medieval assault weapon bent upon destruction…

[ 175 ]

“—I saw Mother & Aunt Babs kneeling on their hands & knees, submitting to either vaginal or anal intercourse at the rude hands of two of the blue meanies…where I knelt on the floor at the feet of some pig brass-hat, forced to manipulate his jutting organ with My childish hands. Pretty soon, Skull Man told ‘My’ cop to hold Me. He did, while My frequent tormentor stripped Me naked. Then he lifted Me onto the table just beside where Kathie still squatted… Then the bald, vulture-like cop forced his throbbing shaft between My lips & raped me orally ’til he’d orgasmed, his vile slime gushing into My mouth & throat, nearly strangling Me…

“About this time, another pig arrived—a fat, bloated mountain of blubber in a serge suit that threatened to burst its straining seams at any moment. He started waving a roll of bills in front of Aunt Babs’ face, trying to cajole her into offering him next crack at her young daughter. He argued on & on with her as to whether the child was still technically a virgin. She assured him that such was indeed the case, her having saved the taking of Kathie’s maidenhead for just the right occasion (& price). But he demanded to have intercourse with her before the others had thoroughly mauled her privates, loosening the youthful stricture of her sexual canal. The others, though, would have none of his highhanded dealings, & insisted upon squatter’s rights &, having lined up for her first, were eager to lay their hands on her tender charms, as well. Aunt Babs had to relent or they would have started a brawl. The reason for the fat pig’s urgency was manifest when she tugged down his fly—like, you, Bible Fuck, he was endowed like a goddamn schoolboy, his adult penis barely bigger than My own exposed as I was upon the table…

“When Skull Man finished with Me, the next piggie bastard, in turn forced Me to suck him off. Another followed. Then the two who had been having Mother & her fellow whore both dog-style…

“& when at last the first five pigs had experienced their momentary fill of prodding & probing of touching & tonguing the exhausted yet still submissive child, it was the fat man’s turn to have his way with her. After much fumbling & bumbling with his bloated paws, &, yes, more than his share of kissing & licking at her front & rear like some male dog hot with the rut, he finally managed to bribe & coerce Kathie’s mother into letting him be the one to first lay assault to the cherished membrane guarding the depths of her as-yet-unused passage.

Logic prevailed as well as currency, for what better method to initiate her gradually than through the agency of the fat pig’s pencil-puny engine of generation…?

“No details, You Pitiful Bible Fuck, though I can sense how eager you are to have to have full knowledge of their carnal chaos…”

[ 176 ]

Frank’s pelvis pummels the red-furred mound of Cherry’s eagerly offered, upward-grinding womanhood. His pace builds toward a crescendo. But just as he nears critical mass, his inamorata pulls away, disengaging her love-sheath from his pistoning staff of ironhard gristle, his forced withdrawal at her sudden retreat accompanied by a loud, wet, slurping noise.

Cherry rolls out from underneath him, &, backside jiggling delightfully, she struts across the room, digs in her handbag, & removes a pair of handcuffs. She squats on the floor, her thighs obscenely splayed. She reaches down between her legs, touching herself, fondling herself it seems…

“So, you’re turnin’ me on already,” Frank says, “sure, I dig watchin’ a girl play with herself, but…there’s a time & place for everything. & now is the time for you to get yr ass over here, so I can put this—” he waves his erection in her direction, beckoning, “—in that hot, juicy little place right there where your finger is right now…”

& Cherry gives a wicked grin, like some Salacious Cheshire Cat (or is it Cheshire Pussy, in the feminine, Frank ponders…).

[ 177 ]

“—Let Me just say that the major dilemma to be overcome was the pig’s gargantuan bulk which they quite rightly feared might crush the life from her frail form. Ha, ha. Mother & Aunt Babs (those wicked bitches…) thought they’d solved the situation by telling him to lie back flat on the sofa & they’d lifted her into place so she was straddling his loins, but the Behemoth’s weight caused the couch to creak & sag. So, instead, Mother made him lie on the throw rug in the center of the room. Kathie no doubt had seen sufficient of life’s seamier side to know. Precisely. What they had in mind for her. She began to squeal & struggle in fearful anticipation of this new indignity which now lay ahead. Aunt Babs gave her several resounding slaps to the face, silencing her immediately. She was well-disciplined, I must say. Much like our own dear little Miss Juliette. She acquiesced, & the two women hoisted her into the air, legs akimbo, & set her down atop the wallowing piggie’s pitious jut of flesh. They gripped her firmly, one by each arm, & moved her about so that the bald hillock of her juvenile Mount of Venus & the jiggling globes of her bottom cheeks rubbed & frictioned against his own bared privates in the most libidinous manner. Poor Little Kathie had been born & nurtured by a slut all too eager to exploit her innocence & naiveté. She was, like our dear Juliette, a true amoral having no guidance to teach her what society might deem proper, & so reacted as the sensations of her body showed her… &, yes, despite her tender years, sex is among the most basic & natural of functions, & what she experienced was pleasurable, there was no pain, as her genitals had been profusely lubricated with Vaseline, her own body’s natural fluids, &, indeed, the pigs’ spittle as they drooled & licked at her… So it was that, in her lewd, now-eager squirmings atop that mound of blubber, quite by accident his penis finally slipped into the “wrong hole,” wherein he spent himself almost instantly, overcome by the heat & extreme tightness of her nether channel & the sheer novelty of this unanticipated trick of fortune… So, in the end, as you might say, the proverbial fly was in the ointment…the girl first lost her “other cherry” before that which they duly had intended…”

[ 178 ]

She walks back to the bed, dangling the manacles above Frank’s face—the stainless steel glinting blue in the diffuse light of late afternoon filtering through the motel’s thin drapes. She stares into the grey-blue wells of the detective’s eyes. They are dark-circled, the pupils a scrimshawed webwork of enflamed veins that betray his obsession & his sleepless nights. She sees the hate & anger he hopes to slake in the slow burn fury of S.E.X.

“Okay, Big Man,” Cherry taunts, her voice a cooing whisper tight with need yet unfulfilled. Her gaze drifts downward to his jutting erection, “—now you get to prove just how tough you really are…”

She climbs back into the sack, cuddling up to Frank, rubbing her furry mons against his aching penis, teasing him, kissing the huge bruise on his chest, rolling over ’til she faces away from him, pressing the lush globes of her buttocks back against his groin & belly, crushing the dark crevice between her wriggling ass cheeks hard against his throbbing stiffness & the forest of wiry hairs sprouting from his pubic mound… Her skin down there feels so hot so smooth so slick, like oiled sealskin warmed by a raging hearth.

She kneels up, waggling her sensuous backside in his face.

“Handcuff me.” She says.

“Wwwhat?” Frank mumbles. “No way, Lady, that’s sicko stuff—”

[ 179 ]

“The scene that ensued thereafter was the sexual equivalent of a ‘feeding frenzy’ of human sharks. Skull Man claimed lead position in the gang rape that now seemed eminent…stimulated beyond any bounds of reason by the sight of the young girl held captive by the two women & forced to grovel & squirm astride the grotesquely obese cop, he threw himself upon her even as the man beneath her groaned & spasmed in the first throes of release. He wasted no time in formalities. He merely pushed her face-downwards with her belly rubbing against the fat man’s gut, tugging the child-sized penis from where it was lodged in her backside, her bottom cheeks now waving seductively before him. I suppose originally he may have intended to simply enter her vagina via the most expedient route, from the rear, dog-style, as he might better ease himself at length into her untried depths from that point of vantage… But Skull Man’s gaze now fixed upon her obscenely exposed derrière. Grasping her slender hips in his bony hands, he thrust his brutal ramrod forward, entering her already-anointed anus with slow yet unyielding determination. Gently at first. Then, as the disproportion of their sexual parts hindered his progress, ever more savagely… This time she experienced no pleasure. This was Vlad-like impalement. She writhed & shrieked in torment. But she was a helpless captive of his unnatural lust…”

[ 180 ]

“So it’s kinky? So what? This is my little game. You want to get off, Big Man…? Then you play it my way: You’re the Vice Cop, & I’m this little teenage-jailbait hooker you just busted; you find out I’m a runaway, & you promise to pay me & let me loose if I’ll do anything you want…” She peeps around at him, her head cocked pertly, her face flushed from the heat of her admittedly perverse desires, her red hair glows like tendrils of flame flowing across the bronzed curve of her shoulders & upper back. His words may protest, but his blue-grey eyes prove their falsehood—there is a new fire raging out of control, his suppressed hate & anger fueling the wildfire blaze.

Once more Cherry bows her head in mock submission.

“You’ve already made me suck you off. You’ve already screwed me missionary-style. But now you wanna get rough. Real rough. No more Mr. Niceguy. No. Now you’re Mr. Hardguy. Mr. Rough Trade himself… You handcuff me—” she pauses for a moment, waiting for him to make his move, letting her words sink in, “I said, YOU FUCKING HANDCUFF ME, GOT IT, MR. HARDGUY…?”

Frank feels a flaming fishhook in his backbrain, tugging back the trapdoor, letting loose the serpents of subconscious, the serpents of seductive Evil wriggling down there inside the darkness… He lifts the manacles from where they lie upon the crumpled, sweat-soaked sheets. The metal burns like dry ice like cold fire in his palm. He can feel them cauterize his flesh where they make contact. He can see blue wisps of smoke or steam rising from the chill fire of their curves. Now he is caught up in the game. Now he is a willing player.

“Okay, You Little Bitch-Slut,” he snarls, “now you’re goin’ to pay for sellin’ your hot little ass… & gettin’ caught!”

He grasps her wrists. Painfully. Clicks the joining halves into place. The sound echoes through the room, magnified & maddening. A sound distorted beyond reason. Now she is his. He looks down at her, kneeling submissively, her face buried in the pillow, her ass thrust lewdly in the air, wrists clamped & chained in subjugation. Mr. Hardguy’s helpless captive. The sense of POWER rushes up his spine, buzzing, swelling his pounding head, threatening to burst the limits of his cranium, threatening to spill forth in a wildfire of raging BLUE.

[ 181 ]

“—When Skull Man finally finished in her, far from being through with his assault upon her innocence, he merely withdrew his spent but still stiff & rearing member, guiding it down the dark cleft between her buttocks ’til the swollen purple head of the thing nudged against the hairless furrow of her Vaseline-slicked vulva, nuzzling past the tight little lips, into the mouth of her yet-virgin vagina. Mother & Aunt Babs & his fellow blue meanies, already circled ’round to enjoy the former spectacle, now cheered him on as he assayed to penetrate her in the ‘normal’ fashion… His renewed attack upon her immature charms drew further wails & protestations from Little Kathie begging him to stop. But plead & struggle as she might, he, of course, proved her cruel & unrelenting master. He took her dog-style, ramming his huge penis all the way into the secret & heretofore unexplored depths of her vaginal vault, bursting her hymen, rendering her slit a bloody mess as he penetrated her to the hilt…”

[ 182 ]

“Spank me,” Cherry tells him, “I’ve been bad. Very bad! I need to be punished, Mr. Po-lice-man! I need you to tan my bottom! Spank me! Spank me like Daddy always did…”

He kneels up behind the redhead, his gaze fixed on the lush, tempting swell of her upturned rump. His huge right hand unknots from tensely clenched fist into cupped palm, he draws it back, waiting in slow deliberation, the execution of her requested punishment threatening, taunting her with the harsh promise of the sudden jolts of pain she craves. His hand lashes downward, striking the soft, yielding flesh of her proffered backside, the slap ripping the air like a thunderclap in the hushed silence, drawing a long, low, throaty moan… “Oooooohhhhh, yes, Mr. Po-lice-man, yes, Daddy, hurt me hurt me hurt mmmeeeee…” Cherry mewls in delighted torment.

If Frank could see her face, he would see her pouting lips parted in an excited “O” of pure pleasure, the tip of her pink tongue darting wetly across their scarlet flower-petal pucker, panting in shallow, rasping gasps of unhinged desire, cheeks brightly flushed.

But, instead, he sees only her gloriously rounded bottom, jiggling from the force of his blow, the red welt of his huge handprint marking the creamy whiteness of her abbreviated bikini-line glowing in the half-light against the rich bronze of deep tan… Again & again & again his hand draws back, descends, striking with resounding slaps of white-hot torment, raising welts on the tender flesh, raising lewd moans & strings of obscenities pleading for him always to “hurt me hurt me, please, I’ve been so naughty, Daddy, punish me…”

Every man wishes to be a tyrant when he fornicates, the infamous quote by the Marquis de Sade flickers through Frank’s throbbing brain in letters of trailing blue flame. Never before had he grasped the mind-swirling profoundness of those words. Their true meaning hits him in a visionary rush of REVELATION.

“You asked for it, You Hot-Cunt Little Fucking Bitch! I’ll teach you to sell your ass to strangers! I’ll teach you to strut your fuckin’ stuff in front of me, & wiggle & jiggle your little tushie in my face, You Fucking Little Jailbait Whore, I’ll teach you how t’ fucking fuck! Ever do it dog-style…?”

[ 183 ]

“—& when he had done his thing with her, he offered her to the others, lifting her from atop the monstrous human altar of her virgin sacrifice, rolling her over on her back with her legs thrown wide to better display the savaged aftermath of the heinous rape. That they took their turns with her I know. But of it I saw nothing else for quite some time…”

[ 184 ]

They are locked in the roles of their demented game, keying off each other’s comments, playing it out line-for-line, caught up in the heat of their sick fantasy of a sadistic Fascist-Pig-Vice-Cop brutalizing a wayward teenage girl:

“NO! NO! Pllllleeeasssse! NO!” Cherry begs, the voice of outraged almost-innocence, “Not like that! I’ve never done it that way before! It seems so dirty, like an animal! Let me over on my back, I’ll spread for you, Mister—I promise! Just pppllleeeassse, don’t make me do it that way! You can stick it up my little pussy that way, or you can jack off all over my belly & my titties, or you can do it between by boobies or in my mouth again! I’ll swallow all of it this time, I promise!

“I’ll even tell you about the time when I was a freshman in high school & these older guys from the football squad sneaked into the girls’ locker room & caught me & my friend Mindy with all our clothes off in the shower, & they whipped us with wet towels & threw us down on the tiles of the water-flooded stall & felt us up all over & pushed their fingers up our pussies & our bottoms, & then they…they…gangbanged us…”

[ 185 ]

“—In the background, masking the commotion, Fats Waller tickled & tormented the ivories through rendition after rendition of ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’,’ jangling away on the Victrola.

“Skull Man forced Me to fellate him ’til his erection raged once more. Of it, I recall vividly a taste like stale shrimp & nutmeg, & the familiar saltiness & chlorine-bleach tang of semen. He took Me down as he had the girl, penetrating Me anally. Somewhere inside My screams & the tearing agony, The Great Night opened up to Me & made Me one with it, transforming Me from mortal flesh into a child-God of pure Hate & Vengeance…the others now followed Skull Man’s example. One held Me down on My hands & knees while the other pig-prick buggered Me. You see why I hate those fucking blue meanies, Bible Boy…? At the age of four they used Me like a jail punk, & I was ‘forced to pull a train’ for all of them in turn, while My drunken mother & her slut-friend stood by, cheering on My anal-assailants…”

[ 186 ]

What is she, some kind of fucking mindreader…? Frank thinks, it wasn’t quite like that, but close enough to touch a hidden nerve:

He has been ashamed of it for years, buried it away in some mnemonic lockbox or closet or dam of the subconscious, but now it boils forth not in shame but in a furied rush of awakened sick desire. Something he’s never confided in anyone before. Never. Not even Judy Lynn. But now, something breaks loose. The lid pops. The door swings open. The sluice gate gives way. The pent-up anger & the pain & all those sleepless nights & the need to at long last confess his dirty, festering secret. The Hero’s transcendence through this ritual purging himself of the mortal weakness of the flesh…? The lure of absolution…? Or simply the wild panpipes of desire conjuring forth the Serpent from its pit of nesting in hidden depths of darkness…?

A long, low groan of torment wells from deep within Frank’s chest, & Cherry senses she has grasped a touchstone charged with immense potential. & her body quivers with near-orgasmic intensity with the knowledge of this power she now wields…

The words spill out, unbidden: “There’s this thing that happened, Cherry. It was in high school. I’ve never told anyone. But I have to… I was a junior, a tackle on the varsity team. Yeah, a BMOC with all the hot-pants cheerleaders & hangers-on & all that shit. I got plenty of pussy. Plenty. At the drive-in, mostly, in the backseat of Daddy’s borrowed Buick…

“But this one night, me & my pals were drunk. More beer than we could handle. Buddy Nash said he had a great idea. He didn’t say what at first. He just said it was a chance too good to miss. There were eight of us guys. We all packed into Dale Hewlitt’s Chevy, & Buddy told Dale where to drive. We pulled up in the alley next to a house I sure didn’t recognize. At that point Buddy finally told us what this hot deal was: this girlfriend of his little sister’s was babysitting over there; the parents wouldn’t be home until early the next morning, & this girl, Lois, he said was a real hot-ass little slut. He said he’d made this date with her, & she’d agreed she’d put out for him & maybe a couple of his football friends…”

[ 187 ]

“—But as for My fellow victim, the girl, Kathie…? Her suffering would not last out the long night of torment. No. She, too, The Great Night claimed. As sacrificial victim. Perhaps one or more did rape her. Before him. I shall never know. Nor care. But, in any case, obsessed beyond any boundaries of reason with the desire to have the girl again (this time as he had initially intended—‘straight,’ up the ‘birth canal’ of her immature, battered vagina…), the mammoth pig bastard bullied his way past the onlookers & waiting ravishers & climbed between her thighs, mounting the fragile rise of her belly, a fashion, considering his enormous bulk, dangerous to even a full-grown woman.

“She shrieked once more as the weight of his flesh sank down upon her. His first thrusts were met by an ear-splitting scream & a splintering of bone like dry twigs trampled underfoot…

“Yes, You Bible Hawking Cocksucker, she died. Just one more little martyr with no cause to celebrate, save the passing over into Eternal Hell, another slave to service her slayer in the final Paradi(c)e. I know you shall never believe this, but I could see her soul exiting the clay of flesh, BLUE so BLUE it caused My eyes to burn, Yes, even as I-the-child knelt upon the floor, My own flesh shrieking from the torment of sodomy those pig-fuck-cocksuckers forced Me to endure, even then I opened My mouth & I summoned that BLUE lifeforce to enter Me, & it bade My calling, & I swallowed it into Myself & made it one with Me…”

[ 188 ]

“We’ve all looked around at each other—there sure as shit were more than a couple, any way you figured.

“‘Fuck it, the more the merrier,’ Buddy said. ‘I told you she’s a slut! The more cock she gets, the better she’ll dig it, right?’

“Now, Buddy had this reputation for being a bit crazy, & I didn’t know his sister or how old her girlfriend might be. Dale did. He started to ask, ‘ain’t she a little young f’r us…?’ But Buddy cut him off. ‘She’s a slut… Who the fuck cares how old she is if she likes to spread her legs?’

“Some of us did care. I know I did. But we were drunk. & there was peer pressure—none of us wanted to seem like some kind of chickenshit or faggot.

“‘Awww, fuck it’ Bob Ellsworth said, ‘You guys know the saying, “a hard cock knows no conscience,” who the fuck cares as long as we all get a nice tight little piece of ass…?’

“Buddy whispered something into Dale’s ear, then went around to the front door. He disappeared for a while. Dale looked at his watch in the light of the streetlamp. He gestured for us to follow him. He led us around to the back door. He tried the knob: it was unlocked. He put his finger to his lips to signal silence, & then let the whole troupe in. Man, were we all in for a big surprise…”

Frank is lost in his monologue, & Cherry rolls over onto her right side, pivoting on the crumpled sheets until she faces toward him. She curls up like a contented kitten, hanging on his every word, her wrists still cuffed in mock servitude to his role of Brutal Dominating Male. She reaches out, so gently he does not consciously register her contact. She cradles him, two-handed, stroking his fiercely throbbing cock with feather-soft caresses, teasing on the wavelengths of the subliminal.

“They were in the living room: it wasn’t just Buddy & this young chick we sneaked in on. No. It was Buddy playing ‘Doctor’ or some other kind of strip game with this kid Lois & his own sister, Missie, & neither of these girls could’ve been a day over twelve…

“They had their blouses off, & were showing him their titties—Lois was stacked pretty good for her age, but Missie’s were only tiny pointed cones with pink, stiff, rubbery little nipples. Yeah, I felt guilty peepin’ in on them like that. I knew they were way too young for us t’ be messin’ around with, Cherry, y’ know, but somehow I just couldn’t stop myself, even though I knew how wrong it was. Maybe it was the beer. Maybe it was the lure of the forbidden. Or maybe just plain cat-incautious youthful curiosity about anything you’ve never seen or heard or tried…but maybe wondered…”

Cherry’s encircling fingers tremble like a divining rod, reverberating as a sudden soul-deep shudder stirs her lover’s tense flesh.

[ 189 ]

“—The reek of Death filled the crowded room. The thrill of the kill drove them to even greater excesses… Yes. Far from wasting such a fresh-plucked moss rose (however damaged…) they busied themselves with her still-warm corpse, repeatedly raping & sodomizing her remains…”

[ 190 ]

“Okay. Anyway, Crazy Buddy had his zipper down, & he had his cock out, & he was playing with it while they watched—ever-so-eagerly. About that there was no mistaking…

“We should have stopped right then & there. Got our asses out & left that nut case to whatever he wanted. With us gone. But like Ellsworth said… I’ll admit it. I was. & they were. But we shouldn’t have let our brains get caught up in our zippers even if he did.

“So here we were, standing out in the hallway, hidden, peeping in to see just what the fuck was going on. One thing apparently was true—Lois was hardly a blushing virgin, she sure seemed to know the ropes, & so it followed to all of us, I guess, that she was, indeed, the slut he’d promised, &, what the Hell!, sluts, regardless of their age, were just asking to be fucked, right…? The typical macho-asshole programming, I know.

“‘How d’ya like these dirty magazines I swiped out of my Daddy’s dresser drawer?” Lois asked Buddy. There wasn’t a doubt in our minds that she sure did! Her voice was a dry whisper of excitement…

“Lois walked over to Buddy, kneeled in front of him & started stroking his already-hardened dong. Sister Missie let the fuckbook she’d been gazing at drop to the floor, & just stared spellbound at her brother’s rigid penis & her girlfriend masturbating him.

“& we nearly SHIT when we heard what she said next!:

“‘Goddamn, your brother’s got a nice cock!’ Lois moaned, ‘It’s so big ’n’ fat! You’re hung almost as big as Daddy—God, Missie, I can hardly wait to have him stick it in me ’n’ fuck my hot little pussy with it…’

“‘YOU FUCK YOUR OLD MAN…?’ Buddy gasped, for once totally losing his cool. ‘YOU REALLY LET HIM FUCK YOU…?’ His penis jerked & twitched with obvious arousal at the obscene revelation.

“‘Well, no, not really. He doesn’t fuck me, ’cause he says I’m still too young ’n’ he’s too big for me to take…that way…he’s afraid he might get carried away ’n’ bust me up inside…you know, takin’ him ‘straight’…”

[ 191 ]

“—When, finally, they had slaked their raging lusts, Fat Man asked what they would do with her? Skull Man answered: ‘Ha ha. ha. Remember. If she’s old enough to bleed, she’s old enough to butcher…’

“Fat Man giggled.

“Skull Man said, ‘Wrap her in a sheet. I’ll take her home to use a bit longer before I trim her bones.’ He gestured to Fat Man. ‘You can help me. Think I’ll cut out her snatch & save it as a souvenir. I’ll chop her up & feed the flesh to my dog. As for the bones…? All we need to do is find a fresh-dug grave, shovel down another foot or so, cover the evidence with backfill, & our little playmate disappears…”

[ 192 ]

“‘Daddy’s hung like a mule, like Janie says—”

“Who the fuck was Janie?” Cherry interrupts.

“That’s exactly what Buddy asked.” Frank says. “&, if you’ll hold on, I’ll tell you—

“‘Oh, she’s Lois’ older sister—’ Missie blurted.

“‘What the fuck…?’ Buddy questioned, totally puzzled by now…

“Well, see, I mostly only fool around with Daddy,” Lois said, “you know, I jack him off after he stares at the pictures of the naked ladies ’n’ the little girls in his fuckbooks. You know, ’n’ he makes me take off all my clothes so he can look at me ’n’ touch me down there…’”

“‘He does…?’ Buddy asked.

“‘Oh, sure… He’s been doin’ that t’ Janie ’n’ me for years…’ Lois said…”

[ 193 ]

“—What bribes or intimidations kept Mother & Aunt Babs silent I shall never know. I’m certain her mother would miss her as a potential source of revenue if nothing else. Skull Man stripped off the glittering rhinestone studs from her pierced ears. He gathered up her panties where they lay on the kitchen table. He loomed over Me. Handed Me those reminders of what happens to naughty kiddies. & cautioned Me to keep My little yap shut. Or else…

“Her other belongings, her clothes & shoes & whatnot, they tossed in with her body when they wrapped her in the sheet.

“I saved the little treasures of her throughout My boyhood, using her panties as a fetish which I loved to kiss & rub all over Me when I was naked. As I grew old enough to fulfill such wicked, exciting stimulation, I would masturbate onto the semen-crusted garment as I fondled her earrings.” Maldoror pauses, staring down at Truman Gilmore as he lays upon the Fat Man’s naked back, his flaccid penis long-since spent & drooling, yet still inserted in the Bible salesman’s violated anus… “Can you see now, You Pitiful Bible Fuck, why it is:

‘MY VENGEANCE NEEDS BLOOD…?’”

[ 194 ]

“…ever since Mom ran off with that bartender guy, see, he started crawlin’ into bed with us so he could finger us ’n’ stuff…not both of us at once…he’s real sneaky about it… But I’ve seen him fuckin’ Janie, you know, with his huge thing stuck all the way up her—sometimes I peep in his keyhole when I hear ’em in there, in his bedroom, or when I see ’em sneakin’ in there together… He fucks her real good! I can hear her moan ’n’ squeal ’n’ everything… With me, he mostly just gets out those books…’n’ after he gets real turned on, he makes me get naked so he can do his ‘special things’ with me…’

“Before we could recover from that confession, or even take time to consider the full implications we got hit with another shock…

“Surprise Number Two. Missie stood up right in front of her brother, pulled up her skirt, pulled down her panties, & began fingering herself— &, man, did we ever get an eyeful…”

[ 195 ]

The tall cop with the hang-dog face cants forward across the formica countertop, the steam rising from his scalding, mud-murky cup of java swirls into his nostrils, an aromatic sauna serving to ease the ache of his clogged sinuses, tiny moisture droplets beading in the pores of his still night-cool cheeks & forehead, gathering like dewdrops in the dark folds of flesh circled beneath his bullet-hard eyes.

His gaze is fixed on the green-checkered cloth of uniform straining suggestively with each shifting sway of the waitress’ backside. Without turning, lest he lose his vantage, he queries his florid, rum-blossomed partner: “So, O’Malley, I almost f’rgot—whatever came a yr nosin’ int’ that moonfaced sales guy ’n’ his Bible-wacko buddy…? HAH! Don’t tell me, let me guess—th sonbitch He wz one of America’s Most Wanted…? or maybe th’ ghost a’ Baby Face Nelson back t’ haunt us fr’m his grave…?”

[ 196 ]

“Surprise Number Three. Missie seemed eager to play one-up with her friend. ‘Put his thing in your mouth,’ she told Lois, ‘& suck it for him like I do. Suck him ’til he cums.’

“Goddamn! I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing, Cherry! Here I was, what? seventeen? & I’d never got a girl to suck me all the way! Handjobs?—yeah. Sure. No big deal. Grunt-&-groans in a Buick backseat?—Beaucoup! Sure, an occasional fleeting kiss down there to tease me, even a cheerleader or two who’d put their mouths on it & hummed a bit & licked it like it was some kind of exotic ice cream cone or something. But it sure wasn’t their flavor of the month! & it was always with that same goddamn caution: ‘Only if you promise you won’t cum in my mouth!’ But a real fucking drop-your-load type blow job?— FUCK NO! & here he was, with his own fuckin’ sister copping to have copped his joint… & sucked his jizz! SHIT, Cherry, I figured she must either be lying, or she was some kinda fuckin’ NYMPHO or something! & this other girl, Lois, must be a nympho, too— I mean, she’d just admitted… Hell… practically bragged about doin’ sex stuff with her own goddamn’ father f’r chrissakes! By that time, I didn’t give a flyin’ fuck how crazy Buddy was for foolin’ around with his sister & this other little jailbait— I wanted to see her suck that thing, &, by God, I was going t’ get mine sucked by her. Or Lois. Or both. Like it or not! After all, they both must be sluts, & I guess in some twisted way I’d already started rationalizing how havin’ ’em suck us wasn’t quite so bad even if they were so young & all…! What fucking harm could it do, really… I mean, y’ve sucked one dick off, y’ might as well SUCK ’EM ALL, right…?”

Cherry bows her head, brushing the flared knob of Frank’s penis with her lips, her tongue flickering soft so soft his conscious perceptions fail to notice…

[ 197 ]

“Awwwhhh shuddup, Caldwell, wha’d’ya’ know? I just knew ya’ wouldn’t let it well enough alone… I ran th’ dirty bastard through th’ NCIC. Nuthin’. Ran Him through th’ Oklahoma DMV, too, by god. Yeah. He must’a’been who He said He was. It checked out. Th Olds is owned by one Truman P. Gilmore. It may’ve checked out, but I’ve still got this weird hunch about that guy… Sumthin’ ain’t right. I can feel it.”

“Just so I don’t hear about it. Got that, O’Malley…?”

“Ya’know, th weirdest part of it all is, I just can’t seem t’ focus on His face. Ya’know me, Caldwell— I never f’rget one. But all I get when I try t’ r’memb’r His, is this goddamn sort’a outline with th’ rest of it blanked out like it should have a Dick Tracy question mark in th’ middle ’r a target-range bullseye laid across it. Sumthin’ ain’t right…”

“Cut th’ goddamn friggin’ Inner Sanctum crap, will y’, y’ loonie mick…? Next y’ll be seein’ little green men fr’m Mars ’n’ dancin’ hippos in pink tutus… Better cut tipp’in’ th juice, huh…?”

“Sumthin’ just ain’t right, Caldwell—” The HIRES clock above the counter reads one minute ’til 2 a.m.

[ 198 ]

“I know what you must be thinking, Cherry! He was that sick… & I guess we were even sicker for watchin’ ’em. I mean, here he was with his sister & all… Incest. The whole bit. But I guess by then, the idea of him doin’ things like that with his own fuckin’ sister & this other jailbait kid was part of the kick… I mean it was like a goddamn freak show or something, y’ know what I mean…?

“‘I’m afraid,’ Lois said, ‘Daddy’s tried to make me do that…’n’ I’ve seen Janie doin’ it for him, but…I…I bit him when he tried to stick it in my mouth! I’ve fucked a whole lotta guys, y’ know…lots…’n’ most of th’ guys have tried to talk me in t’ that…but…I mean they smell funny, ’n’ he pees out of it, doesn’t he…? Besides, I’d rather have it in my pussy, or…even—’

“‘Oh, Christ, Lois! Do I have to do it for you?’ Missie bitched. She kicked her panties off. Then walked over to them. She knelt next to the other girl, removed Lois’ hands from her brother’s cock, bent her head down in his lap, & took it in her own mouth.

“Buddy had a very strange look on his face. Even though he was gettin’ his dick sucked by his little sister, he looked distracted or puzzled. “What did you mean, ‘or even…?’ he finally asked.”

[ 199 ]

Mal & crew are holding tight to their timetable. It has been just a bit short of 30 hours since the police rapped on their respective doors, canvassing for possible clues in the two multiple murders that claimed a total of six lives. It is early morning, still pitch dark, & the ill-lit courtyard of the motel court conceals much of the trio’s actions behind the screen of shadow posed by the unpruned overspill of foliage once planted as a hedgerow delineating the illusory oasis of a narrow strip of pool & playground. Located at the end farthest from the office, it most effectively masks the front of Rooms 12 & 14 from casual observation by motel guests lodging along the opposite side. The Olds is backed up to the curb in front of Mal’s quarters, the trunk scant feet from the doorway.

[ 200 ]

“Lois blushed positively crimson & started giggling… She walked over to where the strokebooks lay, & searched through the stack ’til she seemed to find what she wanted. She carried it back over to where Buddy & Missie were sitting, & flipped open the book, thumbing through the pages slowly so both of them could get a good look at each of the various pictures. They both stared wide-eyed. Missie gasped in astonishment, & said, ‘Oh, god, that’s sooo grossss!’ Buddy seemed considerably more receptive, judging by how hard he was breathin’ & moanin’ & by the way his cock started twitchin’ & jumpin’ as he pumped it in & out in & out of his sister’s mouth! Oh, yeah, we could see what the cover said & the picture on it: ANAL SCHOOLGIRLS was the name, & there was a picture of what looked like a blonde teenage girl with her hair in pigtails, bending over, with this guy shoving his big cock right up her ass! From where we were watchin’, we could see the whole goddamn book looked like it was fulla pictures like that…”

[ 201 ]

The Medic of Mutilations has given the Bible salesman a TKO-jolt of Demerol, rendering him a deadweight equivalent to a watertight sleeping bag pumped full of Jello ’til the seams bulge with the bulk of the wriggling contents.

Snuff opens the trunk lid, casts a wary eye for watchers, & strolls back inside, & returns seconds later, helping Mal wrestle Truman’s inert mass out the door & into his waiting place of confinement. There is no need for speech. Both move as though caught up in the flow of well-choreographed steps in some badass ballet. Snuff eases the lid closed. The two step back into the motel room. The door shuts. There is a pause of several minutes…

Julie opens the door of Room 14, & carries first one, then four more heavy brown grocery sacks one-by-one out to the Olds & into the again-opened trunk. Her father follows her with a large black trashbag slung in his cradling arms. He shuts the trunk lid, walks back to the room, returns with several suitcases, then slides the car key into the left-rear lock, twists his wrist, hinges the door open, & deposits his burden in the back seat.

Snuff enters the front passenger door. He unlatches the far side for Mal, who carries only His attaché case. Mal climbs in, takes the keys from His henchman, & cranks the starter, letting the motor warm & purr. Julie unobtrusively wipes the door knob of any prints, then scurries out to the car, toting her own suitcase, & enters via the right-rear door. Mal lets the motor idle for several minutes, unhurried… He pulls out. Stops in front of the office. Steps out & tosses the room keys in the night-drop slot. Gets back into the driver’s seat. Smiles. Satisfied with the smooth workings of His contingency plan. & eases the big white DELTA 88 out into the street…

[ 202 ]

“Anyway, Missie kept suckin’ on it & strokin’ it for him while Buddy stared at the pictures. He asked Lois, ‘You mean you won’t suck cock, but you let your old man do that to you…?’

“‘Well, I mean, he’s only done it a few times—it’s not like he does it all the time or anything! & he only pushes the tip of it in…just a little way…not all the way up my butt with his big thing! But he says I can take it better that way than up my pussy, but I don’t know how he figures that! I think it’s really ’cause he’s scared of gettin’ me pregnant or somethin’…but he always uses a rubber on Janie…?’

“‘I think the sonofabitch just wants to shoot his cumload up you, instead of baggin’ it, so he likes to do it up your tight little ass,’ Buddy grinned. ‘But, shit, he’s an asshole, himself, ’cause, Babydoll, you’re too young to have t’ worry about gettin’ knocked up (that liar!)… I could do it up either one of you & shoot, without makin’ a baby in y’… I mean, SHIT, Missie’s only got a little patch of fuzz down there, & maybe about thirteen real hairs… if she’s got that!’ he teases.

“Missie kept on suckin’ him for a few minutes. Then she came up for air & said, ‘Here, Lois, you jack him off while I suck— I’m gettin’ tired of blowin’ him…my mouth’s startin’ t’ ache…c’mon, let’s make him cum…’ With both pretty young girls working on him, believe me, Cherry, it wasn’t long before Buddy shot his wad off right in his sister’s mouth, just like she’d fuckin’ promised… When she finally pulled it out of her mouth, her lips were slick & slippery with his goo & it was droolin’ out the corners of her mouth, & she just stuck out her tiny pink tongue real sexy-like & licked it all off her lips & where it was startin’ to dribble down her chin… & she grabbed hold of Lois’ hand that still held her brother’s cock, & drew it right down to the base where his curly hairs all sprouted, & she started frigging it real hard & fast, milking out the last few pearly drops of jizz, & then she forced Lois’ head down & made her put her mouth on it & suck…

[ 203 ]

The bone-white Olds follows the almost-empty streets of early morning Quincy north. Mal carefully observes the speed limit, as well as all those minor dictates of Illinois’ traffic law. No errors. Ever.

The air is crisp with the night-chill of this unseasonably warn autumn & with that peculiar clarity characteristic of the wee hours just before the breaking dawn.

The red & green & amber of traffic signals seem to wink approval of this stranger, this ghostly presence who bows so courteously to their dictates, never cheating their honor system, even though no enforcers wait with summons books in hand.

It glides by beneath the yellow blur of residential street lamps, beneath the muted pinkish aura of mercury vapors lined along the major traffic arteries…

[ 204 ]

“‘Lois, take off your panties so he can see your pussy, too. & stand up when you do so Buddy can have a feel. You want to feel her, don’t you, Buddy…? She doesn’t even have any hair down there like I do now…it’s just like mine was when I was younger…when we first used to play ‘show’ & you first thought up ‘our little game’… She’s let me see it before—’

“Lois burst out in giggles, again, blushing profusely. ‘Goddddd, I guess this is True Confessions Night, isn’t it? I’ve never told you this before, Missie, but Daddy shaves me ’n’ Janie down there…’

“‘Christ! That’s sick—your Old Man’s some kinda fuckin’ PERVERT! Some kinda cradle-robber or something…’ Buddy groaned, barely holding back his laughter as he played ‘Rock-a-Bye’ with an imaginary baby. ‘Let ME see it—’

“‘BBB-UUUUUUDDDDDDY! You’re terrible!’ Missie moaned in mock outrage. ‘& what are you, Mr. Smartypants?— I’m still only eleven, Lois just turned twelve! & you’ve been foolin’ around with me since you were what…in junior high & I was only six or seven—’

“‘Well, Daddy always says, ‘eight’s too late…’ Lois giggled.

“‘SHIT! I guess he oughta know, huh…’ Buddy razzed her, ‘Heh, anyhow, Missie, how come you know what Lois’ pussy looks like…?’ Buddy asked. He grasped Lois by the waist & pulled her to him, forcing his hand up under her skirt, groping her through her panties…”

[ 205 ]

Mal spots a likely spare set of wheels, an older model black Ford Fairlane.

Snuff hops out of the Olds, walks back a block-&-a-half, & hotwires the battered Fix-Or-Repair-Daily special.

They head north, beyond the limits of the city. Snuff leads, driving point, while Mal & Julie trail at a casual distance. A trip of little more than 15 miles before they reach the bridge-span above the Bear River. Snuff cruises across to the opposite bank in recon. Then the Olds follows. The trio scans the environs for any sign of surveillance. The dash-clock of the DELTA 88 reads 4:43. The area appears deserted… Snuff drives some short distance farther, pulls over to curbside, leaving the engine idle. Mal draws the Olds up right behind him, also idling. Snuff climbs out, walks to the rear of the 88, fidgets a pick into the lock, & pops the trunk lid open.

[ 206 ]

“OOOooohhhh, Buddy, you naughty naughty boy…” Cherry coos to Frank, delicately stroking & licking at his penis as she does so.

“Evidently, the hand up her skirt had cured any last pretense of ‘shyness’ or feigned ‘modesty,’ ’cause Buddy’d no sooner started feeling her that way than Lois immediately complied with Missie’s original request… She lifted her skirt up above her waist, & Missie tugged her pink cotton panties down off her slender hips, stooping, pulling them down over her thighs & calves to her ankles. Lois kicked them loose, & Missie caught them. She giggled, & stuffed the crotch in her brother’s face… The way she was standing, wrigglin’ around while he fondled her vulva, we could all see that little twat of hers was as bald as the day she was born… I’d never seen a pussy shaved like that… I felt guilty enough lookin’ at girls that young, & to think how her own father did that to her… But I couldn’t help myself—I felt my own stiff dick throb & swell up even stiffer at the sight of it… I couldn’t take my eyes off her… I know I shouldn’t admit this to you—but it was the most exciting twat I’d ever seen…”

[ 207 ]

Truman is still down. Cold-cocked by the Demerol.

There is a rattling of rusted metal as Snuff loops the lengths of tire chain around four of the plastic-wrapped parcels from the grocery sacks, securing them, testing their closures. The Bible salesman will be short a set, but this is perhaps the least of his worries. Normally, Mal would have insisted His henchman boost snow chains from a secondary source, some other auto in the neighborhood of the motel; but the local pigs are on alert, & He judged using those from the Olds the lesser risk.

He returns each of the parcels to their respective sacks, carries two to the passenger door, opens it, & places them in “shotgun” position on the seat. He walks back to the trunk, & repeats the procedure with the two remaining weighted sacks, as well as the unweighted fifth sack & the larger bundle.

[ 208 ]

“I think I forgot to mention, Cherry, but when we first sneaked in, Buddy was sitting in an armchair by the side wall, closest to us. Missie’d straddled a hassock right in front of him & leaned forward with her head in his lap while she went down on him. After the girls’d finally got him off, he stood, grabbed each around the waist, & steered them over to this big brown leather couch along the far wall, where he plunked his bare ass down on the cushions with his legs sprawled wide & his deflated dick lying limp in his lap. He motioned them into position, where he wanted them—both girls stood up in front of him, with their skirts rucked up while he fondled first one, then the other…

“About all us guys peeping in on them could really see were the girls’ pert, dimpled little bottoms, carelessly exposed beneath their lifted skirts much to our prolonged appreciation. Goddamn, they had nice, tight little asses! Man, oh man, I can see ’em just like it was only fuckin’ yesterday, SHIT! &, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, Cherry, what kinda thoughts kept poppin’ into my mind after hearin’ all that stuff Lois had been telling them about… & seein’ the picture on the cover of that one fuckbook: ANAL SCHOOLGIRLS…

“I knew it was sick, but the images excited me… Christ, Cherry, I’d never even heard about guys doin’ somethin’ like that to a woman, much less some little girl! That was the kinda thing the guys in the locker room joked about queers doin’… & I KNEW I WASN’T ANY GODDAMN QUEER! But I guess it had the same effect on all of us…

“Bob Ellsworth must’ve been gettin’ really antsy, ’cause I could see his fixated gaze flickering back & forth between the girl’s butts & that friggin’ book, layin’ there on the floor beckoning his curiosity like Pandora’s Box… He took a big chance & broke cover, scuttling over & scooped it up & carried it back for a closer look! He thumbed slowly through it, & I was surprised to notice him playing with himself while he pored over its lurid contents. At first he was just squeezin’ his crotch through his Levi’s, but pretty soon he got too carried away to bother what we thought, & he unzipped & started stroking his hard cock without caring who saw him…”

[ 209 ]

Snuff closes the trunk lid, then saunters up to the left-front door of the Fairlane, tugs the latch, & swings himself into the driver’s seat once more.

The Ford pulls a 180-degree turn, then noses back toward Quincy, stopping at mid-span of the Bear River Bridge.

The Olds hangs back, trailing at a distance. When the Ford stops, Mal follows suit, just within sighting range, where He can cover His companion should anything untoward occur. He steps out of the car, kneeling by the right-front tire as He feigns a close inspection of the treads & sidewall with His pocket penlight.

Unhurried, Snuff strolls around to the passenger side, & dumps the parcels one by one over the railing, down into the pre-dawn’s vault of gathered shadow, splashes echoing as each plunges into the flowing waters of mid-channel.

What sinks shall sink. & what does not shall be dragged along the river’s course, out into the Mississippi, no doubt on their way downstream to Quinisippi Island Park, to snag somewhere along the shoreline or wash up onto the beach. Much to the horror of whomever discovers them & seeks to unravel what mysteries are contained within the tight-wrapped folds of plastic…

[ 210 ]

“Bob Ellsworth was holdin’ the book open with one hand while he beat his meat with the other, & he was rubbin’ the head of his cock against the pictures… Pretty soon, he started yankin’ his prick so hard it looked like he might tear it off if he got any wilder, & then he shot off, spraying his scumload into the air, squirting all over the pages & onto the carpet. He was shakin’ like a leaf & moanin’ real low & bitin’ his lips ’til they bled to keep from lettin’ out a ruckus…

“Jim Doins & Al Brady grabbed the book from him & went into a huddle, flippin’ through the pages & gawkin’ like their eyes would pop out any minute… My own burning curiosity & blueballs finally got the better of me, & I bullied it away from them, shocked yet titillated by what I saw… By today’s SOTA smut-peddlin’ standards, Cherry, the production values were el cheapo—the cover was color but the illos inside were all in grainy black & white. Remember, this was way back in the late ’50s when all this shit was outlaw underground, all ‘under the table,’ so there was no regulation like we have today—no boldfaced assurances on every cover that ‘PROOF ON FILE ALL MODELS ARE 18 OR OLDER,’ & with no vested business facade to protect from prosecution, that meant they shot whatever twat was most expedient & cheap to lure or procure into somebody’s basement or backroom & get ’em naked so some poolroom lothario with black socks & a horse-hung dick could give ’em the long strokes…make them suck or fuck or sodomize them while the in-&-out pics were snapped & the presses rolled… & a lot of jailbait snatch did get utilized in the process…

“Anyway, all those prurient promises hinted by its lurid title & cum-on covershot with the ‘cornholed kiddie’ were geared for a fast buck from the kinkiest of the cradle-robbin’ shorteyes set… & what the basic book supplied was indeed a butt-fuckin’ boff-fest for the hardest of the hardcore handjob Joebobs—a headspinnin’ array of heiney-hump honeys all laid out & splayed out & wide open & bendin’ over for that ultimate poke up the poopchute…”

“Ffffrrrannnnkkkkkk, you’re sssooooohhhhhh nnnaughtyyy…” Cherry coos in his ear, sensing the sheer intensity of his pent-up, but repressed desires, noting his strange shift into the rhythms of hip/flip hardboiled lingo as his heated musings probe deeper & deeper into the hardcore of backdoor… &…

“Most of the book was full of y’r typical overblown ballbustin’ backalley bimbos, or, in this case, backdoor bimbos, all tricked out with the generic pigtails & ponytails & schoolgirl skirts & teddybears & cheerleader outfits… butt they’d gone big budget, with a veritable bevy of off-campus & in-the-buff college cuties lettin’ some dude do the bone dance up their bottomholes… & there were a handful of highschool hardcase whores & randy little teen-queen runaway lays that were doin’ their share of cheerleadin’ in the rear-end-zone…

“But it was that add-on collection Lois’ dad had taped inside that came across…all the way—literally dozens & dozens of those good ol’ livin’ color ‘four-by-five Kodachromes’ that must’ve been shot & developed by the intrepid entrepreneurs of some sub-sub-underground porn-pushin’ network whose performers were the GENUINE babyrapers & the babyraped—grown men & young boys all doin’ anal sex with these real-young-&-innocent-lookin’ teenagers & little prepubescent grade school girls—it was the sickest thing I’d ever fuckin’ seen…”

[ 211 ]

The unsteady chug chug chug of the Ford’s idling engine transforms itself to a throaty rumbling as Snuff shifts out & the car rolls slowly forward, exiting the disposal site.

Mal & Julie follow in the smoothly purring Olds, hanging back just in case their companion’s actions have drawn any unwanted attention.

Normally, Mal would drive the Olds to center-state, & leave its burned-out hulk, after torching it, to further confuse The Law as to which direction its occupants might have headed. But now He senses the critical timetable He must follow if He is to avoid the hounds upon His heels, so He heads directly for the Illinois/Iowa border crossing at Keokuk…

[ 212 ]

“Yeah, & we could see Buddy sittin’ on the couch with his again stiff peter sticking out. Christ! It looked like it was even bigger & harder than before…he was hung pretty good f’r a kid his age. But I was BIGGER. My wang was my pride ’n joy—biggest weiner in the showers…it put those other jocks t’ shame! Anyway, we could read his body language easy enough. The implied motions of his arms & shoulders. An occasional glimpse of hands groping down there between Lois’ & Missie’s thighs. You can bet, though, our imaginations filled in the blanks—it was certainly more than ample titillation to get us all quite hard. As if we weren’t already!”

“& you’re sooo hard, now, thinking of those two hot, prepubescent pussies, aren’t you, Frank, the one with that itty-bitty peachfuzz patch… & the hairless, shaved one…” Cherry whispers, stringing him along, “you like ’em young & tight-assed, don’t you, Big Man…”

“NOW WAIT A MINUTE, CHERRY, I’VE… NEVER… DONE ANYTHING WITH A YOUNG GIRL… NO WAY, CHERRY, NOT SINCE THEM… I MEAN ‘THEN…’” Frank pleads, “I HATE GUYS THAT DO THAT… I MEAN, CHRIST, CHERRY, I’VE GOT A DAUGHTER OF MY OWN… I’VE BUSTED DOZENS OF THOSE BASTARDS…”

[ 213 ]

After leaving Keokuk, Mal & His cutthroat crew cruise U.S. 218 northwestward the twenty-odd miles ’til they hit the junction with 2 East. They beeline the short sprint to the Shimek State Forest, on the Des Moines River, bordering the northeasterly tip of Missouri.

Snuff unearths their stock set of polybagged Iowa untraceables from the usual cache-spot, then swaps them off for the Illinois “hots.” Avoiding attention as “out-of-staters.” A DMV trace will access a total goose-egg, Just ONE BIG ?. Sure as shit not street-legal. But damn convincing. A perfect pair turned out in Mal’s workshop back home sweet home down 666…

Less than an hour’s drive, & they pass Centerville.

Just beyond Plano, Mal hangs a right onto a rutted dirt road, vanishing among the cornstalks…

[ 214 ]

“Don’t get so serious, Lover Man, we’re just doing a little fantasy trip, here, right…? You don’t think that if I thought…you were somekinduva real babyraper that I’d be in bed with you right now, do you…? But you know what they say, Baby, ‘it doesn’t hurt to look, does it…?’ & the same goes for what you think, Frank, & it’s those deep dark hidden thoughts wayyyyy down there, all that shit you’re repressing that needs to come out so you can free yourself from your secret demons…tell it all to me, Baby. I sure as Hell won’t tell anybody! it can be our special little secret… & what turns you on turns me on… My name may be ‘Cherry’ but I sure ain’t… & I’ve known plenty of normal, healthy guys that get off thinking about young stuff, Frank, even looking at pictures of naked kids in nudist mags or those Tijuana fuckbooks & Philippine zines with all that underage twat… I mean, shit, Frank, these kids either sell it or starve… & if they’re getting fucked anyway, & some guy pays ’em a bonus for takin’ the bone on-camera… then, so what… I say, ‘go for it…’”

Frank knows what a fucked-up line of hype she’s trying to sell him on… He knows how sick & twisted her line of logic is… & he knows how rampant with self-justifying rationalizations it is… But he’s so far over the edge now, so mixed up with the sleepless nights & festering rage & boiling lust, that he’ll grasp any dangling line that’ll serve to save & salve his ravaged ego from the dark disease & despite he’s already laid open to this red-haired Jezebel… & the thought flashes through his mind that maybe, just maybe, she’s the Whore of Babylon Incarnate… & it only serves to fuel his lust…

[ 215 ]

“& so I knocked on th’ door, ’n’ this bimbo opens it, ’n’, I swear t’ god, I start t’ say ‘Hello, ma’am,’ ’n’ there she is buck naked, with th’ goddamnedest set of hooters I ever seen—”

“Well, Wyzynski, did y’ r’member t’ read her her friggin’ rights b’fore y’ frisked her?” the tall, gaunt cop asks, his hangdog face a five-card-stud freezeout.

“In yr dreams, Wyz. In yr dreams,” the third cop growls, shaking his gnarled mick mug with the bulging rum-blossom, his complexion three shades redder than its basic beet. He tilts his head back & slams a scalding gulp of java down his gullet, a Mississippi-mud dark trickle spilling from the left corner of mouth, dripping down onto his serge shirtfront. “’N’ yr just as bad, Caldwell, you’d’a’ tripped all ov’r yrself try’na get a gander at her gash—”

“—’r didja just cream yr shorts gawkin’ at her…?” His partner finally finishes his sentence.

“Awwwhhh shuddup, th both’a’ya’s. Yr gettin’ goddamn pathetic…”

“Heh, O’Malley!” A hand grabs the stocky cop’s shoulder, just as he takes a big bite of blueberry-filled doughnut. He spins to see whotheHell wants him.

“Remember that make you ran the other night, the one on the Olds from Oklahoma I heard you grumblin’ about?”

“YEAH?”

“Is this the guy you ID’d?” Watch Sergeant Vaughan Boston asks, holding out a faxed photo & bulletin for his inspection. “ODMV recalled your query, & hit us with this Missing Persons—”

[ 216 ]

“Tell me about your daughter, Frank, what’d you say her name is—Melissa Lynn…?”

Frank doesn’t remember having mentioned her name to Cherry… When the Hell could I have let THAT slip…? he wonders, sweating harder than he already is from his fueled fires of his passion…

“What do you call her, for short, Lover Man: which is it—‘M.I.S.S.Y.,’ or ‘M.I.S.S.I.E.’…?”

Frank’s whole body, but in particular, his belly & his groin, are wracked by a chill, chill shudder of utter despair… He feels himself plunging into the very depths of The Great Abyss, &, for a split-instant, he sees Asmodeus, Lord of Lechery, beckoning from the yawning rift of The Bottomless Pit… & Lord Asmodeus lifts his long & bony middle finger, the FUCK FINGER of his right hand, & he gestures an obscene salute…as the Mark of The Beast flickers in blue flame in the palm of his upraised hand…

[ 217 ]

“Awwwhhh, SHIT! Ohhhhh, SHIT!” O’Malley gasps, choking on his mouthful, coughing a flurry of powdered sugar & gobs of blue goo & bits of half-chewed dough all over his shirt, & right in Boston’s face.

“Awwwhhh, SHIT! ’Scuse me, Sarge. Sorry!”

His superior zaps him a look that would fry bacon.

“BUT. THAT. AIN’T. THE. BOZO. I. SEEN. NO. GODDAMN. WAY!”

Caldwell looks like he just caught a fistful of crow feathers in his craw.

He gives the Coke machine a violent kick, & it issues forth a low, moaning rumble & a clunk, & an avalanche of crushed ice gushes out of the hopper, splattering off his groin, burying his shiny black shoes, & mounding up around his ankles…

[ 218 ]

Returning from his latest waking nightmare, Frank tries desperately to lead Cherry’s train of discourse back to safer ground(?), but at least away from Missy Lynn…

But to no avail. Her hands. Her tongue. Her wriggling body press lasciviously to his…

& her whispers. Ooooohhhhh, her infernal, taunting whispers…

[ 219 ]

A straggling thicket of willow trees partially encircles what once was a respectable if somewhat modest farmhouse & barn. Now they stand in disrepair, ramshackle & weathered, red paint peeling away in brittle, flaking strips, oxidized to a shade of rust that blends, chameleon-like, with the equally disreputable, corroded & dented rain gutters & galvanized troughs & sheets of corrugated metal.

Once-prim stakes of a white picket fence now are little more than kindling remnants, & the yard is over-spilling in a lush tangle of dominant native flora that dare a “make my day” showdown with any top-of-the-line Weed Eater, & challenge the concept that Agent Orange is all downside.

The windmill still stands, blades pinwheeling in a lazy spin urged by the unseasonably warm breeze.

The white Olds & the black Ford shimmy & lurch along the last gasp of what laughingly passes as a driveway. Then pull to a halt in front of the double barn doors. Snuff throws open the passenger door. Scrambles out. Walks up to the barred entrance. Bends as he flicks a brisk left-right-left to the combination padlock’s tumblers.

The doors grate open. The idling Olds rolls forward into the cool darkness, followed by the Ford. & the doors close, swallowing car & passengers from sight.

[ 220 ]

Sensing he’s so far into his torrid, tormented reminiscences there’s no turning back, Cherry segues back into the line she’d been pursuing— “OOOhhhhh, Frank! That’s sick—” she mewls in Frank’s ear, momentarily raising herself up on her elbow, letting her mane of flames tickle softly against his back & shoulders, “—that’s cradlerobbing— & you’re getting so fucking hot thinking about that tight little CUNT I can feel you twitch & tremble…

“How would you feel if that was somebody doing things like that with your own little daughter… MISSY Lynn…” & feigning innocent of her earlier & very tacky tack: “OOOhhhhh, FUCK, Frank! I hadn’t thought of that before—talk about Freudian, huh…? & you said your wife doesn’t know about this little escapade, huh…?” she whispers in awe of her own perceived on-the-couch analytical astuteness.

Frank would no doubt argue if he wasn’t so far gone…too gone to care about anything in a sense approaching rational…

[ 221 ]

George Brittain, Expert of Extermination, boneshaker, fleshraker, backbreaker, heartstaker, bloodslaker, widowmaker, soultaker, Medic of Mutilations, Philosopher of Psy-War Ciphers & Stone Slaying of Cainite & Carpocratian Cabal & Caribbean Cults. To HIM, words are things of power, each invested with its own potent magicks to be tapped by their Enlightened wielder. Places, too, have their magick, deep & resonant, ancient & sacred to those cults who share the slumbering dream-sentience of earth & stone & wind & water. Those with eyes to trace the hidden Dragon Veins & to will their flow into the self…

To George Brittain, this humble crib is a Place of Power, wakened by the spill of blood, the shaping of savored pain, & the passage of transient Life into the conjured World of Death a thing to open Gates. It is a water place. Empowered by its symbolisms. Nearby is Rathbun Lake. & the Words of Naming have created Correspondences & Conjunctions transcending the Natural Order of existence, a focal point of energies subverted, inverted & perverted to serve the will of Darkness. It is located at near-perfect midpoint between the towns of Bethlehem, Mystic & Brazil, equidistant from Promise City & Confidence, forming a Great Pentahedron of Earth Lines…

& what rough Beast, His hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born…?

One monstrous fragment of twisted cosmic humor, akin to the vision of a rude black billy goat miraculously dropping a dump in the shape of a cross right upon the Holy Manger of that pathetic, epileptic infant martyr…

[ 222 ]

“Have you ever looked at your daughter, NAKED, Frank, & thought about her that way…? Did you get hot staring at her little titties & her pussy… & her ass…?”

“FUCK NO! SHE WAS ONLY PRACTICALLY A FUCKIN’ BABY WHEN JUDY LYNN & ME GOT OUR GODDAMN DIVORCE!” Frank wails…as if his response absolves him… He’s busted sickos who’re into that…

“How about now—?” Cherry asks, gently squeezing his bloated testicles & stroking his penis as she queries him, “—how old is she—twelve…? thirteen…? She’s probably already FUCKING with the boys from school… Do you ever imagine her naked & being felt & sucked & fucked…?”

Frank lets out a low, tormented moan, & Cherry can feel his huge erection jerk & twitch, despite his shame… & that beckoning finger of Lord Asmodeus beguiles him into his next confession: “Ooooohhh, FUCK, Cherry… I…I’ve…never even admitted it to myself, goddamn it… I keep tellin’ myself it just didn’t happen…when I know it did… But sometimes at night… I wake up, tossin’ & turnin’ & drenched in sweat. & the sheets… & my shorts are all soaked & sticky with my cum…drenched… & I know what I’ve been dreamin’ about— & I try t’ tell myself it’s some woman I’ve seen that really shook her stuff…or Judy Lynn, my ex…but it isn’t… I’ve been dreamin’ about my own fuckin’ daughter, Cherry, & maybe some of her little friends… & I’m doin’ sex things with her or them…just like we did with Missie & Lois… & she’s all naked & hot for my big cock!” He buries his throbbing head in his hands, & groans: “& it makes me feel so sick inside, I can barely stumble to the john before I puke…”

“You’ve gotta get this all out, Frank, everything, it’s torturing you…repressing it just isn’t healthy…” Cherry cajoles. “Tell me everything that you jocks DID to those poor little girls…every detail, don’t leave out ANYTHING…”

Frank slavishly obeys, sliding back into his lewd memories…

[ 223 ]

The land & buildings were purchased for a pittance, paid in Yankee greenbacks, one month shy twenty years ago. Acquired from some god-fearing simpleton Fundamentalist of Austro-Hungarian ancestry, his wife & horde of brats, alas, fallen upon hard times.

This “summer shack” is but one of the Maldoror’s crashpads.

Hideout & supply depot.

Self-contained & isolated.

Cut off from the mainstream flow of Time & Order & the ever-upturned palm of consolidated conjob corporations, & needle-in-the-arm, of PITIs & utility/futilities…

A generator & the windmill replace the meter-reader scam of Ready Kilowatt. No A.T.&T. No M.C.I. No Sprint. A well & pump provide the water. An outhouse relieves the need for a more elaborate throne room. Taxes tendered by mailed money orders, purchased cash on the barrelhead at convenience stores across state lines, drawing no scrutiny from local prying eyes & gushing gossips.

Yet another mask. Even the name upon the deed assumed…

He can walk away from this, untainted by any link of paper trail or circumstance that ties Him to this place.

As if waking from a waking dream…

[ 224 ]

Cherry whispers: “So, tell me, Lover Man—how would you like to shove this great big old poontang-poker up your little girl’s hot tight little CUNT, Big Man…?” She gives his hardness a lewd, knowing squeeze, & skins the prepuce back & forth tauntingly, circling his thick shaft with her outstretched fingers, deftly simulating the rhythms of coital thrusts… “How would you like to fuck your little MISSY…? Up her PUSSY like Buddy did…? Or would you like to do it to her in her ASS…?”

[ 225 ]

“‘Welcome. To. My. Parlor.’ Said. The. Spider. To. The. Fly.” Mal gestures to the interior of the barn.

A battery-powered shop lamp dangles from the rafters, illuminating a confined space little wider than a two-car garage, but perhaps three times the length. Pitchforks & scythes & rusted chains are hung along the walls. & there’s an acetylene rig set up next to a sturdy wooden workbench at the far end.

A white Ford pickup truck fitted with a prefab camper shell is parked beside the Olds. The truck is several years old but well-kept. The camper is one of those Cavalier models with a door with a little window centered at the rear.

A real “Mr. Middle America” special.

Nice & homey.

With one of those familiar chrome Jesus-in-a-fish emblems mounted just above the back bumper.

A sticker on the right side of the bumper:

“PROTECT YOUR INVESTMENT

HIRE A LICENSED CONTRACTOR”

A decal decorated with a tiny picture of Old Glory plastered on the camper’s window patriotically proclaims:

“SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL

LAW ENFORCEMENT”

& on the left-hand side of the bumper is another sticker, this one saying:

“I’D RATHER BE FISHING”

Just right for exploring the highways & byways of “god shed his grace on thee,” all the way from sea to shining sea…

[ 226 ]

“I wanna hear all the wet details about what you & those other jocks did to ’em…got it, Mr. Hardguy…?” Cherry whispers hoarsely.

“Okay. Okay…” Frank mumbles, his face buried in her hair, nibbling her neck & ears, teasing her, stoking her fever of twisted passion, “Bite me! BITE me HARD…” she moans, shaking her flaming mane to & fro, whipping it about the sleek, tanned, shoulders, the rippling muscles hard beneath the flesh only serving to seem so dangerous & feral, so wild & female & leonine…

[ 227 ]

Snuff lifts aside several bales of the hay stacked along the left side of the barn, nearest to the house. Mal pulls out His pocket calculator. Taps in the required sequence. Exposes the hidden back panel. & enters the code that pops open the concealed trapdoor in the floor & deactivates the trigger mechanism linked to the charge of C4 & the metal footlockers filled with TNT & the cylinders of white phosphorus.

The property straddles the dividing line between Appanoose & Wayne counties. Had the boobytrap detonated, it would have blown the flaming remnants of barn halfway across both counties & into Lucas & Monroe to the north, as well.

Snuff grasps the rusted pendule hook & chain hanging from a swiveling boom & block & tackle setup mounted among the lattice of beams & roof joists overhead. A grating noise of pivoting metal & the clattering & clanking of swaying links echoes in the hollow stillness, as he swings the rig into place above the vertical tunnel mouth exposed by the open trapdoor.

He handles the pulleys while Mal hoists the Bible salesman up to almost chest-level, catching the loop of the manacles’ chain over the “U” of the hook, then lets him fall free, dangling in midair.

There is a loud popping of savagely twisted vertebrae, & his shoulders are nearly ripped from their sockets as Gilmore’s 250-pound bulk suddenly drops floorward, then yanks taut. He tries to scream, but can’t, the bondage gag effectively silencing him.

George Brittain crawls into the pit, clambers down the wooden ladder bracketed to the side of the shaft, & disappears down this mad, leering rabbit hole into the Dark Wonderland of Waiting Horrors below. A Wonderland of His devisement, & fashioned by His henchman’s labors.

Snuff lowers Truman into the mouth of the Hell Hole.

[ 228 ]

“Ooooohhhhh, Frank Baby, that’s so fuckin’ SICK, it makes me all WET & STEAMY & CREAMY…!” Cherry moans. “There’s nothin’ I love to see like some WELL-HUNG STUD eatin’ out a naughty little angelbaby’s hot, tight little ASS, & gettin’ it all slithery & slick & ready for him…”

[ 229 ]

Snuff returns to the Ford, lifting a bound & drugged girl from where she lies on the carpet behind the front seats, & carries her over to the pit. She barely whimpers at this new torment inflicted upon her helpless body. Her mind has already snapped, too fragile to endure what has already transpired, let alone the terrors & torture that await her soul & flesh…

She is a young girl. A very young girl.

Just the kind Mal likes… Julie muses. How easy it is… Snuff spotted the kid strolling down the deserted block, at daybreak, so close to home & yet an eternity away from safety… Some grade school kid skipping down to the corner convenience mart, running some petty errand for her mother, a grey carcoat & a little knitted cap, & the breeze is tugging at the hem of that knee-length grey wool skirt & lifting it up around her thighs giving quick flashes of soft, innocent young flesh, & Snuff is already slowing the car, & then a sudden gust raises the skirt immodestly up above her hips & waist, & it’s just a split second before she pulls it down to cover herself but Snuff gets a quick peep of her panty-clad bottom, & Julie’s already psyching herself up to run her verbal tap-dance…

Yeah, & it’s all over now Baby Blue …

Julie follows, eager to join in Mal’s little games.

“I’ll take the Olds apart, first,” her father says, pulling on a welder’s mask, & firing up the torch. “While you two take the bitch & see what she’s made of…”

He giggles, low & shrill & brittle as ice.

“Yeah, sugar ’n’ spice…just save at least one slice f’r me…”

[ 230 ]

“SO, YOU DID IT, DIDN’T YOU…? YOU SHOVED YOUR BIG COCK RIGHT INTO HER BACK THERE… IN HER BOTTOMHOLE… & YOU FUCKED HER TIGHT YOUNG ANUS, DIDN’T YOU— WAS SHE GOOD? DID YOU RAM IT ALL THE WAY HOME…? DID THE LITTLE SLUT TAKE THE WHOLE FUCKIN’ THING UP THERE IN HER BEHIND— DID SHE TAKE IT ALL THE WAY…? DID SHE CUM FOR YOU THAT WAY?” Cherry moans, stroking Frank’s huge, jutting penis with both hands, the bright cold steel of the manacles clicking with her lewd, frenzied motions…

“NO…”

[ 231 ]

A team of plain clothes silently surround the sleazebag motel in Quincy, IL. Officers O’Malley & Caldwell accompanying to ID the GTA/Kidnapping suspects.

Two of them burst in on Mr. Bruce Davids, Motel Clerk. They catch him in the act. Spanking his monkey while he eyeballs his latest stack of sickoid stroke books. Flustered, & trying desperately to re-zip his dangling doodle with one hand & hide his hardcore with the other, he fumbles his bobbing balls, catches his meat in the metal teeth, lets out a howl of horror, & the stack slides, scattering his stash of smut face-up on the floor, their lurid covers exposing his pet perversions… Hard Metal Honeys, The Quarterly of Pierced Tits & Clits… Rubber Vixens in Chains… Dildo Dolls… Corraled Cuties… Prize Pussy & The Contest Canines…

Somehow, the innate humor in the situation is lost on them. They Mirandize him for Public Masturbation & Possession of Pornography.

[ 232 ]

“‘WHY NOT…? WHY THE FUCK NOT…? YOU WANTED TO… DIDN’T YOU, BIG MAN?” Cherry suddenly stops frigging Frank, her hands clenched stiff & still. Shocked at his perceived stupidity: “YOU TURNED DOWN WHAT THAT LITTLE SWEETCHEEKS WHORE OF A TWELVE YEAR OLD WAS OFFERIN’ YOU…? WHAT’S THE MATTER, BIG MAN, COULDN’T YOU GET IT UP AGAIN EVEN FOR YOUR ANAL BABYANGEL…? NO FUCKIN’ BALLS, BIG MAN?”

Frank flushes, fists bunching into knots of fury. He wants to smash this red-haired BITCH in the face for scorning him. He wants to punch her belly with short hard jabs & smash her in the face with a roundhouse right & drive home a couple of uppercuts to her jaw & MAKE HER SHUT THE FUCK UP… & MAKE HER BLEED… & THE FURY & THE LUST ARE SO TWISTED UP INSIDE HIM & SHE’S RAISED THOSE TERRIFYING NEEDS IN HIM HE HAS SOUGHT SO FUCKING LONG TO BURY… ALL THAT REPRESSED SHAME & WANTING IN HIM THREATENING TO SPILL…

BIZARRE IMAGES EXPLODING IN HIS SKULL… SHEDDING THE OUTER SKIN OF PALE HUMANITY… EXPOSING THE DARK HUNGRY PREDATOR WITHIN… DESIRES TRANSMUTING TO A PSYCHIC HURRICANE OF PAIN THEN FURY FALLING BACK INTO REALITY AS SCALDING RAIN HARD SO HARD IT STRIPS AWAY THE INNER FLESH AS WELL… NEED STREAMING ALL THE WAY DOWN INTO PRIMAL DARKNESS… ALL THE WAY IN… & BAD TO THE BONE…

[ 233 ]

The police then question the seedy motel manager regarding the occupants of Rooms 12 & 14. But it’s a no-show. Mal & crew have long since split, & are safe on the farm, across state lines in Iowa. & all they’ve managed to bag is one fucked-up weenie-wagging perv.

Small consolation when the Forensics boys turn up some O-Negative stains in between the bathroom tiles—a deadringer for Gilmore’s blood type. & one skyblue contact lens. A prescription comparison could tie it to one WFJ runaway named Heather Riley, providing a Missing Persons had been filed.

But her old man’s too afraid she’ll talk him into god-only-knows how many counts of Forcible Rape & Sodomy, not to mention the multiple raps for Corrupting a Minor & Incest &…

Besides that, he’s always got his two boys to comfort him in his Hour of Need, & that flock of sweet & innocent young lambs he teaches in his Sunday School class.

Oh, yes, praise the Lord! surely he can show them all the way…

[ 234 ]

“NO. You goddamn bitch!” Frank snarls. “It wasn’t like that at all! I was still hard. I could’ve stayed hard all night long for her… I could’ve sunk it in so deep & hard, when she nuzzled the head of my big boner down there, against the waiting circle of that puckered, rubbery little hole. & then she clambered up on her hands & knees with her dark dark hair all tousled & damp & swirling down across her shoulders, & she thrust her rump up in my fuckin’ face & wriggled it all naughty-like & sexy & I wanted to kiss her back there & stick my tongue into her just like I saw Buddy & Dale & Bob do to her & to My Little Missie… & she was beggin’ me to push my fingers into her anus & masturbate her & she was beggin’ me to lick her asshole & eat it out & she was beggin’ me to shove it up her ass, moanin’, ‘ANALFUCK ME! ANALFUCK ME JUST LIKE DADDY DOES—ONLY SHOVE IT ALL THE WAY UP INSIDE ME…

“THEN WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU…?” Cherry taunts.

Frank’s hairy chest is suddenly wracked with sobs, spilling forth his desire & loathing. “I JUST COULDN’T. NOT LIKE THAT. EVEN THOUGH I WANTED TO. SO BAD… IT WAS SO FILTHY & DEGRADING… & I’D NEVER SEEN OR IMAGINED ANYTHING SO EXCITING… BUT I COULDN’T— CAUSE THAT’S THE WAY QUEERS DO IT…”

[ 235 ]

Professor Punk stares out through the copper-tinted wall of mirror-glazed windows at the expansive panorama of downtown Houston skyline. He is ringed by the highrise thrusts housing corporate power structures, rearing like angular phallic colossi erected in some narcissistic rite of circle jerk asserting dominance through implied comparisons of relative virility.

The rose & saffron flames of dawn herald the Boat of Amon-Ra as it rises once more from its night-journey through the Underworld…

In a syncretistic merger of the concepts & pantheons of ancient belief-systems—

Hades, World of the Dead, whose gate-realm is Erebus—

Son of Chaos—

Who fathered Light & Day as he coupled with his sister, Night—

Erebos, the corporate demigod, ruled by the Lilithian Lucy Nation, Mistress of Mermaid’s Inn, whose ultimate goal is to throw wide the very Gates of Hell & enslave its minions…

But for now, the twin dominatrices in black leather corsets & spike-heeled boots loll in the luxury of Prof’s temporary digs, the ennui of their all-night orgy with the masochistic genius washing over them, mingling with the dreamdregs of designer drugs synthesized by their sex partner/submissive.

For now, the Prof has uncinched the straps & buckles of his wellworn leather bondage mask, & set aside its womblike, enveloping total-isolation-of-the-tainted-soul, in lieu of daylight visions…

For now, his flaccid, inchworm prick dangles, spent, between his skinny, naked thighs…

For now, the braided leather lashes of the dominatrices lie coiled upon the coverlets, no longer scourging raw, bloody hieroglyphs of eager pain upon the topography of scar-furrowed flesh…

& he wonders why no further word has been heard of the Blue Devil Killer, Slice, who seems to have vanished as if swallowed up by The Bottomless Pit, itself…

[ 236 ]

“Just like Missy Lynn’s, Frank, just exactly like your daughter’s! Can you just IMAGINE how fucking TIGHT she is…! Just right for you to FUCK & CORNHOLE, You Filthy Fucking Prick, You!” The redheaded temptress taunts him with her whispered obscenities….

[ 237 ]

Prof. Punk punches the ON button of the TV remote. The 46” screen crackles, rez’ing up in a momentary snow of red, blue & green dots that transform themselves into the image of the CNN early-morning newscaster & the monitor behind him, the camera cutting from his face to an on-the-scene replay: the blowup visage of a young girl of Japanese ancestry, long black hair swirling in October breeze…

He takes a brief respite from the night’s program of pain. Answering some secret goading more intense than savored torment.

…behind her is a field, stretching away to where the fire-leafed maples crowd the skyline blinding with the intensity of westering sun, all cobalt & amethyst & bloodred & vermilion, lancets of Aztec-gold searing through the rifts in foliage, glaring on the camera’s lens, foxing the transmitted visual with blazing starbursts & spiderwebs of reflected sunlight…

The camera zooms in, filling its focal field with an immense mouth, flower-petal delicate lips smeared with crimson gloss:

“…THE SCENE, WHERE SEVERAL HOURS EARLIER, TWO BOYSCOUTS MADE THIS GRIM DISCOVERY—”

The camera pans to left, following the thrust of her outstretched arm & pointing index finger…

“—A PIT FILLED WITH STACKS OF DESECRATED BIBLES, APPARENTLY URINE-SOAKED. LOCAL POLICE BELIEVE THIS TO BE THE WORK OF SATANIC HEAVY-METAL PUNKS OR A COVEN OF DEVIL WORSHIPPERS THAT MAY BE OPERATING IN THIS REGION”

A chill gust seems to blow across Prof. Punk’s scalp & spine, raising gooseflesh, the short hairs bristling on his naked arms & legs. His cadaver-pale, holocaust-skinny body trembles as if hit by a petit mal seizure, & he knows, he surely knows what Devils walked this very field…

[ 238 ]

Frank’s confession spills from his lips like a flood of vomit, detailing, to Cherry’s delight, every sickening, shameful detail of his long-kept secret, including the final outrage he witnessed, something that pushed him over the edge, twisting his mind forever with the shame he did nothing to stop it—something far worse even than the gang rape of Lois & Missie—something that set a rage of self-hatred seething within him, obsessing him with the need to vindicate his inaction, to absolve his guilt…

“…& I was buried deep in sweet Missie’s exquisitely tight eleven-year-old pussy, fuckin’ away, again, & I was just about ready t’ cum in her a second time, when I looked up for a second, & stared over my shoulder, Cherry, ’cause I had this weird feelin’ like I was bein’ watched…

“& goddamnit, there was this little fuckin’ kid just standin’ there all wide-eyed & innocent with her big babyblues starin’ at us all naked & Buddy fuckin’ Lois in the ass & me with my cock in Missie… She was maybe six years old & blonde & pigtailed, & she was wearin’ one of those frilly little babydoll nighties that barely cover anything, & you could see her little cotton panties…

“& I looked away, ’cause I felt so dirty, her seein’ me doin’ it…

“& I started to go soft all of a sudden & I was slippin’ out & floppin’ limply against Missie’s slit…

“I realized we’d completely forgotten how the girls were babysitting… & we’d been makin’ all this ruckus…”

[ 239 ]

Professor Punk stares spellbound at the TV screen.

“—REPORTS OF BIZARRE CATTLE MUTILATIONS & ANIMAL SACRIFICE. STRANGE LIGHTS SEEN NEAR MIDNIGHT AT FULL MOON—”

His head buzzes with the droning of a billion times a billion flies unleashed…

“—NOT TWENTY MILES FROM WHERE THE BUTCHERED BODY OF A LOCAL FARMER WAS DISCOVERED MONDAY MORNING FLOATING IN THE MISSOURI RIVER, VICTIM OF A GRISLY AXE-MURDER—”

His quaking hands drop the remote control box.

It seems to fall toward the thick shag carpet in slow motion…

“—BLOOD STAINS WERE FOUND ON THE PAVEMENT, NEARBY—”

The camera zooms in on a small, irregular blotch on the asphalt, outlined in yellow chalk, which, with some imagination, appears perhaps a shade or two darker than the surrounding tarmac…

“A BEIGE BUICK REGAL, MISSING LICENSE PLATES & BELIEVED STOLEN, WAS ALSO DISCOVERED IN THE WOODS JUST ABOUT NINE MILES NORTH OF HERE, ONLY A STONE’S THROW AWAY FROM WHERE THE MURDER VICTIM’S OWN RED FORD PICKUP TRUCK WAS FOUND ABANDONED. FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS OF THE DECEASED SAY MOST PROBABLY HE LEFT HOME FOR A DAY-LONG HUNTING TRIP, A REPUTED FREQUENT PASTTIME. HIS RIFLE, HOWEVER, IS REPORTED MISSING, & WAS NOT FOUND EITHER AT HIS HOME OR IN HIS TRUCK. INVESTIGATORS REVEALED THAT THE BUICK’S WATER PUMP HAD FAILED. WHEN QUESTIONED ABOUT A POSSIBLE LINK BETWEEN THE OCCURRENCES, AUTHORITIES SUPPOSITION THAT IT IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY ALL THESE EVENTS ARE INDEED RELATED…”

[ 240 ]

Cherry feels the stone-hard gristle of Frank’s penis starting to soften in her grasp, threatening to shrivel…

“…& then I heard a cry & looked around again, & THOSE FUCKIN’ FAGGOTS, Bob & Jim were over there grabbin’ hold of her & Jim was pickin’ her up & carryin’ her over to this armchair on the far side of the room, & he was sittin’ & draggin’ her into his lap, & Bob was pullin’ her panties down & she was bawlin’ & strugglin’ & they had her naked from the waist down & they had their hands all over her & they were feelin’ her & doin’ things to her they had no business doing…

“& then Buddy was over there, in their face, screamin’ how they were gonna get us all busted… & then tellin’ them to ‘at least take her the fuck upstairs if y’re gonna fuck around with her like that…’”

[ 241 ]

The raven-haired dominatrix swings the cat-o-nine-tails savagely down upon Prof’s bare buttocks. He gives out a strangled moan of ecstasy, trembling again, this time with a very different excitement.

“Down, You Sniveling Worm. Down on the floor & lick my boots, you Spineless Egghead Jerkoff!”

P.P. hits the deck, like a good little perv, flicking his tongue out, running it across the point-toed, black leather vamp, along the exposed ridge of sole, exploring the criss-cross of the knee-length hook-&-button lace-ups, down to the impossibly tall stiletto heels…

His eyes fix on a dinner plate of fine Dresden china, sitting several feet away on the carpet. His dominant playmate has been quite busy while he was scanning the boob tube. A sterling silver knife & fork set rest beside the plate’s rim, arranged precisely on a folded linen napkin. In plate-center is a stinking, fresh-laid pile of shit…

[ 242 ]

Cherry quickly steers Frank’s thoughts away from what he cannot accept, sensing this subject may render him impotent, leading him back into forbidden realms of pleasure she has found secretly excite him—

“‘That’s all right, Frank Baby,” she whispers, “you got it all out, all those poisons eating away at you; Cherry will make everything okay. Now, let me tell you about my very first experiences with sex—

“I was very precocious as a child. I guess I was the typical California Girl… Adventurous, Hell, downright promiscuous in my sex play, even the early girl-girl & boy-girl games frequently got a bit out of hand—partly because, in addition to kids my own age, I fooled around with older kids, too, who introduced me, along with the typical ‘Show’ & ‘Doctor’ games, to such practices as mutual masturbation, oral-genital contacts, & genital-genital ‘mock coitus,’ sans actual penetration. Yes, Frank, &, even at this tender age, I learned to enjoy letting older boys fiddle around with my naughty little bottom & push their fingers into me, back there, or rub their penises against me, in imitation of photographs they showed me…

“Anyway, I did learn how good it felt, being fingered up the ass! In fact, it turned me on so much, I incorporated it into my own nightly masturbation routine, diddling myself both vaginally & anally…

“By the time I was in fourth grade, I’d been messing around with junior high & high school boys, even allowing teasingly slight partial penetration of both my vagina & my anus… I was also a very experienced cocksucker, & was quite the popular thing with all the neighbor boys…

“In fifth grade, I lost my cherry to not one, but a trio of high school boys—tenth graders, I think. I was kidding around with them at the park, flirting & flashing some thigh at them, & bending over so they ‘accidentally’ saw my panty-clad bottom, & sitting on the picnic table, shooting them a little beaver, when, the next thing I knew, they were dragging me into the bushes & pulling my panties down, & then they were taking turns, crawling on top of me & forcing their stiff, teenage cocks inside me while the other two boys pinned me to the ground. Not content to just put it in part way, as the boys I’d fooled around with before had done, they fucked the bloody Hell out of my tight, hairless, no-longer-virgin twat!

“In sixth, seventh & eighth grade, I went ‘all the way’ with quite a few guys. Mostly kids my age. A few high school guys. I also started insisting the boys use rubbers on me, so I didn’t get knocked up—I was practicing safe sex, even back then, Lover. I’d started having my period, & I had a little patch of peach fuzz growing on my pussy mound, too. I was one of the school sluts, I know—I had quite a reputation as an ‘easy lay.’ It was, for the most part, pretty unsatisfying—the boys jackrabbited into me, shot their rocks, & left me moaning for more. Yeah, of course, this meant I was a ‘nympho’ to all those brainless, three-minute wonders. That’s why I liked doing it with older guys—they usually did much better in the Mr. Stayhard Department, so I could get off, too. But, even when I did, it seemed like something was missing, something that really took me over the edge…

“I did some other stuff, too, oral sex, mutual masturbation, anal-frigging, like I’d done when I was younger, except, now, with much older boys…

“I also got into this really, really wicked thing. I met these two girls from school, this skinny, light brunette-haired girl, Penny Harris, & her black friend, Sharonda. Sharonda was extremely pretty & curvaceous, with soft, delicate features & a coffee-&-cream complexion. Penny’s father, an Air Force sergeant major, had this Doberman named ‘Duke’ (how original, huh?). Anyway, Penny had me over to her house. Her parents were both gone every afternoon at work & we were left alone to do whatever we wanted. Penny & Sharonda kept smirking & giggling, real naughty-like, from the time I got there. After a while, Penny disappeared for a couple of minutes, & returned, grinning like crazy, with an obviously excited, overly frisky Duke in tow. The dog kept trying to climb her leg, & when she pushed him away, he then began to pester Sharonda in similar manner, yipping & poking his nose into the crotch of her short shorts. Penny said she & Sharonda had a very special game they liked to play they wanted to show me. I wondered what the dog had to do with it, until I saw Penny bend down & grasp the dog’s furry penis sheathe in her hand & begin to stroke it. The dog quickly sported a raging, pink-tapered boner—it looked like an oversized lipstick tube, but furry-shafted. The girls jacked him off while I watched, shooting his sticky cum all over their fingers. They then coaxed me into masturbating him as well—I was too excited & incautious performing my first, lewd act of bestiality, & he soon spurted his doggie sperm not only onto my hands & arm, but all over the front of my blouse & skirt, as well. Penny convinced me she should wash the dog-cum off my clothes so my parents wouldn’t see it. She urged me to strip naked—which I did with little coercion necessary. I didn’t bother to ask why I needed to take off my underwear… I was far too oversexy-wild by then to give a flying fuck! I no sooner got myself undressed than Penny & Sharonda did likewise. Then we fingered ourselves & engaged in mutual masturbation while they showed me how well Penny’d trained Duke—seeing us all bareass naked he leaped forward & shoved his eagerly probing head between our widespread legs & we watched him lick & tongue each other’s hotly itching, violently spasming & twitching little pussies.”

“You actually played with the dog’s cock?” Frank gasps, his suddenly blanched face & bugged eyes betraying his shock at hearing her lewd confession, just as his huge penis lurching & jerking with undisguised arousal betrays his sick fascination with the very thought of young, tender teenage girls performing such a degraded act of bestiality…

“You better fuckin’ believe it, Big Man!” she brags, giving his penis another, taunting squeeze. “I became a frequent guest at Penny’s, engaging almost daily in mutual masturbation with the two girls, while we ogled each other performing masturbation & cunnilingus with the brutal, ever-horny dog.

“Then, one day, several weeks later, I stopped over, & Penny & Sharonda looked as excited & guilty as two sex-kittens eating a sweet, toothsome little canary. I soon found out why—Sharonda had suggested to Penny she was willing to try something new & very, very wild… Something that would ‘blow my mind watching!’ She got down on the floor with the big dog, completely nude, & began toying & teasing & playing with his penis. Then she placed her lips around his furry, stiffened cock & sucked him off until Duke shot his doggie cum into her greedily slurping, suctioning mouth. Then she urged Penny into performing fellatio on him, too… The spectacle of the two young, naked girls blowing the dog was both intensely exciting & yet incredibly sick & disgusting! I fingered myself in both places, climaxing repeatedly, while I watched them sucking dog cock. But I flatly refused to go down on him when they taunted me to try it, too.

“As much as I dug doing sex things with the girls & the dog, this latest twist totally panicked me out, despite the wild sex-fun I’d been having, scaring me off… for fear they’d force me into sucking Duke’s cock! I stopped hanging out with them, no matter how much they begged & pleaded me to come over & have some more doggie-fun with them…

“I suppose I was acting out the experiences associated with the ‘loss of my virginity’—I frequently put myself in situations where I was expected to ‘put out’ for several boys, one after the other, letting them gangbang me. Once, during a school dance in eighth grade, I was forced to take on six boys out under the bleachers, lying there on my back on some old army blanket one of them had stashed in preparation, with my dress rucked up, panties off & legs widespread, getting pumped by one after the other. That one scared me, though, ‘cause only the first kid went in with a rubber, the others went in skin-to-skin, &, when I tried to protest, it was too late, they just banged away, all of them shooting their cum up me—I was scared shitless I was gonna get knocked up. But I was fuckin’ lucky, & didn’t. After that, I braved it down to the free clinic & went on the pill… & though those were the early-AIDS days, there were still plenty of venereal diseases a girl could catch screwing around the way I did… I believed in leaving nothing to chance, & insisted any guy who wanted a piece of my pussy used a rubber…

“In high school, well, I already told you about the locker room deal, it wasn’t really a rape thing, we both wanted it, me & my friend—”

“—Mindy, right?” Frank interjects.

“Heh, I’m impressed, Big Man, quite a memory you’ve got for names & details,” Cherry teases, “particularly when it comes to tight young pussy… But, seriously, Mindy’d been fucking two of the guys, off & on, & they’d set up the deal, you know, swapping lies, the old locker-room hype. They may have been macho assholes, really, but I’ve gotta give them credit—they brought along a couple party-pacs of rubbers. & they were experienced fuckers, what with all that cheerleader pussy they’d been knocking off, & they knew how to get a girl off, & they sure as fuck did, BIGTIME! I must have climaxed twenty-five or thirty times, once I got going—I kid you not, Stud! Oh, god, was I ever sore afterwards!

“Mindy’s father had some fuckbooks she showed me where grown women were being sodomized, & it seemed as if they enjoyed it, judging by the lewd looks on their faces… the bizarre sight of the women’s wide-stretched anuses, obscenely engorged by thick, jutting penises—some bigger around than my wrist—both thrilled & terrified me! I desperately wanted to try anal sex & see what it would feel like. But I was frightened, too, unsure whether a girl my age could take it that way, particularly with a grownup man—afraid I’d injure myself & have to go to a doctor or something! I began to fantasize constantly about doing it that way, becoming positively obsessive in my fixation with the indecent act—the fact it was taboo made it all the more fascinating…

“I guess I did kind of kid around about trying it with several of my boyfriends I thought might be adventurous enough to try it… But they acted like I was weird or nuts or something & just joked it off.

“I fucked a lot of guys in high school. & some grown men, too. Three of our neighbors—Mr. Delmont, Mr. Ambrose & Mr. Clements—even though this was the mid-’80s, not the swingin’ ’60s or ’70s, before the laws got really tough, when it was still fashionable for middle-aged California swingers to indulge in ‘teenybopper boffing…’

“The thing with Delmont started in the summer following my freshman year. He caught me with his son, Derek—sexual blackmail, snapping polaroids of us. He got me into the photo stuff—nudie & sex stuff with his son, &, later, with himself. He was fat & ugly, but hung like a horse! I had never had sex this good before—with his huge cock brutally impaling me, rammed all the way up my little fuckhole, cumming myself silly… He never failed to bring me to a frenzied, whirlwind string of multiple orgasms, pumping away at me until I thought I’d die with pleasure…

“He did something with me no other guy had done before—a true depraved act of amour fou, ‘mad love’… He taught me what a wild fucking rush it is, having a guy eat-out your asshole; he was a freak for it, & I was hardly one to argue—I’d go nuts when he shoved his tongue up my ass, performing analingus on me ’til I orgasmed again & again…

“After we’d been having sex together for a while, he confessed to me he’d also been getting it on with two other ‘sexy little twats’ from my same school. When I asked him who they were, he said he’d show me… let me see if I knew them… He brought out some polaroids, & I gasped & damn near fainted from shock when I saw pictures of my old playmates, Penny & Sharonda, in bareassed buff, as usual, doing sex things with each other & with Mr. Delmont, getting themselves savagely fucked, his huge cock rammed up their hot little fuckholes… & more pictures of Penny & Sharonda, with Duke, too, jacking him off, letting him eat them out, in front & in back, & them sucking his hairy pink-crowned cock & groveling on their hands & knees letting him screw them doggie-style… letting him fuck them both in their pussyholes &, incredibly, taking him anally… ‘I’ll show you what else I did to those little hotpants whores’, he gloated, pulling out several more polaroids. There was a picture of him mounting the pretty, curvaceous black girl from the rear, savagely sodomizing her with his immense penis, her tight little anus stretched to near-bursting with the disproportion of the huge glans and cockshaft impaling her. She was obviously in excruciating torment, her eyes rolled up in their sockets & her mouth opened in a shriek of mindreeling pleasure-pain… The last several pictures were of him having anal intercourse with Penny as well, & I could tell the skinny little brunette’s wailing screams were not of ecstasy but of agony instead…

“I fucked around with him a few more times, off & on, but his now constant demands & imprecations that I ‘go anal’ with him & get together with him & Sharonda & Penny for a dogfuck party with them, ‘taking it up my pussy & my hot, tight little ass’ while he watched me terrified me too much to continue our liaisons. I was excited, yes, watching the other girls dogfuck, but was repulsed by the idea of letting a dog screw me in my pussy, let alone, up the ass, as I’d seen my two schoolmates doing. Also, as much as I eagerly longed to experiment with being analfucked, the ludicrous & fearsome disproportion of trying to allow a man hung as monstrously as he was penetrate my tight asshole was just too scary to deal with…

“My first experiences with Mr. Ambrose began early in my sophomore year, He was into pictures, too. Why is it all those pussyhounds that chase the jailbait twat are such goddamn shutterbugs, huh…? My thing with Mr. Clements began soon after. Actually, Ambrose spilled the insider info on me to Clements, telling him about the ‘hot young slut next door,’ over golf, & Mr. Clements wasted no time getting into my panties, too. Later, he admitted having been shown the skin pics Ambrose snapped of me, & had decided ‘he just had to stick his big dick up my choice little snatch,’ as he put it.

“I often ‘double dated’ the two of them. They introduced me to XXX videos, & sometimes took me to the drive-in, taking turns having sex with me in the back seat. One night, we got too careless, & Clements & I were caught en flagrant delicto by this usher kid. He threatened reporting them to the police for statutory unless they ‘shared me’ with him. They agreed. But Ambrose handed him a rubber & insisted he use it if he wanted to fuck me… The kid was a pimple-faced geek, a pencil-pricked jackrabbit, but he couldn’t get enough. During our third bout, my slit was so slippery with my love juices his penis slid out, the condom slipped off, & his dick slid down a little bit, accidentally penetrating (if only partially) the ‘wrong hole’ upon reinsertion. His mistake brought ridicule, then provoked interest, & aroused new lusts as my two ‘dates’ watched us—they realized it was turning me on… begging him not to stop, grasping his penis, trapping it inside me, forcing him to ejaculate into my lewdly wriggling backside. I climaxed as he did, experiencing simultaneous vaginal & anal orgasms…

“The kid tugged up his pants, & split. Both men had already screwed my hot little cunt—now they eagerly gave my ‘backdoor’ an experimental try! They both confessed they’d been aching to ask me to try ‘going anal’ with them, but were afraid they might frighten me off by proposing they try fucking me up my tight teenaged ass. While I admitted to them I, too, had been tempted to suggest anal intercourse but was just too scared to broach the subject! Ambrose went first, now rubberless, barely managing to force the head of it in just a little way… Clements followed, with greater success—I guess my asshole was getting pretty slippery by then—eventually cramming his entire cock inside me. Once turned on to this new thrill, they couldn’t get enough. They drove me out to a deserted lover’s lane, & both of them did me again, belly-down on the hood of the car…

“They took turns holding me down, mounting my exposed behind, clutching me firmly by my hips & sodomizing me, several times each, before they finally satiated their perverted lusts, so eager were they to indulge themselves in this fresh method of depraved copulation, ravenously fucking my compliant young body, keeping after me this way well into the early morning hours…

“This time, both Clement & Ambrose brutally rammed their thick, throbbing penises all the way up inside the quivering depths of my tightly clenching rectum, penetrating me completely…making me shriek & squirm & squeal in excruciating pain & pleasure…

“I could hardly sit down for a week afterwards—my bottomhole was so fucking sore from all that fevered anal action!

“Thus began our exploration of backdoor pleasures…” She relates the whole wicked story to him, leaving out no titillating detail…

[ 243 ]

Slice experiences and overwhelming sense of déjá vu… How long has he been gazing into the mirror?

The mirror returns his reflection, as if it wants to get rid of it as soon as possible, spitting the distasteful image back to its outlandish source. The latex on his face has been applied unevenly, giving his face a freakish facade, certain to draw unwanted attention. But then, Slice is no makeup or special effects artist… GOTTA DO BETTER THAN THIS, SCUMBAG, says the voice in his left ear,

What the fuck?! Who is that? He looks behind himself, then glances all around the room. The woman’s naked, mutilated body is on the blood-soaked mattress, just as it should be. No way SHE said anything. She’s got a mouthful of fucking intestine. Who said that?

YOU LOOK LIKE A FUCKING REJECT FROM NIGHT OF THE FUCKED-UP DEAD. LIKE A RETREAD GETTING READY TO BLOW OUT BIG TIME…

Who are you?

WHO DO YOU THINK I AM, YOU ANUS? GET THAT SHIT OFF YOUR FACE & START OVER. WE’VE GOT PLACES TO GO. PEOPLE TO DO…

It ain’t that bad. You can’t see the New Flesh, that’s the main thing. & it’s dark out. Who’s gonna see?

IT’S GONNA GET A LOT FUCKING DARKER BEFORE WE’RE FINISHED, MR. HYDE… Slice begins peeling the latex mask from his face. Blue pebble-like flesh is revealed as each piece of latex comes off. Beautiful, isn’t it?

WORDS CAN’T BEGIN TO DESCRIBE IT, ZIT SUCKER. DO IT RIGHT THIS TIME. THAT FUCKING WHORE YOU DID IS STARTING TO STINK. & WE’VE GOT MILES TO GO BEFORE WE SLEEP.

I know who you are.

OF COURSE YOU DO, SHIT STICK. YOU’VE ALWAYS KNOWN ME.

But I was never sure…

WELL, YOU CAN BANK ON IT NOW, HEMORRHOID.

You shouldn’t talk to me like that. I’m the New Flesh.

I’LL TALK TO YOU ANY WAY I WANT TO, SCOURGE OF THE EARTH. WHO DO YOU THINK MADE YOU WHAT YOU ARE?

Blue Devil made me what I am. Not you.

THE MOON IS BLUE, BUTTFACE. WHERE DO YOU THINK THE FORMULA FOR BLUE DEVIL CAME FROM?

The one called “Professor.”

BULLSHIT, ASS-LICK. BLUE DEVIL IS MY FERTILE SEED. & YOU ARE MY FUCKING OFFSPRING. NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP & FIX YOUR FACE.

With encouragement from his unseen companion—the voice in his left ear—Slice re-applies the latex skin.

A fly lands on the nose of the corpse on the mattress, & crawls into the black, blood-crusted cavern of her nostril, looking for a good place to lay her eggs. It scuttles down the back of her throat, stopping just inside the ragged piece of intestine lodged against her uvula. The fly lays her eggs there.

[ 244 ]

“So, you really didn’t have anal sex with either Lois or Missie—?” the redhead seems surprised.

“Naw, I just couldn’t… In fact, I never have. Not with my wife. Not with a hooker. Never. Although, as I’ve admitted, I nearly freaked out, I wanted to so bad with both of them…

(& the secret knowledge that he had resisted his most wicked urges served to salve his guilt, but not the suppressed fury of his frustrated longing), Cherry ponders silently.

“It was ugly. & it was sick. & it was wrong. & I guess I just kind of closed a door inside my mind, letting the alcohol blur all but the vaguest hauntings so I would never have to face my shame until NOW…” Frank says. He is trembling like a man drawn out of freezing water…the deepest darkest backwaters of his subconscious.

Until tonight. Until Cherry wakened the sleeping horror deep within him, stirring the remembrance of his sordid complicity in those youthful crimes.

Once more she bends forward on her on hands & knees, assuming the posture of the slave-submissive, wrists chained & manacled. He kneels behind the bowing redhead. “Do it to me now!” she urges, wriggling her rump against him, inciting him to join with her in copulation. Her bottom gleams pale as ivory in the subdued light. Blue veins seem to writhe beneath the smooth, translucent skin… She tosses her head in sultry, licentious abandon, & her hair flails the air like whips of flame… The buzzing in his brain increases: the sound of a million droning flies.

He guides his manhood down between her upthrust globes, down into the valley of her sex. The head of it nudges at the thicket of curls that guards the secret cavern of her primal depths. But her slender hand grasps his throbbing erection, draws it upward, tickling the dark, half-hidden crease of flesh, bringing it to rest, nuzzling against the brown, crinkled rosebud…

“NO! Not there,” he argues with the wanton redhead, “It’s the wrong place, it doesn’t belong there…” his voice is lowered to a low growl of lust, a whispering of self-denial. “I won’t do it to you that way,” he moans, “that’s the way QUEERS do it…”

“Do I look like a queer…?” Cherry taunts him, in a throaty whisper.

“Uhhh, no, of course not—”

“Well, Mr. Hardguy, Mr. BMOC, if you want me that’s how you’ll do it…”

“But how the HELL can I get THIS—” Frank shakes his snake in her direction, pointing that big meanmuthuh boa sheathed in its second skin of prophylactic deadbang at the tiny brownish hole down there between the lush globes of her backside… & it looks even bigger than that huge cock of her father’s Little Lois told us all about…

“Don’t worry, Lover, what did you think I was doing when you saw me squatting on the floor…? I was lubing my ass with KY Jelly, & if you’re gonna fuck me, Baby, it’s gonna be a California Girl’s favorite ride—a trip down what those backdoor-boffin’ little Valley Girls euphemistically term ‘The Hershey Highway,’ & believe me those little bitches just can’t get enough…

“& Big Man, remember, I’m a California Girl as in ‘are really the MOST…’ & I’m READY for a ride down that Dusty Back Road…”

[ 245 ]

Needle slips into blue vein. No pain. Not even the tiniest prick. Odd thumb depresses the plastic plunger & the blue liquid in the syringe is forced into the bloodstream. When the syringe is empty, Slice removes the hypodermic from his vein & tosses it into the ocean. The waves rolling under the dock catch his attention & hold it, the ebb/flow/ebb associations setting off liquid visions in his mind.

COME ON, SHIT STICK, YOU’VE GOT WORK TO DO.

“Where do we start?” Slice asks of his invisible companion.

YOU KNOW.

“Washington?” His memory is hazy, his mind reeling & rolling like shore-pounding breakers as the Li Di 9 surges through his system.

BINGO, BOZO.

“Pynchon’s hit list?”

WORK YOUR WAY TO THE TOP OF THE CHARTS.

“Then New York. The Mafia motherfuckers.”

JACKPOT, CROTCHROT.

“What about my face? My flesh?” Slice asks, his forefinger & thumb clamping down on a particularly viscious- & viscous-looking boil on his left cheek, festering blue filth exploding in a splatter-pattern on the dock’s rough-hewn planking that keys a depraved parody of fusion Jackson Pollock-Theosophic/Jungian/Surrealist periods & Abstract Expressionist/ Action Painting…

He chortles at his imaged gallery hanging.

NO PROBLEM. OTHERS DON’T SEE THE NEW FLESH. NOT YET.

“You mean it’s all in my head? Like hallucinations?”

SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

“Then why the makeup?”

USE YOUR BRAIN, POND SCUM. YOU DON’T WANT TO BE RECOGNIZED AS YOU’RE BRINGING DOWN AN EMPIRE. THESE BIG BOYS ARE PROS & THEY WILL SWAT BACK IF THEY SEE THE FLY THAT BITES THEM. WE CAN’T GIVE THEM A TARGET. FROM HERE OUT, IT’S HIT & RUN. YOU’RE ABOUT TO BECOME THE ULTIMATE URBAN GUERRILLA.

Slice’s face cracks into a leering grin, causing the latex makeup on his face to form odd wrinkles & lumps so that he looks like a man who has been stung by a hundred wasps. “I can remember now. All of it. The whole program.” What he remembers is the late Pynchon’s knowledge of the international power structure, the interconnected underground factions, the vast networks of the Shadow Bosses who run the world, the political gangsters who hide the whole humming machine from Mr./Ms. John/Jane Q. Citizen with media mirrors & smoke. Slice knows his destiny lies in throwing a monkey wrench into the hulking machine by making precise hits, from the White House to the palaces of the Colombian drug Kingpins. He is the hard-cyber saboteur…

He will conjure forth the Snakepit of Chaos & loose it upon the multinational machine ’til it runs amok, triggering economic & political havoc all over this fucking anthill-world of existence. Then he & his companion will sit back & watch the power structure devour itself, like the Worldsnake locked in perpetual rectal-cranial inversion. After Armageddon, Slice will reveal the New Flesh & he will be the Dark Savior to the New World of Unleashed Serpents.

A sudden thought intrudes. A key perhaps unburied. Long-forgotten delvings into Jungian metaphysics bob surfaceward (no doubt some bullshit hype implanted by that assfuck Dr. Howard, that baggy-eyed quack, that retard reject Moe-of-Three-Stooges-clone, who played all those verbal cat-&-mouse mindgames; that only scratched the surface of my mind’s seething Black Hole core, right? RIGHT?). In a tidal gush like pure-crystal rush, Slice asks: “Who the FUCK are you anyhow? The Unknown Man, my Shadow-Self? Or maybe some diesel-dyke deviant of Anima, the Dark Side of Primal Womb Personified, yeah, the Lilith, the Female Death Demon, the One ‘Who Follows After the Shadow…?’”

GETTING IN A BIT DEEP, NOW, AREN’T WE, DR. HECKLE- &-JEKYLL FAUSTUS…? OR IS IT MR. HYDE-THE-WEENIE…? GONNA START THAT PSYCHO-LOGIC-AL FLIMFLAM, NOW, OKAY, YOU THINK…?—

I’LL FUCK YOUR MIND ’TIL IT BLEEDS, YOU PATHETIC POETICK PERVERT! I’LL POP THE FUCKING CHERRY OF YOUR MIND’S CORE, YOU FAGGOT-DANCIN’ PANTY-PRANCIN’ NIHILISTIC NANCY BOY—I’LL EFFACE THAT TIGHT LITTLE ERASER SPACE INSIDE YOUR BRAIN CASE, & I’LL MAKE YOU BEG FOR IT…HARDER… DEEPER… FASTER…

WANNA PLAY SOME GUESSIN’ GAMES, WANNA DIDDLE OUT SOME LITTLE RIDDLES, MR. EX XXX BARD OF BONERS…?

“AB EO, QUOD NIGRAM CAUDAM HABET ABSTINE, TERRESTRIUM ENIM DEORUM EST…”

NEED A TRANSLATOR FOR THAT, MUCKJUMP…?

OKAY: “KEEP YOUR HANDS FROM THAT WHICH HAS A BLACK TAIL, FOR IT BELONGS TO THE GODS OF THE EARTH…”

SO, LET THAT BE A WARNING TO YOU, EHHH…? YOU BEEN TRUCKIN’ ’ROUND WID DAT BLACK TAIL AGAIN, AIN’T YA, BRO…?

YEAH? HOW ’BOUT THIS ONE…?:

“FILI, EXTRAHE A RADIO SUAM UMBRAM: ACCIPE ERGO QUARTAM PARTEM SUI, HOC EST, UNAM PARTEM DE FERMENTO ET TRES PARTES DE CORPORE IMPERFECTO…”

DIG THE GIG, PIGSHIT? OKAY? OKAY: “SON, EXTRACT FROM THE RAY ITS SHADOW: THEN TAKE A FOURTH PART OF IT, I.E., ONE PART OF THE FERMENT & THREE PARTS OF THE BODY…”

& I AM WHAT I AM, OLIVE OYL, & I AM THE FIRST PART & I AM THE FOURTH PART & ALL THAT TRIPE HYPE… FOLLOWIN’ ME SO FAR?:

“FUNDAMENTUM ART IS EST SOL ET E IUS UMBRA…”

CAPISHE, YOU COCKY LITTLE COCKSUCK…?

“THE BASIS OF THE ART IS THE SUN & ITS SHADOW…”

PERFECTLY CLEAR, QUEER…?

OR LIKE MY OLD PAL RAYMUNDUS (SASSY LITTLE NOM D’ ARTS NOIR, HUH…?) USED TO RAP: “TAKE OF THE BODY THAT IS MOST SIMPLE & ROUND, & DO NOT TAKE OF THE TRIANGLE OR QUADRANGLE BUT OF THE ROUND, FOR THE ROUND IS NEARER TO SIMPLICITY THAN THE TRIANGLE. HENCE IT IS TO BE NOTED THAT A SIMPLE BODY HAS NO CORNERS, FOR IT IS THE FIRST & THE LAST AMONG THE PLANETS, LIKE THE SUN AMONG THE STARS…”

YOU KNOW, DIPSTICK, LIKE “ROUND ROUND GETTAROUND I GETTA ROUND,” & THAT ALL THAT PSEUDO-BEACHBOY BULLSHIT, RIGHT?

ALL JUST CRYSTAL CLEAR, NOW, RIGHT, MR, REDRUM RECTUM…? JUST SIMPLE HOKE-US POKE-US LUST-T’-CROAK-US ROSE-OF-THE-WORLD STUFF, HUH, MR. WIZARD O’ THE LIZARD…?

“TIS RUST ALONE THAT GIVES THE COIN ITS WORTH!: THALES…”

YEAH, DEEP SIX SICK SIX STUFF, POWDERPUFF…

OR LET’S TAKE THE ROSARIUM: “OUR GOLD IS NOT THE COMMON GOLD, BUT THOU HAST INQUIRED CONCERNING THE GREENNESS (THE VIRIDITAS, THE AZOTH…), DEEMING THE BRONZE TO BE THE LEPROUS BODY ON ACCOUNT OF THE GREENNESS IT HATH UPON IT. THEREFORE I SAY UNTO THEE THAT WHATEVER IS PERFECT IN THE BRONZE IS THE GREEN ONLY, BUT THAT GREENNESS IS STRAIGHTAWAY CHANGED BY OUR MAGISTERY INTO OUR MOST TRUE GOLD…” ONLY THE GREEN IS BLUE, RIGHT, MR. 2-B-OR-NOT-2-B…? JUST BLOOD-SIMPLE-SAMPLE AS OL’ MOM’S SLICE O’ THAT CHERRY HAIR-PIE, O GREAT BARD O’ BLOODY BLEEDIN’ BONERS…?

I MADE YOU THE NEW GOD OF THE NEW FLESH. QUITE A MINDJUMP FROM A PATHETIC PERVERT X-POET POSTURIN’ FOR PUSSY, SOME FUCKED UP MERCHANT SEMEN JUS’ ROLLED OFF A TRAMP STEAMER ON HIS SEA LEGS, AS YET UNBURDENED BY THE WEIGHT OF HISTORY, JUS’ LOOKIN’ T’ GET SKAGGED, SHAGGED, & DOUBLE-BAGGED BEFORE YOU WENT SNIFFIN’ FOR SNUFF FOR SOME TIGHT YOUNG GASH T’ SLASH SOME SUGAR ‘N’ SPICE T’ SLICE REAL NICE SOME QUIFF T’ STIFF WITH YOUR SLITHERIN’ SHIV… & NEXT THING YOU KNOW, POP! BLUE FIREWORKS, GIDGET THE MENTAL MIDGET GOES BLUE DIABLO, I MAKE YOU THE FUCKIN’ ULTIMATE UBERMENSCH, A GOD O’ DEATH, BOY…?

I’M ALONG FOR THE LONG RIDE, SON/SUN, & THIS IS THE DARK SIDE CALLIN’, AS IN “BREAKER BREAKER,” GOT IT…? & YOU BETTER ANSWER WHEN THE HADES’ HOTLINE’S BUZZIN’ BLUE…

SO, THINK YOU WANNA TRY RAPPIN’ OR UNWRAPPIN’ ’BOUT SHADOW SPOOKS & PRIME-EVIL WOMBS-IN-ROOMS-IN-TOMBS & ALL THAT DEAD-BEAT PSYCHO-LOGIC? FINE, JUNG MAN, JUS’ FINE. BUT YOU WANNA TRY FUCKIN’ WITH MY HEAD, BABYCAKES, I’M GONNA FUCK OFF IN YOURS… & KATY BAR THE DOOR ’CAUSE, WHORE, YOU KNOW THE FUCKIN’ SCORE—KINDA LIKE THAT OL’ ZOMBIES’ TUNE, I ‘CUM AROUND HERE, JUS’ ’BOUT MIDNIGHT,’ & YOU BEST BELIEVE & GRIEVE, MEAT-SLEEVE, I CUM LIKE A FUCKIN’ GODDAMN HELLBOUND CYCLONE…

[ 246 ]

“Yeah, Big Man, & I’ve known Iowa farmboys, too, they prefer to call the act, ‘cornholing,’ but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why when you’ve got all those hot-assed little farmgirls bending over just begging for it out behind the woodshed… & if they can’t find some farmhand’s cock or a neighborboy’s boner to satisfy that itching, then they use the cobs on each other as backdoor dildos…”

Frank stares down at the glistening rosebud.

“If you wanna fuck me, Big Man, it’s up the bottomhole or not at all, capishe…

“Come to Little Babycakes Missie… Cum to Hotassed Little Lois… Cum to Missy Lynn, Daddy Dear, Cum to me… Cum on me… Cum in me—I’m so fucking tight & OOOHHHhhhh, HOW I WANT YOU IN ME, DADDY—”

& Lord Asmodeus stands at the foot of the bed, his vision a flickering of cold blue flame… holding forth the Sceptre of His Dominion, his monstrous, majestic phallus, stroking the sinuously writhing serpent of smooth glistening blue scales & Evil greedy eyes like chunks of living sapphire with an outthrust tongue flickering to the rhythms of the flame, stroking it in lewd tribute to Hawkes’ submission to his darkest nightmare cravings— Something deep inside Frank’s soul dies, & something else is born, something that slithers like the Serpent, something that knows no moral restraint, no bonds or boundaries of Reason, something beyond all inhibition…

She moans as Frank’s fury spills from its long suppression, boiling beyond all hope of control, driving him to sheer sadistic, brutal rape, as he plunges deep into her superheated depths.

Once more she assumes the role of blackmailed wayward teenager. One last feigned protest of ravished innocence to titillate her twisted fantasies: “Ooooohhh, NO! pleassssse, Mister! NO! I’ve never had a man stick his thing in me back there before—it’s in the wrong place… It HURTS!… so GOOD!”

The room flickers blue.

Frank looks up for a moment & thinks he’s hallucinating: the mirror swarms black with a thousand milling flies, the window’s light darkens as millions gather on the pane beyond the curtains, their buzzing filling his head with a deafening roar of Hell unleashed…

“&, I did it MY way…” Cherry whispers, mimicking the familiar tune. Then her giggles fill the room in shards of mirth like crystal shattering…

[ 247 ]

The voice in Slice’s brain grants him one grand & glorious GMOS (Golden Moment Of Silence…), then renews its sledgehammer skull-assault anew:

NOW, WHAT’RE GONNA DO NEXT, BRAINRAPE?

“Uhhh, flag a taxi, head for the airport & buy ourself a ticket to Washington, D.C., right…?”

NO! YOU’RE NOT, CHICKENLICKIN’. YOU EVER GO THROUGH AN AIRPORT SEC-CHECK…? I MEAN, HERE YOU ARE ALL STINKIN’ FROM THAT LITTLE BEAUTY-TREATMENT WHERE YOU DRENCHED YOURSELF IN WHORE’S BLOOD LIKE SOME KINDA POST-MODERNIST BEOWULF BATHIN’ IN THE BLOOD O’ THE DRAGON & ALL THAT, BUT THE ONLY THING DRAGGIN’ WAS YOUR WAGGIN’ WANG & THAT PUTA’S 5-BUCKS-A-THROW FAT ASS THAT YOU HACKED-UP & WHACKED-UP PIECE-MEAL…

& NOW YOU’RE GONNA GO WALTZIN’ THROUGH THOSE MET-DET SCANNERS WITH THAT FUCKIN’ BLOODY BOOTKNIFE STRAPPED TO YOUR ANKLE & TELL ALL THEM NICE FOLKS IN THE UNIFORMS YOU JUS’ BROUGHT IT ALONG ’CAUSE YOU NEEDED SOMETHIN’ TO PICK YOUR TEETH WITH AFTER YOU CHOW DOWN ON THAT DEEELICIOUS AIRLINE CUISINE, OR MAYBE YOU WERE JUS’ GONNA FIX YOURSELF SOME HOME-COOKED STEWARDESS STEW, FRESHLY SLICED-‘N’- DICED & BUTCHERED IN THE COCK-PIT, DUMBSHIT…?

SERVICE! SERVICE! O QUICKSILVER MESSENGER BOY!

& HIGH O’ THE HIGH & LOW O’ THE LOW, MR. TWO-FACE, MR. SONG SANG BLEU, OH GRACIOUS GREAT & GRATING AU GRATIN OF PRIMA MATERIA ET LAPIS PHILOSOPHORUM!

NOW HERE’S THE GRAND SLAM, LIKE WHAM-BAM & THANK YOU, MAM, SPRING-HEELED JACK-HORNY WHO-HAS-NO-CORNERS-LEFT-TO-HIDE/HYDE BUT HAS BECOME THE APOCALYPTIC ROUND-ROUND-GETTA-ROUND OF ROUND-HEELED & WELL-HEELED & FLAT-FOOTED EXTERMINATION…

MY PRECIOUS LITTLE PET, O SERVUS/CERVUS FUGITIVUS…

[ 248 ]

The insistent phone on the bedside table is a raucous jangle that seems enough to fray nerves like weather-rotted high-tension cables or to wake the dead…

It is enough, barely enough, to drag Frank Hawkes surfaceward through a Noctecs-&-Jack-Daniels’ fogbank, up at last to beach on the sweat-soaked sheets, his groin aching with the expended fury of his tempestuous encounter with the redheaded siren, his mind still awash with the ebb/flow/ebb of bizarre, distorted images, dredged up by the maelstrom of her body’s rhythms & her so-kinky mindgames from that Unfathomable Mental Mindanao Rift where Primal Chaos lies long-buried-&-forgotten beneath the crushing weight of that dark ooze of repressed desires…

& secret shame. Memories of young lives ruined by the madness of that Evil night…

He opens his eyes. It is night. Or he is blind. He rolls over. Fumbles with his right hand. Flicks on the lamp. Drags the receiver from its cradle. He tries to lift it to his ear, but his hands feel immense & uncontrollable, part of someone or something else—as if his hands were not hands at all but great, furry paws whose claws are bloody bayonets & whose camouflaged coat is one with the slow spin of Night Sky— One with his tongue—thick with the feline tastes of musk & flesh— & with the stale human bitterness of sour mash & Chloral Hydrate—

Frank glimpses over his shoulder for an instant. His pores gush ice-chill sweat. He lets out a groan of pure terror.

“WHAT THE HELL?” he bellows. Next to him on the bed lies a mangled corpse, what remains of its naked back exposed to him— all the way down to bared spine & raw musculature.

Cherry … ? No. It is male.

The corpse lifts its shattered skull & stares at him.

“Hey, Frank, you look like you seen a ghost, bro!” Shaw chuckles. “Takes real guts just hangin’ out all night & day bangin’ your balls off with some twitchy bimbo when your buddies need you, Man!” His charred fingers fondle the spilled loops of intestine as if they were a rosary.

“FRANK! FRANK! YOU OKAY?” the voice in the phone shouts.

Shaw vanishes. But there is blood on the sheets.

“FRANK!”: finally the voice registers: Clarence Carter, not the long-dead Shaw…

“Oh, Oh. yeah, sorry, Clarence!” Frank mumbles. “A dream, just a dream is all…”

“WHOA! Some goddamned dream, Frank— sounds more like an Elm Street-style nightmare to me!”

Even as Frank stares at the drying blood soaking the sheets, the first-perceived vision of a broad, irregular pool of darkness seems to dissolve away around the edges (…as a mirage vanishes…as an inkblot’s randomness resolves itself into some suggestive pattern: upon closer inspection…), yet not converging but defining itself as separate elements of a greater puzzle. A vaguely heart-shaped patch at approximately groin level. Higher up, twin bullseyes. Two distinct trails of intertwining nail marks: one slender, tapering, clawlike; the other huge, brutal, blunt-edged, pawlike.

“Uhhhhh, hold on just a sec, okay, Clarence?” Hawkes asks even as he pauses, staring down at his loosely-balled fists, palms-up, the short, carefully manicured nails are blood-crusted along the thin, once-white lines. Sharp pain intrudes through the killer fog of booze & prescription drugs & through the breaker-roll of headache. The harsh throbbing of his chest is now matched by raw welts gouged deep into his back, criss-crossing testimony to Cherry’s own frenzy. Tiny pinpoint droplets of blood seep from the pores of the bullet-bruise & cling to the coarse hairs, matting them: stigmata of his sins-of-the-flesh so recently indulged.

He sits up, draws down the sheet, & lets out a low groan at the sight of his flaccid, dangling penis: it, too, raw & bruised, caked with crusts of commingled blood & semen.

Four flies crawl in the heart-shaped pool of tarry sludge, feeding on this Hellish manna. Their wings glisten iridescent Payne’s Grey & ultramarine & cerulean & turquoise, lined with veins of ebon, like minute slabs of brittle black mica.

In contrast to the patch of dark, sticky, scabrous rust, the soiled sheet surrounding it seems soft & unreal & elegantly understated as grey velvet…

“FRANK! FRANK! You losin’ it or somethin’, Man?” the phone squawks.

“No. No. Sorry. Just a bit…woozy is all—” Frank lies.

He emits a strangled gasp—

On the indentation where his weight had lain, he would swear, is scrawled in blood-graffiti:

A lopsided cross-&-circle signature…

But it is only his feverish imagination, just chance patternings traced by the haematic pinpoints trickling from his injured chest, not the warning of some ghostly visitation, he assures himself.

[ 249 ]

Slice’s mental mentor, like some Daedalus of the Darkside, has sent the Servus Fugitivus, his/her soul-black son/sun, skyward on fragile wings.

But unlike the son of the sculptor, Slice rides the nightwind currents, not the fevered slipstream that melted flight feathers loose from waxy pinions. & he is drawn, not toward the flaming shield of Sol Invictus, but toward the chill, broad-bladed sickle-sliver of left-handed Mater Luna, ebbing slowly from the Full into Her Death Phase…

A Harley hog boosted from beside a biker crashpad yields the wheels to carry him out beyond the city. Out where his inner voice, tapping the well of dead Pynchon’s memories, guides him. To an isolated strand among the omnipresent palms & mangroves, a place used as a landing strip for ultralights, those powered one-man-wings that dot the daylight sky above a seaside too flat for the launching of hanggliders.

Nearby his objective, Slice follows a drainage runoff until he reaches a shallow, stagnant lagoon where he unceremoniously deep-sixes some outlaw one-percenter’s pride beneath the scum-green waters.

Then he creepie-crawls to the edge of the clearing, & curls up among the shadowed boles as a jungle cat may wait hour-upon-hour until the sun begins to set & his predatory instincts signal that the stalking time has come… Until the herd has thinned & the last of the prey have grown careless in their urge to sate themselves but a little longer, uncontested on the choicest grazings yet remaining… The bulk of the trailered vans & four-wheel-drives depart, carrying their rainbow-hued flock of now-pinioned flyers homeward to backyard roosts in the scattered outskirts of Dade-Miami territory. The Beast of the New Flesh waits until one last lone droning ultralighter remains, greedy to savor the open azure sky as it deepens into cobalt & to reap the pleasure of the still-warm & fragrant sea breeze.

The pilot at last dips wings earthward & slowly gyres in ever-tighter circles ’til the triple tires roll down the hard-packed runway & skid to a stop in a flurry of swirling sand. As he busies himself with readying the craft for transport, Slice sidles up behind this incautious cretin all but wearing a sign on his bent back reading “VICTIM.” The bootknife whispers from its sheath, its wielder willing his quarry’s brain to freeze in submission, the stalker’s free hand clutching a hank of hair, tugging back fiercely, baring taut throat to the slithering blade. There is a choked cry, the flesh-sound of tendons & trachea severing, a muffled gurgling of air & blood evacuating through the new grinning of ragged lips of skin. Then silence…

The Beast of the New Flesh has wings. Night wings to carry him northward to Washington, D.C., to begin the killing season that shall usher in the New Age of Loosed Serpents… The anti-christ is flying the fiendish skies, on his way to his destiny…

[ 250 ]

Reality slams him like an iron door clanging closed, warding against the Nightmare World that lies just beyond…

“I’m okay. Don’t worry, Clarence, just a bit too much partying—”

“Anything I should know?”

“Naw. Just the booze & the redhead—”

“Redhead…? & you tell me ’nothin…?

“Seriously, Frank, I’ve got fantastic news! The little Jefferson girl, the one whose murder scene you investigated with me? We got the killer, Frank! We got that bastard! Your clue, the torn scrap of denim, remember…?”

“Yeah?—”

“Forensics lucked out. There was blood that matched her type. They also picked up traces of some motor oil with special additives, some state-of-the-art stuff they’re using in those airboats—”

“GREAT!”

“But that was a wash—”

“So?—”

“So. We thought spectroscopic analysis pulled some vague traces of what appeared to be phenylacetone, sodium acetate, acetic anhydrite, ephedrine—”

“HAH! From a meth lab. Right?”

“That was the drift, but you know how fast that stuff boils off, & we’re talkin’ that ninety-plus-degree weather. Bottom line, we didn’t have enough to be certain. Not court-certain, for sure! Nothin’ that’d stand up, &, besides, ever since the smokable hit the streets hard back in late ’89 or early ’90, the labs’ve popped up everywhere. Low risk compared to crack. No importation. No U.S. Customs to hassle with. Main risk is the ever-present danger of flash fire & fast blowout with those flammables they work with. But that’s why the movers ’n shakers use expendables as processors.”

“Okay, okay, so give, Carter, what’s the scam?”

“The forensic guys went back & followed your bootprints. Shit! We both missed this one, Frank. They found the wire spur that the denim scrap was snagged on—fibers, & a tiny piece of flesh nicked from our killer’s thigh when he ducked through the fencing & caught his pants leg…that & some blood—”

“& it was enough?—”

“Yeah, you better beeelieve it, Pardner! The DNA “fingerprinting” nailed it. Ever since the FBI put the NDNATC Network online, the DNA patterns from blood-samples—mandated for several years on a state-by-state basis following their adoption of the uniform sex offender codes—of convicted sex-criminals prior to clearing for releasee-status finally have been fed into the IC computer at Quantico.”

“&—”

“Our boy was an NMA, Darnell Alonzo ‘Fatboy’ Fuller, thirty-three years old. With a jacket for indecent exposure.

—some beef for playground weenie-waggin’ up in Raleigh, NC—back in ’80, & a double bill in New Orleans—a molestation felony with some eight-year-old kid he lured into his car, & the three-year-old daughter of a girlfriend who was dumb enough to let this freak babysit her. All NFJs, by the way. Okay, the first half was linked to a string of similar abductions, but the others bowed when asked to identify, we think there may have been coercion, but no proof, they may call him ‘Fatboy,’ but he looks like a weightlifter fast-gone to bone & sinew from tokin’ that killer ICE to me— ‘Tank’ seems like it’d’ve fit the bastard a whole lot better back then… Anyway, the second half started with a rap for oral-&-anal sodomy, but managed to plea-bargain it down, copping to simple molestation of a minor— I’d love to set those asshole attorneys & the judge responsible loose as punk-bait in stir for a week! He did fucking nine years of his twenty stretch & snowed ’em into a release for ‘good behavior,’ claimed he’d been heavy freakin’ on speed & he was clean, now. He’s out FIVE FUCKING MONTHS, & we hang him for this one…” Clarence’s voice breaks off into a sharp, agonized rasp of stifled fury.

“Easy, Clarence, easy,” Frank says, “you’ve got him, & nothing you do can bring her back, but Florida will fry the fucker. Ol’ Smokey turned that sonofabitch Bundy into home-fries down here, remember…? SHIT! There’s some justice…

“Just don’t let it get under your skin. Don’t take it home with you. Don’t let it ruin your life…” Bitter laughter interrupts Hawkes’ sermon. “& believe me, Friend, I know, how I fucking know what it’ll do t’ you…

“Yeah, you’re right, Frank. I’m okay.” Carter’s voice has leveled out again. “In the string of accused molestation-abductions, he’d used some hype about showin’ them cartoons, he’d done his research, knew what Saturday morning dreams the glass teat was pushin’ to the kiddies & they were gung-ho for, & he used this verbal tap-dance & a nice big ‘signed’ color poster to lure them in realllll close where he could snatch ’em…

“We looked for a similar MO down here. You know, maybe some attempteds…?

“Well, Frank, I wasn’t quite straight with you when I said the airboat lube was a washout—it did help us zero in on the fact he was roamin’ around the state a bit. There were a couple of possibles on the MO in Orlando, a couple more near Titusville, Daytona Beach, & Winter Park—he was cruisin’ a bit to keep us dizzy.

“We blitzed the vice & narco squads statewide, hit ’em with flyers sporting his mugshot. & it paid off. Metro Orlando PD netted him in a meth-lab stakeout. They had me down as guest-cop-of-the-week ridin’ shotgun with ‘Gator’ Gambel, chief honcho for the strikeforce.

“The punk, Fuller, reeked of that sickening-sweet perfume smell that telegraphs the skells workin’ those cookers. So strong it made my gut churn. Had him dead bang with his cartoon pictures in the backseat of his fuckin’ silver Colt. The kids’d said they thought it was a ‘little grey or silver car.’ Yeah, & we matched bloodstains on the backseat with Stephanie’s. & he copped to the kill after we Miranda’d him…”

“Great, Clarence! I’m glad you busted the ratfuck bastard! What’s the word from the D.A.—?”

“He triple-checked our paperwork. Said we’re sanitary. But even the clean shot at the ‘Book ’em, Dan-O, Murder One,’ bit just can’t get it out from under my skin… After what that piece of pigshit did to that poor little kid… FUCK! Frank. The chair’s not going to bring her back, is it…?”

“But that’s the best you can ever ask for. Life’s a bitch, Clarence, don’t you think I know it? Hell, at least you got your man— I’ve tossed my fuckin’ life in the dumpster tryin’ just to catch mine…”

“You’re right, Frank. I’ve gotta keep it in context. Thanks. & be cool, Buddy—. &, oh, yeah, I almost forgot— I’ve got some news clippings you might be interested in, that is, if your car’s fax is working by now?”

“Yep. Hit me. I need something to focus on, once I blow this burg… That is, if they don’t tar ’n feather me first.”

“Be careful, Frank. They don’t cry tough down there. They slab their problems, & the tie you wear to your funeral is more than liable to be your own tongue danglin’ out through the slit where your throat used to be…”

The phone clicks.

The line goes dead.

Frank feels like a conman, stroking his friend when all he feels is empty, sordid, dirty. He looks down at the bloodstained sheet. The flies are still crawling…still buzzing…

So is the phone.

He hangs it up, & heads for the john for a long, scalding shower—trying to forget that night of secret shame, & all its repercussions… That poor little kid was the very worst of it… Her mother noticed the bruises on her privates, & was told she’d “fell & hurt herself…” Further inspection revealed bleeding in her vagina & anus… She finally admitted Bob or Jim had threatened to kill her kitten if she ever ‘told’… Both were arrested for numerous sex counts involving their molestation of the girl, as well as statutory charges after they admitted having had intercourse with Lois & Missie… Those latter dropped when the girls refused to testify. They all admitted having a party there, but kept quiet about the rest of us… Lois left town & moved to Florida to ‘live with her aunt,’ but we all knew the real reason was one of us had knocked her up…

But I nailed Lois’ old man, didn’t I, just like we got THIS ONE.

Even if it took so many goddamn years…too late to help Lois & Janie…too late to save HOW MANY OTHER LITTLE VICTIMS…? But we nailed his pervo ass, for his key role in that ring of Midwest pedophiles & kiddie-porn producer/pushers…

[ 251 ]

“So, where are you headed, now, Frank?” Rios asks as he slices off a tender chunk of spicy Cajun-style “blackened” swordfish steak, spears it with the glistening tines of his fork, & pops it eagerly into his mouth.

The restaurant is King Neptune’s Grotto, Rios’ favorite upscale seafood spot. But, neither of them is paying any attention to the profuse array of antique nautical decor. Or to the 20-foot indoor waterfall cascading down amid colored spotlights. Or to the numerous portholed & multi-faceted Plexiglas aquariums framed in injection-molded, mock “verdigrised bronze,” filled with darting, brilliant-hued saltwater fish—the displays resembling Victorian-bizarre relics from Jules Verne’s imaginary Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Beneath The Sea.

All a “reality” conjured up in some marketing amalgam of David Copperfield stage magic, leftover Disney/Tinseltown-F/X & P.T. Barnum modesty & candor. Dreams for sale, not seafood. Pirates & Paradise for the wish-fulfillment hungry, luring obese billfolds primed for quick-trimming, tempting the online slip-&-slide of sky’s-the-limit Platinum Cards & Diners Club & American Express & Carte Blanche…

Frank saws away at a K.C.-cut steak cooked rare, his plate swimming in the deep rose-pink of mingled blood & juices. The once-crisp skin of his baked potato is dark-stained, sopping with the spill of crude gravy.

Stacked next to his dinnerware are the faxes received from Clarence Carter en route to the restaurant. “Interesting. Very interesting,” Hawkes muses, while chewing a savory chunk of near-raw beef. “I think Carter’s got the program, Rios—a couple of these news clippings seem extraneous, but there’s a pattern here, I can sense it pulling at me…there’s no such thing as a truly ‘random’ killing, although the victims certainly may be.”

“How can—?”

“Rios, even the most consciously, scrupulously, paranoically meticulous slayer is goin’ to betray something of him or herself in actin’ out this anarchic psychosexual drama that is his/her obsessive raison d’etre—”

“But, Frank, we both know that the most dangerous of the ‘recreational slayers,’ like your postulated Brittain/Zodiac/Green River/etc., the true sexual sadists or sadistic sociopathic killers—whatever term you choose—may vary their MO so as to avoid creating a discernible pattern. Like the original, gloating admissions of Henry Lee Lucas—”

“No. It isn’t necessarily the MO—like you said, Lucas copped to confusing authorities by varying his method of execution, ‘I’ve got thirty-six states, in three different countries… I’ve had shootings, knifings, strangulations, beatings, & I’ve participated in actual crucifixions of humans.’ Yeah, I know his confessions chapter & verse. But that’s tactical stuff, for the most part, as opposed to strategic, to borrow the military terminologies. The ones who get caught are the ones with an MO. Or the ones who start to lose it… The Edge… either through overconfidence at their own invincibility or because of the slow or sudden spin into delusionary psychosis…”

“Not much difference, is there, Frank? Although, as the old saying goes (& I never get it quite right), ‘Just because a paranoiac experiences delusions of persecution doesn’t mean someone may not actually be persecuting him or that everyone who believes they’re being persecuted is in fact unjustified or a paranoiac.’”

“Too metaphysical for me, Rios! The chicken & the egg. The sound of a tree falling in a forest when no one is there to hear. To get back on track with our original subject, it’s more the subtle ritualizations that even the most seemingly chaotic of serial killers expresses & the specific paradigm of circumstances that serves as stimuli that he ‘keys off of,’ in turn triggerin’ his extreme of ‘self realization’ through the act of murder—‘what makes me real,’ is a frequently heard expression with numerous individual variations. ‘Doing My thing,’ as Zodiac was wont to phrase it. Sadistic: yes. But also an act of extreme desperation to define a sexual identity that he finds nonexistent in ‘normal’ ‘straight’ sex, any attempt at which normally leaves him totally impotent. He must dominate. So he rapes or seeks the ultimate submissives—through necrophilia or pedophilia, but always a vicious pedophilia that seeks to degrade & torment, in which there is no love but only the lust to inflict suffering. His own identity has generally been ‘stolen’ from him early in life through zealous Puritan punishments for the ‘sin of pleasure,’ or through homo- or heterosexual molestation or rape, in some conjunction with a confusion of the sex act & violence of pleasure & pain…”

“Straight out of your Pattern Violence, Mass Murder, and Serial Killings in Contemporary American Society— I’ve read your textbooks as well as your best seller.”

“Then you understand the other linked concept as well, right…?”

“That the serial murderer’s prime motivation is not the brief, though intense, sexual rush afforded through murder, but an act of rebellion against an establishment he perceives as hostile to his own existence. Okay so far? The ‘consensus reality’ of Establishment he subconsciously senses is what renders him irreal. It is a political act, an almost-pure act of Anarchism by which he can loose the night terrors of Chaos he secretly suffers upon this Establishment. This sense of persecution is the common logic-bridge he or she shares with many paranoiac or hebephrenic psychotics. I anticipated your line of thought, Frank, that’s why I digressed into the earlier discourse. After all, it’s the still-controversial central premise/logic leap you posit in the title of your second text: A Profile of Anarchic and Psychotic Terrorism in Urban and Rural North America. Right?”

“You have read my books & paid attention to them, haven’t you, Rios? I’m flattered! I guess it’s the Hell with any last pretense at ‘good ol’ boys’ tonight, & we both come out of the closet as at least pseudo-intellectuals, right?”

“Yeah, none of that Happy Horseshit, Pard? We’ll both admit our college days were spent as more than just jocks or pussyhounds?”

“Okay, Rios. You’ve got it. Anyway, with Zodiac/Brittain, it’s the presence of water or water names nearby the murder site, the favored proximity to the nexus of city, county or state jurisdictional boundaries that so often confuses the transferal of info by ‘competing’ law enforcement agencies, rendering them ineffective in identifying, let alone apprehending Him. &, of course, as I’ve explained to you, there’s the presence of one or both of His accomplices. Even the apparent ‘randomness’ in His choice of weapons may be the tipoff—a sudden string of ‘unrelated’ murders, ‘accidental deaths’ or ‘suicides’ in some cross-country chain may betray his involvement. There are a number of still functioning but undetected serial killers loose in America today—at least two dozen, by conservative estimates…slayers too smart & too controlled to be caught. But Zodiac’s the Main Man of Multiple Murder. You can bet your life on it…”

“So, what’s the bottom-line on the faxes, Frank—?”

“I sense a pattern, Rios. No MO. But a fuckin’ pattern. I’m gettin’ VIBES from these.” He lifts the top sheet of paper, slides it down in front of his companion:

LOCAL FARMER SLAIN IN GRUESOME AXE MURDER!

“His body was dumped in the Missouri River. It washed up on the south bank, near Fort Osage. Near the border junction between Lafayette & Jackson Counties. No motive established.”

Frank flips another page upright in front of Rios.

BLOOD GRAFFITI MARKS DEATH

SCENE IN GANG SLAYING OF FOUR

“Quincy, Illinois, Rios. Four nights ago.”

“On the Mississippi, right? But a gang slaying…?”

“What’s the hook? This one would have blown right by me, but a buddy of Carter’s was one of the investigating officers. Seems Clarence has already put out feelers—”

“Looking for murders that just don’t scan right, where something seems hinkey? If you discount the eighty percent that are obviously done by KAs, & just focus in on the portion of the twenty percent where you spot some weird kink &/or happen in your ‘high risk’ proximities, you’ve narrowed it down a lot, ehhh? Not bad. Not bad at all, Frank!”

“He’s got a solid rep as a real pro, & there’re a lot of folks who owe him for past favors, plus he’s got a network of sorts goin’ with guys who’ve served with him before. I’ve got plenty of other sources, too, but right now Carter’s fresh on the trail, & that means a lot.

“Now, take a look at the notes this guy forwarded to Carter—”

Frank peels another page from his stack & lays it face-up on Rios’ growing pile. The light is poor, intended for mood & not for reading. Rios pulls a penlight from his pocket, & skim-reads the small print, drumming the fingertips of his free (left) hand against the tabletop.

He lets out a low whistle. “One kid had his eyes poked out with a row of needles? & his nasal bone punctured the floor of his brain pan in one quick commando-style killing stroke…? Martial arts training? That’s a defense move some militant feminists stress as a definitive tactic in rape prevention, isn’t it…?”

“Yep. Read on…”

“The angle of impact & expended force suggest the assailant was shorter than the victim & sleight of build? Whoa!”

“Did you get to the part—?”

“Where the coroner noted that all three shooting victims (all done with the same 9mm, close-range, execution-style—shit! the one kid had it shoved right up his barenaked ass!) showed signs of recent coital activity. To be more precise, their genitals, pubic hair, underwear, & the interior surface of their pants were encrusted with fresh semen, vaginal secretions & blood. As did the pavement at the crime scene, the forensics boys attested…”

“Yeah, Rios, & how about where he mentions that two of the three yielded multiple non-negroid pubic hair specimens tangled among their own. Carter’s informant examined them himself, with the coroner’s permission, of course. The official report went into great detail in medical-jargonese. But he described them as ‘short,’ ‘very dark brown or black,’ ‘gently curled, not kinky,’ ‘soft & downy.’ Off the record he told Carter it was ‘jailbait beaver fur, without a doubt…’ Carter said he didn’t ask where he’d gained his inside expertise on the subject…”

“But the bottom-line was the examiner’s report that bore it out—pubic hairs from a single WFJ, approximate age of twelve-to-fifteen years. Same general age range as this girl you’re sure is one of Zodiac’s two companions—right? Some were broken off, others ripped out by the roots with portions of or the entire follicles still attached, further indicating violence involved in the sex act.”

“You’ve got the program, Rios. Definitely a gangbang, & most probably a rape, as it’s rather hard to imagine this young white chick was so desperate for the licorice-stick or so far into ‘rough stuff’ that she’d have willingly been pulling train for at least three or more gang spooks in an alleyway littered with broken glass, garbage & god knows what else—”

“Cool the racial epithets shit, will you, Frank? Sometimes you come across sounding like a total rednecked White Supremacist Aryan Asshole—Church of Jesus Christ Christian or Church of the Creator or KKK— & I know you’re not, or I wouldn’t be working with you. Okay—?”

“Sorry, buddy, it’s just when I get torqued, it starts those old tapes playin’—the Wichita WASP upbringing, the Rangers & ’Nam, the cop-talk programming. What Judy Lynn always calls my ‘macho bullshit.’”

“No prob, pard. Apologies accepted but unnecessary. Guess I’m a bit sensitive sometimes, being an occasional target of minority-hate-talk myself, & all…”

“Powder burns on the gun-sodomized boy’s buttock area were consistent with the altered pattern the coroner expected, given the use of a silencer on the 9mm’s barrel. I mean, give me a break, Rios, what the Hell would the kid be doin’ droppin’ his drawers in the middle of a dope deal ripoff or gang fight, lettin’ somebody shove a pistol up his ass? I think he’d’ve showed signs of puttin’ up one Helluva struggle if he knew what was goin’ on. No. He had his pants down already, & he was shaggin’ away, when the girl’s companion/rescuer bushwhacked all three of ’em! Carter’s informant feels so, too. Says the positioning of the corpses makes sense in the case of an interrupted rape/revenge bit. The rest was all blowin’ smoke to cover what had really happened, & the hit was pro all the way—the shooter’s a cool, experienced death-dealer, not a touch of the amateur about it. Readin’ ‘Mob’ or—”

“Serial slayer—either Brittain or His male accomplice—”

“Not Brittain. Definitely not Brittain. The hit was pro, but he lacked the Zodiac’s paranoiac attention to detail. You see, he failed to eliminate several important clues—matching fingerprints on the emptied needle packet & the torn plastic & cardboard blisterpack from a pack of Gillette Super Blue Blades… & a cash register receipt dated the same day (from the late-night drugstore just across the street & down about a block), that listed two sundry purchases that synced with the price tags on the aforementioned bits of evidence…”

“So, Frank, what did the folks at the drugstore have to say? Were they able to identify your rape-victim/serial slayer bimbette…”

“Wellll, catch a load of this—” Frank says, tossing another fax face-up on the table—like a winning trump card.

TWO SLAIN IN DRUGSTORE HOLDUP.

“OHHHH SHIT!” Rios moans. “The same night? The same frigging’ drugstore? & nobody caught that it was no mere coincidence? HOW…”

“There was excellent circumstantial evidence tying it to yet more black youth gang activity: paint & metal scrapings left on the brick wall of the adjoining alley as the killer made a too-hasty getaway in a car stolen or borrowed from a black kid with two drug priors, both dismissed; missing cash & drugs; stray scalp hairs from a late-teen or early-adult NM; some traces of cannabis ashes & cocaine powder; a discarded stiletto, a bloodstained metal baseball bat, as you know, a standard gang-weapon; &, in a nearby dumpster, the .38 Police Special also used in the slaying of the druggist—the lands & grooves of the expended slugs were a perfect match with those from an unsolved “drive-by” shooting, several months back…

“&, the head honcho of the Detective Division chose to overlook the evidence of an apparent vigilante slaying/coverup, & used it as a political ploy to go for a hefty appropriation to beef up his pet project—his Gang Violence Unit…

“Oh, yeah. Here’s one last item.”

POLICE SEARCH FOR CLUES IN

LOCAL CHILD ABDUCTION CASE

[ 252 ]

Hawkes & Rios stand on the neon-splashed sidewalk just outside of Neptune’s Grotto.

“Take care of Elijah for me will you, Rios? Just until the vet says he’s okay to travel, then I’ll fly him home. I hate to admit it, but I think things have just gotten too hot for a return visit—for whatever reason—for the foreseeable near future.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll drop in to see him every chance I get. & I promise I’ll do my best to smuggle him in some goodies to chow down on in the meantime.

“By the way, Frank, be careful, man, real careful. I got you a little going away present—“

Rios hands Hawkes a clear plastic cylinder with black endcaps, perhaps an inch-&-a-quarter in diameter & six inches long. It weighs heavily in his palm, its appearance most deceptive. Hawkes guesses its weight at perhaps a pound, though the sensation suggests two or three times as much.

“What the Hell’s in here, Rios, a lead pipe?”

“Better. Much better. Read the label.”

“ASP Tactical Baton…? But it’s too short for—”

“Expandable. Compact. ‘…gives the plainclothes professional a serviceable intermediate weapon,’ a direct quote. Nifty, huh?

“These things are available only to the law enforcement in-crowd. Man, oh man, Frank, catch this—it’s ‘American made of the highest quality aerospace alloys & ordnance synthetics. Its non-reflective, low-profile finish is rust resistant. The textured handle is not only attractive, but produces a firm, durable gripping surface.’”

“Christ, Rios, what did you do, memorize the fuckin’ flyer…?”

“You bet your ass, pard. This here is a gen-u-wine magick wand, & I ain’t kidding. ‘This baton provides you with a compact, inconspicuous & yet extremely effective impact instrument.’ ‘…bridges the gap between hands & the use of a firearm.’ ‘For the first time a practical baton available for the investigator or Federal Agent.’ Pop it open. Words cannot describe this gadget—it’s total kickass!”

Frank digs his right thumbnail under the soft, flexible endcap, gripping the opposite side with the tips of his fingers, & works the tight-fitting stopper off slowly, a motion reminding him of a shapely girl tugging on a brand-new pair of skintight, preshrunk denims, inching it over the clinging curves…

He slides out a matte-black rod with a textured surface like rawhide or buckskin, but obviously synthetic. The far end of the six-inch cylinder sports a raised chrome-silver “button.”

“How do you use this thing?”

“Well, just like that you can use it as a Persuader or Yawara—a control tool. But grab it in your strong hand, give it a brisk flick down or up, & the two telescoping inner shafts whip out, extending it to just over fifteen-&-a-half inches worth of Holy Terror. The end tip is a rounded knob so it won’t catch on an assailant’s clothes or rip him up. Strike the pressure points, man, WHAP!—you know, the appropriate muscle groups & nerve centers. But don’t hit his head, his face, or his neck—or it’s Humpty-Fuckin’-Dumpty Time, man, you’ll crack his goddamn noggin… that is unless you’re aiming to get lethal…”

Hawkes gave it a try. “WHOA! I’m duly impressed.”

“Via con dios, amigo. Be CAREFUL. I’ve got BAD vibes, I mean, BAD. Too much weird shit going down here—

“This mind-control psycho you told me about…

“Mermaid’s Inn & its spooky disappearing act…

“All that astrology & occult jive that Zodiac is into…

“Like Palo Mayombe… Like Abakua… Like the darkest of imagined Black Magicks… I’ve never believed in this shit, not even the relatively well-known stuff, not Santeria, not Vodun nor Voodoo nor Hoodoo—whatever you want t’ call it—none of it…

“But The Rules just aren’t working. The maggots are hatching, wriggling in the meat of Reality right now, &, man, the flies are going to be buzzing thick & furious before this weird shit is over with. I’ve never been superstitious…but…”

[ 253 ]

Frank’s fingers tap out the seven digits of Cherry’s number on the chrome push-buttons of the pay phone’s keyboard. The Plexiglas curves of the kiosk’s wraparound windscreen are splashed in a gaudy rainbow of neon afterglow reflected from the tavern lights above, He lets it ring. Five. Eight. Thirteen. Seventeen. Twenty-one…

Nada.

The Big Zero.

A strikeout. Just like earlier. Just like when he’d tried from the phone in his motel room. Just like the numerous attempts from his car phone. He knew what the outcome would be before he tried. But the nagging thought that maybe it was some insane glitch again in his cellular, a hope bordering upon the superstitious, spurred him to action.

But as that folksy old Midwestern saying goes: ‘wish in one hand, shit in the other, & see which one fills up faster…’

[ 254 ]

Once more, the white blips of lane markers dissolve away mile upon mile in the tight-focused swatch of sole reality marked by the headlight beams of the Stingray, as enveloping darkness & the Endless Highway flow past Hawkes like the River of Night’s Dreaming…

An occasional road sign…

The white-hot blaze of all-night truck stops burning holes in the solitary black of moonless, post-midnight, unseen storm clouds gathering above the speeding glint of the silver bullet…

Nameless cities twinkling far off…

The jagged neon of motel strips, deserted streets awash with streetlamps’ chill pools of luminosity, swimming with shadow patterns, shapeshifting inkblots keying split-second associations, alongside or overhead the offramp info-boards announcing meaningless street after street in a whispered blur of white-on-green…

Taillights ahead…

Headlamps behind, as the Stingray slithers past…

The eerie glow of the dash lights across his huge, scarred knuckles, tensed & clawlike, clenching the curve of steering wheel…

FM stations laying down cool blues riffs from the Kenwood’s speakers, the bass tingling up & down the arched bow of Frank’s spine, plucking at the dull ache of knotted muscles, the sharper pain of bandaged wounds… Charlie Parker’s alto saxophone superimposing substituted chords in double-time above the background rhythm… Miles Davis’ innovative modal patterns from “Kind of Blue”… John Coltrane strangling the music with the mad harmonic shiftings of his tenor sax… Thelonius Monk… & Blue Öyster Cult… & Lou Reed with Velvet Underground… Shaw’s voice whispering so low the words twine within the blue notes… whispering of Devil’s Fucking Valley & darker, far darker, secrets beyond any measure…

Friday morning, again, another cycle of existence nearly come full circle…outbound…homebound…time & transformation…

The shark’s-mouth grille & sculptured curves of gunmetal-silver Stingray lancing down the strip of Endless Highway…

Beneath its underbelly, a tiny black box attached remora-like…

Upscaled protection, the H&K G11 & its fifty-round magazine concealed from sight…

Taillights…

Headlamps…

& the empty seat beside him…

[ 255 ]

Frank’s eyes are getting heavy-lidded.

Again. & again. He’s been forcing himself back to wakefulness, yawning, stretching his neck & back & shoulders, listening to his tendons creak & pop, shaking his head to exorcise the waves of sleep that swirl inside his brain.

“Switch the station. News, Man, I wanna hear what’s breakin’ on the newsfront—” Shaw says. Quite clearly.

Frank whips his head around.

Shaw’s battle-ravaged body with its spilling guts is seated next to him, the white jut of bone piercing through his black-seared facial flesh burning phosphorescent greenish-white in the glow of the dash lights. His bony left hand reaches out, punches the selector buttons on the radio to a news station.

Then shimmers out, along with the rest of him…

“& on a somewhat weirder note, in Lafayette County, Missouri, yesterday afternoon, two boyscouts discovered a cache of Bibles, tossed into a ditch & desecrated with human urine. Authorities credit this crime to the work of a Satanic cult…”

He was heading for Quincy, IL. But, now, Frank knows where he will recross the tracks of the Beast…

[ 256 ]

Frank has driven all night & on into the morning.

Following Interstate 75 all the way through Atlanta, & on to Chatanooga. There he catches I-24 North. It’s noon by the time he reaches Nashville. Fourteen hours, a handful of caffeine tabs, a dozen or so cups of coffee, & about 910 miles to go the distance. & everything becomes a jitter & a white-line blur.

He finds himself in the Nashville Hyatt Regency. A bit upscale for his normal tastes. Glassed-in elevators yo-yoing 25 floors up & down the inner canyon walls of plant-lush atrium like some transplanted rainforest.

He blows off the bellboy’s offered help. Stashes his own bags. & decides to grab a quick bite before he crashes…

The balcony restaurant overlooking the foyer looks great, but the service sucks bigtime. He orders a BLT on white & a Bud. The brew comes through. He dozes off. An hour-&-a-quarter later the sandwich is still on standby status.

“Screw this!” he says.

Drops cash on the counter to pay for the suds.

The cashier wants to hit him for the balance of his tab.

He snarls. Whips off his shades. & lets her take a long deep peep into his fevered, Dirty Harry stare.

“Thanks, sir,” she says, “sorry for the wait,” & hands him back his change.

He catches a few winks. Not many. His exhaustion is so extreme he just can’t sleep. Just tosses & turns, & ties himself up in the sheets.

[ 257 ]

The Vette is a sleek meanmuthuh mako shark, gobbling the miles, chewing them up & spitting out the whiteline trail of littered bones…

Seven o’clock sees Nashville disappearing in the rearview mirror…

Seven-thirty-eight, & the lights of St. Bethlehem & Clarksville are winkin’ & blinkin’ to the west, & his head’s already nodding to the lullaby of steelbelt hum…

Seven-forty-seven, & the Kentucky state line passed beneath from going-to to coming-from…

Jingle-jangle nerves, shoulders hunched & tense, the highway markers shouting in Frank’s head, “I-24,” “I-24,” “I-24,” “I-24,” “I-24,” a berserk bingo caller’s litany caught in the groove, the needle skipping & tripping him back to Friday nights in Wichita, smoke-thick air, the smell of sweat & felt-tip markers, his mother indulging her sole vice, Little Frankie nodding off, his head nestled against her shoulder…

His scarred right hand reaches out, turns up the volume on the radio… Coleman Hawkins’ tenor sax wailin’ hot, fragmentary phrases coalescing into conjured substance, full-bodied & melodic, yeah baby yeah… Frank’s fingers snapping, Paris & 1937, Hawkins’ backup some crazy cosmo Frog-band, wailin’ sweet on his classic, “Out of Nowhere…”

The silver bullet shooting that long, slow-swingin’ “S” curve, ’round the northern tip of Land Between the Lakes, passing by Paducah, the whipsnake flood of the Ohio a wash of moonlight sparks on moving water, flowing by beneath the bridgespan, the firefly glow of Metropolis filling the nightsky to the west, then, too, vanishing into the distance…

Stations fading in & out.

Another fistful of caffeine tabs, washed down with scalding “black-as-my-luck” coffee at some nameless all-night truckstop just before the Shawnee Forest.

T-top opened to the night sky, the big wheel of stars turning ever turning in a slow spin overhead…

Focusing the white-hot core of his meltdown-ready mind on a mad mantra of the Beast’s bombastic braggadocio bobbing up through a dizzying well of years & mostly-unshed tears—

The score of His claimed kills forever rising:

Zodiac-10 SFPD-0

0-12 SFPD-O

SFPD = 0, Zodiac = 13.

DEAR EDITOR:

You’ll hate me, but I’ve got to tell you.

THE PACE ISN’T ANY SLOWER! IN

FACT IT’S JUST ONE BIG thirteenth

13 ‘Some of Them Fought

It was Horrible’

(beneath the “13,” a cross drawn in human blood…)

SFPD-0 0-17 +

Me-37

SFPD-0

0 - guess

SFPD - 0

[ 258 ]

Interstate 24 deadends, forking into 57 North.

Frank’s sprinted about 180 of his 300-mile Nashville-to-St.-Louis stretch.

He stares down at the dash-clock through beyond-bloodshot eyes. The time reads “10:07.” Counting the pitstop for a fast wizz & that steaming cup of joe. That’s 70-&-countin’ any way you stack it. & the fuzz-buster hasn’t had to warn him once. Might say the freeway’s on low heat, & Smokie must be smokin’ somewhere else…

The highway dissolves in a wake of steelbelt hum.

He’s just approaching the 64 turnoff to Mt. Vernon to the east, about five miles south of the junction where 64 splits off again from its temporary merger into 57, his goal to roll west on toward St. Louis if Casey Jones don’t jump da rails from lack a’ shuteye, &, if he does, well, then, it’ll be “or de Promised Land…”

The car-fax starts beeping, signaling incoming, then it buzzes busily, & out slides a printed sheet. Frank reaches down, lifts it in his hand, & flicks on the domelight overhead. All it says is:

R.I.P.:

SHAW

CARVER

DOC

SIMMONS

ZENNO

WARREN FRANKLIN HAWKES

His name struck out by the cross-&-circle signature of Zodiac…

[ 259 ]

Frank feels as if a sledgehammer just hit him in the chest, then glanced off & struck his skull. His diaphragm contracts in a gut-knotting spasm. The air whooshes from his lungs. His heart freezes in mid-beat. His trachea constricting as if crushed by an iron glove. His entire cranium threatens to go critical, ready to explode, temples throbbing, the ridge of his brow seeming to swell outward, brain & flesh & bone warping, bulging outwards like some insane parody of John Merrick, The Elephant Man…

Shaw starts whispering again, snatches of acid lyric torn from ’60s rock, mad harmonica riffs whistling from between shattered teeth & gumless jaws, wailing on the night wind rushing through the opened T-roof. Dylan, again. From his favorite album, Highway 61 Revisited. Never a whole song, just jagged little frags like he always fucking did in Nam… Words “From a Buick 6”: “Wellllll, you know IIIIII need a STEAM SHOVEL mamaaahhh to KEEP AWAY the deadddddd. IIIIII need a DUMP TRUCK mamaaahhh to unnnnnloooooad my headddddd…”

Frank is no longer looking at the highway ahead, his stare locked to the sheet of paper fluttering in his right hand, fixed on the call-prefix of identifying numbers of the sending fax— “312 767—,” no need to run a trace, the sequence is a familiar one, denoting a Chi-Town area code & exchange…

Shaw throws back his head on cracked vertebrae & laughs, long & low & soulful… “Yeah. ‘& the ON-LY sound that’s LEFT, afterrrrrr the AM-BU-LANCES GOOOOOHHHHHH, izzzzzz CIN-DER-ELLA SWEE-PING UP on DES-O-LA-TIONNNNNN RRROOOOOOWWWWWW…”

Shaw’s fire-ravaged face leans in towards Frank’s, grinning that goddamned bare-boned, toothy, lip-torn grin of his, just chuckling away like he’s never heard anything so funny, then whispers that eerie refrain from Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man”: “Becauzzze someTHIN’s HAPpenin’, HERE, but you DON’T know WHAT it IZZZZZZ, doooooo youuuuuu, MIS-TER Jonezzzzzz…?”

Frank foregoes his plans to follow the I-64 fork to St. Louis, catch some hard-earned Delta dreamtime, then cruise on through tomorrow morning via I-70 to Lafayette County, MO. Shaw is drumming his bare finger bones on the padded dash, ten little drumsticks doing his damnedest jammin’ like a Buddy Rich improv. Hawkes’ right Tony Lama lizardskin stomps the pedal to the metal, & he burns rubber straight for the Windy City. The slipstream roused by the racing Vette wails through Shaw’s shattered teeth like dog-callin’ riffs of ghost harmonica, & he launches into a rap remix of vintage Highway 61:

“…Dr. Filth, he keeps his world. Inside of a leather cup. But all his sexless patients. They’re trying to blow it up…

“SHUT UP, SHAW, YOU’RE FUCKING DEAD!”

“…& the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls. “Get Outa Here If You Don’t Know…’”

“& THE DEAD CAN’T FUCKING TALK—”

“‘…Between the windows of the sea. Where lovely mermaids flow…’

“GO BACK TO DEVIL’S FUCKING VALLEY—”

“‘Casanova is just being punished for going. To Desolation Row…’

“& FUCKING LEAVE ME ALONE—”

“‘& picking up Angel who. Just arrived here from the coast. Who looked so fine at first. But left looking just like a ghost…’”

“I DON’T FUCKING BELIEVE IN ALL THIS GODDAMN VOODOO SHIT—” Hawkes screams. The wind blows through his dark, silver-streaked hair, stirring the strands into a wild swirl around his throbbing skull.

A huge moth splats loudly against the windshield.

Moonlight & the highbeams glisten on the highway ahead, his blurred vision transforming the asphalt into the dark River of Night’s Dreaming flowing away beneath the marauding mako silverbullet shark…

& moonlight glistens on tan leather on the empty curves of seat beside him…

[ 260 ]

Hawkes hits homebase about 2:30 in the morning. His Rolex’s face is nothing but a waterdroplet blur, but the FM’s so-sexysounding emcee-ette cues him to the time & temp.

He’s too shagged & fragged to do more than nose the Vette in an inch or two short of a one-on-one with the ground-level lot’s cement slab wall, tires straddling two parking spaces, grab his bags & the newly-acquired H&K G11, & stumble upstairs to hit the sack ’til sunup.

[ 261 ]

The Sandman cometh.

Down in the Loop, where State Street crosses Congress Parkway, the all-night grindhouses & porno joints are still sellin’ skin & sin & sleaze. Raincoats. Pale phantoms in slouched fedoras. Plain brown wrappers. & The Kinks wailin’ & flailin’ from some half-opened doorway, “All Day & All of the Night…”

Down on Wentworth, neon still splashes the rain-wet street with rippling wen-yen characters & dragons & pagodas in red & blue, though the restaurants have long since closed. A black Lotus cruises the block between Chiam & China, passing by a line of lesser-known competitors touting the regional cuisines of Szechwan & Hunan & Mandarin & Cantonese. The car glides to a stop along the curb. Two orange embers glow within the black, flaring with each drag, waning with each exhaled puff. Two teenage hoods in tailored grey silk suits & oilslick hair, just bidin’ time & blowin’ smoke. Scopin’ the street with matte-black wraparounds, & listenin’ to ’60s rock ’n’ roll…

Nearby, the sad & solitary call of a foghorn echoes in the mist along the Chicago S&S Canal…

A trio of Triad toughs in motorcycle leathers & savvy denims sidle out of an alley, swagger down the sidewalk, mosey up to the mobsters, lean into the Lotus, whip out a wad, & slide some cash across in trade for designer White from the labs of Hong Kong. The driver grins & nods. Revs the engine & rockets away from the curb. & the radio’s filling the S. 2300 stretch of Wentworth with Them, & “Here Comes the Night…”

A lone one-percenter rumbles down Lake St., ex-Straight Satan immigrated east from LaLa Land, now he flies the colors of the Tempus Fugits, an hourglass with wings, & the legends, “ThOu ShALT KiLL” & “RemeMBeR ChARLiE SUffEReD 4 UR SiNs.” He rolls along beside concrete columns of The EL, on past Clark St., Dearborn, & hangs a right on State past the front of NOLAN VOID’S. He nearly nails some skinny, keyed-looking geek who just bopped off the curb.

The little dude spills a sheaf of papers as he does a classic ass-backwards half-gainer of a pratfall, & comes up flailing, like an overgrown kid or a defrocked priest with coke-bottle specs dangling from one ear, a thin river of blood running down his balding scalp, trickling into his tonsure of blonde, back-swept hair.

“In Your Butt!” the geek squeaks as he flips the outlaw off. More balls than brains…

A big, red-bearded bear of a Viking biker kicks open the door to Nolan’s, & Bob Seger throbs on the night wind, tellin’ ’bout those “Night Moves…”

A distant cockcrow echoes through the shadows of an ill-kept Iowa farmyard…

Radio rockin’ ’n’ reelin’ the Everly Bros. Phil & Don wailin’ “Wake Up Little Susie,” as daybreak’s rays lay a bright golden haze on Turtlewaxed injun-turquoise, twin shark fins & about half-a-ton of chrome… A very cherry ’57 Chevy, just leaving St. Louis, & makin’ the I-70 here-I-come run to Kansas City, before cruisin’ that Big K. Turnpike all the way to Wichita.

Just minor portions of a sprawling landscape, while the Head of Hawk lies lost in slumber…

Just a study in synchronism & synchronicity…

[ 262 ]

Frank’s plans for an early rising can be filed among those good intentions that the road to Hell is surely paved with.

It’s a little past 4:00 p.m. on Saturday afternoon when he finally drags his ass out of bed.

Almost exactly 12 hours of Z-time. & for Hawkes, Z-time is Z-time, filled with the symbols & taunting messages of Zodiac, mixed & remixed & endlessly looping, reality & nightmare & film & novels merging into a blue flickering cinema of the surreal…, & sometimes it’s himself, & sometimes he is Clint Eastwood as Callahan, trapped in never-ending reruns of a deviant version of Dirty Harry where a pre-Hellraiser Andy Robinson as Scorpio becomes the winner, & sometimes he is William Peter Blatty’s Lt. Kinderman straight out of The Exorcist’s Hell & stalking the Gemini Killer & stalked by the Gemini Killer in Legion, & then he segues into an escape that is no escape—back into time, back into Nam, back into Devil’s Fucking Valley, his body shredded by flying shrapnel, Death & Desolation his companions, & the flies always the multitude of buzzing, swarming, swirling flies, & sometimes he is Brother Frank exploring the limits of Pain & Pleasure, on His Final Day of Judgment (Frank Jr. had conned Dad into taking him to see the flick as a rare Father-Son outing during a too-brief too-seldom visit to D.C.—the day ended with a knock-down-drag-out of a fight with Judy Lynn for “poor judgment” in “condoning such violent & perverted trash…”), torn apart by Barkerian Cenobites while a hooded Zodiac stands among them, laughing & laughing like the roar of the waves…

It’s his swollen bladder that is the cause of his awakening. It feels like a basketball inflated to near bursting. All that caffeine acting as a diuretic. Inducing dreams of drowning in the ocean’s surging ebb-&-flow, dreams of heavy porcelain worship, being chained to the cool, enticing base of beckoning commode, unable to relieve the pain politely, afraid he’d drown face down if his own pipes burst, dreams of rivers tempting with the fluid babbling of Nature’s call, but every time he pops his weasel out another waterlogged corpse drifts by beneath the swinging penile pendulum, dreams of shadowed outhouses & the fear lurking in their depths that freezes his urethra in a frosty fist of iron…

After the proscribed regimen of shit/shower/shave, Frank dials his clandestine contact at Illinois Bell, a young lady whose assistance he has inveigled on numerous occasions, a serendipitous meet at a Sunday Jazz Brunch at The Empire Room of The Palmer House, & regularly paid off in swanky steaks at Eli’s.

[ 263 ]

Hot on the trail of his lead, Hawkes wheels the Vette at near-warpspeed through the weekend wahzoo-to-wahzoo crush of Chi-Town downtown rat race…

The EL rumbles by practically overhead, snaking the “S” curve rails at Wabash & Harrison. EL DIABLOS COPY MAGICK the sign above the narrow storefront reads. Frank pulls in to the curb. Locks up. Steps out. Boogies over to the business, & peers through the front window.

But the tenants have done a Doug Henning-worthy disappearing act, vanishing without the slightest trace.

A fivespot on formica works its own sleight of hand trick.

“Saw a panel truck out back, early this morning,” Ronnie Corleski, the barkeep at neighboring HARRY ZERO’S tells him.

“Any markings?” Frank asks.

“Plain blue van. Nothin’ fancy.”

“Any of ’em ever stop in here?”

“Yep.”

“Did they say anything about where they lived? where they were from?…you know, that kinda shit?”

“Fuckin’ gimme a break, Bucko, this here’z fuckin’ Chicago, nobody gives ya th’ fuckin’ time’a’day lest they’re goddamned gays ’r rapists…”

[ 264 ]

Back at his digs in the Dodge-Western Sector near the 41/Lincoln overpass, Frank bangs out his usual bullshit written update report for his mystery employers, eliding all but the less self-incriminating details of the Ocala/Miami investigations.

He types out the Houston dropbox address on the label of the manila envelope. Slips the report inside. Slaps on the “double-nickels” postage. & heads out the door for a round or so of cold ones…

[ 265 ]

The elevator lurches upward.

Frank struggles to keep his footing, knees threatening to buckle, his stability slammed by the sudden increase in g-force.

A double whammy. He is struck by an intense sensation of loneliness, a physical twisting in his gut. Goddamn, he misses the companionship of his pal, Elijah. Times like this, he’d be scratching the scruff of his neck, burying his fingertips in the warm fur…

His mind reels, slipping yet again into chance associations, remembering snatches from some small-talk conversation over supper several weeks before. Sally Allen, a valuable contact as a staff reporter for The Chicago Sun Times & a frequent dinner date, effusing about some brilliant young local writer fast acquiring a major rep on the international lit scene, apparently her latest cause celebré, waving her fork to accentuate each point, telling him about this 60-page epic poem the guy had written, something called “Desmond’s Inferno,” where each of the Windy City’s bars becomes another symbolic step along the Dantean Path…

Well, if that’s the case, he thinks, then I must’ve just been to Hell & back…

The lift whips to a quivering standstill. Again, torqueing Hawkes’ grip on the elusive reality beneath his feet, “…This sky, too, is folding under you, & it’s all over now, Baby Blue…” more lines from Dylan, Shaw’s voice whispering from somewhere deep inside his backbrain.

A pneumatic hiss, & the elevator doors slide open.

Frank staggers out, following the familiar, slightly threadbare red carpet down the hallway to his room. He knows each stain along the way by memory. & another couple of lines from the song flash through his mind, “…The carpet, too, is moving under you, & it’s all over now, Baby Blue…”

He fumbles with his keys. Finally negotiates an insertion in first the standard lock & then the double-deadbolt.

I could afford the Lake Shore or the Executive House or the Oxford House, with the bread I’m bringin’ in, between the monthly retainer & the short-term freelance PI gigs & the royalties on the books & the occasional article for one major magazine or another & those guest shots on national talk shows…

…But fuck those high-rollin’ stuffed shirts, I’m just a down home Kansas boy! He thinks as he swings open the apartment door.

Then it hits him, just as he swings the door inward on its hinges & strolls through the entryway.

The pleasant, homey scent of dog is fading fast.

That, & something that feels like a mule just kicked him dead square in the back of the skull…

[ 266 ]

Not a mule. Just your basic steel-toed work boot. Aimed with vicious efficiency by someone trained in Sabot or Korean Kickboxing or karate.

Even drunk, Hawkes rolls with the blow.

Reflex.

Basic, ingrained survival tactics.

A sudden massive riprush of epinephrine jolts his system, late-season Hurricane Frankie roarin’ in & blowin’ away the brewski fogbank that was clouding up his senses.

Hawkes has always prided himself on being one hardheaded sonuvabitch. Metaphorically & literally. This time it saves him from a probable concussion.

He becomes one with the blow, syncing with its energy rather than opposing it. His own Ranger training in martial arts makes his move of going with the flow second nature. Paper wraps rock. Mystical, perhaps, but most effective.

His massive frame tucks & rolls, surprising in his agility for his size & weight, dodging another blow incoming from the front, somersaulting, crashing into his opponent’s shins, knocking his pins out from under him like a 190-pound bowling ball thundering down the lane, colliding with the heavy oak coffee table in a crash & blur of pinwheeling limbs, the bullet bruise on his chest from last Monday night’s bloodbath searing bone-deep pain from the fury of his exertions.

Frank lands on his feet, whirling to face the first assailant. An animated shadow hurtles toward him—ski mask, turtleneck, sweats, & cheap, loosely-fitting suitcoat all in cat burglar basic black.

Hawkes chuckles aloud, epinephrine-edged, whiteline-fever, Vette-jet-lagged-&-jagged, licking a trickle of blood from his split lip, eight miles high on the primal scream of pure brutal physicality pouring forth all his pentup ANGST… Rock crushes scissors…

His right bootheel lashes out, connects with a taut, muscular midsection, hears the wwwhhhoooooppp of out-rushed air, spins & kicks again, senses the jarring crunch of bone, the shattering of teeth.

At the right extreme of his peripheral vision, he spots another blur of black. A third man, headed for the door, carrying something, maybe a rifle, & the door opens & slams shut…

A vicious kick to the small of his back. Two rabbit punches, swift, simultaneous, expertly aimed, striking the base of his nape, two more quick blows, fist edges slamming into his kidneys, doubling him, dropping him to his knees for a moment…

Half real.

Half ploy.

Flashing on a split-second strategy.

Frank’s hand gropes into his right coat pocket.

He clenches the hefty six-inch cylinder in his fist. Whips it out, blitz-flicking his thick wrist, sleek chromed shafts telescoping, slithering out with a metallic whisper & a clink, as 10 inches of cool tactical steel snap-lock into fixed position, extending his reach beyond the baton’s hilt…

He hears the foot swishing through the air behind him, another killer kick aimed smack at his back.

He thrusts himself left, dodging, whirling, ASP swinging, striking rattler-nasty, impacting bone on his assailant’s stationary ankle, raising a howl of sharp, shattering agony, the second strike smashing knob-first into his kneecap, the twin blows dropping the blackclad man like a load of bricks, the third slamming direct to his solar plexus in midfall…

Frank goes over the edge.

Losing it.

Bigtime.

Battering the downed man about the face & body, using the ASP as it was never intended, smashing it again & again into his skull, inflicting punishment like some Salvadoran inquisitor or a Brazilian Neo-Nazi Death Squad assassin coercing a confession & copping-out co-conspirators before he segues to straight snuff…

Pain lances through his right forearm. A heavy endtable lamp crashes into tensed flesh. Pottery frags. His right hand goes numb. The ASP slithers from his grasp, clattering against the wall, chipping shards of paint & plaster.

The burglar standing above him must be in a world of hurt, as well. His black ski mask is damp with something dark, the knitted fabric sticking to his skin, & bright blood is smeared & dripping from the mouth slit.

The man makes a move with his right, reaching for the gap of his jacket, gunhand obviously heading for a hidden holster…

Frank is packing his .44 Mag.

But his own gunhand is still all pins & needles, novocaine numb, & he’s afraid a showdown may prove a blowdown with him the sitting duck…

He launches himself like a flying tackle for the nearest wall plaque, grabbing it with his uninjured left, ripping it free, swinging, slamming the heavy board & its half-dozen mounted strands of rusty barbed wire deadbang against his opponent’s skull, listening to the sick, splintering crunch of impact, grabbing the next display in line, tearing it loose, wielding it left-handed, also, knotted knuckles white with exertion, scars jagged slashes of even whiter white, as he swings, smashing wood & rusted iron spikes into the wrist that drags out the unaimed .38, the skell waving it wildly as he grips his wire-impaled cranium, clawing at the twisted strands stuck deep into his forehead’s flesh…

Frank hears a rustling of carpet behind him.

Starts to turn.

Hears the muffled pop & wwwhooosssh of a discharging weapon. His mind tagging it as a low-velocity CO_2 load in that extended second even as he feels the searing pain of something skewering his left shoulder, entering through the back of his jacket, lodging deep within the muscle… He starts to take a couple of steps forward. Staggers. Falling…

Falling into darkness…

[ 267 ]

Frank shakes his head, marveling at the immensity of the pain contained within his brain, the convulsive throbbing that threatens to explode his skull into flying shrapnel at any second, or to implode, sucking everything within the room into the vast blackhole of his collapsed cerebrum. Part steel-toed-boot-to-head interface. Part hangover. Part drug-ugly morning-after downer…

He does a mental quickscan, accessing & assessing the extent of damage suffered.

The backs of his eyeballs feel severely thumb-gouged.

His skull feels like an eggshell dropped out a 15th-story window. On to solid cement.

A sharp, piercing pain in his left shoulder. Like somebody used him for a dart board. His left hand gropes to locate its source. They did… Trank dart… He tugs it loose & tosses it.

His right forearm courses with pain, swollen & bruised…if he’s lucky…

Ditto for his lower back.

Frank’s eyelids flutter open. The room looks like it was hit by a cyclone. & that’s the good news…

The bad news is, there are two dead bodies lying near him on the blood-soaked carpet, hands bound behind their backs with hanks of common white clothesline.

No need to check for pulses. No. Not enough left of either one’s head to have to ponder on the possibilities. The tops of their skulls blown right off. Shot point blank. Brains sprayed all over the floor. His .44 Magnum lying just inches from his fingertips. Missing two Teflon-coateds on closer examination. One of the sofa cushions shot all to shit, two ragged holes blasted through it, ringed with powder burns.

Those .44 loads didn’t leave much face to look at, but he can piece together their mouths were sealed with strips of silver duct tape. His hand digs into the nearest stiff’s hip pocket for a wallet & ID. Nada. He pats him down. Feels the telltale bulge in his inside breast pocket. Pops it out & takes a peek. It’s one of those with the little plastic window. Behind it is a brass badge. & the card marked “CHICAGO D.E.A..” D.O.A. Bad news. Real bad. A major bummer.

He does a rundown on the other daisy-pusher.

Same story.

Frank freaks. Two dead C.P.D. Narcotics cops. Snuffed execution style. In his fucking living room…

He just knows the Forensics boys would nitrate-test him positive for recent firing of the .44, circumstantial indication his was the trigger finger…

Instant Panic City. Sure shot for a one-way ticket to Death Row.

& that knot in his gut is never wrong, he can hear them—

Ghosts scratching from inside the walls, ghosts rapping on the door, those slope bastards impersonating the police, calling, “COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD! PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS, PSYCHO, OR WE’LL SWAT YOU LIKE A GODDAMN FLY, COP KILLER!” but on the wavelengths of the subliminal he can hear them whispering in that ugly sing-song gook language…

The war dead are massing just out of sight…

The flies are buzzing, swarming thicker ever thicker ’til they cloud the sky…

& he knows,, yeah he fuckin’ knows, in this instance, Retreat is not Dishonor… He will break on through to the other side… beyond enemy lines… & he will go LRRP & enlist a cutthroat crew of badass Montagnard mercs & he will take no fuckin’ prisoners…

[ 268 ]

Hawkes makes a quick trip to the john. Opens the washbasin’s cabinet. Fumbles through spare rolls of white toilet paper, letting them tumble everywhichway. Locates the pale tan pack of ScotTissue 1000s, rips off the resealed wrapper, unpeeling a horse-choker flash roll of used, unsequenced twenties, wrapped around the cardboard core & taped. He stuffs them in the empty shaving kit waiting such emergency status.

He empties his dresser drawer of the reserve stock of .44 Teflon-coateds & hollowheads & tosses them in his shaving kit. He digs out the High Standard Sentinel Mark III revolver, the .22 Long Rifle nine-shot with its two-inch barrel, cinching the twin straps of this petite “lady’s pistol’s” ankle holster into place as backup firepower, just above his boottop, hidden by his left pant leg. Making a lethal match for the survival knife & scabbard strapped to his right.

Suddenly he remembers the recently acquired H&K G11.

But the gun & ammo supply are gone.

[ 269 ]

At 11:47 a.m., an anonymous call reporting a possible shooting is phoned in to 911, leading CPD officers to Hawkes’ apartment.

The living room looks like a brawl took place there. Furniture is smashed or overturned. The walls & carpet are soaked & splattered with human blood. They find the cold corpses of two veteran narcotics cops, bound with common white clothesline & apparently gagged with duct tape, slain execution-style, each shot once through the head at pointblank range with a large-caliber handgun.

A thorough search uncovers a small stash of LSD & amphetamines, polybagged & taped inside a wall clock.

An APB goes out for ex-FBI Special Agent Warren Franklin Hawkes, described as “armed & extremely dangerous.”

[ 270 ]

Frank is less than 35 miles away, sitting on the King-size bed in the swankiest hotel he could find in Gary, Indiana, when his 16-channel Bearcat Scanner picks up the all-points alert. The scanner is a portable, slightly cheaper version of the model console-mounted in his Vette.

Whoever whacked those cops & set me up has some heavy connections, he thinks. & they wanted to give me room to run, or they’dve made the informant call considerably earlier…

& why the Hell didn’t they hear my cannon roarin’…? Unless they turned up the TV or the stereo, & muffled the shots somehow…

Don’t make silencers for revolvers, they just don’t work…

He reaches inside his coat & pulls out the Magnum, giving the barrel a close inspection—around the tip feels gummy to the touch, & remnants of adhesive are barely visible…

Yeah. But, then again, they might’ve used a couple of two-liter plastic pop bottle disposables taped to the barrel, maybe packed with foam rubber or baffling to help disperse the gases evacuated at the muzzle—the gangbangers sometimes use them— & with the cushion placed in front of the suppressor, & maybe my pillow held over the gun, muffling the cylinder’s blowout… Shit! I should’ve checked it out…

Whoever masterminded this fuckin’ frame-up had plenty of time to work all this shit out… Unlike yours truly…

Hawkes is strictly wingin’ it, as best as he can.

Slow the cops with the jurisdictional limitations posed by crossing over state lines.

Cruise ’til you find the first open lemon heaven, BARGAIN EDDIE’S USED CARS. Park just around the corner. Pick out a demolition special. Tell the smilin’ sleazoid in the plaid pants & Hawaiian shirt you’re shoppin’ for a fix-up transportation special for your kid who just scored a license. Jew him down just enough to lend credibility, but not enough for him to remember you as a hardball asshole. Flash that fake ID you use for undercover gigs.

Let him sign over the pink slip for a carefully counted stack of twenties nursed out of your “almost-emptied” wallet.

Drive that oil-burnin’ Dodge Dart into the nearest deserted alley. Clean out the glovebox. Nothing to link it to BARGAIN EDDIE’S or previous private owners.

Go back & get the Vette.

Strip the Indiana plates from the bomb & swap them with those Land of Lincolns. Stash them in the Stingray’s trunk.

Not bad for spur of the moment. Not bad at all.

Be sure to break known behavior patterns. No Holiday Inns or Travel Lodges this trip. No way. Hole up in the fanciest joint you can find. Kick back & keep low…

& all I’m doin’s tryin’ to buy a little time, set up a meet with my own private legal eagle, Hal Meyers, keep from gettin’ myself blown away as some psycho cop killer, right…?

Frank mosies down to the payphone in the lobby. Drops in some change & tries to reach the shyster’s home number.

No dice. Sonafabitch must be off fishin’. Have to try again, later…

[ 271 ]

This is the tenth ring of his thirteenth or fourteenth try. Frank looks down at his Rolex: 11:27 p.m. He’s been trying Hal Meyers all afternoon & evening. All night, goddamn it. Last try. If he doesn’t answer now… Another ring. One more for the road. Zero.

He starts to drop the phone into its chrome cradle.

“Hullo. Hullo. Goddamn these crank calls,” a faint voice edged with weariness emanates from the receiver.

“HAL?” Frank asks.

“Yeah. It’s Hawkes, all right. Guess you’ve heard the news…?”

He pauses, listening.

“Fuck no! I didn’t do it. No friggin’ way, Hal. I come home last night from a little bar-hoppin’, & I bust in on three…no there must have been four of ’em, countin’ whoever nailed me with th’ goddamn trank dart…”

Another pause.

“Yeah. You heard right. KO’d me with a tranquilizer dart. I was out like a light ’til almost 7:00 a.m.…

“That’s when whoever whacked the narcs. DRUGS? Hell no, Hal! Well, maybe a bottle of Noctecs, but they’re prescription…”

“LSD? Amphetamines? Christ, no… It’s a goddamn FRAME, that’s what it is… Who? I don’t fuckin’ know… Yeah. PLENTY…

Frank listens.

“In the mornin’? How the Hell am I supposed to sleep? OK. OK. Yeah. I hear y’, Hal. Gotta do this right. Slide in smooth & easy. Or I’m liable to end up in the same condition…

“You grease th’ wheels. Get me a clean surrender… OK. …Yeah. I’m… No? No. Of course. They may have you bugged. If I wasn’t so fuckin’ fried, I’d have thought of that…

“Can’t have done a trace yet. See y’ t’morrow, Hal, OK.?

“Yeah. Trust me—”

[ 272 ]

Monday morning. School Bus 1187 is a sunny slab of yellow among the confetti dots of eastbound traffic streaming along Archer Avenue, heading through the Forest Preserve below the southeasternmost tip of Du Page County.

Perhaps a 100 yards or so to the north, the commuter rail runs almost parallel, the highway belling away slightly southward before the 95th Street terminus, then curving in again as it nears the Willow Springs On Line Rail Station. The Des Plaines River & the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal wend along the Cook/Du Page County boundary about a quarter mile beyond, crisscrossing from the Cook side over into Du Page, then back. Directly to the east, on the Du Page side of the Des Plaines, lies another Preserve, this housing the Argonne National Laboratory of the U.S. AEC & its powerful proton synchrotron, operated by Argonne Universities Association & the U of C, an R&D facility “exploring the peaceful uses of atomic energy.”

But it could be White-fucking-Sands or Bikini Atoll for all the didleysquat the surrounding geography means to Driver Dave J. Hunter. He shifts uneasily in his seat. Goddamn! The day hasn’t even STARTED yet, & already his piles are killing him… & the load of kids in back are roughhousing & raising Cain…

He glances down at his watch: 7:56. A couple of minutes ahead of schedule. Christ! Maybe the week won’t turn out all that bad…? Shit! Kids’ll be kids, he wasn’t no saint when he was just another snot-nosed yardape back in grade school, & there’s always soothing TUCKS MEDICATED PADS & PREPARATION H…

Then he glances up at the sun visor, & the wad of the weekend’s losing lottery tickets, & he knows his life will always amount to the brown-smeared end of a dump-dipstick…

“If” & “only.” Two biggest words in the English Dictionary—

If only Driver Dave had glanced slightly to his right, instead, up at the ridgeline of the road-cut embankment among the shrubs & flame-leafed oaks, then he might have spotted the sudden glint of sunlight glancing off ground-&-polished glass…

MAYBE. A BIG MAYBE. But Driver Dave did his time for Old Glory over in Vietnam. & just maybe, he might’ve spotted that split-second not-so-distant early warning as the tall, black-hooded sniper swings the crosshairs of his scope into place…

…& time begins to freeze & roll in SloMo…

…Gloved forefinger squeezing the trigger ever so gently…

…A single, rasping report echoes out across the pavement as a three-round burst erupts from the barrel—the first shot firing, the mechanism begins its recoil, the auto device now operating the bolt to load & refire while the weapon is still moving backward on the recoil stroke, the second adding momentum to the rearward motion, the third shot chambers, fires, & completes the 2.5-inch stroke back to battery before the gunman’s shoulder senses the recoil, before barrel drifts off aim, fading left…

Squeezing again & again & again…

Loosing three more three-round bursts…

Driver Dave starts to scream, “SSSHHHIII—” as both front tires blow & the wheel whips out of control & the school bus jackknifes & he hits the brakes & the bus teeters on one tire & a rim sparking & shrieking & grinding metal shavings like a rain of tiny shooting stars & somehow he manages to wrestle the jerking, convulsing, jittering wheel back into some semblance of control as rearend rubber smokes off the four back tires & they sideswipe at least a dozen cars & the shrill scream of terrified tykes inside merges with the wail of the tortured metal & the “TTT” is half-formed on his lips as the next bursts rip through the windshield in a chaos of exploding glass, two of the 4.7-mm slugs slamming into his skull, smashing his right mandible & cheekbone, the impact yanking him back in his seatbelt, & despite the searing pain he fights the runaway bus to a fishtailing stop amid the roiling smoke of stripped treads & burnt-out brakelines & popping safety glass as minute fragments scatter like hail, & he tries to yell, “DOWN! KEEP DOWN! HIT THE FLOORBOARDS, KIDS!” but blood just sprays & bubbles from his ruined mouth, & then three more shots hit him in the head & this time two-out-of-three are lethal hits…

The blackclad sniper stands atop the ridge, casually exposed, a hulking shadow limned against the rising blaze of sun, as he empties his first 50 rounds, strafing both front tires & the front & right side windows in a barrage of sudden, numbing, 4.7-mm terror…

Several sharp-eyed bystanders spot the emblem on the hooded sniper’s chest—a cross overlapping a circle, gleaming white as bone against the background black…

He snaps out the expended magazine. Pockets it. Slaps in a fresh 50 rounds. Thumbs the selector switch from “burst” to “auto,” & aligns the crosshairs…

Traffic backs up behind the devastation of smashed cars & stalled-out school bus.

The pneumatic doors whoooosh, folding open, letting loose a panicked crowd of kiddies, tumbling over one another, head over heels, trampling each other as they come bouncing off the bus…

A dozen. Two dozen. Blubbering brats milling like ants evacuating a flaming lighter-fluid-doused hill & tunnel complex. In his sights. Three dozen. More piling out every second. Those who can still walk…

Bystanders running everywhichway, waving their arms, screaming, “NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!” like a mad mantra of horror… BACK! GET BACK! TAKE COVER!… DOWN!…” Some trying to reach the kids & protect them. Most just standing slack-jawed, too numb to move or try to help…

& the gunman triggers off, laughing as his next barrage rips through school clothes & soft babyflesh, shattering bones, mowing the helpless kiddies down like wooden cutouts in a midway duckshoot…

Until the pavement is awash with the blood of innocents…

Disappearing into the cover of the Forest Preserve when he sees his work is done…

[ 273 ]

Later, the reports flood in.

A couple of folks with CB radios call 911 in the first few minutes, bringing a sweep of howling prowl cars down Archer Avenue & a SWAT team dropped into the woods by helicopter.

A silver Stingray was noticed nearby the scene of the sniping, pulled off among the trees along 95th Street, “in a suspicious manner.”

One lucky motorist even notes the plates as it drives off, “heading east toward Hickory Hills.”

DMV makes it as a match with the plates on Hawkes’ Vette, confirming the motorist’s pre-news-update hunch that it “belonged to that guy that killed those cops the other day…”

Another informant warns “the car was heading north, up Willow Springs Road…”

Half an hour after the shooting, a caller to the Downers Grove PD says, “I WANT TO REPORT A MURDER. A MASS MURDER. A SNIPER JUST KILLED A BUSLOAD OF KIDDIES. THE WEAPON WAS A 4.7-MM. IT HAPPENED DOWN ON ARCHER. OR SHOULD I SAY, ‘SAGITTARIUS,’ THE LATIN TERM. AFTER ALL, THIS IS THE ZODIAC SPEAKING. BEWARE. I HAVE RETURNED AMONG YOU TO FULFILL MY DIREST THREATS…”

The call is traced to a phone booth at O’Hare Airport, less than 12 miles to the north of the shootings.

[ 274 ]

Frank is just slipping on his coat, ready to ring up Hal Meyers & arrange a clean “meet,” when the APB comes in on his portable scanner. It’s an early bulletin, calling for backup, including a SWAT team, to investigate a school bus sniping with numerous fatalities. The short hairs bristle on the back of his neck. When he hears the locale mentioned as “near Willow Springs on Archer,” an aerial view from a roadmap vantage flashes in his mind. The proximity of jurisdictional boundaries & nearby river & canal. & the place names, Hell yes, the place names… Frank looks down at his trembling hands, feels the gooseflesh rising on his arms & scalp. This is Zodiac’s October 31, 1969 threat made real…

He flicks on the TV, & watches for a newsbreak while the scanner crackles in the background.

Soon, the station interrupts regular programming for an eye in the sky broadcast panning in on the scene of slaughter…

Someone from Downers Grove PD must be suffering from a greasy palm, slipping a hot lead to the local media—

“A CALLER, IDENTIFYING HIMSELF AS ‘ZODIAC’—THE SAME NAME USED BY THE INFAMOUS SAN FRANCISCO-AREA SERIAL KILLER DURING HIS REIGN OF TERROR MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS AGO—HAS LAID CLAIM TO PERPETRATING THIS TERRIBLE TRAGEDY … “

Again, he can hear the buzzing of the flies, the screams & whispers of the war dead breaking through from Devil’s Valley.

“Fuck this shit!” Frank snarls to himself, “I’m not about to end up on the sidelines sitting this one out, tied up in some courtroom battle with the shysters doin’ a long, slow verbal arm-wrassle for months on end, while there’s the slightest chance Zodiac may really be behind all this…

“After all, this is where the fax came from with my name crossed out by His goddamned crosshairs signature.”

Frank stares down at his Rolex: 10:48…

Holy shit! Three hours fugued through while glued to the boob tube, listening to calls on the sguawkbox drifting in & out on subconscious wavelengths as he stares enraptured at the media carnival, flicking station to station in a montage of Hellish images of devastation burning themselves into his retinas & down down into his brain’s seething, molten core…

He grabs his bags & heads for the Vette. Living out his chosen role of Lone Gun upon the stretch of Endless Highway, knowing the black mask of the mysterious Outlaw Man hides the face of the Last Ranger, closing fast on the Final Showdown…

[ 275 ]

ZODIAC RETURNS TO CARRY OUT HIS THREATS IN CHILD-SLAYING TRAGEDY?, in one form or another, is front-page headlines from coast to coast.

John Walsh, celebrated Pro-Child/Anti-Crime advocate & spokesman, host of America’s Most Wanted, is flown in to Chicago with the program’s crew to film a special, hour-long segment, scheduled to air next Saturday night on the Fox Network.

& Robert Stack, of Untouchables fame, & Virginia Madsen fly out to San Francisco, then back to the stomping grounds of Eliot Ness to film the Friday special edition of Unsolved Mysteries, expanding upon his earlier coverage, several years ago, detailing the history of the notorious Zodiac case…

[ 276 ]

Three separate letters arrive at the mailrooms of the targeted newspapers—

The Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Sun-Times

The Daily Calumet

—early on the morning of October 13th.

All spotted quickly among the flood of incoming postage by wary mailroom staff alerted by CPD advisory bulletins warning of the need for utmost priority in processing any envelopes or packages received bearing the established “signatures” of the Zodiac from his barrage of taunting missives to San Fran area dailies during his early “reign of terror,” in ’69 & early ’70, & the scattered collection of altered greeting cards & postcards & letters that trickled in up until the very last in late April of ’78.

All indeed bearing the doubled postage & the words “PLEASE RUSH TO EDITOR” or simply “RUSH TO EDITOR” scrawled across them.

All are routed directly to the special Zodiac Task Force set up in the wake of the school bus slaying.

In this age of sophisticated, lethal letterbombs, cooperation is 100 percent by the editors of the respective papers. None wish to make their personal splash on the headlines.

Each envelope is carefully placed in a “containment canister,” & held for fluoroscopic examination by Bomb Squad specialists before opening. The envelopes are immediately forwarded to SSD for analysis, the letters photographed (not photocopied, lest some minute bit of evidence be lost or damaged in the process). The copies are sent to ZTF members for evaluation. The originals are rushed to SSD for hair & fiber inspection, then lasered for latents, & sprayed with Ninhydrin in the hopes of turning usable prints. Nothing. Not that they expected any. Zodiac was always scrupulous.

The text of the letters reads:

This is the Zodiac speaking

I have ben quiet for quite some time now.

Bet you pigs thougt I had retired? No way. Kiling peopple is simply too muuch fun. Guess you blue meannies thought I would never carrie off my promise re using a San Fran scholl. buss for target pracktice. So, sue me, The Lord High Executioner moved east too Lake Micchigan. The Yellow Submarine just sank. It was postively ventalated. Unless you wish Me to prove My bomb thret of anilating more kiddies is no less valid, then you hadd better see the following ciper appears on today’s front pge. I have three death machines alredy in plase. Wht a blast! No bluff ing. Remember. All it takes is a bag of ammonium nitrate fertlizer & 1 gal of gas stove oil & a few bags of gravvel & perhapps some roofing tacks. San Fran pigs have seen My diaghran & know I can do My Thing!!!!!!

SFPD - 0

Guess??? -

PS. you shall never NAIL Me: I am to smart for you! Bee shure the television news is also alerted ore the results could be DISASSTROUS!!! I become very nervis if I get lonly! My triger finger gets itchy. & I shall detonat a bomb for each unpublshd cipher!

PPS. BEWARE! each letter & cipher MUST be run in its entirety for 3 consecutiv dayz to avoid My retribution!!!!!!

««—»»

Underneath is a series of apparently random letters interspersed with occult symbols. The body of each uncoded message is the same, save for a number of misspellings that each is rife with (suggested but not duplicated above)—some extra letters added “unnecessarily,” some “unintentionally” omitted.

But each of the coded messages is different. The Tribune’s consists of 39 letters & no occult symbols. The Sun Times’ includes 15 symbols & 35 letters. The Daily Calumet’s has four symbols & 41 letters.

Each of the letters also includes a grisly memento to assure the messages are taken seriously, a reminder of Zodiac’s love for puns & wordplay—a bloody human fingernail, obviously ripped loose, with plier-marks visible upon microscopic examination. SSD is able to identify them as belonging to a WMA of approximately 40 to 45 years, an office worker or the like, not engaged in manual labor, who indulged himself in professional manicures. The blood type is O RH Negative, the same as the victim of Zodiac’s 1969 cabbie slaying (now a matter of public record, so not absolutely conclusive of “insider” knowledge only available to the actual killer & SFPD staff…).

An urgent request to SFPD for copies of the original Zodiac letters has to be forwarded along to Sacramento & the State Department of Justice who have taken over most of the investigating officers’ files. There is a slight delay as Records clerks hurriedly sort through the now-disordered remains of what once was immaculately cross-referenced data.

Half an hour later, CPD receives the faxed copies. Handwriting experts identify them as “consistent with the samples, matching on nearly every major point of authentication, considering a degree of variation in keeping with a timespan of over three decades…”

Police psychologists & psycholinguists with the FBI all concur that “the phrasing & tone indeed appear consistent with known semantic & thematic choices by the San Francisco-area serial killer known as ‘Zodiac.’” “The chances that this is the work of a typical ‘copycat’ killer or a ‘crank writer’ in our estimation are very slight.” “There is a clear & present danger that, should his demands not be met, further violence, as threatened, will ensue as a result.”

They also agree with detectives that the enclosed fingernails display the same grim sense of humor, the “paranoid wordplay,” associated with Zodiac’s greeting card missives to SFPD via area newspapers. The capitalized word “NAIL” in the text of the postscript is obvious. But additional associations suggest themselves: the writer, assumedly Zodiac, is giving them the exact opposite of the fingerprints they no doubt searched feverishly for, & the only believed existing evidence of Zodiac’s fingerprints are the right-middle & ringfinger partials in blood lifted from the vehicle in the ’69 cabbie slaying. The writer appears to be functioning in a “methodical & well-ordered” manner, despite what appear to be “paranoid-delusionary power references that betray severe megalomania & clear evidence of magickal thinking.” Cited is his care in avoiding the chance of Post Office delays by using local children or teenagers as couriers, leaving the envelopes in night letterslots or with receptionists. Strangely, they fail to mention the fact that all three couriers have since vanished, leaving police with no firsthand witnesses to who employed them…

[ 277 ]

Truman Gilmore once more drifts up out of the beckoning black rift of unconsciousness & the raging sea of nightmares that separates the Now-Sweet Promise of Death from the Reality of Pain & Horror. & a fevered fragment from Revelations whispers over & over in his mind—

& in those days shall men seek Death, & shall not find it; shall desire to die, & Death shall flee from them…

Truman tries to conjure the image of his beloved Bertha’s face & to hear the soothing of her soft, steady voice as a comforting talisman against his excruciating pain & the waking nightmares that will beset him. But his wife’s face is only a blank blur. Instead, he sees & hears only the twisted, mindless face of the Nameless Child, echoing her no-longer human shrieks through the passageways of the subterranean tunnel complex, hanging suspended by her chained wrists from the ceiling beams as, with sadistic glee, Snuff & Julie & Mal smash the delicate bones of her hands & feet, her elbows & her kneecaps, both arms & legs, her ribs & pelvis. Each of the 206 bones of her skeleton slowly, systematically demolished with a wide variety of hammers—tackhammers & ball peens & claws & blacksmith’s & sledges. & in between! merciful Jesus, in between!… The chains rattle as they lower her & throw her on the other mattress, & Mal forces him to watch… …& Mal masturbates onto her crushed & battered body, dreaming His waking dreams of the Gilles de Rais & remembering His pastlife infamies… & the girl, Juliette, fondles & fellates Truman, & they laugh as they make him touch the Broken One & do things to her, or else they jab his shattered kneecaps with the tips of icepicks. & last among the 206 are the bones of her skull…

Whether it was days or weeks or hours that she suffered, the Bible salesman does not know. It is all one eternal Hell of screams & suffering & then, finally, they take her away… & he hears them laughing as they drag her body out—still living, if but barely—hears them joking about how they’ll dispose of her: like all the others down the outhouse sump, as Snuff giggles, “asses to asses & dump to dump…” & Julie says, “Ding dong Hell, pussy’s down the well…” & then Mal says, “a little white lye or two would hardly hurt her now, just a bag or two to help speed decomposition…” & something about how He showed that trick to the narcosatanistas down in Mexico a few years back, & how He helped to “raise the consciousness” of the mayomberos of the Palo path, weaning them to His own fusion of the darker secrets of Abakua & a “revival of the ancient Aztec rites…” reminding them that Elegua, The Master of the Paths, shadowside mask of Santerian St. Peter, had tired of the chicken blood & talcum powder offered at the doors & crossroads & would grant Power to those who wielded the human shinbone & wore the crown of ceiba leaves & who stirred the nganga cauldron fed with the “most potent” living sacrifice, & how Shango’s favor could be coaxed if the “Goat Without Horns” is practiced as proscribed by rite…

But Mal’s references are beyond his limited ken of understanding, & all he senses is the Evil the presence of the Great Night unfolding to suck down his soul & trap it in Hell’s Circle…

&, as he awakens, as he lies in a nightmare world halfway between the World of Death & the World of the Living, Truman mumbles broken phrases from the Twenty-Second Psalm—

“But Thou art He that took me out of the womb—

& all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels—

the Assembly of the Wicked have inclosed me—

they have pierced my hands & my feet—

I may tell all my bones; they look & stare upon me—”

His naked body is lying on the filthy, blood-stained mattress in the damp cellar beneath Mal’s Iowa farmhouse hideout.

But his spirit watches down upon his flesh, sees the cracked & yellowed chamberpot of water that they bring him to slake his thirst & the plate of disgusting hogslop that tastes of organ meat, & he wants to puke instead of eating it but his hunger is too great & he eats & vomits at its foulness & then he eats again for the urging of his body’s hunger is far far stronger than his mind & soul’s revulsion…

& he sees the red, festering swelling around his ravaged kneecaps & he sees the slow blackening as necrotic tissues rot away within the twin wounds, & he can smell the stink…

& then Mal comes creaking down the wooden staircase, & He’s cursing about “some son of a bitch copycat imposter that used My name in vain & the fucker is going to die slow as I swallow his pathetic soul,” & how “the fucking television showed the school bus bloodbath & the cretin could not even get the date right…if he was going to do it he should have done it on either the 13th, the date of My threat to do My thing with a school busload of slaughtered kiddies, or, at the very least, the 11th, the date of the cabbie killing…”

& he sees the hacksaw Mal holds in His hand as He stands above him, & the Medic of Mutilations says to His assistants: “Looks like contamination of the wounds. Alas, with all of our fiddling & farting around with that little gash, it seems My ‘field treatment’ of Bible Boy was insufficient. The bits of shattered bone & shredded flesh, & necrosis has set in, &, of course, I failed to remove the remnants of the slugs, & My diagnosis is severe gangrene infection of them both—

“I. Fear. The. Legs. Shall. Have. To. Come. Off…”

[ 278 ]

The furor on the nightly news alerts Maldoror to the recent developments by this newest daring copycat who has stolen His glory & used the sacred name of “Zodiac” in vain.

He leaves Snuff & Julie to “tend the farm” while He fires up His truck & makes a quick run up-country to Des Moines to secure copies of the two larger-circulation papers. A roundtrip of almost 200 miles. But well worth the effort.

A quick scan of the printed letters & ciphers discloses to His eye that this is no casual copycat. Most likely, the engineer of the massacre. Whoever created them is a longtime student of His writings. Too many keynotes, too deep an appreciation for His leit motifs, to account for chance. It could be a fan. It could be the Feds. It could be that goddamn Hawkes, but He doubts it. Subtleties of language are not Frank’s forte. Although, of course, it could likely be an associate or someone in his employ. The contents should serve to disclose much…

He quickly notes the variance in the otherwise-fixed number of exclamation marks. Hence, He begins by decoding the message to the Tribune by adding & subtracting letters from the misspelled words from His stockpile of 39 letters.

In a matter of half an hour, Maldoror has translated the following:

EMTCATNOCEVITAREPMICAIDOZNIATTIRBEGROEG

which He scans quickly, recognizing as a simple mirror image, & reverses:

GEORGE BRITTAIN ZODIAC IMPERATIVE CONTACT ME

The second section contains 15 Zodiacal symbols, including His own Earth/Spirit Cross-&-Circle, & the all of the first nine signs except Taurus & Virgo, &, most notable, Libra is used three times. They are scattered singly among the alphabetic characters. He uses a transposition code as follows:

Aries Taurus Gemini Cancer Leo Virgo Libra Scorpio Sagittarius

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The letter to the Sun-Times translates, after reversal:

713 (the Houston area code)

a seven-digit telephone number

OCT 17 734 PM NAME YOUR PRICE MERMAIDS INN IS OURS

The “George Brittain” leadoff is perhaps the first thing to truly startle the Medic of Mutilations in close to 30 years. It absolutely eliminates the crank factor. He has His immediate suspicions. The date & time & the reference to “MERMAID’S INN” are the other tipoffs. October is the 10th month. The cipher-sender could have used the symbol for Capricorn instead. But he used His “Zodiac abbreviation,” “OCT.” & He knows or knew one man positively obsessed by the numbers “7734.” & 7734 had been the codename listing he had used in the logbook where he had listed the empirical formula for their shared project, “BLUE DEVIL, LI DI 1.”

The Prof. had voyaged beyond the boundaries of Death in his quest for the forbidden secrets it might yield. & this mortal had traveled with Him on three occasions to Tijuana to visit the infamous snuff parlor in its Psychedelic Era incarnation south of the border. The only living person except Snuff to do so…

However, Brittain had been forced to abandon His formal studies in the wake of His discovered indiscretion with the corpse of a 16-year-old rape-murder victim. & He lost track of His associate except for an infrequent contact triggered by some chance meeting at a shared haunt or the like. Except for the time he had crashed with Him & Snuff & The Wicked Witch for a brief spell in the Haight, dodging some unnamed peril too heavy to handle.

But The Prof was into pain in a far different form than He fancied. Brittain twisted the biblical axiom, steadfastly believing it is “better to give than to receive…” The Dominatrix of the Damned spent many interesting hours exploring the limitless wastes of The Prof’s utterly unbelievable Pain Threshold. Although He tried, Brittain found it a useless expenditure of energy tormenting anyone as willing as His cadaverous companion. Though it led to a Master/Slave relationship where The Prof worshipped Him as the True Incarnation of Evil. Had it not been that He found three the perfect number for His initiated elite Satanic SPIKE team, He might have included this fellow perverse genius into His Zodiacal endeavors.

Maldoror has little doubt what the basic content of the remaining cipher will reveal. He only wishes to confirm it quickly. His plans are to drive all the way to Chicago tomorrow morning, purchase a copy of the Daily Calumet, & return to His hideout by evening, a roundtrip of just over 600 miles. It will prove a foray into hostile territory under full alert. A high-risk venture that is ill-suited to His normal super-cautious strategy. Sending Snuff & Julie is not a valid option. His quandry is solved. Due to media cooperation (read: “sweet deal”), the 10 o’clock network news warns: “stay tuned for a special broadcast profiling the recent tragedy, including the actual contents of all three letters, in the hopes some alert viewer may be able to crack the mysterious ciphers, just as a pair of amateur cryptologists did back in the original Zodiac case. Just as we sought the public’s help in solving the ‘Zodiac’ copycat slayings that terrorized New York City during 1990.”

“Get the goddamn VCR ready. Julie. Grab a fresh tape. This is one we shall wish to save…” Mal orders.

Later, He replays the tape, holding the image of the third letter on STOP PICTURE. Forty-one letters. Two Sagittarius symbols. One Virgo. & a Zodiac cross-&-circle. In less than 20 minutes, He has His answer: BLUE DEVIL LI DI 9 OAK 69 SNUFF & JUSTINE SIGNED THE PROF The only slight surprise is Prof’s dual use of His symbol as the zero & ampersand. The triggered association causes Him to crack a rare grin…

[ 279 ]

“Lucy, I think you’ll have to agree it was a stroke of pure genius!” Even through the tinted glass of the penthouse windows, the glaring mid-October Houston sun glints on the left lens of his cobalt mirrorshades, forming a blazing blue star of reflected light, as Prof. Punk kicks back in the black leather office chair, his bare feet propped up on the desktop. There is a muted, sucking, squelching sound, as he shifts slightly in his seat, the pleasant glow of sweat causing his bare butt to stick to the buttersoft leather.

A spiked cockring clamps tightly around the slender jut of his erect but pitifully boyish penis. The twin dominatrices entertain him as he talks on the phone, taking turns whipping his bloody genitals with the thorny stem of a single, blue-dyed rose & raking an emery board across the head of his raw-scraped phallus. He has no fear of speaking candidly to his employer in their presence—both wear their Hear-No-See-No-Speak-No-Evil sensory deprivation masks of zippered black leather.

“I trust you’ve been watching the Windy City newsfront, Lucy…? I’ve just personally taken care of our problem with Hawkes. Thanks for lending me The Trouble Shooter—”

He pauses momentarily.

“Yeah. He’s got the connections, plenty of them, both with the Mafia Mob & inside CPD. The two dead narcs were both K.A.s. Among other things, they were helping merch slip out of Property, shaking down the independents, you know the score… In fact, the narcs were both on Erebos’ payroll, He set them up with a straight break-in scam, & the faked roust re the LSD & crank, then whacked them to keep it on the QT. Anyway, Lucy, the shooter wasn’t even the one with the Vette. He stashed the costume & the H&K the girl gave Hawkes in a big tackle box he’d dug down in the dirt beforehand about a hundred yards to the southwest, & kicked a little soil over it. They ‘discovered’ it before sundown the first day. Hawkes’ prints are all over the gun barrel. & the shooter wore a CPD-issue set of cycle leathers under the Zodiac rig. Didn’t bother asking where he got them. Had a copcycle-clone & reg crash helmet waiting in the weeds. He kicked it over. Headed out. & blended right in with the general chaos. I got the idea from the text of the same Zodiac letter as the threat— ‘The S.F. police could have caught me last night if they had searched the park properly instead of holding road races with their motorcicles seeing who could make the most noise…’ They had a van waiting just over in Palos Hills. Old scam. But it worked on the heat. Drove the Vette up a ramp into the back. Abracadabra. Instant disappearing act.”

Another pause.

“I used one of those simple camera lucida setups—the kind they used to sell mail order through all the comic books—to trace the examples of Zodiac’s handprinting from the ZODIAC book by Robert Graysmith onto the sheets of paper I used for my Zodiac letters. In fact, the rig was a gift from Brittain Himself, way back when we worked on the development of Li Di 1 back at UCLA. He had a whole shitload of the things He’d picked up from some warehouse jobber or whatever that was liquidating all his stock. I had warned Him He should type all His letters or His handwriting would give Him away. He gave a rare smile, & told me, ‘No. Quite to the contrary. It will prove Me innocent. My original sources, for all intents & purposes, are totally untraceable. If they ever try to match My handwriting to it, they shall be forced to use their own evidence to secure My release.’

“The number of exclamation marks following the misspelled word, “DISASSTROUS,’ in the postscript will alert George as to which of the three ciphers comes first. The Tribune’s has one, the Sun-Times’ two, & the Calumet’s three…

“No chance He’ll miss it, Lucy. His Pattern Recognition score on the college entrance tests was at the top of the ninth stanine, & He said He’d deliberately ‘sluffed’ a few just so He wouldn’t draw undue attention… As for our little couriers, be expecting three new guests down at The Inn. BellaDonald should enjoy meating them…”

[ 280 ]

Miraculous.

Considering the media exposure. Considering the “high profile” of the gunmetal silver Vette, even with the switch-off to the Hoosier plates. Considering Hawkes’ distinctive build & rugged facial features, frequently photographed. The authorities have no need for composite drawings. Frank’s face has appeared from coast to coast, along with the warning “CONSIDER ARMED & EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.” But he has eluded capture. Evading notice, perhaps, due to his sheer boldness, making no attempt to disguise himself. No dyed hair, no wig, false beard or mustache. No switch to unaccustomed clothes in which he feels self-conscious. Invisible due to his very visibility.

Or, perhaps, it is something more…

Perhaps it is his two very recent, very near escapes from the looming grasp of Death Angel’s Shadow—from the yawning portal-mouth of Death the Mystical Doorway—not near-death experiences in the purist-sense, but near-death experiences nonetheless…

Perhaps it is the loss of his familiar, dayside/christian sigil—the golden medal of St. Michael—a sigil depicting the legendary archangel in the act of defeating Lucifer, leader of the Fallen Angels, during their rebellion against god at the beginning of the creation, as the judeo-christian mythos has it…

Perhaps it is the crippling of his sole/soul companion, his forced separation from the protection of Elijah…

Perhaps the prolonged, mind-altering sleep deprivation Hawkes has suffered…

Perhaps it is Hawkes’ atavistic initiation rite of Dionysian sexual exploration, the vision quest journey deep into the darkest darkside of his psyche…

Perhaps it is all these elements, interacting together in synergistic combination…

Perhaps Hawkes’ old persona has been shed like a serpent’s skin, & he has transformed—he has been reborn upon the Shaman’s Path…

Perhaps he is invisible to his enemies simply because Hawkes WILLS it…

He leaves Gary, Indiana in broad daylight.

Takes I-65 South to Indianapolis, then on to Louisville, Kentucky. Catches I-64, & cuts across the southern tip of Illinois, heading west to St. Louis. There, he must opt between I-70, & a course almost due-west, or I-44, that angles southwestward. He flips a dime.

I-70, heads.

I-44, tails.

Tails wins.

Just before Rolla, he hits the backroads, wending his way west.

The weather is unseasonably warm. A stretch of Indian Summer. Hawkes rents a scenic cabin overlooking the Lake of the Ozarks. Digs in. & tries to relax, put the pieces of the puzzle together, & enjoy the blazing autumn foliage for which the region is so famous…

[ 281 ]

October 17, 7:34 p.m.

In the distance, the graceful columns of the Learning Resources Center conjure uplifting associations reminding onlookers of the strings of some colossal celestial harp. But it is the dramatic, 200-foot-tall, spindle-shaped tower with its disk-like glassed observation deck housing the campus radio station & a battery of dial-for-counseling phones that dominates the Tulsa landscape. Atop its summit, the eternal Flame of Knowledge burns symbolically.

Surely enough to send the awed sheep-souls of the evangelical faithful into raptures of pious bliss & to stir the embers of self-righteousness into the raging fires of fanatical devotion to their Okie godhead of Bible-thumping, mom-&-apple-pie euphoria & jingoistic “shed-his-grace-on-thee…” in visions of red, white & BLUE…

DEEP. DEMONIC. BLUE.

&. DOG. SHIT. HIS. RACE. ON. THEE.

ANTS. MORALISTIC. HUMAN. ANTS.

AWAITING. THEE. EXTERMINATOR.

Thoughts flashing through the mind of Maldoror as He drops His coins into the payphone’s slot. IT. COULD. BE. THIRTY. COINS. OF. JUDAS’. SILVER… A. GAMBIT. BEGGING. FOR. THAT. FAREWELL. KISS. UPON. THEE. CHEEK… HENCE. THIS. SIDESTEP. OF. THIRTEEN-HUNDRED+ MILES. INTO. ANAL. ROBERTS’. ANTHILL. U. …LET. THE. BLUE. PIGS. TRACE. THIS. HELP. HOTLINE. TO. HELL… Piquing His twisted sense of humor.

Like watching TV Saturday night in Room 16 of the cheapjack motel just west of the Kansas border, the 18-wheelers thundering past down Interstate 160, through the outskirts of Walsh, Colorado, as Hawkes’ face is broadcast continent-wide on America’s Most Wanted…

The last of the coins clinks into the slot.

The throbbing buzz of a live line.

George Brittain’s leather-gloved left hand lifts the receiver to His ear. Gloved right fingertip punches in the 713 area code & the remaining seven digits. His Sixth Sense, the Tantric Vamacara link of the wakened Third Eye of the Predator’s pineal gland & the seething snakepit of the reptilian limbic backbrain, signals the Professor’s ploy is not a trap. He has long studied the left-hand path of Laya Yoga’s kundalini, the secret magicks of Kali, “The Earringed One,” the devouring, destructive black Earth Mother, She to whom the goats are sacrificed in diurnal ritual, She of the Garland of Skulls & the Girdle of Severed Hands, She of the Sword & the Shield & the Severed Hand & the Hangman’s Noose… She who is the Hindu equivalent of the Aztec Coatlicue, Serpent Skirt, with Her necklace of amputated hands & hearts & single human skull… & He has studied the secrets of the pineal body, photoreceptor, endocrine secretor of melatonin influencer of sex glands, rich in noradrenaline, serotonin & histamine. He who has studied the secrets of the limbic brain, its role in fear, rage, aggression, & sexual behavior… He is the Ultimate Adept of the Occult, synthesizing His Power from the diverging paths of comparative philosophy…

Yet He leaves nothing to chance.

Here in Tulsa, He has led any electronic eavesdroppers far afield of His own network of hideaways. A trace, here, will yield a sumtotal ZERO. His roundabout trip has served to scout out a potential point of rendezvous. He senses this is what The Prof seeks. For whatever reason. Though He deduces it is the Blue Devil Serum in its alluded ninth refinement… His gloved finger punches the tenth & final digit of the phonecode. He hears it ring.

“Yeah. Prof here. Is that You…?” The answering voice asks.

“This is the Zodiac speaking. I am back with you.” Brittain says. “Give Me the details of how this came to be.”

Prof fills Him in on the development of Li Di 9, & how they framed His nemesis, Hawkes, with the narc-slayings & school bus massacre. “We’ve always held Hawkes within the palm of our hand. Now we choose to crush him…”

Maldoror recognizes the familiar clipped pattern of His former partner’s speech, as Prof recognizes Brittain’s characteristic monotone.

& Prof, as expected, seeks a meeting. “Name Your price—”

“Make it Monday, the twenty-third. The first day of Scorpio. The Element is Water. The Sign is Fixed. The Mysterious Seeker. Make it eight a.m. Scorpio is the Eighth Sign. & Eight. Is the Number of Initiation. There is a deserted farm near Satanta, Kansas—”

“Satan-ta.” Prof emphasizes the semantic connection he instantly perceives, confirming the place-name.

“Yes. Near the joining of the dry riverbeds of the ‘Wild River,’ the Cimmaron, & its North Fork.

“The price is high. A pig or a preacher. Twelve little stars. You understand?: twelve angels. & thirteen hounds. How you accomplish this is your problem…”

“Z? I have no problem meeting those requirements. But I have one request. I will need some help to handle what You ask. Will You allow me three assistants—?”

“Agreed.”

[ 282 ]

Frank tries to ride out the nightmare.

Wanted as a cop killer. Implicated as a copycat, at the very least, in the most heinous crimes claimed by the mysterious “Zodiac” serial slayer, his quarry for over 30 years. Hoping against the odds that some break in the case will clear his name.

The weather is quixotic. First hot for several days. Then a sudden cold snap, frost spider-webbing the windowpanes with white. Then yet another bout of Indian Summer.

The nights are uniformly endless, restless, sleepless, despite the Noctecs swallowed down with Jack Daniels, Mickey Finn nightcaps that should fell an elephant…

But don’t.

The dead whisper through the walls until the morning hours, when Frank finally grabs a few fitful winks of Z-time, tossing & turning, caught up in his own very special Hell of Zodiac & Devil’s Fucking Valley, waking with the sheets & pillow soaked with icy feversweat, the mattress soggy with the flood of perspiration.

The days pass.

The nights linger, a bad taste on the tongue that will not go away…

Frank flips on the glass teat. Flips it off. Riffles through the stations for the latest news. Hopes. & sees his hopes fade. Sometimes, Shaw stares out at him from the cathode wasteland, whispers to him, & sings him fragments of his favorite songs. &, sometimes, Shaw lies back on the bed, just staring silently or muttering to himself. Frank tries to read. A favored, page-worn Zane Grey classic. Hardboiled Detective, noir & lean & mean as they come, James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential. Picked on impulse from the local drugstore’s rack, the paperback of Wayne Allen Sallee’s blockbuster, The Holy Terror. Just meaningless words. A bleary-eyed jumble that might as well be Bantu or Babylonian for all he comprehends…

He strolls along the lakefront. Jogs. & hikes. Trying to think this nightmare out & exorcise it. To brainstorm some coherent action plan. To psyche-out the hairpin twists & turns of his unknown adversaries’ seemingly ironclad frame-up & fathom some way to clear himself of the fatal ripoff roust. To divine what in the Hell could have prompted the Zodiac’s resurfacing into the limelight after two decades-&-a-half of silence…

He falls back on a favored form of relaxation. Decides to try his hand at fishing trout. Digs down in the Vette’s trunk, hauls out his tackle box & the dusty case containing his cherished fly rod. An 8-foot fiberglass rig with a simple single-action reel his daddy gave him for his 13th birthday.

Frank carefully observes the time-honored rituals of the fly-caster. Seeks out the nearby bait & tackle shop. Lets the proprietor, a wizened old hillbilly, show him the wet-flies he considers best for local casting. Buys three hand-tied beauties. Seeks out the spot the man suggests. & tries his luck.

Hour upon hour lost in meditation of the sport. The whir of the unwinding reel. The heavy line’s soft hum playing out, the length of plastic-coated nylon filament cutting through the unseasonably warm autumn air. The faint splash & the ripples circling outward from the point of impact in the still waters of the lake, some 60 feet away from shore. The fly & leader quickly disappearing down into the depths. Pulling the line in by hand. Carefully mimicking the movements of some bottom-dwelling insect. The zen of cast & reeling in. But no pull. No need to raise his rod & set his hook.

The pleasurable, icy bitterness filling his mouth, savoring, & swallowing, swigged from chilled bottles of Bud dripping beads of perspiration, as he raids his styro cooler, dredges in the numbing clink & slosh of cubes & melt-off…

The dry, acrid tang of nicotine upon his tongue, stray strands of tobacco clinging to his lips, the tingling smoke of the Marlboros swelling his lungs. Inhale. Exhale. Stamp out the smoldering butt.

Strike a flame. Light up another. Inhale. Exhale…

Cast. & reel.

Hour upon hour.

Flies swarm & drone around him, attracted by his scent.

But he is oblivious to them, lost in the warm glow of sun upon his arms & face, the warm glow of memories of innocent & engrossing pleasures of a past long before the war & the pain & horror & the consuming compulsion of his quest… Time melts away in an ebb & flow unnoticed. The sun hits its zenith. The sun sinks toward the horizon. & no sign of his intended prey. Thought submerged into the dark subconscious depths as the ritualized reflexes learned in youth replace the conscious response to external stimuli…

Something snags the hook. Something heavy. Something inanimate.

Illogically, a cold chill stirs Frank’s flesh to a mass of goose pimples.

He reels it in. Sensing what it is before he even sees it. Judging by the feel as it drags along the bottom, catching momentarily on unseen obstructions, time & again, then pulling free.

The flaming Ozark oaks & maples & hickories seem to draw in closer all around him on the shoreward side, behind the tensed curve of his exposed back.

He whirls his neck around, staring over his shoulder, fighting off the sudden sensation of being watched…

The slender fiberglass rod bows beneath its weight as he lifts the dripping, muddy object out into the daylight.

A rusted handgun.

& he knows who threw it there even as he reaches out, his big right hand trembling like a dipso with the D.T.s grasping for a phantom bottle. Scars white as bone. Worrying the hook loose from the trigger guard. Almost dropping it.

He sets the rod & reel down on the grass. Gingerly.

He cradles the pistol in his palms, examining it. Although badly corroded, he is able to identify it—a Charter Arms Bulldog .44.

The same kind used nine years ago in the string of unsolved slayings known as “The ‘Show Me’ Good Samaritan Executions.” Just one series of “pattern crimes” he has long believed are linked to the mysterious killer & His companions. The man once known only as “The Zodiac.” The man Clarence Carter’s informant in San Francisco Records has recently supplied with a name: “George Simon Brittain.”

A man officially dead…

But Hawkes knows that He is beyond Death.

He is Death.

Cold & swift & merciless.

[ 283 ]

Sleepless. Frank paces his room. Pours yet another nightcap. Slams it down. Returns to the motel room’s writing table. With bloodshot eyes, stares at the opened pages of the Rand McNally Road Atlas & the crinkled U.S. roadmap unfolded across its burn-scarred formica surface. Picks up the rusted Bulldog .44 from where it lies atop the map. Lets the jolt of its contact with his flesh unleash the frenzied rush of images again—

A powerful, heavyset man dressed all in dark blue, with a huge, owlish face & a piercing gaze—

A small man, thin & wiry, with long, dirty-blonde hair & a straggly beard—

A young girl with long black hair, terrifying in her feral sexuality, lithe & dangerous & cruel, old so old beyond her scant span of years—

An endless highway lined with the savaged corpses of their victims.

In his investigations of serial murder & the occult, he has delved into a wide variety of writings. He knows its lingo. But he has always been an unbeliever. Save in Man’s limitless gullibility when faced with the unknown. “Psychometry” is what they call it. The ability to divine knowledge about an object, or about the person connected to it, through physical contact with the object.

Shaw sits across the table from him. Bare bone glinting in lamplight. Blackened flesh peeling away in tattered shreds. The sightless pits of his eye sockets fixing Frank in a Hellish gaze.

“Here, said she, is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)…” Shaw whispers.

Frank stares blankly at his dead war buddy, unable to place the quote, at first, but remembering it as something heard within a nightmare long ago.

“Here is the man with three staves, & here the Wheel, & here is the one-eyed merchant…” Shaw’s once-remaining eye Frank had gouged out with his survival knife back at “The Bates Motel,” now reappears, replacing itself within the hollowed socket.

“I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water…”

Hawkes connects with the quotes: broken lines from T.S. Eliot’s poetic magnum opus, “The Waste Land.”

“Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so carefull these days…”

More of Shaw’s mad gibberish, Frank thinks. Then realizes the words hold their own twisted logic.

“Ta ta.” Shaw leers. “Forget th’ goldbrick road, muthuhfuckuh… Click yo heels three times, L.T. The Highway begins & ends with Satan…”

The rusted Bulldog .44 burns like chill flame in Hawkes’ hands, seeming to sear his flesh. “GODDAMN!” he bellows, dropping the pistol. It crashes down in southwestern Kansas, ripping a hole right through the map.

He glances at his wrist. The Rolex reads: 11:52. Yeah, headin’ for th’ final showdown, gotta catch some sleep, gotta find my fine edge & hold on ’til I ride out this fuckin’ nightmare…

Frank fumbles with the twist-off cap of his prescription. Last two, he silently bemoans, might as well do ’em now as do ’em later… He shakes out the remaining pair of Noctecs. Slams them down with a couple gulps of Jack D’s Black Label straight from the bottle.

Hawkes is sitting slumped at the table, his right hand still grasping the rusted pistol, his chin pressing against his chest.

Suddenly, he lurches to his feet, & stumbles toward the door. Some sound outside. Half-heard in half-sleep. “Sleep with one eye open when you slumber…” Goddamn Shaw again, recitin’ Dylan, this time the theme from the soundtrack of Peckinpah’s hip & savage western, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid…but Shaw couldn’t have seen that one, he was long-buried by the time it came along…but I’ve seen it, yeah, a coupla times… Frank tripping over his own feet, lurching into the sofa, the room spinning as if he stands in the eye of the cyclone, its funnel whirling whirling around him, “…Every little sound just might be thunder… Thunder from the barrel of his gun…” & he pitches face-forward onto the motel room floor, unconscious, at last…

The Rolex says: 12:06. But he is beyond caring, let alone perceiving, lost in the timeless realm of dreams & nightmare…

[ 284 ]

It’s a little after 8 a.m., when Frank rouses himself, crawls to his feet, & finishes the interrupted trip to the motel room door. & opens it. There’s a folded note thumb-tacked to the outer surface of the door. He rips it loose, & steps back inside to examine it.

Dear hawkes, This is from your SECRET PAL

MANO A MANO, COMPRENDE?

THE FIRST DAY OF SCORPIO

THE ELEMENT OF WATER

A DESERTED FARM (NOT DOROTHY’S)

THE DRY RIVERBEDS SHALL RUN WITH BLOOD

THE WILD RIVER & ITS NORTH FORK

NOT QUITE “BADLANDS,” BUT THIS IS NOT 1959, EITHER,

BUT, THEN,

“THE EXORCIST” WAS THE BEST SATIRICAL COMEDY THAT I HAVE EVER SEEN.

Signed, yours truly:

The dead whisper through the walls, again, clawing & scraping from within…

Hawkes tosses his belongings into the Vette, leaves the key with the clerk, & hits the Highway to Hell, tires smoking & gravel churning, fishtailing, as he tromps the gas…

[ 285 ]

He catches I-65 North.

Routes due west down U.S. 70.

Hawkes is a man with a mission. He draws out his .44 Magnum, checks the chamber as he grasps the wheel one-handed, all six rounds chambered, the cylinder spins smooth as silk.

But, goddamn, how he misses his sidekick, Elijah, whose role as sole companion has been a destiny of riding the endless blacktop ribbon to oblivion. Only a goddamn dog, many folks would say. But to Frank, that redbone hound was a faithful friend who shared this nightmare quest for Vengeance, swift & sudden as Kansas lightning, rolling onward together towards Redemption or Apocalypse, seeking to unmask the ever-shifting face of the one he has named “The Beast.” Together, sharing the blur of roads & towns & cities without ending, a blur of face- upon-face-upon-face—some grave-cold, already ravaged, some etched with pain by the proximity of the Angel of Abominations, by the Annihilating Angel’s passing, most but blank pieces in a far greater puzzle…

Elijah. In Hawkes’ personal mythology, a figure drawn from biblical legend & transformed & infused with his own secret significance. Prophet of yahweh, lord transcendent, who, at Judgment, shall accept the purified few into his fold. The prophet appearing in the reign of King Ahab, whose Phoenician wife, Queen Jezebel, promoted the Cult of Baal—a cult of human blood sacrifice, of sexual excess & license, of sensual frenzy & ecstasy. He who proclaimed the drought. He who vanquished the 450 priests of Baal, shaming their impotence at sympathetic magick, thrice pouring water on the sacrificial altar, then calling down the Fires of Heaven that consumed the two slaughtered bulls. He who caused the drought to cease. Who, incensed by the conspiracy of Jezebel & Ahab, their false accusations of blasphemy & unjust decree of death by stoning for the pious vintner, Naboth of Jezreel, threw his curse upon first the Wicked King: “In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick your own blood…” & then upon the Evil Queen: “The dogs shall eat the flesh of Jezebel within the bounds of Jezreel…” Who, when his Earthly mission was completed, “went up by a whirlwind into heaven…”

Elijah. Silent & observing. Trusting. Thrusting his nose out the T-top or through the passenger-side window. Letting his ears flap in the slipstream breeze.

But, now, Hawkes’ sole companion lies far away, in a veterinary hospital, critically wounded, crippled by his enemies…

& the Endless Highway is a lonely, outlaw road to Vengeance or Damnation…

He passes through K-City.

Passes through Topeka.

& all the bigtime burgs between.

It is another Indian Summer day, oppressively hot & humid.

The endless highway stretches out before him, beneath the big sky that boils with storm clouds.

As far as the eye can see, wheat stalks or dry brown grass ripple in the wind, whispering with the voices of the dead, a Sea of Desolation rolling away in waterless breakers that promise nothing save further desiccation to slake the Drowned Man’s drunken thirst in the savage brine of tears & blood…

Now, the phantom rides beside him, mumbling a nonstop monologue of madness unspilling like the looped coils of his intestines, the dead Army Ranger’s ravaged skull once more one-eyed & charred & blistered, seeping blood & serum, Shaw giggling through lipless jaws & shattered teeth, flies swarming thick upon his rotted flesh, buzzing, buzzing as they feast & burrow in to lay their hordes of maggot eggs.

The Endless Highway is a world unto itself, alien & isolated, the dusty tarmac stretching out to a vanishing point lost somewhere beyond infinity.

The strange spires of Castle Rock pass by to the south.

& the air throbs yellowish-grey beneath the roiling cumulonimbus clouds. Cyclone weather.

A killer thunderstorm lashes the pavement in a roaring downpour as he cuts due south down 83, past the Chalk Pyramids & the sphinx-like Monument Rocks, & a dark funnel cloud dips groundward in the distant west, out along the horizon, & Hawkes flashes this is his vision conjured to reality, the product of his eerie premonition, blue jags of lightning rip-sizzle across the jaundiced-yellow sky, & Shaw whispers, “Surely some revelation is at hand; Turning & turning in the widening gyre, The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, & everywhere, The ceremony of innocence is drowned…” words familiar to Hawkes, from “The Second Coming,” by William Butler Yeats, initiated with the magickal name, “Daemon est Deus Inversus” (“the Devil is the reverse side of God”), fellow member, with Aleister Crowley (the self-styled Great Beast 666), of the occult society, the Order of the Golden Dawn…

The air is choked with the swirling swarms of gnats & larger flies, drawn by the reek of Shaw’s festering wounds.

& Frank knows that, this time, he shall at last face The Beast…

Man to man.

The Final Showdown.

But Shaw just throws back his head & laughs a mirthless gravestone laugh & drums his bare-boned fingertips upon the dashboard, ripping off his right ring finger, he smears a circled “A” onto the windshield in the dripping blood of his self-inflicted mutilation.

[ 286 ]

Frayed nerves & whiteline fever.

Shaw still whispering. Still humming. Still drumming those infernal fingers. The air still throbbing yellow-grey.

Frank passes the I-160 turnoff, road signs noting WEST to ULYSSES & JOHNSON & the Colorado border.

At the I-56 junction, he takes the exit ramp & heads on for Satanta, now only six miles ahead.

The sky still boiling with the black storm clouds like surf crashing on Perdition’s shore. A second funnel cloud stabs downward, its tip raking across the plain, off to the southwest, the monstrous, kickass, Kansas twister moving true to form, traveling northeast as if drawn by some malignant, megalithic magnet toward his very goal…

He cruises through the town, slow & easy, scanning for any sign of his demonic nemesis, half expecting to see some stock Hollywood prop—a de-consecrated church, perhaps, with the Sigil of Baphomet set in stained glass high up in its looming steeple.

Nothing so outré…

The town, just another quaint reminder of a bygone age of innocence of lost & agrarian Americana, is there & gone before Hawkes has time to register more than these fragmentary impressions. The streets are empty. The windows boarded before the apocalyptic wrath of the coming cyclone.

He travels on, southwest, drawing ever nearer the dark funnel of the twister, seeking a side road that will take him to where the “Wild River meets its fork.”

It is nearly 5 p.m. by the time Frank locates the apparently deserted farmhouse & outbuildings. He sees no sign of cars. No sign of life. He fears that all of this has been only some cruel hoax.

But they knew where to find him.

It all connects, at last.

He kneels, reaching up under the Vette’s underbelly, groping with his hand until he finds the small transmitter box.

He tosses it to the patch of bare earth of the rutted dirt road. Stamping it to twisted ruin beneath his bootheel, grinding the remnants into the parched & barren soil.

The sea of straw-dry grass seethes in the wind, sloping slightly uphill, stretching away to the dark horizon, chaff & litter swirling all around, as the huge black vortex bears down upon the frail wood structures, dominating everything before it, riveting the eye with the fury of its Hellish majesty…

A slight draw separates Frank from the farmhouse.

He unholsters the .44 Magnum, its long, vicious barrel glinting in the weird yellowish-grey light.

He can see why his enemy selected this sight for the Final Showdown. There is nowhere to hide for the hunter. No way to approach without his quarry spotting him.

He can feel the crosshairs of the Zodiac scoping him, waiting for the moment He selects, squeezing that trigger so fucking slowly, selecting the exact moment, savoring the eternity of waiting… & each thundering heartbeat reminding His quarry, Hawkes, that: “I. LIKE. KILLING. PEOPLE. BECAUSE. IT. IS. SO. MUCH. FUN. IT. IS. MORE. FUN. THAN. KILLING. WILD. GAME. IN. THE. FOREST. BECAUSE. MAN. IS. THE. MOST. DANGEROUS. ANIMAL. OF. ALL. TO. KILL…”

He can drive in. Or he can walk.

That goddamn H&K G11 would’ve made one Hell of an equalizer. Just this Dirty Harry six-pack.

“FUCK THIS WHININ’ OVER SPILT MILK SHIT!” He snarls, pops open his trunk, &, much as it galls his sense of pride, drags out his Kevlar Second Chance wrapped in a faded army blanket, walks around to the relative privacy of the “blind side” of the Vette, strips off his jacket & shirt, & dons the flak vest over his undershirt. He has to work around the holster. Not easy. But the reassuring fit of the hand-tooled leather is like some mystic talisman he cannot bear to remove. Not this close to where The Beast lurks…

His shirt whips around him, as he rebuttons it, flapping in this Hellborn wind. He unbuckles his pants, tucks in his shirttails, & zips up, before tugging his jacket back across the broad expanse of his shoulders.

Frank’s eyes are hidden behind the mirrored mask of his gold-rimmed aviator’s glasses.

His grey-streaked hair billows in the gusts of wind.

A leg-shot can still cripple me, he thinks, but I’ll crawl ’til I see that bastard on His way to Hell… only a fucking headshot can take me out, now…

Hawkes squares his massive shoulders, sucks in his gut, & strides toward the farmhouse, gun hand thrust forward, the Magnum gripped in his right hand, tilted slightly skyward, ready to assume the combat stance on split-second notice, aim & fire.

He wades through the raging sea of dead-brown grass. Scrambles down the slope of the draw. & up the other side.

He’s halfway there.

Still no fire.

That goddamn Kansas twister spinning closer ever closer.

He skirts the eastern perimeter of the weathered & obviously long-abandoned house, its broken windows dark & ominous, staring down at him from the second story, leveling malignantly from the ground floor.

An explosion rips the death-still air, booming, echoing across the dull rumble of the prairie’s trembling earth.

Frank drops into a combat stance.

Realizes it is only the crash of thunder that he hears. Jagged bolts of blue-white lightning sizzle across the black & boiling sky.

Now, on the far side of the house, he can see a scarecrow, arms outstretched, limned against the lightning-illuminated clouds.

He sidles farther past the corner of the house.

Rain suddenly lashes downward in icy sheets, swirling like wet shrouds, cutting Frank’s line of vision to only a yard or so.

Just as suddenly, it ceases.

Another scarecrow.

& another.

& another…

The twister is so near, now, there is a deafening roar a vibration of both air & earth like a freight train racing toward you through a tunnel with your ear held down along the tracks.

He eases closer.

They are circled there, on the west side of the house… ten… eleven… twelve scarecrows form the circle… another, the largest, at their center…

Typical of cyclones’ trickster nature, the ground beneath Frank’s feet is running with rivulets of water, turning muddy, as the cracked, dusty soil sucks up the moisture, while the circle of scarecrows still stands upon dry ground.

Golfball-sized chunks of hail explode from the dark sky, clattering all around, bouncing & ricocheting like rock salt blasted from some gargantuan scattergun. Frank drops to a squat, ducking his face, shielding his head with his arms.

The cloudburst of hail lasts only a few moments, stopping as unexpectedly as it started.

The monstrous funnel moves past, just to the west, not more than two- or three-hundred yards away, ripping up fence posts & sod & dry-parched soil as it tears a swath across the open countryside.

The wind stirs again, whipping the dust & chaff in eddies, nearly blinding him in its renewed fury.

He closes the distance.

Gooseflesh rising. Bad vibes pouring over him like icy rain.

He takes the house first. Rushes the back door. Kicks the weathered wood to splinters. Searches room to darkened room in a flurry of commando shadowstrikes & feints, .44 swinging in brisk, studied arcs, taking it by the book, classic search-&-destroy tactics second nature to the ex-Ranger, focusing on every flicker of the lightning, every creak & whisper of shifting wood…

Nothing.

Nothing but a few mice, nailed to the walls, squealing with tiny, feeble voices, still squirming in their death throes…

Frank exits the same way he came in.

His hair bristles. The goose pimples ripple across his sweat-soaked flesh. His shirt clings wetly to him with every movement.

He knows before he sees, what Evil has been worked here.

He feels as though the very Pit of Hell has opened at his feet…

He wants to run.

Without looking.

But he can’t.

He has opened the yawning Gates of Hell, & he must peer through to the other side…

Almost hoping he takes a headshot before he witnesses firsthand what horrors the inhuman mind of George Simon Brittain has devised.

Flies swarm & buzz in a demonic symphony.

Step. By step. He forces himself to walk. Closer. Until there can be no mistaking—

Lightning flashes, throwing fitful light across this scene straight out of Hell—

Twelve little girls, stripped naked, savaged, skin flayed to expose bare flesh beneath, nailed to wooden crossbeams, crucified, throats slit, tongues tugged through leering wounds…

Colombian neckties…no one who has ever seen this abomination can ever forget the silent, shrieking terror it invokes…

The Great Night opens… & Hawkes is sucked into its dark & secret, mad & mindless heart…

Hawkes steps closer.

There is a horrible gurgling & groaning sound.

A booming roar.

Another strike of lightning sears the sky.

The figure at the center is a Missouri State Trooper, crucified, like his companions, but still clad in shirt & tie…naked from the waist down, save his socks & boots…his Smokie hat resting at his feet, beneath the juncture of his crossed ankles where the heavy, rusted nail is hammered, pinning him to the wooden beam in frozen torment… All ten fingers have been hacked off. They lie beside his hat. His penis, too, has been severed from his body…

Frank needs no one to tell him how the trooper has been gagged…

&, then, there is the final abomination.

The skinned carcasses of the thirteen slain german shepherds. The dead wear them like the hooded cloaks of shamans.

Bared fangs leering above their heads, trailing like robes across their shoulders & down their backs…

Hawkes screams. But his throat allows no sound to escape.

He kneels on the damp & dark-stained earth, & lets himself weep, pouring out his anguish, sobbing, until he believes he tears a stream of blood. He dips his fingers in this bizarre stigmata, watching it drip from his blood-drenched hands.

A sudden ray of sunlight pierces through a rift in the raging sea of storm clouds above, illuminating a weather-bleached plywood sheet lying face-up on the trampled grass inside the Hellish circle, & the blood-scrawled message reads:

SFPD - 0 ZODIAC - 666

My VEnGEANcE NEEDs BLOOD

The reek of blood fills his nostrils with its coppery stench. Hawkes is surrounded by the chainsaw-droning of the swarming, hungry, countless multitude of flies, his brain thundering with their ceaseless buzz & the laughter of his dead war buddies… & The Beast …

Laughing. & gurgling. Infernal, mindless babbling…

He swings.

Combat stance.

Firing on reflex.

Firing again, & again, even as he moves.

He hears bullets strike flesh.

The groaning ceases.

But the laughter rings even louder, peals of thunder that shake the earth beneath his feet & make the air quiver like bare-flayed flesh…

He stares at the crucified State Trooper.

Dead.

Killed by his own hand.

Shot pointblank twice in the head.

His shirt splattered with blood where the third bullet took out his left lung & his heart.

“GEORGE FUCKING SIMON GODDAMN BRITTAIN, YOU MOTHERFUCKING COCKSUCKER, ZODIAC, WHERE IN THE HELL ARE YOU?” He screams.

But there are only the soft wailing of the wind & the whisperings of the endless sea of grass in answer…

Hawkes stands alone on this plain of carnage, blinded by his tears, circled by the dead, the soulless mirrors of his aviators’ shades reflecting the storm clouds & the jagged bolts of bluish lightning.

[ 287 ]

“Warren. Franklin. Hawkes—”

An unseen hand catches his right wrist in a crippling hold, fingertips digging into pressure points until his balled fist goes limp, & the .44 Mag drops from his deadened fingers.

Suddenly he smells the reek of Evil smoke.

Yet another hand clenches Hawkes’ hair in a steel-hard grip, & wheels him toward the sound of this measured monotone address.

& he stares through the blur of tears—

Immediately in front of him stands a stocky man dressed in a blue serge suit. A dark madura cigar is clenched between His teeth. He inhales & exhales, blowing out another pungent puff of bluish smoke to pollute the ozone-tang of lightning-charged Plains’ air…

He extends His leather-gloved right hand in mocking greeting.

Hawkes’ every hair bristles as if hit by a jolt of current, his pores puckering to chill gooseflesh. The piercing gaze of those owlish eyes fix his, exerting His will against Hawkes’, striving to dominate him, as if locked in a bout of mental arm wrestling…

This is The Beast.

His left hand holds His black attaché case.

His right withdraws from its pose of welcome, & He reaches behind His back, & slips His MAC 10 from the rear waistband of His trousers, & levels its muzzle at Hawkes’ heart,

“At. Last. We. Meet. Mano. A. Mano…” He chuckles. & His chuckle swells to a booming laugh like icy breakers lashing stone…

“Well. I. Did. Bring. A. Select. Few. Friends—”

Strung out in a ragged arc between the Zodiac & the outlying barn stand four of His companions—two men, a woman & a girl. He recognizes all but one…

& the recognition stuns him to abject silence.

“May. I. Introduce. My. Esteemed. Associate—” The Medic of Mutilations gestures to the emaciated man with the cobalt mirrorshades & black leather jacket. “—Professor Punk.”

“My. Traveling. Companions.” Again He gestures. “Snuff. &. His. Young. Daughter. Miss. Juliette…”

They are the pair seen in his momentary flash of psychometric revelation. & the memory hits him with a grandslam dose of dèjá vu.

“I. Believe. You. Are. Familiar.” He grins. “Very. Familiar.” Oh, how He grins. “In. The. Carnal. Sense…” He bows, His gestures exaggerated & grandiose— “With. Our. Ill-named… Miss. Cherry…”

She struts toward Hawkes, her sinuous hips swaying, firm breasts jiggling beneath a faux-snakeskin jumpsuit, cut to accentuate her muscular-yet-so-female assets. She lifts the Galil. Cradles it in her arms.

“No such thing as safe sex with me, Frankie Baby— I’m one dangerous lady, all the way…” She purrs. “Remember those condoms I made sure you used…?” She pauses, letting her words sink in to Hawkes’ buzzing brain. “Wellllll, hate to have’ta tell y’ now, but they were treated, with a topical cream, a custom blend a la Prof. Punk—some of Lucy Nation’s special libido-stimulator/Stayhard drug, an exclusive import for Erebos from the ‘black clinics’ of Hong Kong, & just a trace of a powerful hypnotic, & ditto for a dash of LSD…

“I hear you’ve been real busy, since I saw you, huh, Big Man…” The redhead taunts. “I’d offer t’ fix you up with some hot hardcore angelpix; I’ve got all the connections, y’ know…but I guess you’re into the cop’n’kiddie-snuff bit, now…?

“Enough smalltalk bullshit—

“Warren Franklin Hawkes, I’m a licensed P.I., & I’m making a citizen’s arrest… Murder One, Big Man, Multiple Murder…”

“Still confused, Mr. Hawkes?” George Brittain asks. “You see, MY friend, The Prof, informs Me Miss Cherry is one of Erebos’. Most Valuable. Players. One of Lucy Nation’s top trackers. & her. Prime. Female. Undercover. Operative.”

He draws deeply on the Te-Amo, ’til the tip glows like a Hellcoal in the gathering darkness. Then lets out a great puff of the vile, stinking smoke…

“Nice to know. You have been. Had. By. An. Expert…eh?

“Sorry. I. Shall. Not. Be. Able. To. Stay. Around. For. The. Trial… But. We. Have. Places. To. Go. &. People. To. Do…

“Oh. So. Many. Many. Of. Them…” & He laughs, how He laughs, savoring His victory over the meddling P.I., & with the sheer joy, in anticipation of The Hunt ahead… “Ah. Yes. Indeed. I like killing people. Because it is so much fun… Because man. Is. The most dangerous game of all to kill…”

Cherry raises the Galil, aiming it at Hawkes’ midriff & motions to the bald-shaved brute with the mascara & purple eyeshadow who holds Hawkes immobile. “BellaDonald, put the cuffs on him— it’s your turn this time, Big Man…”

“Hail Satan, Lord of the South!” Snuff chants.

“Hail Lucifer, Lord of the East!” Julie continues the proscribed litany.

“Hail Belial, Lord of the North!” BellaDonald cries out, as he slams the cold steel of the manacles shut around Hawkes’ wrists.

“Hail Leviathan, Lord of the West!” Prof adds.

“Hail. Me! Hail The Pale Horse Death! Hail The Great Beast 666—The Lord of Hell! The Lord of Paradi(c)e!” His voice no longer a controlled monotone but a howl of lustmord…

& Snuff shouts, “MAN HAS WILLED MAN!”

“NO BELIEF IS VALID—YET EVERY BELIEF IS VALID!” Prof. Punk answers.

BellaDonald screams, “NOTHING IS TRUE! EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED!”

& the Count Zaroff knife slithers from its strange, wooden scabbard, & He brandishes the Knife of Spring-Heeled Jack, & blue lightning twitches across its upraised blade, & The Beast who once was the man George Simon Brittain, & who has been The Zodiac/The Green River Killer/The Maldoror lets His laughter roar & merge with the echoing thunder, like The Bell of Doom tolling…

“MY DESIRES SHALL BECOME FLESH, MY DREAMS REALITY & NO FEAR SHALL ALTER IT!”

“Hystera!

“Ialbadaoth!

“Baphomet!

“Thanateros!

“In nomine Dei nostri Satanas Luciferi excelsi!

“The Day of Mankind has ended, The Time of Mancruel is at hand… AVE SATANAS! ALL HAIL BLUE DEVIL! & BID WELCOME THE APOCALYPSE—

“In the name of Satan, the Ruler of the earth, the King of the world, I command the forces of Darkness to bestow their Infernal power upon Me!

“Open wide the gates of Hell & come forth from the abyss to greet Me as your brother & friend!

“By all the Gods of the Pit, I command that these things of which I speak shall come to pass!

“Come forth & answer to your names by manifesting My desires!

“Aamon—

“Abaddon—

“Abigar—

“Adramelech—

“Agaliarept—

“Agares—

“Ahaw-K’in—

“Ah Itz—

“Ah Puch—

“Ahriman—

“Ak Ek’—

“Alastor—

“Amemon—

“Anath—

“Apanecatl—

“Apollyon—

“Aries—

“Asherah—

“Asmodeus—

“Astoreth—

“Ayperos—

“Azathoth—

“Azazel—

“Azrael—

“Baal Berith—

“Baal Gad—

“Baalim—

“Baalot—

“Baal Phegor—

“Baal Shamen—

“Baal Zabul—

“Baal Zebub...”

The endless sea of dead brown grass ripples, as if stirred by some monstrous, unseen hand…

& as if in answer, swirling, glistening blue-black stormclouds boil & break like Perdition’s surf across the vast expanse of Kansas prairie, & we hear an Evil chorus, the droning whisper & buzzing of what seems a million times a million flies, drunken with the heady reek & primal, ocean-taste of blood…

— | — | —

T. Winter-Damon has authored over one thousand written works—fiction, poetry, biographies, bibliographies, interviews, critical essays, rants, & other nonfiction, appearing in over 300 magazines, books & anthologies in 13 countries. Also illustrator for numerous books & magazines. Served as editor, copy editor, copywriter, creative writing instructor, freelance (literary nonfiction) contractor, & info-merc… Work selected for anthologies including The Year’s Best Horror Stories XVI, XVIII, XIX, XX & XXI (DAW) , The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories #15 (DAW), The Year’s Best Fantastic Fiction II, Semiotext (e) SF anthology, Darkside: Horror for the Next Millenium, Bizarre Sex & Other Crimes of Passion (Masquerade), No Other Tribute (Masquerade), Alien Pregnant by Elvis, Sinistre: An Anthology of Rituals, Masques IV, Touch Wood: Narrow Houses Volume 2, Xanadu 2, Excalibur, Heirs of Cthulhu, Zothique: New Tales of the Last Continent, Skoob Esoterica Anthology #1 “Occult thought, lore & discovery” (Britain; included works by Kenneth Grant & Aleister Crowley), The Darker Side of Eternity, First Cuts (Britain) & New Original Visions Anthology (NOVA-Britain), among numerous others. Poetry collections: Dedicated to Darkness (Night Visions), l’heure d’hallucinations (Talisman), Tuyau # 70 (France). Nonfiction book: the highly controversial Rex Miller: The Complete Revelations (TAL). Co-author with Randy Chandler of 2 fiction collections: The Forbidden Gospels of Man-Cruel, Volumes I & II (forthcoming from Jasmine Sailing Books). Co-author of authorized screenplay, with Edward Lee, of Rex Miller’s cult classic hard-boiled crime novel, SLOB. Nominee for: Stoker Award for Short Story, 1988, 1995, 1996, 1999; World Fantasy Award, 1991, 1994 (book illustrator for Best Anthology finalist); Nebula Award, 1995; Pushcart Prize, 1994; SFPA’s Rhysling Award, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1994, 1995; SPWAO Poet of the Year, 1987, 1988, 1989; Readercon Award, 1993.

T. WInter-Damon passed away in 2010.

— | — | —

Randy Chandler is a former book reviewer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, & editor of Bone Chilling Tales & Lil’ Demon Review. Chandler is a Vietnam vet. Inspiration for his deranged & dangerous fictions comes from his having lived & worked in a funeral home, & from his many years spent working in a mental institution, these disturbing experiences recontextualized through reality-filters hardwired into the mind-altering works of William S. Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon & Jack Kerouac… Chandler’s writings have appeared in Darkside: Horror for the Next Millennium, Back Brain Recluse, Bizarre Bazaar, the Noctulpa 4 anthology, Grue, E.O.T.U, Alpha Gallery, & Festering Brainsore, to name but a few. Co-author with t. Winter-Damon of 2 collections: The Forbidden Gospels of Man-Cruel, Volumes I & II (forthcoming from Jasmine Sailing Books).