Evil Companions

by D. M. Perkins

  Chapter Thirteen

  ___________________ The Fraud is Night

  With my human bundle under arm and a giggle in my throat, I knocked on the door like the laundryman. Malcolm objected, but I told him it was just a joke, and he decided it was one of those things a freak had to put up with.

  Anne opened the door and Wino ran out, hot for pussy.

  “Where’ve you been?” she asked.

  “You wanted a freak—here he is.” I presented Malcolm to her, after sitting him down on the chair next to the television set. He removed his hat and assured her that he was “charmed.” Anne hissed, as if she had been burned.

  “He’s freaky, all right. My God!” Lydia hovered around her master, trying to make him more comfortable. That bugged Anne. “Who’s that obnoxious bundle of sentiment and nerves?” Lydia stiffened at this description of herself, and marched over to where Anne was standing. Anne looked small and slight next to her, a cat versus a cow.

  “I go everywhere Malcolm goes,” she said, ready to fight.

  I wanted to see it, all female elbows and cunt-teeth, but Malcolm had more interest in drinking.

  “Do you have a whiskey for a guest?” he asked. “Really, Lydia, we didn’t come here for you to exercise your ego. After all, I left mine at home, didn’t I? Now just come over here with me and sit down.” His voice, commanding as it was, was kind with her. Obediently, she went back to him and sat at his feet, glaring at Anne.

  It was almost midnight by then. Anne went off into the bedroom after ordering us to take off our clothes. Malcolm fussed a little at that, but Lydia persuaded him. They acted as a very effective counterbalance for each other. She was hot for it again, I was sure.

  Anne entered, carrying candles. She lighted nine of them and placed them around the floor in the shape of a pentagram, which I remembered from a book I had read was a potent symbol. I was sure Anne was as much an amateur as I was, but she was naturally a witch anyway, and that gave her follies a reality they ordinarily wouldn’t have had. When the candles were ready, she brought out an ordinary straight razor, then stripped off her clothing. The last part of the ceremony was a bowl full of buttons of some kind.

  “Peyote,” she told me. “You need peyote, a freak like him, and a blade for this.”

  She carried herself with a new kind of dignity as she put us in our places within the pentagram. Her eyes remained almost shut. I looked over at Malcolm and could tell that he was also impressed. Lydia at least kept quiet. Anne served us the little buttons, making us swallow them dry. We lay on the rug in a rough circle, feet in someone else’s crotch, or along their legs, and waited a while. When Anne felt the vibrations were right, she picked up the razor....

  And it began, the hour of the wolf, the hour of teeth and claws, the razor’s descent. Through foggy eyes and a wave of nausea, I saw Anne crawl over to the freak, her sharp tits dragging the floor like nails. The razor in her hand was a question mark in the warm air, cutting it for her advance. He saw it in her hand and tried to scoot away. He was stopped by the line of the pentagram. Faintly, from far away, down a long hall, his teeth were screaming, and then she was on him, sitting astride his torso and smiling. He was paralyzed with knowledge of what was coming, and wriggled his flippers frantically, as if to swim away from her teeth at his throat. She opened his zipper and rummaged around in his pants for a non-existent cock. She snarled when she found nothing there, and leaned her face into his, spraying him with spittle. She brought the razor forward and sharpened it on his shoulder, holding his arm by the elbow. Suddenly, it came off, and we all applauded. It was a great trick, but then we noticed the freak was crying—or was it screaming—and we felt sad. Anne was sawing at his other arm, and we all cried no but she kept sawing and wrenching at it until it came off too, and then we were truly sad. I felt pains in my own shoulders, and held to them, rocking my body in a paroxysm of guilt and relief. Lydia was shrieking, but stayed rooted to the spot, her knees drawn up to her chest, and her hands tucked between her legs. Victorious, Anne held the two flippers above her head in an X sign, while below her the freak thrashed his torso. Finished, she tossed one of them to me and one of them to Lydia. Close up, it looked like a doll’s arm. There was no blood. Then Anne had reversed her position, and was kneeling over him like a dog, her head toward his feet. She did push-ups on his body, rubbing her tits into him, ending by pushing her ass into his face. Her head went after his tiny tim again, found something this time, growled like a dog with a bad bone and jerked up with his dink like a small sausage in her teeth. She howled in triumph, and crawled over to Lydia with her trophy. And then, in some kind of animal etiquette, she dropped the flesh into Lydia’s mouth in a long kiss.

  We might have slept, but I doubt it. We simply traveled across the continent, and returned, to hear the freak, Bascomb Malcolm, speaking, his face red from the candles:

  “Well, that’s all right. It’s all meat, and now I’m free. Free of a little more meat, free of another fraud. I don’t see how you normal people can resist cutting into yourselves, to see what’s under that vapid expanse of skin. It’s the Matto Grosso! There are pygmies in there! Can you imagine all that red, wet meat, those veins and arteries and capillaries like jungle snakes, the trees in your bellies? It’s an undiscovered country, the only one there ever was.”

  Anne spoke then, her voice serious and slow:

  “That’s what the voices said, ‘The fraud is night,’ and it meant what I wanted it to mean. It was a key I was supposed to use. But I live at night, the sign of luxury, idleness.... I don’t have to hunt in the daytime for food, it comes to me at night. My food is the rest of you, who must hunt in the daytime. The horns blow, and the footsteps come, and it’s always a mark in the night begging to be defrauded. They bring their meat to me to cut up; what they’ve taken the outside of, they want me to explore inside. So I suck them off, or fuck them—or I give them an express train to put in their arms, to make their blood boil and rise. The whole country is boiling over.”

  The freak rolled over to her, pushing with his feet. I thought it strange that he wasn’t bleeding. He rolled up against her, where she sat with her legs spread, and put his foot into her cunt, and sat there happily wriggling his toes in her cunt, speaking as he did so:

  “We have got to get looser, I know that. So free we can disappear into the air, or mix with the animals in the zoo. We’ve got to get the inside out.”

  And that’s all they said, if they said that. If I didn’t fantasize it on my own loud speaker system. We laid ourselves out in a daisy-chain, and hardened our hearts to the loss of blood....

  A day later we awoke, shaking our heads and fixing coffee. I looked at the freak, and he was lighting himself a cigarette. Anne washed her face and made us noon breakfast.

  Wino came in through the window, all his lusts blown. I felt like talking to him, but it would have been too much with the rest of them there.

  “I hope I satisfied your expectations,” Malcolm said tiredly. “About my magical properties, I mean.”

  “You were a trip, baby. But you know what I’d like to do to you? I’d like to put you inside a big red balloon, and go up to the roof and let you go.”

  Malcolm shivered. “I think it’s time to go, Lydia.” Lydia followed dutifully as he waddled through the door and down the stairs.

  “I’m glad they’re gone,” I said.

  “I thought he was a friend of yours—all that poetry crap. Man ... some of the jazz you come up with.”

  “Okay, okay. How about ...” I was interrupted by a loud, sharp rap at the door—a rap, not a knock—the sound of cops. “Are they back again?” I said, meaning Malcolm and Lydia, but I knew I was kidding myself. Anne jumped up.

  “Shut up! Keep them at the door while I get rid of the stuff!” She ran into the bedroom and grabbed the stuff, heading for the toilet to flush it down. But she could have saved her energy. I only had time to stand up before they had broken in—I hadn’t locked the door, I rem
ember.

  “Freeze!” the man in gray said. He was dressed like a goddamned mailman, but he had a revolver in his hand, and it was cocked. I collapsed back into my seat, with my hands at half-mast. The toilet flushed, and Anne came out, eyes shooting sparks.

  “Who’re you?” she demanded. “You’re not the cops.”

  “True, but I have the gun,” he said, and smiled. He pointed it at her left tit, and she shut up. He looked like the hero of a French dirty postcard—black hair and a black mustache. Faintly Spanish.

  “Aren’t you going to offer me a chair?” he asked.

  “I don’t have much to say about it, do I?”

  “Well, why don’t we just sit down and talk things over? I’m known as a very friendly fellow, once you get to know me—and you might get to know me.” Anne sat down at the table, so that we faced each other, with him in the middle.

  “What have we got to talk about, if you’re not a cop?” I asked.

  “Now, I’m glad you asked that. We’ve known about you two for a while now. We could have picked you up after the job you did on that guy in the hotel, but I wanted to wait—to see what you’d come up with. I’m glad I did. It was good, really good. I kiss your hand, madame,” he said to Anne. She blushed. He had lowered the gun, allowing it to rest on the table beside his hand.

  “What do you mean, you’ve had an eye on us? Quit talking in riddles, would you?”

  “Okay. I represent—in a very minor way, let me assure you—a group of men who deal in bodies.”

  “Bodies?”

  “That’s all I can tell you. Bodies in every form, and every part of them. It’s a small group of very powerful people.”

  “What’s the connection with us?” Anne asked.

  “We’ve noticed that you do extremely well with bodies. Both of you. By the way”—he looked my way—“we know about your activities in the park. Very interesting. You were getting very close to something. Anyway, that’s all there is to it.”

  “So how do we fit in?”

  “I just ask you to come with me. I think you’ll be happy with our arrangements.”

  “What if we decide we’re not interested?” Anne asked. It was clear she was interested, however. His hand covered the gun.

  “That is not one of your choices. The people I work for have already decided that they want you, and that is all there is to it.”

  “It’s freaky, man!” Anne told him. “We’re just supposed to up and follow you, without knowing anything about what we’re getting into? You’re out of your skull! Tell me you’re kidding, and I’ll let you go.” He laughed at this, and brought the gun up.

  “Let’s go. I don’t have any more time.”

  A modest sedan was waiting for us on the street. Anne climbed in first, and he got in after her. I followed him, sitting next to the window. The driver, a man dressed in the same drab uniform, pulled smoothly away from the curb the minute we were in and headed for the West Side Highway.

  “Relax. We have a long drive ahead of us.”

  Our destination was a modest two-story colonial house in the Palisades of New Jersey. It was surrounded by copses of trees of various kinds. We pulled directly into a garage already occupied by two cars of foreign make, and were taken into a basement.

  “Sit down, sit down. You should be thirsty. I’ll bring you a drink.”

  “A coke for me,” I said. The room we were in was paneled in that cheap knotty pine suburbanites use when they convert their basements into recreation rooms. There was only one door to it, and it had no knob on the inside. There were two windows placed up high, but they were small, and covered with iron. No chance of escape, but by then the deal intrigued me, even though Anne was still bitching.

  “This is the weirdest thing I ever stood still for!” She paced across the room, her heels making hard sounds on the wooden floor.

  “It could be exciting,” I suggested.

  “Yeah, maybe for a faggot like you, baby, but I don’t like not knowing which creek I’m up. And we do not have a paddle.”

  The door opened and two older men in silk suits and shades walked in. Blatantly Italian, I thought.

  “These two?” one of them said to the other. “She’s got no meat on her, and she looks mean. As for him, he looks disgusting. A beatnik. We paid good money for them?”

  “I don’t know. She’s skinny, but that can be delicious. We can give him a bath and shave him, you know.” This the second one remarked, thoughtfully. “I’ll show you. Look here, girl, take off those pants you have on.”

  “You want my ass, take them off yourself.”

  The first one got excited at this.

  “She talks back, too. It’s bad business. We got screwed.” The second one was calmer. He took off his belt, looking for all the world like someone’s father, and whipped it in Anne’s direction, striking her on the cheek. She yelped, and the next lash hit her shoulder. He really didn’t hit her very hard, but her reaction was immediate: She stood up and stripped off her Levi’s. She wasn’t wearing panties—she told me she hadn’t since she was fourteen. She liked the feel of the tight ridge of Levi’s material against her cunt.

  “All right, there’s the box,” she said defiantly, hands on hips, pelvis thrust out. The belt hit her on the ass this time.

  “Just keep shut,” the first one warned. “Bend over. I want to see if your hole has been used very much.” She bent over, holding to the chair.

  “No, grab your ankles, you dumb bitch.” So she had to grab her ankles, in the classic GI stance, making a V of her body. He walked over and deftly inserted his forefinger into her rectum, corkscrewing it in.

  “Nice. Nice. Tight like a virgin.”

  “Now her cunt,” the other one said. So her cunt was inspected and found satisfactory.

  “What about him?” the first one asked. “He’s so disgusting he might not even have any equipment.”

  “Oh, calm down. We’ll just see, that’s all. Take it out, boy.” I didn’t feel like the belt, so I brought out my prick for inspection without hassling over it.

  “He’s all right. Looks like it’s got a lot of cheese on it, but it’s about the right size.”

  We sat back and waited while they whispered to themselves. When they turned their attention on us again, we were both, I think, ready for anything. Their demeanor was so solemn, so removed, I began to realize what horses for sale must feel like, or boxers at a pre-fight examination. They seemed to take no interest in us at all.

  The first one took out his cock when they finished talking and walked over to where Anne was sitting.

  “Take care of this thing,” he told her, holding his cock in front of her face. She ducked her head.

  “I’m not going to give you a blowjob!”

  “You’ll do whatever you’re told—you’ll learn that soon enough. Just give me a hand job. It’s been bothering me all day.” The rest of us watched as Anne reached for it in compliance, handling it with an expertise learned in a hundred doorways. Her nimble fingers flew over it, nursing the swollen head with a finger, scooping up his balls, churning up his cream until he came in her palm with a small moan.

  “Now lick it off your hand,” he commanded. She bent her head sullenly to his sauce.

  Before they left, we were told that we would be fed shortly, and after that, “the other things would be taken care of.”

  Anne said, when they were gone, the most frightening thing I had ever heard her say. I felt my foundations crumbling.

  “You know what? I’m scared.” But she licked her lips.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ___________________ The Operation

  I put my arm around her, and she didn’t object.

  “Why aren’t you scared?” she asked.

  With my other hand I was fondling my erect penis. I felt numb, but a faint sense of anticipation stirred somewhere in the back of my mind.

  “Well, I think they may have something I’m looking for. You know, they could be
a shortcut. Besides, I’ve got nothing to lose, have I?”

  “I never could figure you out. I thought I had you framed a couple of times, but the picture always slipped.”

  “I’m not that hard to figure out.” I wanted to go on, of course, as I always do with her, but I couldn’t find the words. I was a nut, after all, and if I weren’t here, or with her, I was sure I’d be in a hospital somewhere, vegetating on Thorazine, and rolling around in my own shit. It may come to that anyway, I said to myself, but it’ll be my own doing. If I ended that way, my only regret would be that I hadn’t destroyed more.

  After a while of sitting there with our thoughts, the door opened again, and a small Japanese man came in.

  “Come with me,” he ordered softly. We followed him up a short flight of steps to the main part of the house, where we were led to a small room made of mirrors. We walked on mirrors, and they also made up the entire ceiling and walls.

  “I am your servant. I will help prepare your bodies for inspection by the doctors.”

  “Doctors?”

  “Please do not ask me questions. There is nothing that I am allowed to tell you. Please undress.”

  We stripped our clothes off and he disappeared with them, returning with a large basin of hot water and soap, and towels.

  “I will wash the young lady’s body first.”

  Anne stood docilely enough, although her thin flanks trembled at his soft touch on her skin. Standing, he washed her all over, beginning with her forehead and going down, slowly and sensually. It raised goose bumps all over her body. I tried to sit on the floor, but the mirror surface was too cold, so I had to pace back and forth until he completed his slow labors. When he was finally satisfied with her, he took out a pair of nail clippers and clipped her fingernails and toenails as short as he could get them.

  Then it was my turn. He made it a somewhat quicker job, probably because I smelled bad. He had me wait, when he was finished, while he went to get scissors and a razor.

  “Bend your head,” he ordered, and he chopped my beard off. Another few minutes and he had me bald. He swept the hair away, left, and came back with a large bottle of alcohol and a sponge. We were both cleaned a second time, then, rubbed so briskly it felt like the skin was being scraped off. When we were quite red, and hot and dry from the alcohol—the fumes of which made me gag, they were so strong—he pronounced us ready.