Classics Mutilated

by John Shirley

  She reached down and tried to grip the handle of the blade with both hands, but I drew her forward into an embrace instead. I held onto her. I thought a part of me had managed to love her as much as I was capable of loving any woman. I tightened my hold and kissed her throat. She struggled and beat at my chest and snarled in my face. I kissed her again.

  “Even if you kill me the spell won’t stop,” she said. “The demon will follow you until you die.”

  “Maybe that’s how it should be.”

  “Do you want to know why I didn’t steal your soul?”

  “I already know.”

  “Because you don’t have one.”

  “Goodbye, Gina.”

  My hands moved then, doing amazing and savage things almost without my consent. When it was done I was red and wet up to the elbows and some of the fever had left me. I climbed to my feet and pulled the knife out of my side. A gout of blood followed. I tore up a bed sheet and tightened a makeshift bandage over the wound. The bleeding wouldn’t stop but it had slowed some.

  I picked up the bottle holding Portman’s shadow and smashed it. I watched a liquid-like blackness pour free, rise, curl through the air, and vanish. Then I gripped myself across the belly trying to keep my guts in and stumbled out the door.

  I staggered through the neighborhood, leaving a spattered trail on the sidewalks. Shop owners called to me. I scuffed chalk-drawn hopscotch boards and felt bad about it. Kids followed saying, “Mister, you know you’re bleeding?”

  I made it to the church in time for evening mass and fell into the back pew as I listened to the benediction of the blessed sacrament. I hadn’t heard it for years. It was an invocation for divine help, spiritual guidance, and forgiveness. I wondered if there was still time for a man like me to regain his soul. I listened to my blood dripping onto the floor and felt a little sorry for whoever had to clean up the mess after me.

  I leaned my head back and listened to the prayers from the few parishioners. I found a strange comfort in it, something that led me back to my childhood when I was an altar boy and had a firm faith that God would reward and protect me someday.

  I heard Mother Superior’s footsteps in the vestibule before I saw her. I glanced up and there she was with two nuns I didn’t know and my mother. They had her by the elbows and were helping to carry her along as they all came toward me. Her habit was soaked with sweat and she was holding herself about the waist. I could see she was in terrible pain. We were still sharing dreams and sorrow, visions and misery.

  “Hello, Ma.”

  She didn’t respond. Her eyes had that thousand-yard stare like she was looking through me into the abyss. Her dry, cracked lips framed sentences I couldn’t distinguish. I thought, She’ll be rid of me soon and be much better off without the burden. Maybe my death would give her a fresh chance at life in or out of the convent. I tried to imagine her a normal, happy woman planting roses in a garden out on Long Island, a second husband mowing the lawn, a dog romping around. I tried desperately to hold the picture in my mind, but it kept flitting away.

  They helped to slide her in beside me and the nuns I didn’t know tore open my shirt and started working on my wounds. A lot of nuns seemed to have some kind of emergency training. I don’t know where they got it from but I’d seen them do this kind of thing before. They applied pressure and checked my pulse rate and tried to stem the flow of my blood. They failed. Then one ran off to call 911.

  The Mother Superior gave me the same kind of glare that I’d be met with at the gates of heaven. God would look at me with no less disappointment and anger.

  I grinned at her. “Say a prayer … for me.”

  “I’ve said thousands for you.”

  “Thanks for trying.”

  “No one’s beyond redemption.”

  “You almost … said that … with a straight face.”

  I laid out on the pew and listened to the benediction echoing across the high ceilings, the stained glass windows, the stone images of Christ’s agony in the twelve stations of the cross. Then it came to an abrupt end as the priest finally caught wise to what was happening at the back of the church. I heard some muted shouts then and footfalls on the marble.

  I rested my head in my mother’s lap and she pressed her lips to my ear and began murmuring indecipherable words in a language beyond language that soon began to make a bizarre kind of sense. I managed to eke out a rough cough of laughter as the light drew away farther and farther and separated from the oncoming rush of endless darkness and black fire.

  Quoth the Rock Star

  By Rio Youers

  The Lyric Theater, Baltimore, MD.

  Friday October 13, 1967.

  They described him as electrifying and passionate—a rock shaman charged with a dark, sexual energy that left the audience breathless. They used adjectives and superlatives that, while approbative, meant nothing to Jim. He slithered across the stage, trapped in the lights like a lizard in the sun, and vocalized from the depths of his soul. He looked at their faces and heard them calling—screaming—his name. They held out their hands, as pale as flowers. They threw their energy at him, and he held it, and cast it back in crashing black waves.

  Electrifying.

  Passionate.

  Rock shaman.

  He wrote lyrics—splashed his soul to music—to entertain their intellect, and to offer glimpses of his mind. He was a poet, through and through. The performances were recitations; dark verse married to melody. A war raged in Vietnam and every other band clapped their hands and placed flowers in their hair. His band rode the snake. They sermonized from a barely imagined rim where the day destroyed the night. They sang about fire and death … The End. They were a four-man orchestra, bleeding dark colors. They created symphonies of psychedelia and challenged their audience to break on through. But for the most part, all they saw—this audience, with their pale-flower hands and flashing cameras—all they saw was a drummer, a guitarist, a keyboardist, and a charismatic, enigmatic lead singer with a pretty face.

  They saw nothing.

  Jim Morrison sprawled on the stage of the Lyric Theater, motionless, held in the moment like something painted. A fallen leaf, perhaps, curled and brown. Or a still river: deep, uncertain waters. The crowd chanted his name and he looked at them from his prone position, but saw little through the stage lights’ glare. He had dropped acid before the show and he could feel it biting the corners of his consciousness. There was a black, velvet curtain in front of him and beyond it the audience roared. Not individuals, but a singular entity: a massive mouth gushing nonsense, filled with teeth. The stage vibrated with the band’s extemporization. He could feel it through his cheekbone and ribcage, and in the delicate plates of his skull. He closed his eyes and felt the music. Ray’s fingers blurred across the keys: tiny demons filled with fire. Robby twisted his guitar and women-shaped melodies snaked from the speakers. John smashed his drums like a child smashing glass.

  You don’t know me, Jim thought. You think you do, but—

  His left hand flexed, clutching the trembling stage. He closed his eyes and his mind buckled. Cold blood ran through his body. His back arched and he imagined a thick tail swishing behind him. The crowd roared like an ocean, his blue eyes snapped open (glowing yellow in his mind), and for one heartbeat the backs of his hands appeared covered with hard scales.

  See me CHANGE, Jim thought. A trick of the stage lights, maybe. An effect of the acid, almost certainly. Either way, he licked his lips with a forked tongue and sprang to his feet. The band emerged seamlessly from their improvisation and, half-human/half-lizard, he slithered to the mic stand. Grasping it, he stood in the spotlight, clad in tight leather pants and Cuban-heeled boots, while the crowd’s singular mouth rumbled. They cast their affection at him, and he reciprocated with his soul. He purred into the mic and his voice formed bridges. His eyes fluttered, blue again. Cool sweat glimmered on his throat. Jim sang the final verse and chorus of “The End,” and then sank through their appl
ause like a man wrapped in chains.

  Midway through the encore—“When the Music’s Over”—Jim noticed the raven. It circled above the crowd, sometimes swooping low, mostly riding the thermals of their energy. He should not have been able to see it: a black and heavy bird amid such darkness, but its silky feathers caught the glow of the stage lights, allowing him to discern it with ease. Indeed, it appeared to shimmer preternaturally, finding light where there was none. As Jim recited the poetry section of the song, he heard the raven caw—a discordant, brilliant sound that punctuated every verse. He followed its flight around the theater, thinking it should soon disappear (it wasn’t real, after all, but surely another lysergic twist), but the raven proved pertinacious. Before the song’s end it glided over Jim’s head and alighted atop Ray’s keyboard bass. The bird shook its dark feathers and looked at the singer. It cocked its head and blinked bright eyes. Ray continued to play, oblivious.

  I need that bird, Jim thought. I need to feel its feathers … know that it’s real.

  Distracted, Jim finished the number. The music ended and the lights went out.

  The raven shimmered and watched him.

  Camera flashes and questions, hands touching him, too many people calling his name. The whole world was backstage. Reporters, VIPs, groupies, friends of friends, industry people, hangers-on, lackeys, and dogs. He was pulled in too many different directions, but went to none of them. At times like these Jim floated away:

  Part-fantasy, part-memory. All-refuge. A highway in the desert, a tangle of metal, and a scatter of bleeding Indians. An accident … he didn’t know what had happened. He stood in the middle of the road and absorbed the chaos, listened to the screams. He turned his gaze to a dying man thrown to the side of the road, broken and bleeding. Jim’s fragile heart drummed. The Indian looked at him….

  “Jim … Jim.”

  “What is ‘The End' really about?”

  “Your appearance last month on The Ed Sullivan Show caused—”

  “What’s your stand on the war in Vietnam?”

  Jim watched the Indian die—saw the life flutter from his eyes. Fascinated, he stepped a little closer, and then witnessed something amazing: the Indian’s soul, slithering from his broken body. It shimmered, moon-bright and lizard-shaped, and crawled toward the boy….

  “Jim … come on. Come with me, baby.”

  He recognized Pamela’s voice and opened his eyes. She stood before him, protecting him from the barrage of senseless attention. His cosmic mate. His love. Her red hair burned and he touched it, and felt her in his fingertips.

  “Hey, baby,” he said.

  She smiled. “Come with me, Jim.”

  He started to go with her, but paused. Beyond Pamela—beyond the swarm of people—the raven swooped and landed on a rail. It pecked its glowing feathers for a moment, and then looked at him.

  I know what you are, Jim thought. You flew from a broken body. You’re someone’s soul.

  “Are you okay, baby?” Pamela touched his face.

  The raven cawed. It rapped on the rail with its bony beak.

  “Gonna fly tonight,” Jim said, speaking to Pamela but looking at the bird. “Real high. I may never come down.”

  She kissed the underside of his jaw. “Don’t leave me, Jim,” she said.

  But he did leave; twenty-five minutes later he was walking the streets of Baltimore, having escaped the backstage madness. He told the guys that he was stepping outside for some fresh air—didn’t mention that he was, in fact, following the raven.

  An unusual fog draped across the city, in places so thick that Jim could hardly see an arm’s length in front of him, and then it would dissipate and hang in smoky ribbons, coiled like snakes around the streetlights, whispering across his skin as he walked. The raven flew just ahead of him, moving from fencepost to trashcan to the hood of a parked car, and as Jim drew close it would ruffle its feathers and take wing again, leading him deeper into the night. He drew his collar tight and followed with his head down, eyes up. Cars hissed by, too close, too loud. Their headlights bullied the fog, revealing its seams.

  Maybe none of this is real, Jim thought. The raven, the fog, the cars. Maybe I’m still on stage, trapped in my haze while the band plays.

  It was cold, too, and the fog was heavy with moisture. It tasted like camphor. The city’s light gave it a burned hue, and within it the raven shimmered, just like it had in the theater. There was no chance of him losing sight of it, even when the mist thickened; it glimmered, like the Indian’s soul.

  My soul, Jim thought, weaving slightly. His boot heels clicked rhythmically off the sidewalk. He heard car horns sounding, a train shuddering along the Northeast Corridor, and the raven’s bruised cry, teasing him along.

  He spared little thought for Pamela or the guys. They’d all be looking for him, no doubt checking the restrooms and darkened backstage areas, expecting to find him entertaining one of the many female partisans who had crashed the after-show parade. They would give up soon enough, if they hadn’t already, conceding that he had gone AWOL, and not for the first time.

  “Not for the last,” Jim said. He smiled. The raven worked its wings and carried him away. He walked, listening to his boot heels, watching the raven. He had no idea where he was. Down alleyways and beneath trembling overpasses, across silent streets and through neighborhoods of old brick and faceless glass. He had lived in many cities across the United States—an unsettled upbringing; the eldest child of a Navy Admiral—and they all started to feel the same after a while. Climatically different, sure. Demographically diverse, certainly. But they shared a similar feel, he thought: just grids upon grids, filled with buildings and stoplights and authority, sustained by people who worked and ate and prayed and copulated: the great American prison. No wonder he continued to move around … to slip through the bars and fly.

  But this place, this town … it felt different. Maybe it was the—

  acid

  —camphor-taste of the fog, or the kinked streets and heavy, ancient brickwork. Jim wasn’t sure, but he knew he had never been any place like this before.

  Where am I?

  In reply, the raven uttered an abrasive cry, circling in the mist to alight upon a street sign. It was archaic in design: wrought iron, with gilded letters on a sooty background. Jim smiled when he read the sign.

  “Yeah, pretty neat,” he said, nodding. “Now I know this isn’t real.”

  The raven snapped its fat wings and tapped its beak against the sign.

  It read: Night’s Plutonian Shore.

  Strings of fog curled around the elaborate ironwork, and with a burst of angry sound the raven took flight, leaving a spray of black feathers that swayed to the damp sidewalk like burned leaves. The bird cawed, flickering in the mist, and then swept down, beneath a rustic archway and into a narrow alleyway. It flew ahead … a glowing apparition in the distance.

  Jim followed, boot heels clicking.

  And the sound of his heels was soon enveloped by another sound, not dissimilar: the ticking of a clock, only it was loud—too loud, booming from within the confining alleyway, making the fog tremble and the old bricks shake in their joints. Jim covered his ears but, like the music when he had been lying on the stage, he could feel the thunderous ticking vibrate through the plates of his skull. He screamed, but could not match the sound.

  The raven swooped and glittered ahead of him.

  Death, Jim thought. I can hear you. Tick-tock, my pretty child, my sweet one.

  He screamed again.

  It grew darker, colder, narrower, as he stepped deeper into the alleyway. Soon all he could see was the fog and the raven, and he had to put his arms out to his sides to make sure that the walls were still there. The bricks were slick beneath his fingertips, like snakeskin, and they continued to quiver as the ticking sound crashed around him.

  “What do you want?” Jim asked the raven. “Do you want my death? My broken body?”

  He received no reply from t
he bird, which soared and, for a moment, flickered from view. Jim stopped and waited. Moisture gleamed on his brow and he drew his arms close to his body. He had never felt so alone. Five long seconds. A drifter on Night’s Plutonian Shore. And then the raven reappeared with an almost musical swish of wings and Jim sighed, drawn toward it, walking quickly.

  He could hear his boot heels again; the ticking had subdued to normal volume. Not that any aspect of this night could be considered normal.

  I don’t know what’s going on, Jim thought. But I have to see it through. I have—

  Something touched him in the darkness. It felt like fingertips brushing over his cheek. He cried out and stepped back, and a steely hand clasped his upper arm from somewhere else. Jim shook it loose, staggering slightly—felt someone else touch his face, and yet another hand reached out and grabbed the lapel of his leather jacket. He slapped it away, crying out again, shuffling down the alleyway as yet more hands poured from the darkness, each seeking some small part of him. He could hear voices, too, melding with the clip of his heels and that constant ticking: Jim … over here, Jim … Jim … look this way … over here…. A sudden burst of light that he recognized as a camera flash. Jim shielded his eyes, but not before he saw what the alleyway had become: a jungle of hungry arms, bursting from the walls, hands snatching. Jim … right here, just one shot … this way, Jim … look…. Another camera flash. Hands grasped at him, fingernails raking down his leather pants, clawing his jacket. He could feel them in his hair, on his throat. He started to run, pushing the arms away as he hastened down the alleyway. His heart clamored in his chest and for the first time he felt afraid. He closed his eyes and the camera flashed again, urging its harsh glare against his eyelids. The silhouette of the raven—wings spread—was printed against the shocked membrane of skin.