"I'm going to bed," I said, practically crawling in through the kitchen door.
"Hey, we have work to do," groaned Coop. "You gotta muck out the horses."
I didn't even have the strength to reply. Dragging myself down the hall, I made my way to the mattress that was my bed. In the moment, I couldn't even face being in his bed that smelled as sour and spermyas him. I was pretty sure his mattress was pregnant.
"Aw, you're such a baby," he called after me. "I remember when I had my first big boy drink."
"Shut the hell up."
I slammed my door like a petulant teenager and the bang burst through my head. Flopping onto my bed, I tried to stifle the urge to vomit again. As I tried to sleep, I thought about how Coop was probably trying to kill me with that fucking moonshine. No ordinary man could consume such poison and live to tell the tale.
"Motherfucker," I grumbled into the mattress as my eyelids grew heavy.
Falling into a deep and velvety sleep, I was encapsulated by strange, abstract images of every person I'd ever known. But they were all dead. Etta was there, not as she was in life but how she was when I saw her last, rotten and in that box of ice. Bosworth was with her too and he was falling apart, his flesh falling from his bones like that of his corpse bride. Their bodies merged into one another as they kissed then floated away. Now I was standing at the pool with Etta's mother. She was floating in the swimming pool with a serene smile on her face as she sipped a mojito. I looked up at the house expecting to see Bosworth up in his bedroom window but the house wasn't his, and we weren't in Mexico anymore.
Now I was back in Normont and it was freezing. The pool was frozen over and covered in dead leaves and snowflakes. The sky was gray and dead, the grass on the ground was black. The buildings were dark and derelict and the air smiled like fried food and cigarettes. In front of me Bosworth's luxurious mansion blurred and morphed into something much smaller and darker until I was now staring at the Water's House with its red bricks blackened from the exhaust fumes of the heavy, city traffic. There were a few girls smoking outside, beckoning for me to come over but I knew I couldn't because I knew what they wanted. One of them, a lithe blonde with black eyeliner pointed toward the cellar door and pouted. I knew what was down there.
"No!" I shouted.
"Shhh..." came a reply.
There were soft hands tickling the back of my neck and the scent of vanilla. The hands moved around my waist and pulled me closer to the body waiting behind me. Turning my head, I saw Miranda in her nurse's uniform looking that perfect way she did on the first day I met her. I melted into her arms and she kissed me with those pretty heart shaped lips that tasted like caramel. She groaned as she pressed her body into mine. I had missed her so much, had been secretly waiting for the softness of her touch.
The Water's House disappeared. Everything vanished. We weren't in Normont anymore. We were nowhere at all. Just floating, just being, just existing somewhere above the clouds. She pushed me back until I felt like I was falling. I was sure I would die until I felt something pressing into my backbone and I felt the safety of a comfortable bed. We were in her apartment. There were the distant sounds of a television in the next room playing kids' cartoons.
"Shh... It's okay," she said as she lay her head on my chest.
Her nurse's uniform smelled of carbolic soap and I breathed it in. It was the first clean thing I had smelled in days, maybe even weeks.
"Relax," she said. "I'll take care of you."
There was the sound of my zipper and the feel of her long fingernails hooking into the sides of my jeans as she pulled them down over my hips. Her silky lips caressed my stomach, my hip bones, the impossibly ticklish area of my inner thigh. I squirmed beneath her and we both laughed.
"Stay still."
"I can't."
"You must."
She poked out her tongue and licked me. With her teeth she pulled off my boxer shorts until my erection was pointing toward her face.
"I've missed this," she said, taking it in her hand. "I've missed you."
"I've missed you so..."
Before I could finish my sentence she was clamping her mouth to my balls and sucking hard.
"No, no, no!" I screamed. "I won't last if you-"
She pulled away and kissed me hard.
"I wanna feel you inside me," she purred, pulling up her cute little nurse's dress until I could see the gusset of her pantyhose. I tore a hole in it to reveal her panties, lacy and red and barely there at all. Pulling them to the side, I saw the satin soft flesh of her pussy and stroked a finger down over her soaking lips. She giggled and bit her finger then began to lower herself down and down until I was being swallowed up by her intense, hot wetness and screaming. We were both screaming. Crying out so loud I was terrified that God himself would hear us. And I was overflowing with pleasure, being invaded by pure euphoria.
My dick was so hard it hurt and she was so wet and slippery and opening herself up to me more and more until I was gripping her hips and forcing myself to go up further and further until I was reaching places so far inside her body I never knew were possible.
"Harder," she cried as she bounced.
But no matter how much I drove myself up into her it wasn't enough and she was growing even wetter until there were wild torrents of her juice cascading down onto my stomach and we were both slipping. Sliding against each other as we struggled to grip onto one another. Then we were struggling to keep afloat. The bed was no longer there, but a vast see of her pleasure was taking us away.
"Don't let us drown," I heard her say but her voice was drifting far, far away from me as her body was pulled from mine and now there was nothing but sea beneath me. I was drifting, afloat and lost with the sky above me the color of onyx and the sea wind as cold as ice.
"Where are you going?" I called out as I grappled for her but I couldn't see her anymore. She was gone.
"Shhh..." I heard a voice.
My eyes opened as though they'd been sparked awake by a bolt of electricity. I was stuck to the mattress with sweat and looking up at a single cockroach on the ceiling. The air smelled like animals and greasy, leftover eggs and hot sauce. There was a wet sound down below and with all my strength, I lifted my head and looked down between my legs. A slurping sound came from a bobbing head. Coop was sucking my dick like he was sucking for his life.
"Hey, fucker, get off."
I slapped him around the head and he fell away laughing.
"I'm sorry. I couldn't just stand there and watch you sleep without getting on top of that."
"You shouldn't have even been watching me sleep. Fucking creep."
"Aw, don't be like that."
I sat up, dripping with sweat and still shivering. The sun was low in the sky now and the clouds were shining with a peculiar shade of crimson mixed with purple.
"Are you mad at me?" asked Coop.
He perched on the edge of the bed like a sad old dog who had been turned away by its master.
"Kinda."
"Aw. What have I done?"
"Just... Just... I dunno. Just give me some time alone."
He pouted and looked up at me with puppy dog eyes, an affected look that probably looked adorable on a little girl or, you know, an actual puppy but looked positively creepy on a an old man.
"Don't look at me like that.”
"Why?"
"You look cursed."
He ignored all my wishes to be left alone and jumped up on the bed beside me. Lying down next to me whether I wanted him to or not, he leaned on his elbow and cradled his head in his hand.
"What were you dreaming about?" he asked, tracing his hand down the front of my chest.
My nipples became stiff and aroused and he moved his fingertips over the bumpy, pink skin.
"I wasn't dreaming about anything," I lied.
"Now you're not very good at fibbing, are you?"
I slapped his hand away from my nipple and offended, he decided another tactic, runnin
g his fingers around my belly button until gooseflesh formed across my abdomen.
"You were saying the name Miranda a lot."
Embarrassed, I cringed and turned away.
"Oooh, a touchy subject?" he asked.
"No."
"I think you mean yes."
"I mean fucking no. Now leave it, alright?"
Batting his hand away from me again, I sat up and dragged myself to the open window where a hint of cool air was drifting into the room.
"Don't tell me it's your mother," he laughed.
There was no need to reply. He just wanted to pry, to wind me up so he could hear another dirty story. Well he wasn't getting one. Not this time.
"Is Miranda who brought you down here, who got you into this mess?"
"I said just leave it."
"Ooooh...." he sang, mocking me.
I was always told to respect my elders and I was well aware the old man was taking good care of me but that didn't stop the overriding thought in my head that I wanted to punch him square in the jaw to stop him talking.
"So, she's not your mother and she didn't get you in trouble...." he continued. "Hmmm.... I wonder who she could be."
Then it struck him and he snapped his fingers as the lightbulb went off above his head.
"Got it!" he said. "She was the one that got away."
She was more than just the one that got away. She was the one that should never have been. I was never good enough to be in her presence let alone inside her. I hoped to God that she had forgotten I ever existed. But still, I wondered if she ever dreamed about me. Maybe she was lying in bed now wondering where I went as I drifted off on a sea of her pleasure. It was an alluring thought. Tears pricked my eye. I missed her.
"Why did I leave?" I said to the ceiling.
Coop, annoyed, leaned over my face and said, "Because you were supposed to meet me. Because you were supposed to be my boy. You walked into my path like a black cat. Like a good luck charm. like an angel. You're my little black kitty. My little dark angel."
"Quit your jabbering!" I yelled and pushed him away.
Now the romance of this new love of a man and the desert had worn thin and I was filled with nothing but a deep sense of regret and self-loathing. How had I been so stupid? If only I had stayed in her apartment, I would still have her, still have the chance to care for her kids. We could have had a family, a chance at a proper future. But no. Here I was in this shack that smelled like chicken shit where all I'd eaten was hot sauce, eggs and dick. I wanted to run away, but I knew that was impossible.
Coop was still trying to grab at me as I made my way to the door.
"Will you just let me breathe!" I shouted. "Seriously. Just give me five minutes alone."
"Where are you going?"
"Outside."
"Where outside?"
"Just outside!"
Stomping through the house, I exited through the kitchen, stepped over the chickens and stormed past the horses. It was dark now and at last, the heat had vanished.
Chapter Six
Lincoln
The red door looked as though it should have been the entrance to someone's abandoned utility room or something even less extravagant. I imagined Marcel was going to open it to reveal a mop and bucket and maybe some old junk if I was lucky. Then I noticed the amount of locks. Six in total, each needing to be opened by a separate homemade key that was larger than Marcel's hand. He kept a bunch of them in his inside pocket and peeled them away from the ring one by one with a great deal of ceremony.
"Did you make those?" I asked.
They were like no keys I'd ever seen before. They were more like ancient artefacts, long and spindly as though they should open the gateway to the underworld. I soon discovered they did.
"I make magick," he said as he twisted the last key in the door.
He cracked it open just an inch but I was hit in the face by the smell of herbs, incense, marijuana and something else, something coppery. Blood? I thought. It was an unmistakable scent. Especially to someone who had worked in a hospital or to be more specific, someone who had killed more people than he'd had hot dinners.
"What is this place?" I asked.
There was a fear inside me. It was a new sensation. Over the last few months I had grown to think that I was immune to all feelings, especially fear but this new wave of anxiety washing over me was exhilarating. It was like being a kid and waiting to go on a rollercoaster. It was like being a teenager and sneaking into an R rated movie. It was like killing for the first time.
"You will find out," said Marcel.
The cat jumped to the floor and sauntered inside as though he was entering his home.
"Come."
Marcel’s salami-like fingers were wrapped around mine once again and he was leading me inside. It was dark and cold. I couldn't see a thing but I reveled in the darkness. Down in San Lucrezia, the brightness of the sun invaded everything until you felt as though you could go blind from the sunshine. Now, I found that I could relax my eyes. But my nose was on fire.
"Bear with me a moment," said Marcel through the darkness.
He let go of my hand and I stood still, too scared to move in case I felt something. On the floor, I could hear the pap pappap of the cat's paws and the tap taptap of Marcel's shoes. There was a pop and the noise of something sparking. Through the blackness I could make out a small amber glow as he lit a match. The small flame became two as he set a candle alight, then another and another until there were now six flames. He blew out the candle and let the scorched wood drop to the ground.
Now I could just about make out the faint outline of feet behind the candles and saw they were on an altar. The feet were crudely painted porcelain with chipped toes that gave way to the bottom of a robe. I didn't need to look up to know it was the figure of the Virgin Mary.
"Seriously? You brought me to a church," I said, disappointed. "A motherfucking church. Do I look like someone who prays?"
"This ain't no church," came the blunt reply from Marcel who was in the shadows, somewhere in the corner of the room.
There was another spark. More candles were lit. More footsteps. More paws dancing on cold concrete. Now the room was illuminated and the incense was burning.
"Not a church," he said and held up a large black pillar candle that was as long as his arm.
He lifted it above his head to shine light on the Virgin Mary.
"No church would have this."
The statue was so tall he had to pull a nearby bench up to the altar, climbing up so he could reach her face. It was then that I saw her eyes. They were gone. There was nothing but burned out hole.
"What the fuck?"
Calmly, he lit the smaller candles that lined the crown around her face.
"Where are her eyes?" I asked.
I was no good Christian but some childhood fear came over me.
"Whoever did that is going to hell."
"Hell," he laughed as he climbed down from the bench. "You're already there."
I couldn't take my eyes off the Virgin Mary. She was the most frightening vision I'd ever seen. More frightening than the hundreds of corpses I'd seen. More frightening that death itself. She was staring down at me with her empty eyes. No matter where I turned she was always watching. I had the urge to drop to my knees and pray but was almost too scared to move.
"Wha--- What do you mean we're in Hell."
"Portal," he said as though it meant nothing. "This house, well what is left of the house that used to be here is a portal to the Hell. Satan is alive here."
"Ah come on," I said. "I don't fall for that crap."
Or at least I didn’t' want to but I'd never felt such a dark and oppressive atmosphere. No matter how much I tried to rationalize that this was just some kooky old man in some random old building, I couldn't shake the sensation that people were watching. Or rather, something was watching. There were invisible eyes on me. I could feel them on my skin. They burned through my clothes.
They were in the walls, coming up through the floor, raining down from the ceiling. I shivered and wrapped my arms around me.
"Her name is the Black Virgin," he said.
"Why?" was all I could muster.
He came over and handed me a candle.
"Because she is Satan's bride," he said. "Now come. I must tell you a story."
~
I don't remember how I got there. Following him in a daze, I found myself on a stairwell that spiraled down into the bowels of the house. It grew colder and the steps became steeper, smoother, more slanted and corroded. Feet had been treading these stairs for as long as time existed and the building seemed to get older the more we descended.
"Where are we now?"
Shining the candle on the crumbling wall, I saw faint patterns painted on the stone. Symbols I didn't recognize and arrows that led the way. But led the way to where?
"Stop asking questions," said Marcel.
The cat was on his shoulders again. It was starting to freak me out. Its eyes were terrifying me, like they were filled with an all knowing that only a god could possess. It's just a cat, I told myself but I was still shitting myself. The whole way down, it never removed its gaze from me. At last, when we reached the bottom of the stairs, Marcel put it down on the ground and it snaked its way around his leg, purring with delight at being down in this dark hole.
There was another door, more keys, another great ceremony of unlocking. My heart beat faster. The air tasted bitter. I ran my tongue over my teeth and tasted herbs and dirt and then again there was that all pervading scent of blood.
"Okay, now we are here," said Marcel.
He struggled to push the heavy, ancient door open inch by inch until I was looking at another room filled with darkness. He led me inside, holding his candle up to show me what excited him. With great pride he said, "And we're here."
Jewels and Panties (Book, Sixteen): The One Above All Page 4
