The entire audience was a sea of undulating heads, thrusting back and forth in time to the dark and deafening rhythms. This was beyond music and conventionality. Beyond tunes and jollity. This was brutality barely contained and stimulating beyond measure. They played the big hits: Vascular, Body Bag, Delirium Tremens, Disgrace Forever, Sister Suture, Bile Influx, Drip Fed And Anxious and Collapsing Floor By Floor, and several other lesser known but still ferocious and demented tracks and everyone was soaked with excitement.
After the gig, a wringing wet with sweat Charlie flashed her laminated VIP backstage pass on a lanyard to an unrealistically well-built security guard who stood bored and constrained in a too-tight uniform. He nodded acceptance like a somnambulist and she’s ushered straight in. Back stage, yeah! And there he was, bare-chested, wearing a glinting silver necklace and standing in the centre of the large Star Dressing Room, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in one hand and a smouldering spliff in the other. Right there, in front of her once more. She strode forward out of range of glares, gossip and fists from any possible opposition. She moved on up close to him, face to face.
Kissy kissy, hug hug. His body was still damp from the gig and unshowered. She loved the manly, sweaty, testosterone smell of him like this. It’s a big turn on.
“Hey, Babe! Oh, so glad you made it! Did you get a good place? Did you like the show? Yeah?” Kyle says.
“Oh Kyle. You bruise my heart! You were MONUMENTAL! I literally came in my pants before you’d even appeared! Aaah, I love the smell of your over-used leathers. It gets me hot. I wanna blow you right here and right now. Oh, c’mon let’s do it, you spunky fuck puppet!”
“Hush now for a moment, babe, yeah? “
Kyle drew Charlie to his side, clapped his hands after handing her the bottle of JD and shouted in his post-gig slightly hoarse voice:
“Hey, everyone? My lady and me need some together time right now, so please off you all go and give us some space, yeah? Thanks.”
He gestured away the other band members, roadies, wardrobe and make-up ladies, Record Company personnel in tour jackets sneakily cramming as much booze and food down their necks as possible in the shortest amount of time and disgruntled male and female groupies. He’s the Star of the biggest Industrial Metal band in the US right now. He can do whatever the hell he wants and damn the consequences. He hugged her longtime and motioned impatiently with one hand for the slow moving remaining stragglers in the room to seriously fuck off and leave them alone. They did and when they’d gone and the dressing room door was shut, he said to Charlie.
“I love you, Babe. You know that don’t you? Listen, I’ve got a little present for you. Yeah, I know, I don’t really do that gifty thing but this is something special, OK?”
“What could it be, Kyle?” She whispered, flirtatiously brushing back her damp blonde hair with one hand and fingering herself between her laddered stockinged thighs with the other.
“Well, I paid a dude handsomely so that he could pay another dude who could pay some other motherfucker down the road who knows a guy who worked for the Port Authority back in the day. He then wacks him a wad of real cash for two particles of metal that came from the ruins of the Twin Towers in 2001!”
“Are you shittin’ me, Babe?”
“No Babe, absolutely not! I got myself two tiny fragments of one piece of steel that’d been stashed away secretly in some warehouse or whatever before the whole shebang was shipped off to China and wherever else for what they call ‘recycling’. Man, the guy whose name I can’t mention is minting it from selling these very small bits of the Towers, let me tell you. Now, I got a man fan friend to make us up two silver necklaces that encase these tiny little fragments of WTC1 in a little bitty frame like an Egyptian Ankh that we can both wear round our necks! Ain’t they just the coolest damn things that a Rock Star and his gal are ever going to have? Damn, I’m gettin’ hard just thinking about a little bitty piece of WTC1 around our necks. It’s like urban Voodoo or some kind of Industrial magic, yeah? See, I’m wearing mine already! C’mon, put it on, Babe. Yeah, there you go. Love you!”
Charlie looked down at the necklace he’d tenderly placed around her moist neck, held the centrepiece between her thumb and forefinger and said:
“Ah wow, Kyle that is so beautifully fucked up, you know? I LOVE IT! THANK YOU! Thanks you SO much. Hey, you know my Old Man died from jumping from the North Tower on the day?”
Kyle looked solemn for a feigned moment and then in a low voice said:
“Yeah, I know, honey. I’m sorry.”
She squealed: “It’s OK, it was a good death. I’m well over it now. But hey, look at us, two sick peas in an alien pod! Kiss me, you beautiful demon!”
They kissed with mouths like entwined serpents. Then she swiftly knelt in front of him, ripped open his rank leathers, pulled them down to mid thigh and took his semi hard cock between her wet lips. Her tongue flicked around its smooth and shiny head. He tilted back his torso as she cradled his balls in one hand and jerked him into her mouth with the other. He was erect immediately and after she started to suck in earnest he came very quickly. With a gasp and a prolonged shudder he then squirted warm jets of jism down her throat, some on her cheeks and one final tiny spurt onto her new necklace. After a moment for them both to catch their breath he pulled her up to her feet, clasped her face in his hands, kissed her and then said directly into her eyes:
“Phew! Oh, you are the best gal in the world for me. Thank you.”
He stood upright and pulled his leather pants back up to waist level. He tucked in his now deflated cock and buckled his belt. She stood up too.
“Now listen, Hon, I got another couple of surprisingly good things going down for us tonight. Are you up for us having some seriously spaced out fun out there amongst the stars tonight, Babe? Yeah?”
“Sure Kyle. I’m ready for anything you got for us, honey!”
Charlie stood tall and straight, her face shiny with anticipation.
Kyle reached into the left side pocket of his leather jeans and took out four small round and flat pills and clutched them in his palm. Prolonging the mystery to seriously whet Charlie’s appetite he said mysteriously:
“These tiny little circular rascals, once you swallow them, they will make you lose yourself in joy and visions previously unknown. Sounds will become pictures and your body will become liquid. That’s the advert! It’s pure, it’s sexy and I want to share all of it with you right now tonight. You ready, Hon?”
Charlie, still wiping off the last residue of Kyle’s hastily jettisoned cum from her face and neck with a found tissue said:
“Sure. OK, whatever. What are they then?”
“These, my little darling, are called Ecstasy or Molly or MDMA as they are clinically known.”
Charlie gasped: “Oh wow, are they gonna take us like…out there? Big time?”
“Honey, these little beauties will be coming straight at you brain-wise two at a time like Siamese Kamikaze Twins. They’ll take you to places that you ain’t never, ever been before or even thought of!”
“I love you Kyle. Let’s go wherever!”
They swallowed the two tabs each in unison.
Kyle pulled on a T-shirt with his band’s logo fading upon it, a pair of Ray Bans and leather jacket and made a brief whispered call on his cell. He then took Charlie by the hand and they left the dressing room, smiling and nodding their heads like departing royalty as they passed the phalanx of security people in lurid orange T-shirts holding back all the sad and tearful ones hoping for re-entry to the rarefied zone and the duo left the building by an unused side door.
The die-hard fans would be waiting outside the main stage door and they’ll scream excitedly any time the doors open and then wail in disappointment and frustration when they realize it’s just another roadie, or some of the support band or a journalist or two flushed with their reviews of the gig already on their way to the editors of their particular onlin
e rag. Many more fans will be swarming fruitlessly like ants around the entrance to the concert hall. Kyle’s driver, whom he’d just called, swerved the black limousine silently to a halt in the alley at the exact moment they exited. They got in the back and the car took off swiftly into the night. They didn’t have that far to go.
Inside the car Kyle was now starting to feel the onset of the drug. The sudden swarm of thoughts and images. The rush, the pulse speeding and the dislocation. He rode it. Here came the familiar visions and the sounds. Yeah! But Charlie was new and was greatly taken aback by all that unknown data. She fought it nervously. Together they resolved it some-how, he hugged her back against the smooth leather upholstery and whispers:
“Ssshh…everything will be all right, Babe.”
She stayed silent but nodded slowly and breathed in and out in what she hoped was a calming and controlled fashion.
The limo pulled up at the junction of Vesey Street and West Street in Lower Manhattan. After Kyle slid a generous fold of cash into the driver’s outstretched palm through the open window they clutched hands as he drove away and they walked unsteadily towards the lobby of what appeared to be a brand new and very expensive building. Charlie didn’t look up. There were too many sinuous and serpentine thought patterns convulsing inside her head and behind her eyelids to even begin to think about where she might have been.
As they entered the vestibule they saw a bulky security man seated visibly half asleep at the front desk in front of a large bank of security CCTV screens. As Kyle tapped him gently on the shoulder he blinked awake with a start. Upon recognizing his visitor he gestured with a tilt of his head to the elevators in the vestibule behind him and the desk and smiled with stained tobacco teeth as a wad of serious denomination dollars is placed onto the desk in front of him.
Floors with illuminated numbers flashed past them as they hurtled upwards. Kyle and Charlie, now both tripping the light fantastic big time, hit the topmost floor of the building. From the elevator he led her down a corridor like a bemused Alice in Wonderland; kicked open the bar of an exit door and gently pulled her with him out and onto the unfinished roof of the skyscraper.
She clutched to him as the drug kicked in for her big time. She was worried, distorted and confused but also joyously happy and totally alive sensually at the same time. Quite rightly this was paradoxical to her remaining rational mind. Kyle turned to her as she shuddered against his shoulder and said:
“This is it, Babe. We’re here, right now on the very top. Higher than high all the way over Manhattan. We’re on the very summit of The Freedom Tower.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, really! Look down below. Can you see us? Flying and joyful and free above the whole of New York City?”
The wind blew their hair back as they looked down at the world below and the vast panoply of stars above. Time slowed to the pace of a blinking eye.
“Oh wow, yeah, I can see that. You and me swooping! Look at all those lights! They’re like jewels in our crowns, aren’t they! I can totally SEE that! We’re like big birds! Opened winged and silky feathered and flying, yeah?”
“That’s it. That is even IT! The mystery within the nutshell. Yeah, we can jump now and solve everything everywhere. Take my hand, Charlie. I love you, honey. This is where we become immortalized forever. C’mon, sweetheart, let’s jump for it.”
“But…I…”
“Hush now. This is our time. Let’s go!”
They laughed together and then they jumped.
Only a second or so after they leapt into the clear night air, an aged and ashen-faced, sad-eyed male Angel with grey, tarnished but still somehow active wings appeared from nowhere and fluttered in front of them in a disjointed manner and then halted their downward trajectory with a thrusting gesture from an upturned palm.
Then it said without further ado right into their faces: “You guys are assholes, you know that? Look at you both, you’re young, beautiful and have got everything going for you, futures ahead of you and what, you take drugs and choose this? Listen, you want to know how many jumpers I helped back on 9/11? I’ll tell you: over two hundred. Yeah, that’s right, two hundred terrified, desperate people who chose fly over fry. I despair of people like you, there’s nothing glamorous about taking your own life, because that’s what you’re doing, you know? So you want to be immortal? Go right ahead because you’re not worth saving. You’ve got about ten seconds left before you hit the ground and become part of the building itself”.
“But - HEY!” Kyle managed to shout. Charlie merely whimpered sweet meaningless nothings as she hung entwined and motionless with her lover. The pupils of her eyes were huge, black and staring. The ashen Angel said:
“Hush, no words anymore. You’ll become history. Just as you wished”. He let them go and began the countdown: “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 - Adios!”
Blackout.
VICTIM(e)
by Emile-Louis Tomas Jouvet
“I wanted to swallow myself by opening my mouth very wide and turning it over my head so that it would take in my whole body, and then the Universe, until all that would remain of me would be a ball of eaten thing which little by little would be annihilated: that is how I see the end of the world.” Jean Genet
“You have to remain calm. Time is against us. I have to get this off my chest: I never loved you. I know what I told you before but I lied. I’m sorry.”
“Never?”
“I tried my best. For you. For me. For us. But...”
“...your best wasn’t good enough.”
“No.”
“I don’t believe...I just don’t fucking believe this.”
“Didn’t I say to stay calm? Don’t over-react. It won’t be good for us if you lose the plot now...you have to listen carefully. You pushed me into a corner – I did what I did because I felt trapped, there was no escape. I tried to warn you but you didn’t hear me, even when I was screaming at the top of my voice for you to stop. I didn’t want to tell you today, of all days...perhaps tomorrow or the day after or maybe even next week – but not today. Ironic. I appreciate how important it is to you.”
“Shouldn’t it have been important to the both of us? All things considering....”
“I swear I never lied to you. I was honest. I promise. You have to believe that.”
“Today?! Today of all fucking days?!”
“Please...forget me...forget that I ever existed...”
***
“Vincent...is everything okay?” The woman coughed. “Sorry, that was damned stupid wasn’t it? Me and my big mouth. Of course everything isn’t. I was worried. You were talking to yourself and...”
Vincent spun around with such ferocity, with such fire in his eyes that she clammed up. He stared blankly at her and then past her, to the concrete wilderness beyond. Slowly, so slowly, the flames died out and he refocused. She held a tissue to her nose. She didn’t look at him; she stared at the ground, at her feet. He removed one of his black gloves, held her chin; lifted her head. A thin smile when their eyes met.
“I’m fine Carole. I was talking to Thomas, that’s all.”
She nodded. He eventually released her, put his glove back on. “I understand,” she whispered. “I’ve been there remember, twice now.”
He didn’t and didn’t comment any further.
***
“It is times like this...” Carole said something else but he had zoned out. He wasn’t interested in what she had to say. There were too many other thoughts rushing around his head – it was as if all his memories (and he meant that: ALL his memories) were being played out before him at the same time.
A sudden rush to the centre of his brain.
And how Thomas had died right there at the forefront...the train crash and...the anger – primarily because Thomas died, it was an accident yes, but at the time he wasn’t alone, he was with someone else...after everything they’d been through together, he had got
on that train with someone else and he had died with someone else...Vincent loved Thomas so much but he dared to die with someone else who wasn’t him and he was probably fucking someone else who wasn’t him. He probably had someone else’s cock deep in his ass right at that moment when...
Jesus! This had to stop. It was killing him: all this doubt. All this mistrust. All this suspicion. He knew that Thomas loved him but even so.
He held out his arm. Carole took it.
“Let’s get out of this place shall we? I’m finding it quite...depressing.”
“Yes,” she replied. “You don’t look well at all.”
He stared at the flowers, that bright blue flower surrounded by the whites, the yellows, the reds. So much colour in such a dark dark place.
“Why don’t we have a drink? That’s what Thomas would have wanted.”
***
“What I would have wanted? How do you know what I would have wanted? If you did perhaps we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this mess.”
“I know everything now Thomas and you know what’s worse, with every passing heartbeat I am discovering even more. There can be...no...there are no secrets between us. How could there be once you let me in? I will find out his name, their names. I will find out everything about them...”
“You’ve grown some balls...well, let me tell you this Vincent, it works both ways now, both fucking ways.”
“Thomas, please, you knew everything about me. I told you everything. I had no secrets. I laid myself bare to you. And now, I will know everything about you. Every fucking thing. I hope you will able to live with yourself knowing that.”
“Vincent, it doesn’t matter how much you prod and probe there will always be one thing that I will stay silent on.”
“We will see about that my friend, we will see.”
Whirling World Page 13
