“You really are a piece of shit, you know?” Jake said.
Paul thumped him on the back. “Atta’ boy. Knew you’d come through.”
Paul had considered it a fortuitous day when Jake answered his Craigslist ad. He’d needed a new roommate after his last one had beaten the shit out of him and stolen three hundred dollars and a bag of his best weed. If he ever saw that fucker on the street, Paul intended to pound the shit out of his balls until the guy coughed blood and begged for mercy. That would teach him to fuck around with Paul Campbell.
Leaning back, Paul stared at the ceiling. The Tool poster he bought when he was sixteen hung over him, and he raised a finger, pointed dead in the center of Maynard James Keenan’s forehead, and mouthed a silent “pow” that seemed to detonate in the center of Paul’s brain. Everything seeming to dribble away in a white-hot stream of fluid. Nathan may be a piece of shit when it came to pills, but he knew his fucking weed. If anything, he could thank his two-bit dealer for a decent high and a good night’s sleep.
“It’s only supposed to be here for one night. Up in New Hope. Some secret place in the woods. You’re supposed to find a sign with a red ribbon and park there and then just walk into the trees. They find you, and then it’s fucking heaven until the sun comes up.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, tonight.”
“I have to work tonight.”
Paul sat back up and looked at his roommate. “Get out of it, dude. Seriously. This is not something to miss out on. Once in a lifetime kind of shit. You know? Get Gary to cover you. He’s always whining after your shifts.”
“Yeah,” Jake said, and Paul leaned forward until Jake’s breath streamed warm and sour over his face and stared without blinking into those idiot blue eyes that flinched and darted just over Paul’s shoulder.
“Don’t you do it, Jake. Don’t be a pussy,” he said, and Jake nodded, his chins jiggling, and Paul pushed himself away, let the joint burn against his fingers.
“Call Gary. Do it. We’re leaving at nine. And clean yourself up. You fucking stink like something died inside of your asshole and crawled into your shorts.”
“Fuck you, Paul,” Jake said and stood, shuffled off to the bathroom where Paul knew he would douse himself in Axe body spray and cover his ball sack in Gold Bond powder.
Whatever. He didn’t really care as long as Jake coughed up his part of the cash. Once they actually got up to New Hope, he was planning on ditching that fat little turd anyway. The very last thing he wanted to see once he finally slid into some hot little piece was Jake’s fat ass.
Again, his stomach contracted, and he pushed his palm against it. If he pressed hard enough, it almost felt better, but there was still a lingering flavor in the back of his mouth. Like he’d deep throated a battery. Acidic and burning.
Once Vinnie got here with his cash, he would hit up the burrito joint on 37th, put something inside of him before he put himself inside one of those hot little cherries. Real virgins, the flyer had said. They had real, honest-to-God virgins.
He hadn’t had a piece like that since high school. Ronnie and those fucking tits, man. Too big for a girl who wasn’t even eighteen yet. She’d told him about the offers she got from the clubs she sneaked into on the weekends. Clubs with sticky floors and watered down drinks and stupid names like Secrets or Twolips.
It was only a matter of time before she started dancing on stage for money instead of on the floor for free, and he’d stopped seeing Ronnie after he had gone to visit her—a surprise—and seen her slobbering all over some guy’s dick.
Of course, Ronnie had told him that it was for money, but he couldn’t get the thought of her mouth filled with old dude jizz out his head, and Paul called it off then and there.
Last he heard, Ronnie’s tits had started to sag, and the club had downgraded her to Wednesday and Thursday nights. He thought he remembered hearing that she’d had a kid, too. Good thing he got out of there before shit got serious. He needed a kid like he needed a fucking hole in the head.
Closing his eyes, he drifted through the high. Visions of flesh laid bare. Round, smooth curves wrapped around his hips. He hoped that the flyer was real. A thousand bucks wasn’t the easiest for him to come by, and if it was just some shitty joke to send him into the woods chasing some mythical pussy circus, heads would roll.
“When’s Vinnie supposed to be here?” Jake opened the bathroom door, and the cloying smell of sweat mixed with cheap body spray flooded the room. Paul grimaced.
“Christ, dude. Shut the fucking door. You smell like a turd wrapped inside of a horny seventh grader.”
“Sorry,” Jake said and flushed crimson. He stepped out of the small bathroom, shutting the door behind him. “Seriously though. I don’t want to be here when Vinnie is. Dude gives me the creeps.”
“Vinnie’s an okay guy.”
“The last time he was here, he saw a picture of my little sister on my phone. Said he would do anything to get inside of something like that. She’s fucking twelve, Paul. Twelve. I don’t want to be here, okay?”
“Okay, okay. He said he would be here at seven. Feel free to disappear.”
Jake shuffled back to one of the two small bedrooms at the back of the apartment and closed the door behind him. A few minutes passed before a thumping bass line kicked on. Some shitty rap group that Jake wouldn’t shut up about, and Paul quelled the urge to kick down the door and smash his roommate’s CD player into tiny bits of plastic.
Two hours. Two hours until Vinnie showed up with his money. Two more hours until he could get the fuck out of this place with its shit brown walls and ratty carpet and dishes piled in the sink and buzzing with flies, their wings a transparent blue hallucination that made him wonder if he was actually seeing them, or only hearing them.
Closing his eyes, he willed himself to sleep, but his mind would not settle, and he snapped his eyes open, looked again at the dark stain that had appeared on the carpet by the entrance to the kitchen two days ago. The size of his fist, it was the deep color of rust, of something gone rancid, and he’d asked Jake about it, who denied that he had spilled anything.
Paul wasn’t sure why he believed his roommate, but he let the issue drop, and since then, the spot had grown larger. At least, he thought that it had. It was hard to tell. If it had grown, it was an imperceptible creeping outward, and he had no way to prove that it was getting bigger. Fucking Nina. She’d always been a shit landlord, and now this place was going to hell, and she didn’t care. He was probably being eaten alive with some kind of mold, spores twitching through his lungs as he breathed in whatever the fuck grew inside of that dark stain, and she laughed it up down there in her office that she’d had completely renovated last year. That bitch.
When the front door opened, he started, jerking upward, and he winced as his stomach muscles cramped.
“Wakey, wakey, you little shit!”
Vinnie. Early.
Confused, Paul pulled himself up, blinked toward the doorway at the scrawny black guy filling the space.
“You’re early.”
“Nah, man. Right on time.” Vinnie jerked his head toward the digital clock hanging on the wall.
“You alright? Look like you’ve seen a ghost, brother,” Vinnie said, and Paul ground his fists against his eyes, watched strange, bloated colors float behind his eyelids.
He must have fallen asleep. The last he remembered, he was tracing the outlines of the stain. Around and around and around, and then Vinnie’s voice had cut through the reverie and scared the ever loving shit out of him.
“Yeah. Fine. Just fell asleep is all,” he said, and Vinnie nodded, his locks bouncing against his shoulders.
“Listen. Was only able to get you fifteen hundred. Nobody’s in the market for mushrooms any more, dude. Xanax. Ritalin. Heroin. That’s what the people want. Nobody wants something a cow shit on.”
“Cows don’t shit on them.”
“Shit on them. Grow in shit. Who cares, man?
Thing is no one wants it, so unless you come up with something better, you’re cash flow is seriously compromised.”
Vinnie flipped a crumpled brown paper bag at him, and Paul thumbed through the bills inside. He could come up with a plan later. For now, he had what he needed for tonight. He licked his lips and counted again. Fifteen hundred. Enough to get him what he wanted and then some.
“Sure. Sure,” he said, and Vinnie glanced at him but asked no questions and saw himself to the door.
“For real though, man. You need something new. Something different.”
“I heard you. Next week, okay?” Right now, Paul wanted nothing more than for Vinnie to crawl back to whatever shit pit he pulled himself out of and leave him alone. Later, he would come up with another plan, but right now, he needed to take a shower, maybe whack off at least once so that he wouldn’t come the second one of the girls wrapped her hands around his cock.
Vinnie tossed a look back before he shouldered through the door, late afternoon sunlight spilling across the frame, and then he was gone as quickly as he had come. Again, Paul rubbed at his eyes, tried to orient himself, but everything felt like it had shifted ten degrees down. He stumbled when he pulled himself to his feet, pitched forward onto the carpet that reeked of cat urine and vomit.
Shaking, he stood. Took a few deep breaths. “Jake?” he called out, but then he remembered that Jake would have left long before Vinnie showed up, and he stumbled into the bathroom, stripped off his Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt and jeans as he turned on the tap.
The showerhead fizzled, but no water fell. Shit. He had forgotten that the city had cut the water. He thought he had some Clorox wipes stashed somewhere in the bathroom, and if nothing else, he’d use one of them to scrub his taint and asshole. His pits, too. He wanted to smell nice for the ladies.
Pulling the container from the bottom cabinet, he began the slow process of cleaning himself off. His head still spun, and his tongue—raw and thick in his mouth—felt like it had been run through a meat grinder.
The weed had to have been laced with something. Probably PCP. No way he had just dropped out like that, and his face felt swollen and bruised. Like he’d been in a fight he couldn’t win, only he couldn’t remember his assailant.
He heard the door open and close again, and he called out. “Jake? That you, man?”
“Yeah.”
Paul watched his reflection in the mirror, ran the wipe over his face, and winked. He’d feel better with a hot meal in his belly, and even still, he would rally. Had to. No way was he going to let this moment slip through his fingers because he’d gotten ahold of some laced weed. Fuck that noise.
Tossing the wipe, he stepped out of the bathroom and cracked his knuckles. “Let’s roll.”
Jake was pale and sweaty. Paul pitied the poor girl that would end up at the raw end of that heaving bag of meat, but Jake nodded and followed Paul out the door into a day that smelled of burnt tar and hot death laid flat on asphalt.
* * *
“I know how to get to New Hope.”
“Listen. I didn’t ask you if you knew how to get to New Hope. I’m telling you where to fucking turn, so just do it and stop complaining.”
Night had fallen while Jake drove, and Paul observed the landscape through the windows. Watched trees morph and change into something strange and monstrous, long branches reaching longer fingers into a dark sky without stars.
They hadn’t passed another car in at least twenty minutes, and the road had narrowed at some point, the right shoulder dropping off into a deep culvert.
“Here. Red ribbon on the sign.” Paul said. “Take a left here.”
The car lurched as it turned off of the main road and onto grass. Paul popped open his door before the car came to a full stop, his seatbelt already off, and he jumped out of the car, bracing himself for the inevitable impact.
Walk into the woods. That was it. The girls will find you. Just keep walking. Don’t look for them. Don’t listen for them. Lose yourself in the trees, in the dark. That was what the flyer had said, and he took off for the tree line, let his gaze fade into the distance. Ignored the sound of the car door slamming as Jake exited. Ignored Jake calling to him, his fat ass scrambling to catch up.
Crashing through the underbrush, Paul dismissed the thorns tearing at his calves, the blood beading before trickling in small lines toward his ankles. When the girls found him, maybe he would get them to lick the blood off of him, watch their tongues dance against his skin before tangling together. He pressed his fist hard against his stomach and kept walking.
Behind Paul, Jake called his name again, but Paul was already too far ahead, and the sound floated into the gloom around him, the mist eating the words, and he hurried onward, his heart thudding hard in his chest.
Paul’s stomach twisted, and he swallowed, his Adam’s apple working to hold back the acid at the top of his throat. He’d thought that eating something was a good idea, but now, deep among the trees, everything he’d eaten threatened to come back up, and he paused, leaned against a tree and waited for the stream of vomit that would surely come, but he heaved and nothing happened, so he kept walking, leaves slapping at his face.
In and out, he drifted, dreamlike and unhurried, the tree line blurring until all he could see was darkness; the sound of his broken breathing heavy in his ears. In and out. One foot in front of the other, and he tumbled into the black, his legs breaking through underbrush that he could no longer see. No longer feel.
He’d folded the wad of bills Vinnie had given him and put them in his pocket, and they weighed heavily against his leg, a definitive reminder of what he was here for. A chorus singing that he should not give in to that soft darkness. A hymn telling him not to forget, and on he walked.
For minutes or for hours he continued, until there came the touch, feather light, against his shoulder, and he turned to see blonde, rippling curls, a soft, crimson smile, and bare shoulders that seemed to shimmer in the moonlight. Across the girl’s cheek, a birthmark the color of rust bloomed. A stain against her otherwise perfect face. Oh well. He could always turn her around when he fucked her.
The girl’s hand was hot, and she pressed it over his lips, slipped her fingers down and down and down, until they dipped inside of his right pocket. She pulled the stack of bills into her palm and closed her fist around them.
“We knew that you would come. We’ve all been waiting. Follow me,” she said and turned, led him further into the mass of thin pine trees, the needles slippery and shifting under his feet as he scrambled to keep up with her.
The girl wore a short black dress that cupped her ass, and she walked quickly, the thin fabric riding up until Paul could see the naked curve of skin. She glanced back at him, lifted her top lip to expose her teeth. A smile. Or what she thought a smile was supposed to look like.
Sweat beaded against him, clung to his pits and balls, and he could make out the smell of his own stink rising. Paul hoped the girl was far enough ahead of him that she wouldn’t get a nose full. Once they got wherever they were going, he would find a bathroom, splash some water on himself. Fresh as a fucking daisy.
Ahead of them, the trees opened into a clearing, the moon suddenly much brighter without the cover of trees, and he squinted, his vision seeming to double.
The house in the center of the clearing had no door, no windows, but it had a roof and a brick front that someone had painted white but was now mottled with dark, bulbous stains that seemed to morph and change even as he watched. He thought again of the dark stain on the carpet back at his apartment; the stained flesh on the girl’s face. He tried to follow the thread—to connect the dots—of each of those similar things back to some greater meaning, but as he watched the shadows lift and change, he lost himself completely.
Over and under they writhed, lifting and arching like bodies coming together, dipping in and out of each other. Fucking each other. That’s what the stains were doing, and Paul giggled. Actually fucking giggled like
some tiny-titted schoolgirl, and he clapped a hand over his mouth, but the girl didn’t even toss a glance over her shoulder, and he dropped his hand.
If there was a way to actually get inside, he couldn’t see it, but the girl kept walking toward the front, those stains rising and crashing, and he ground his fists against his eyes. Fucking Nathan, man. When he got back to the world, Paul planned on beating that piece of shit within an inch of his life and then finding another dealer. If he wanted his shit laced with the harder stuff, he fucking knew well how to find it.
Turning back to him, the girl reached out a hand and touched those squirming stains, and her other hand reached out to him, beckoned him forward. Again, those exposed teeth like a dog who knows it’s about to be put down. A warning.
His stomach clenched, and he swallowed down the vomit forming at the back of his throat, forced himself to shuffle forward.
“Optical illusion,” Paul said once he reached her.
The house wasn’t a house at all, but a wall shaped like a house. Before it, a pit yawned wide and dark, jagged edges of earth crumbling away into candlelit emptiness that led down into something that never ended. There was no way that he could know that, but the thought came to him as he stared into it. This was a place in the earth that did not end, and now the girl stepped down into the pit, a series of stairs carved into hard dirt, and he hesitated at the top and called down to her. “Hey. Where does this thing go?”
The girl did not respond but kept on with her descent. Pausing, he placed his foot on the top stair then took it off again. His money. She had his money; he couldn’t back out now. Not now that he had come all this way, and so he went down, the earth opening around him like a great mouth.
The air was cooler here, and he took in deep breaths of it. Drew it into his lungs until he coughed, the back of his throat gone raw and tasting of blood.
Everything That’s Underneath Page 4
