Dark Matter (Modern Erotic Classics)

by Michael Perkins

  After a while we stopped, and just leaned back, kind of folded together, and she said some words like a ceremony over us:

  “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth:

  For thy love is better than wine.

  My beloved is unto me as a bundle of myrrh,

  That lieth between my breasts.”

  “What’s that?” I asked her. “It sounds like poetry.”

  “It’s from the only section of the Bible I like. Since this is about as close as we’re going to get to a wedding, I wanted to say it to you. There’s one more line.”

  “Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is strong as death.”

  I said the words over to myself so I wouldn’t forget them. Set me as a seal upon thine heart... This was serious juju she was doing. She was marrying us so I could never escape, and it was all right with me.

  “Buddy, don’t ever say love to me, that’s all I ask.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And don’t be surprised at anything I do.”

  “I won’t.”

  She moved, and I didn’t see what she was doing. When I looked, I saw that the bubbles around her were turning red. She had a fearsome look in her eye and she was holding up a razor blade. She’d cut herself, and now she was going to cut me.

  “What are you doing?”

  “’Trust me, Buddy. Hold still for me.”

  What choice did I have? She leaned over me and cut my neck and kissed where she cut. I could feel her sucking, her soft mouth and pointed tongue drinking my blood, licking me.

  I never expected being cut and bleeding would turn me on, but it did. The tower was up above the bubbles again, and the bubbles were turning red. It occurred for just a flash that maybe I was going crazy, letting all this shit happen, but what did that mean? I was crazy already.

  Robin moved away from me in the tub and climbed the tower, a bloody lipsticked grin splitting her face. She stood and lowered herself slowly on it, the wet heat of the water sloshing into the tight wet heat of her cunt. She had a fierce look on her face when she’d swallowed me whole, and then that look changed into surprise. She was moving up and down on my root, and the water in the tub was slopping over the sides, and then a tidal wave slapped me in the face and she fell back. The tub was shaking and I saw the water jump out of the toilet and back in. I reached out and grabbed Robin but she was slippery and I couldn’t hold onto her. Dust and plaster dumped down on us. The medicine chest opened and bottles and jars came banging out. I was bounced up and down in the water and banged my elbow.

  When the shaking stopped, most of the water in the tub was on the floor. Red covered everything, like in my dream.

  “Earthquake, Buddy. Just like he predicted.”

  “Who predicted?”

  “My father. I think he’s arrived in San Francisco.”

  XXXI

  End Times

  Buddy Tate

  Robin ran to the window with a towel around her. I was king of the jitters: everything was jumping up and down inside me, my guts and my heart were bouncing like superballs, my eyeballs were jiggling. I staggered and limped to a television set and punched it till I got all the news. That bitch Mother Nature had taken a club to San Francisco. There were pictures of fires, collapsed buildings, and people like me acting jittery and crying.

  Then Flood’s face was zoomed in on. He was on the news, with a Chinese-American reporter in the background telling us that Flood’s Crusade for San Francisco had begun with a bang. He was speaking in a big stadium, standing in front of a huge cross that sparkled with blue and red lights.

  “Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom and there shall be famines and pestilences, and earthquakes...”

  Robin came back from the window. “I can’t see much. It’s smoky out there. I think there’s a crack in the building across the street.” Then she saw who was on television.

  I was glued to Flood. He was foaming at the mouth and people were cheering. She sat on the couch with me, knees to her chin.

  “Our nation is divided into many pieces and we see them falling apart before our eyes, The Kingdom of God is fighting against the Kingdom of Evil...” I zapped the son-of-a-bitch off.

  “We’re the Kingdom of Evil, Buddy. He’s talking about us.”

  “I figured that. Looks like the Kingdom of God has a whole lot of people in its army.”

  “My father’s flock are sheep. They’re in the big city now. There are wolves running in the streets.”

  “He’s got Mr. Hopper and his nasty friend. And a lot more like them. They know how to put a brand on you.”

  “I’m not worried about them. They’ll do what he says, and I think I can get him to come to us.”

  She was shivering, so I put my arms around her.

  “How?”

  “He wants my forgiveness, and for that, he’s willing to accept my punishment.” She smiled, showing blood on her teeth.

  “Bang bang?”

  “I have a better idea. It’s what will make him want to come to see me — anywhere I say.”

  “What is it?”

  “Let it be a surprise. You’ll be there.”

  I wanted to know more, but she closed up and just sat huddled in the corner of the couch, thinking about something. Things were a mess in the kitchen. Pots and pans and cans and boxes all over the floor and the counters. I found something to eat and went to clean up. It was ragged work shaving. I put a band-aid on my neck to cover up Robin’s cut and got dressed.

  I was feeling panicky, like K. Farouk’s pistol was the only thing in my life I had to hang onto. There was a whole list of things I didn’t want to do banging around in my head and making me crazy, and only one thing I wanted to do: run.

  Robin Flood

  Buddy’s gone. But I knew he will return.

  Alone, I listen to my heart, and shiver at the earthquake inside.

  Dah-dum, dah-dum, dah-dum. Blood I came from, blood I go to. I ride on blood, my body a temporary channel for the river of life, a red liquid tide surging against the elastic boundaries of veins and arteries. Down the surging rapids of this eternal torrent I am hurtled, a small black boat on a river of pain and desire.

  I drank his blood. I begged him for his death finger, and he gave it to me. Buddy Tate is mine.

  Now I desire, and desire is dangerous for me.

  Laura Aurora

  Buses full of crusaders in bright colours streamed into earthquake-stunned San Francisco from the south and east. The buses were seen parked at City Hall, at Fisherman’s Wharf, at the Embarcadero, and down Market Street. Thomas Flood’s frightened, anxious, proselytising armies piled out from them to roam the streets of the stricken city with Bibles in their hands. Innocent irrumators and J.O. Jocks in the Castro were accosted by squads of middle-aged women and elderly men who had been directed by Flood to surround and harass the obviously degenerate. People with piercings, tattoos and strange haircuts, people wearing black leather or not enough clothes, were to be confronted by the wrath of the godly. Serious and persistent persuasion was to be applied.

  When Laura Aurora first saw these pilgrims on the streets of her scrambled city she winced at their tight, mean faces. But she knew there are many paths up the mountain, so at first she was inclined to be charitable toward the invaders. Then in North Beach an incident outside a strip club reminded her that the Indians who welcomed the first Pilgrims soon came to regret their charity.

  A crowd of onlookers had gathered around six elderly men and women in bright polyester who were screaming Bible babble at young stripper outside a strip club on Columbus Avenue. Laura knew the young woman from pagan gatherings. She belonged to another coven, but she was an enthusiastic apprentice in S/M circles. Her name was Sheba, and she looked especially pretty in bondage, Laura recalled. Sheba and Baron had done a scene at Markus’s play party.

  She was engaged in a hopeless debate with Flood’s crusaders, who were prevent
ing her from entering Babycakes, her place of worship. She tried to speak to them of the Goddess, but they shouted her down with their dirty-minded craziness.

  “Exploitation of the flesh is a sin! Lust will drive you down to the fiery pit! We are trying to help you save your immortal soul! Cover your nakedness and accept Jesus as your saviour!”

  Sheba covered her ears to block out the foulness of their exhortations. Then she was inspired to respond with her righteous flesh. Barred from the temple where she was worshipped, however crudely, as a manifestation of Aphrodite, Sheba decided to perform her dance on the street for the Warriors of Christ who confronted her. Her eyes flashed with bold defiance.

  She shook out her long blonde hair streaked with the colours of the rainbow and it cascaded down her back. She opened her leather jacket and offered to their shock and dismay the sight of her quivering young breasts, which swayed as she began to move her hips. She stretched her arms up and moved her hands and fingers in intricate patterns.

  Her street dance drew men as if by magic from blocks around. The men pressed against in against Christ’s Warriors, angling for a better look. Although fond of dancing naked in public, Laura decided not to join Sheba’s protest.

  But it gave her an idea.

  Thomas Flood

  Thomas Flood loved helicopters. The snicker-snack of the turning blades, the glorious feeling of descending from the heavens as if on a wing and a prayer, elated him.

  The Parousia helicopter, a big Sikhorsky, clattered over the low white cityscape of Sodom by the Sea toward a rally Flood had called at a Triple-X establishment known as the ‘Pussy Palace’ aka the Erotic Exotic Exploratorium.

  Flood sat by himself gazing out over the city he’d come to conquer. He fondled a relic in his pocket, a good luck charm. A sow’s ear in a silk purse, he smiled to himself, fingering the leathery object. He had cut it from the whore’s body, from the black whore he’d discovered in the Hotel Napa.

  His team, headed by Hopper and his disgusting associate Floyd Thundergaard, universally known as Thumper, sat behind him talking about strategy for the Pussy Palace rally.

  While he fingered his sow’s ear and the buildings and streets whooshed by beneath their feet, Flood talked to the Lord.

  — Lord, I have done thy bidding. Our armies have fallen on this city of lust. Tonight we will bring the conflagration to an egregious den of iniquity.

  — This will show them. They laugh off my earthquake?

  We’ll give them fire.

  — Lord, sometimes you scare me.

  — I told you: I am a jealous God. These people need a lesson. It’s the Kingdom of God or else.

  — I am your instrument.

  — This is the big one. Don’t screw it up.

  — Your anger fills me.

  — It should. I’m pouring it in your ear.

  — My daughter is down there somewhere. She has hardened her heart against me, and accused me of monstrous things.

  — Don’t bother me with your personal problems.

  — I know I am fallible and weak, Lord, but I need your help with her! I will be nothing unless she forgives me.

  — Don’t bullshit me. You know you can’t lie to me. It’s going to come down on your head, and she’s the key to the crash.

  — Why does she hate me?”

  — Why shouldn’t she? I hate you.

  Flood broke off his prayer. Sometimes these prayers went nowhere. When you talked with God you had to be prepared that sometimes he wouldn’t make sense.

  He shouted back to Hopper: “What kind of coverage do we have lined up?”

  “One network, two locals so far. The bonfire will be what they want to get. That’s what they’re coming for.”

  The bonfire would be the highlight of the Crusade for San Francisco: half a ton of filth burnt in the street while he preached The End. That would strike fear in their hearts.

  He felt a surge of power, God-like power.

  Markus Bloom

  Markus Bloom was not the kind of self-hating, pasty-faced pervert pornographer who would allow a dark angel like Flood to fall upon his beloved city without fighting back. He confessed to many weaknesses, but he adhered to a strict code of right and wrong: Eros was right, and the God of St. Augustine was wrong.

  Like Sheba in North Beach before her strip club, Markus made his stand at the entrance to the Pussy Palace, his cohort a bevy of porno beauties, transvestites, leather dykes and heavy players. Word had spread in the radical sex underground of the City of Perpetual Indulgence that guerrilla theatre was going to be employed against the invaders. Dozens of defiant degenerates swelled the ranks of Markus Bloom’s army until they were able to ring the building with a human wall. In their motley uniforms of leather, chains and dungarees they were a formidable sight, and people kept arriving who wanted to join them and confront the fanatics. A militant party atmosphere began to develop.

  Markus left his post and walked across the street to the dumpster that city fathers had provided for the purification of sexual images by fire. Some of them were probably his own creation, he knew. The television cameras were being positioned around the big dumpster, and men with walkie-talkies darted about looking up at the sky. Markus heard a helicopter.

  He approached one of the technicians to ask where the director was. There was going to be a counter-demonstration protesting the book-burning. The man ran off, and soon an impatient young man wearing headphones and carrying a clipboard strode up to him.

  The director kept looking skyward, and the noise of the descending helicopter grew steadily louder.

  “What demonstration are you part of?”

  Markus turned and pointed to the growing wall around the Pussy Palace.

  “We’re the people they hate, these Crusaders. What Flood is going to burn in this dumpster is our art.”

  The director was sceptical. “You’re shitting me. That’s smut in that dumpster. I saw it.”

  “And you know it when you see it, I’ll bet.”

  “Yes, of course. But what are you doing to do? There’s not going to be a riot, is there? I’ll have to move the cameras, and they’re set now.”

  Markus smiled at the director’s nervousness. He pushed it:

  “Just to demonstrate that one man’s smut is the next man’s delight, what we’re going to do is remain in front of the Pussy Palace and get really comfortable. Then, as the spirit moves us, we’re going to get down and dirty, do you know what I mean? We’re going to play some games you can’t show on television. But you know what that means: you won’t be able to show the Pussy Palace. There’ll be no contrast. Just an evil preacher with a big bonfire, and us yelling and...” — he paused for effect as the director got the picture — “and...slurping.”

  He giggled inappropriately, as if he saw the joke and the director didn’t. The director glared at him, and turned his attention to the roof of the nearby building on which Flood’s helicopter had set down. The noise was deafening.

  Markus Bloom returned with a simple message: “These people would like to burn us in that dumpster out there! What do you say we turn the other cheek? In fact, why not both cheeks? Let’s show them what they’re missing!” He giggled happily.

  Markus began to remove his clothes. Soon everyone was tugging and pulling and slipping out of clothing, and a wall of naked flesh three or four bodies deep stretched around the Pussy Palace.

  Naked, they began to cavort. The television cameras were quickly pointed their way, for pictures never to be broadcast. Powerful lights illuminated a living frieze of satyrs, nymphs, and maenads guarding the temple of Eros. It was a bizarre sight in a city of bizarre sights, but it was instantly upstaged by the entrance of Thomas Flood.

  He was being scooted in a golf cart to a cherry picker that would lift him and an aide above the dumpster filled with smut. The massed ranks of the Warriors for Christ parted for his cart, many or them shouting Bible verses. Some wept at their proximity to Flood. They surrounded
the dumpster as the cherry picker lifted him over their heads, singing “Stand up, stand up, for decency.”

  He stood above them like the Angel of Death, his head thrown back, looking skyward. Hopper stood behind him, scanning the crowd and keeping an eye on the perverts. Microphones whined, and Flood’s voice boomed over the P.A. system:

  “We have arrived here with our armies, as we said we would. We are here in the heart of Sodom struggling against the Kingdom of Evil. We have brought our Crusade to this wicked city, and we have brought the cleansing fire with us! Let it start fires all over this suffering land!”

  His face was a stern mask looking down upon them. His right hand was jammed deep in the pocket of his sober, elegant suit. He peered across the street at the heathen demonstrators ringing the Pussy Palace.

  “These are their works!” he shouted, indicating the dumpster and then pointing to the naked degenerates moving in obscene rhythms before the neon-streaked building. Hopper produced a torch and handed it to Flood, who held it aloft and pronounced:

  “Let the fires of a righteous God consume the filthy, graven images of a degenerate city!”

  He tossed the torch into the dumpster, the contents of which had been soaked with gasoline. Whoosh! Flames roared twenty feet into the sky. The Warriors for Christ screamed their approval. The perverts howled. Onlookers coughed and cheered.