Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast

by Winn, Jonathan

  Fuck. If he had someone, someone special or something, he’d feel better. Probably. They’d help. Or at least talk with him. Help him figure out what the fuck was up. Who the fuck knew? Maybe not.

  Whatever. Damn bitches were never worth the trouble.

  Shit, his head was fucked. What day was it? It’d been morning and then night. He remembered. And . . . ah shit, man. Think.

  Right. He’d left Eidolon really early. Yeah. Not yesterday. The day before? Shit, no clue. There’d been pancakes. At some dive. Sat near the door. Dined and dashed. That’s what you did when you were flat-ass broke. That, and had a mouth that tasted like funk and fuck and pussy and shit. ‘Cause you did that, too, when you were flat-ass broke.

  “One fifty,” the small, scrawny dude with the spike through his nose had said. “It’s final, Bullet. You ain’t gettin’ shit done until we get our one fifty, capice?”

  Capice this, dickwad, he’d wanted to say. But he’d counted back from ten. Everything was cool if he could fuckin’ count back from ten.

  He’d gone to the tat shop. Later. Yeah, that felt right. After the pancakes.

  “You’re flyin’, alright?” Spike had said. “Come the fuck back down to earth, man, and get us our money, capice?” And then he’d crossed his skinny-ass arms across his fuckin’ Metallica tee like he was ready to throw down or something.

  Punk ass poser.

  His knuckles hurt. He opened his eyes and held his hand in front of his face.

  Yeah, he’d punched something. Fingers scraped. Knuckles swollen. Black and blue and sorta yellow and, fuck me, red? Broken? He flexed his fingers. Nah, this was a wood punch, not concrete. Not flesh or bone. Wood.

  “It’s shit,” he’d screamed at Spike, his fists clenched. Fuck counting back from ten. “It’s fucking shit, man. I just want it fixed. It’ll take two fuckin’ seconds!”

  Spike had held his hands up. Dude looked scared. Fuckin’ petrified. “Come down, man, and then—”

  “I’M DOWN.” Pow.

  Right. The counter. He’d broken their counter. Cracked that fucker right down the middle. Heard the damn thing snap, everyone in the shop stopping what they were doing to look over.

  Shit, yeah.

  He smiled.

  He’d left then. Or they’d thrown him out. Makes more sense. Took a piss on the wall around the corner. Some bitch with a stick up her ass rushing by and clicking her tongue. Some dude standing near fake texting while taking too long a look.

  Whatever.

  “I just want it fixed,” he’d yelled. His body was a canvas, you know? It was art. Fuckin’ tats were his life. Everything was inked. Legs, arms, head, neck, back, thighs, whatever. Everything had something on him. And when he added some new shit, it had to look right. Blend in. Make sense. Be the right size. Right dimensions. Sit on the skin right. Be the right fuckin’ colors.

  Red wasn’t just red, you know? There were shades of red. But this new shit? It wasn’t right. They’d fucked it the fuck up. This red, right here, it was more brick than blood. It was too soft and orange, or something. The devil’s eyes had to pop. He wanted them to pop. With blood.

  Fuck it. Whatever.

  “Cool tats,” she’d said. It was afternoon. Late afternoon. The sun wasn’t as bright. The shadows were long. And the shop had tossed his ass out. Went around the corner to take a leak and then puke the pancakes up by a dumpster.

  Shitty stomach couldn’t keep anything down these days.

  “Cool tats.” Those were the first words from the girl with the forked tongue. “I’m Eve.” She’d stood near, her eyes sleepy and dark.

  “Of course you are,” he remembered saying. He wished he had a mint.

  Coming closer, she’d dragged her thumb through the puke along his bottom lip. Stuck it in her mouth. Sucked and then smiled.

  Fuck yeah. Twisted chicks. Love ‘em.

  “I do tats,” she’d said. Goth chick with a Daddy’s Girl Gone Bad vibe. Hair fifty shades of black. Bangs chopped with a razor. Big eyes rimmed with black. Skin whiter than rich kid coke. Dark blue smeared on her lips. Metal in her ears, nose, chin. Her small bright teeth chewing dollar store blue from her stubby nails.

  Tiny and thin, her nipples poking from a thin tank that ended right below her tits, she stood there with a skirt the size of a band aid and legs like a fuckin’ Halloween skeleton. The kind you’d stick in your yard and take down right before Thanksgiving. Only this one wore thick blue socks and battered combat boots.

  What he wouldn’t give to see those boots up by her fuckin’ ears.

  “You do tats?” His stomach had moved again.

  “Yeah.”

  “Where?”

  “Where do you want it?” She took the fingers from her mouth and stuck ‘em down the front of her skirt.

  He puked.

  “Fuck that shit,” he said as he turned over and pushed his face into the mattress. The rest was just dark. Clouds and confusion. Walking nowhere. Talking about nothing. The feel of her arm around his waist last night. Her thin hair in his fist as she gripped his cock through his faded jeans. The sound of sirens. The whirling flash of red in the dark. The chill in the air. His face hot. His bones cold. His muscles seizing. His heart racing. The air like knives stabbing his lungs as he tried to breathe. Trying to act like everything was okay when he knew something was very wrong.

  “It might rain,” he’d said as she pulled him onto Eidolon Avenue.

  It’s cold, his mother said.

  Shut the fuck up, man, he thought as he turned and pushed his face into the sheets. Thought of his five, seven, four friends waiting nearby. Thought of her.

  He’d fought to focus that night, the fuckin’ lock on the fuckin’ door moving as he’d tried to shove the fuckin’ key in.

  Don’t get sick.

  “It might rain,” he said again to the dark.

  “It will.”

  “What?” He tried to look at Eve, but she felt far away. And there was a group of people on the other side of the street just standing there looking at him. The sight of them, it dug into his guts. They weren’t doing anything, but, fuck me, the fact that they were there was wrong. His eyes stung with tears. There was a lump in his throat. His heart was gonna beat out of his chest. I don’t want to die, he said to himself. He stopped.

  Die? Fuck, man. Chill.

  She’d waited, the key turning in the lock, the dented metal door opening with a shove. They walked down the hall and up the stairs to his first floor apartment, her arms still around him. She smelled of piss and old sweat and some hippie shit. Patchouli maybe? Probably. How could he not notice that?

  It made his stomach move. Again.

  Fuck. He pushed himself away from the mattress.

  He needed to get up.

  ***

  Flies circled an island of shit and toilet paper and puke floating in an ocean the color of dark piss. The toilet was plugged. Had been for weeks. Some bitch snorting coke like an ‘80s college kid. Blonde and thin. Too thin. She’d dropped her cell phone down the can.

  “My phone!” she had said. She looked at him, one eye swollen and puffy and bruised bright red, her face pitted with acne scars. She stomped her foot, her baby tits bouncing above her ribs. “Get my phone!” Blood the color of copper had seeped from between her teeth and dribbled onto her bottom lip.

  He’d grabbed her by the hair and dragged all ninety pounds of her to the mattress on the floor. Ripped her cheap ass panties off. And between the punch, punch, slap, punch, bite, slap, punch had gotten one more in before throwing her ass out the door.

  “MY PHONE!” were her last words as she landed in the hall.

  He had to get up, he thought, his face still in the mattress. “What the fuck is up with my head?” he said to no one as he turned over. “Shitty fucking life full of shitty fucking memories. Fuck.”

  He swung his legs over the side. Leaned forward. He’d just been up. Had been in the bathroom, he thought.

  “Wait
, was I?”

  Yeah, the plugged toilet. Miss Emma with her bony hips and eye swelling red and lost phone.

  His heart thumped in his chest. His head was fuzzy and light. Kinda dizzy and shit. He needed to eat. No fuckin’ food, though. Cupboards bare. Floor sticky and cold underneath the piles of cheeseburger wrappers and pizza boxes. The furniture he hadn’t sold or traded for

  five blue, seven red, four yellow

  busted up ages ago. Except for the mattress and the coffee table holding his sixteen, colorful friends. The ones waiting for him to scoop ‘em up and swallow ‘em down. Not yet, though.

  It wasn’t time.

  He stood. Fuck, his thighs burned. They ached. His knees felt wrong and weird. Like swollen water balloons that were going to explode or something. Sorta like if he were to stab ‘em with a knife, they’d send arcs of blood or puss or something everywhere. And his calves, his shins, they were weak. Like he was some old dude who’d fall over any second. Fuckin’ getting sick.

  Damn dirty bitches . . .

  He looked down.

  Two snakes sat on his leg. Two.

  There’d been one, he thought. That’s right, isn’t it? Yeah, one. Earlier. Small. Not even two inches. And green. Or a green-yellow-blue-who knew the fuck what-color. But only one. Just one.

  He was back on the mattress, his leg out, his ankle turned up.

  Fuck.

  They were, fuckin’ shit, over, what, five inches long, ankle to knee. One on the front, the other moving up his calf. Were the mouths sorta open? Fuck. Hard to tell. But it almost looked like the small tip of a red tongue stickin’ out. Blood, not brick.

  And the skin around them looked swollen and dark and burned. And kinda fucked and round. Like a bubble. Like the feeling in his knees. He pressed it with his finger.

  SHIT! Fucker stung. Fuckin’ hurt. Bad.

  He sucked the air in between his teeth, his eyes growing wet. The bubble went down and then, a second later, swelled up bigger. What the fuck? This had never happened before. In all his time, after all that fuckin’ work, it’d never healed like this. With all those fuckin’ tattoos—

  “Is that the devil?”

  Last night. Freaky Eve with the forked tongue had sat on his lap, the both of them here, on this mattress. Was it last night? Maybe. Whatever. She’d held his arm close, her black eyes scanning the sleeve of painted flesh inked from wrist to shoulder. A tapestry—fuck, he loved that word—of a lush garden. Green trees. Thick grass. Brown trunks. Mountains in the distance. The blue of a perfect sky that could never in a fucking million years exist. And demons hiding. Peeking from behind the leaves. From around the trunks. Even looking out from the ground itself. Like corpses rising from the grave, their eyes and hands and sharp claws pushing from the dirt.

  Fucker had taken forever to do. But, damn, the bastard got it right. Colors, scale, size, scope. He fuckin’ loved that piece. Too bad Tattoo Dude got shot up with a shitload of bad smack.

  Sucks.

  “I like his eyes.” She’d watched the devil scrambling from the earth, his eyes large, his tongue forked, his fingers bleeding and raw and reaching.

  “Yeah?” He wanted to kiss her. Wondered if her blue lipstick would taste like anything. Wondered if it’d taste like blue, whatever that tasted like. Thought of blueberries. He hated blueberries. Made him shit like a fuckin’ Smurf. But he still wanted to kiss her. Didn’t give a fuck if she reeked of old sweat, piss and patchouli.

  “Brick, not blood,” she said.

  He laughed. “Yeah. Good call. You think it’s alright?”

  She nodded and shifted her boney ass on his lap, her tits drifting too fuckin’ near his lips, his mouth, his teeth. He counted back from ten.

  “Man, I was gonna have the fucker fix it, but I dunno. Might keep it now.”

  “Keep it.” Her hands cupped his face, her short nails rough against his skin, her fingers cool.

  “Owe ‘em money anyway.”

  Shut up, man, Smart Skippy, the dude with the bright yellow hair, had said once. Bitches don’t like ‘em broke.

  “You want a tat from me?” Her breath reeked of tacos and toothpaste.

  “Hell yeah. Where do you work?”

  “Where do you want it?” Her eyes narrowed, her teeth biting her bottom lip.

  Fuck yeah.

  He laughed and reached around to grab her ass as her arms slipped around his neck and her tits pressed against his chin in the dark of night.

  Morning rain snuck in through the window and ran down the wall. Flies dive-bombed the toilet. He stood in the bathroom. The floor was cold and wet and grimy around his toes. The full-length mirror on the door stood in front of him.

  “Cool tats,” she’d said just hours ago.

  He just remembered that, he thought as he looked at his reflection. Tall and ripped, from his big feet to the top of his buzzed head, he was art. From the green of the garden on his left arm—

  “The trees feel alive—”

  to the seascape on his right. The crashing waves. The swimming mermaids with their big tits and snapping tails. The green fish and blue sharks and hidden caves with their golden treasure. The enraged octopus squatting on the back of his hand to wrap around his wrist and forearm, its tentacles tearing the sailors in two

  “It feels alive—”

  and the flaming nightmare of the Gates of Hell on his broad back reaching from his waist all the way to his neck.

  She’d wanted to see.

  He’d peeled off his shirt and turned. Her fingers had brushed over his skin.

  Fuck yeah.

  She was quiet. He could hear her breathing as she’d caressed the demons running down his back. Her hands discovering the screaming souls twisting and turning and tearing in two as they writhed across his muscular shoulders and fell onto his tight lats. Her palm caressing the dark, heavy doorway, the fiery, screaming, endless nightmare of hell peeking from his spine.

  Her blue lips had kissed the devil then. Found him near the small of his back. Horns and hooves and snarling teeth. Greedy paws clutching a flaming pitchfork, his razor sharp tail whipping the wind. Her lips found him and, her forked tongue licking his skin, had blessed him.

  Holy fuckin’ hell yes.

  He turned and brought her into his arms. His hands had gone right back to her ass, her tiny body crushed against his.

  “This room is alive,” she’d said before he shoved his tongue in her mouth.

  Goddamn, that hurt. His ankle twinged and stabbed and burned. He looked down.

  The two snakes were now three.

  The FUCK?

  ***

  He blinked. Closed his eyes. Opened them again. Shooed away the flies and looked in the bathroom mirror. The floor was wet. Everything smelled like slimy shit and fucked up puke and cold rain. And there were now three snakes on his ankle.

  He looked and, fuckin’ shit, yeah. He was seeing three. Three fuckin’ snakes winding around his calf, his shin, and on past his knee halfway up his thigh. And the motherfucker hurt. The skin was still swollen and red. The bottom half of his whole leg an angry sunburn that reached all around and down to his foot. A throbbing rash that crept between his toes and itched. That stung when he touched it.

  That moved when he touched it.

  The FUCK?

  “Stay still,” she’d said.

  His skin was moving. He laid his palm flat against his calf. Fuck, that shit hurt, man. But, yeah, the skin was vibrating. Kinda buzzing or something. Underneath. And, hand to holy god, he wasn’t flyin’. He knew that.

  The pills were on the coffee table. Five blue. Seven red. Four yellow.

  He knew that.

  Five blue. Seven red. Four yellow.

  He’d counted and they were safe and his fuckin’ skin, his leg, it was moving.

  “Stay still.” Her hand had wrapped around him, holding him steady.

  The needle had stabbed in the dark. He laid on his bed last night. Eve was down below somewhere on hi
s leg—his waist?—inking him up. He didn’t remember where she’d gotten the needle. Or the color, those little plastic pots that stained his flesh. One minute he’d been grabbing her ass, crushing her tiny body to his, ignoring her stench while sneaking his fingers past her skirt and into her panties, and the next she’d been drilling him with a needle. He couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel anything. Knew he should, but didn’t. He couldn’t even see her, it was so dark.

  How in the sweet fuck was she workin’ on me in the dark?

  The sun’s not even up yet, his mother had said. Shut up, man, he thought.

  He swallowed hard, fighting the urge to slam down those

  five blue, seven red, four yellow

  and just make her go the fuck away.

  She’d stood in the door, his mom, her hand on the frame, her tube top sagging too low and her shorts riding too high. This was back in the other house. The last house. The one they squatted in, out in the woods ‘cause they were dead ass broke. The one with the busted windows covered in plastic and the vines that poked through the floorboards like desperate fingers. This was right before she’d stepped off the porch and out of sight. Before he’d left her face down in the dirt while he slid a backpack over his shoulder and hauled ass down the road.

  Shut the fuck up, man, he thought.

  Eve had slid on top of him in the dark. His hands lifting her skirt, he’d felt the needle stabbing his skin and her fingers holding his foot. But then he tasted blue and breathed patchouli and piss and her legs had straddled his stomach. All at the same time. Her tongue in his mouth and her hand holding his ankle.

  What the hell?

  Somewhere he remembered lifting her, and carrying her, and slamming her against the wall. Her head butting his and blood shooting from his nose. Her laughter as she bit his chin, her forked tongue licking the blood from his lips. He thrown her against the coffee table, he thought. It’d broken, the cheap ass wood splitting. He body slammed her, laying on top. She’d grabbed his head. Pulled him close. Had smeared her face in the red as he’d hauled out his cock and shoved it in her.

  His stomach moved.