Gathered Dust and Others

by W. H. Pugmire

  “Drink this for me,” he whispered, cupping my balls with his other hand. “I am the Erection and the Life.” Smiling, I tightened my mouth around the ruddy wound and sucked, as he bent low and wound his lips around my aching phallus. Salty elixir spilled into our mouths.

  My eyes opened, and I crawled to his hanging form. Rising clumsily to weakened knees, I stretched toward his dry dead hand. Blood had thickened on its new wound. Taking hold of it, I bathed it with tears and kisses. A folded sheet of yellow paper peeked from where it had been stuffed into the pouch that hugged his prick. Releasing his heavy hand, I buried my face into his crotch, drinking in the pungent smell of urine. I took hold of the yellow paper and smoothed it against my face. Its violet letters wavered in the gloom. The words were from his beloved Baudelaire, in Clark Ashton Smith’s translation:

  “…Despair

  Weeps, even as Hope, and dire, despotic Anguish comes

  To hang her stifling sable draperies everywhere.”

  The words had been kissed with bloodstained lips.

  I lost it then. Clutching his limbs, I shook with grief, as hopelessness chilled my numb flesh. Misery churned my little soul. It choked my burning throat. Sorrow vomited from my heaving mouth. But his soft hand embraced the scars of my shaven head, and familiar lips pressed against my ear. We fell upon the floor, locked in union, as his mouth bit into my own. I licked the thick blood from his lips, gazed into his eyes, begged for poetry and passion.

  “Death is a soul eater,” he sighed. “A cherry razorkiss. A fuck dicktator. The black sun surgeon cuts into my angst, and poesy pours forth, a mental masturbation. You lick it up, you cow. I am your Venus Psyclone, your sea of stormy love, on which you wreck. I tempest-toss your dick within my fanged Godbox until you beg for clemency.”

  On and on the words assaulted, as jagged teeth tore into my flesh and drooled into my brain. His rough wet tongue licked my throat, my nipple; it fondled my pulsing heart which he sucked in time to cosmic rhythm. He was the wild beast of romance gone mad. My eyelids flapped open. I watched his whispered wordplay whirl around us in the smoky air. His tattered visage rose before my own, a dim yellow thing wrinkled with woe. The blinking eyes dripped blots of blackness into the scarlet slit that was his mouth. Oh, how that crimson void split with torment. The room was splattered with wet red nightmare.

  My bones shuddered. Orgasm stung my phallus. Desperately, I hugged him to me and wound my fingers into his matted hair. His heavy corpse weighed me down with remorseless reality. Dreaming died. Gasping, weeping, I gazed at the broken rope that hung above us. Nasty shadow drifted downward, mocking me until candlelight extinguished.

  Cool Mist

  Night seeped into the early evening sky and made it black. I remember wandering that realm of ink in search of perfect solitude, hunting for one uninhabited place where I could sit undisturbed and weep for the soul of my young lover, dead by his own hand. Finding my way to the waterfront, which was near to the punk artist’s co-op that was my unruly home, I walked in wind that pushed the stink of Puget Sound into my sensitive nostrils. I heard the plash of water on rocks and approached that liquid song. The somber expanse of water spread before me, seeming like some living thing; reminding me of the mortal elixir that once flowed within my lover’s veins, those vital stems into which he pierced a needle and heralded his junky doom. He had mocked my quaint abhorrence of drugs and booze, and I suppose he would laugh to know that I had procured some outlawed absinthe from my Autumn Sister and drank it in bitter memory of our love.

  Night’s chill shook me from my morbid reverie. Shoving hands into pants pockets, I felt the chunk of cheese that I had wrapped in plastic. It had been Todd’s habit to feed cheese to the waterfront rats, and I had decided to continue this tradition in his memory. As I began to unwrap the substance, I heard a human sound above the wind and waves. A voice of song. I hesitated, not wanting to meet anyone; but as I listened something in the sound beguiled my senses and seemed to beckon. My boots crunched on pebbles as I trod upon the path that led beyond the rocks and water; and my footfalls must have carried to the singer, for suddenly the song went false. I looked and saw a shape kneeling on the ground, a blanket enshrouding its shoulders. It rocked to and fro, and as I cautiously approached I could detect the soft singing of an esoteric melody.

  His small face was that of a child, but his eyes were not young – they gleamed with hostility as they held my own. His dark hair was kept short except for two tufts dyed red and shaped into horns. Spiked dog collars choked his throat. His face contained a kind of ravaged beauty, and it terrified me. There was something in his dark sparkling eyes, a weird kind of crazy rapture that chilled the heart of he who looked upon those slanted orbs.

  I knelt a few feet from him. Fearful as I was, I wanted to listen to his tune. The guttural language that he softly uttered was like none I had known; it amazed me that a human mouth could shape such alien words. He turned away from me as I listened and sang to distant water. Trying to think of something to say, I held to him the chunk of cheese. “Care for some? I like feeding the sewer rats, they get so hungry this time of year.” I thought I detected a sort of smile. And then he turned his merciless eyes toward mine and opened his mouth in song – a loud wailing sound. I felt stabs of icy terror creep into my flesh. Those weird words of his cacophony filled me with a kind of panic. I leaned upon my hands so as to push myself erect and stalk away.

  His singing stopped and he gazed toward the water with frantic eyes. I followed his gaze and at first saw nothing – and then it was there, a patch of mist that floated toward us in dark aether. I thought at first that it reflected moonlight, but then I realized that its odd illumination came from some other, some unknown, source. But what kind of light could form such outlandish hints of hue in the body of dull mist? And what were those colors that writhed obscenely and shaped themselves outlandishly?

  Once more the child-like creature sang. The mist wormed nearer. It pulsed inches from my face, and a wisp of it drifted to me and smoothed itself against my brow. Vision blurred and blood thickened. My skull throbbed with pain. The boy’s decadent singing sounded as though it emanated from some other place, some other time. Cold oppression seethed inside my skullspace and spilled toward my heart. Like a drunken thing I tipped and slammed against the ground.

  Awareness came as an ache and sense of dull fear. His strong hand helped me find my balance. How unyielding was the hand that held my own. He saddled nearer and pressed his body against my own. I could taste his rancid breath on my lips. And then I noticed, floating above his head, the patch of mist, that monstrous substance that spilled toward and enveloped our conjoined hands. His fingers tightened in their clutching. I could just make out the muted image of our joined hands as the boy opened his mouth in chanting. I watched in horror as the flesh of our locked hands began to ripple and discolor; how it began to shred and dissolve. The mist grew opaque with crimson cloudiness.

  Overwhelmed with searing pain, I shut my weeping eyes and tried not to lose consciousness. Lips kissed my hair and pressed against my ear.

  “It does get hungry this time of year,” his little voice mocked. That was when my mind snapped, and I lost myself within an hysteria of screaming as my companion sang and sang.

  Descent Into Shadow and Light

  I awakened in my windowless tower, to the smell of ancient books and those worms with which they were infested, and swept the pale winged things from where they had nestled in my coiled hair. Pushing the silken coverings from me, I stood and stared at the white sphere of soft illumination that hovered just above my elongated shadow – the sphere that has been, always, my companion. By its light I have devoured the words found within the ancient books, syllables that I could taste when they were spoken. I cannot quite remember how it is I learned the art of reading, but I have a dim semi-recollection of she who danced in my dreams and always held onto a white book, showing me its illuminated leaves and carefully moving her silent lips so t
hat I could comprehend the words that they formed. It was this woman in white who, at the climax of one vision, dissolved into a globe of light that followed me out of slumber and dwelt with me in the lonesome tower; and it was this sphere of radiance that accompanied on my day of resolution, when I determined to vacate the tower and explore the surrounding forest. Thus I departed from the tower room that had been my home for all of memory, stepped down the winding steps of stone and crossed the arched threshold to the floor of silent earth, where all was dark except for the places that were kissed by the glow of the sphere that followed me. I breathed into the icy air and light mist floated through my lips and drifted toward the dark mute trees of the inarticulate forest. Although there was no sound, I imagined that I could detect sly movement behind distant trees, and thought perhaps the pale winged things that nestled in my hair at time of slumber were surreptitiously shadowing my steps. I did not mind – I liked their smooth cold forms when they wove their way into my coiled hair and kissed my scalp.

  The dark trees of the endless forest stood like quiet sentinels that watched me on my path, and as the way began to bend and drop toward a lower region I reached out for one nearby trunk, so as to support my balance; but it startled me, as I pressed my palm against the dendroid form, how unsubstantial the creature seemed, as if it could have been an element of a dream through which I wandered. As I contemplated this, the pale sphere that was my attendant shot before me, followed by pale winged things, some of which reached for my hair and tugged me on my way, out of the forest at last and toward a field where slim black stones protruded from the ground. It was only then that I became aware of sensation, as an experience of chilliness enveloped my flesh. The ground on which I stood took on an aspect of solidness, its rough texture unpleasant beneath my naked foot. The sky above me was black as pitch, but as I peered into its vaulted expanse my sphere of light floated just before my face and pressed against my eyes; and then it drifted from me, into the midnight sky, where it transformed into a bloated, fungoid moon that cast decayed light upon the slabs that tilted above the surrounding soil. I touched one slab and tried to read the words that had been etched thereon when the silence of the place was ruptured by a sound with which I was somewhat familiar; for in my tower chamber there had been a collection of bells of various sizes, and I would sometimes entertain myself by lifting them and listening to their clangor. What I now felt on the chilly air and heard within ear’s depth was a deep peal, as of from some distant mammoth bell; and wasn’t it queer how I could almost see the vibrations of the sound in the air before me and feel them push into my flesh, my eyes, my tingling mouth? And when I followed that sound it was soon accompanied by a lighter trembling of noise – and this, too, I recognized, for one of my possessions in my chamber had been an antique music box that, once wound, played a lilting melody that often ushered me toward slumber. The din that now reverberated in dark air was a similar sound, yet enhanced and weighty.

  I followed the enchanting sound and espied the rectangles of golden light that proved to be apertures of a tower that was not unlike mine own. It was from this edifice that the music sounded, music that was a lure and summoned me to climb through one golden aperture, into a bright room. I stepped onto a smooth and polished floor and saw the being that burned beside me, a figure that resembled me in that it had limbs and torso. I saw that the room’s illumination came from the creature’s upheld hands, which burned with yellow fire. I saw the others of its kind who stood dead still, their flaming hands providing the light by which the chamber’s other occupants moved in dance to the music that was performed by figures crowded upon a platform. One of the dancers moved to me, and I marveled at her whiteness, at the artificial wings that had been sewn into her gown, at the touch of her gloved hands as they wove their fingers through my hair. I marveled at the reek that emanated from my new companion, a heavy stench such as had never assaulted my nostrils; and yet, as much as it violated my senses, there was an aspect of it that I found comforting. I was led into the dance and embraced by a fellow in motley who had lost most of the flesh that had once covered his visage, and I laughed at the sense of grim pleasure that emanated from his too-wide grin. Another winged woman in white drifted to me, and I wondered why her feet seemed to float just above the gleaming floor. My heart trembled violently when I beheld the white book that she clasped, the book that was opened to me. I stood, spellbound, as the woman moved the pointed nail of one long talon into my finger, and I nearly fainted at the smell of the dark stuff that began to spill from my punctured flesh. Her hand guided my own to press my wounded finger to the clean white page, and when I took my hand away I saw the insignia of my print upon the shimmering paper.

  I was still gazing downward when the white book was removed from me, and thus I saw the image on the floor of polished glass; and I knew that what I was seeing was my own reflection, of which I had read but never witnessed, for there had been neither window nor mirror within my tower chamber. I fell to my knees and touched my hand to my smooth likeness, and I marveled at how I was a thing of iridescent whiteness like unto the sphere of light that had once been my constant companion. I laughed to see how thin the texture of my face had become, thus revealing the skull beneath my mask of flesh. I knew that I would soon join the throng of friendly ghouls that crowded around me, and this knowledge so enchanted me that I raised my face and moaned in ecstasy, at which signal the others gathered ‘round me and offered me their ghastly hands, or that which had once been hands. And I hummed in accompaniment to the orchestra’s macabre waltz as my compatriots knelt around me and welcomed me within their carrion caress.

  Serenade of Starlight

  I see the stars have spelt your name in the sky.

  –Boy George

  I.

  We walked arm in arm beneath the humped moon, and I grinned at Stanley’s frowning face. He held a piece of paper to an arched streetlamp. “She said it was around here somewhere, at the top of the hill. Curse the woman for not coming with us.” I watched him search the crooked street that twisted before us, saw his frown deepen. Pushing him against the ancient brick of the nearest building, I took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and placed one thin cylinder between his lips. He lit up, and then he coughed.

  “This is certainly a charming section of your antique town,” I told him. “One can sense within one’s soul its agedness. Why, even the hoary darkness seems more venerable than ordinary shade.”

  Stanley groaned wearily. “Please, Willy, don’t wax poetic. It gives me gas when you talk like an Oscar Wilde fairy tale.”

  Leaning next to him, pressing my back to the cool brick, I gazed toward heaven. “Ah, dear boy, that is not a fairy tale moon. It is the rapacious moon of Salome, casting its edacious light upon the doomed, the dead.”

  “And the dizzy,” he rudely answered; but I shrugged off the implied put-down and took from my pocket a gold compact and tube of lip gloss. Stanley pushed away and began looking into the windows of the buildings that lined the street. “Here,” he suddenly shouted, a noise that echoed in the vacant street. I went to him and looked at the small sign above a door. I could hardly make out the dark letters.

  “You’re certain this is the place?” I asked hesitantly.

  “Of course it is. There’s Eve’s sculpture.” I joined him and squinted through the murky glass of the display window. The work in question stood one foot in height. Composed of smooth gray clay, it depicted two nude and hairless creatures standing near an outré skeletal tree. The human figures were squat, their bald heads oddly formed. Their facial features were amorphous and amphibian. Each of the tree’s sinister branches ended in a serpent’s head.

  “In the image of Frog created He them,” I chuckled. As if in answer to my jest, an eerie wind echoed in the gables above. Gazing through the cloudy window, I thought I could discern a faint illumination within, and shadows that crept through deeper darkness. I went to the door and turned its chilly knob. A fragrance of antiqui
ty, of dust and darkness, wafted toward my painted face.

  I entered in, followed by my companion.

  We left somber night behind and walked into a different kind of twilight. The glow within the shop was misty and muted; it fell on the shop’s items with a kind of ethereal grace. It seemed, this light, as old as were most of the antiquities upon which it rested. It was warm and primordial on my eyes. How oddly it draped my tingling flesh. My lungs breathed it in, deeply, and I imagined that I could taste dead aeons of forgotten time.

  “I’m gonna look around. If I find any cool jewelry, I’ll howl,” Stanley told me, and I raised my hand in regal reply. I moved past pillars of brittle books and piles of furniture, ran my fingers across the dust that covered a brass lamp and smoothed the residue of dust into my mauve hair. I looked at Stanley, who stood some little distance from me examining a piece of Egyptian statuary. Were we alone is this forlorn place? Was there no proprietor to deplete us of our gold? I moved past a wall of faded photographs, watched by a myriad of dead eyes.

  Coming on a small alcove, I stepped within it and stood before a curious display, gasping in delight at the armlets of white gold that sat on beds of purple velvet. It was the necklace of black pearls that made me shout. It took no especial sensitivity to beauty to fully appreciate their unearthly splendor. How queerly they caught the obscure light of the little room, to catch and transpose it to a different order of spectrum. I felt its weird reflection on my eyes, felt it sink beneath those jellied orbs and find my brain. Taking my eyes from the necklace, I studied the statuette that sat on a brick of obsidian glass. The thing was an image of some wild monster of nightmare, a winged mammoth that squatted on humanoid legs, whose pulpy tentacle face wore an aspect of age-old evil. How strange, that this entity seemed vaguely familiar, like something witnessed in some pocket of forgotten memory.