But you haven't joined in the feast. Instead you slither over to the counter and wrap one of your smaller facial tentacles around a to-go cup. You grab a plastic lid with another tentacle then return to your table, leaving a glistening trail of slime in your wake. You pour your still-hot spinal fluid into the cardboard cup, fasten the lid on, and then put the empty mug on the counter for the barista to collect later. You then lift your coat off the back of your chair—a coat made from the stomach linings of a dozen syphilitic nuns—and head for the exit while the bloody revelers continue gorging themselves.
As you stride out into the night, disappointed, you think to yourself that you need to find a new late-night hangout. This scene is getting old.
Tim Waggoner's most current novels are the Nekropolis series of urban fantasies and the Lady Ruin series for Wizards of the Coast. In total, he's published over twenty novels and two short story collections, and his articles on writing have appeared in Writer's Digest and Writers' Journal, among others. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College and in Seton Hill University's Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program. Visit him on the web at www.timwaggoner.com and www.nekropoliscity.com.
—FLICKER
by Lee Thomas
All that Kathy knew of love came from images flickering on an old television screen. What came from this screen was fiction, and Kathy had discovered the difference between fiction and reality long ago. Fiction was a house in suburbia, cleaned by a beautiful mother who baked cookies, wore pearls and prepared delicious meals. Fiction was a father who worked a steady job in the city, declared his daughter's beauty to the world and fussed over the men who might date her. Fiction didn't show a little girl, bruised and crying, hiding in a filthy basement terrified of the fuckers she called Mom and Dad. But reality did. Reality offered a mother who worked out her boredom with vodka and strange men and a father who expressed frustration with his fists and his cock. Reality offered Santa Monica Boulevard on Christmas Day, waiting for one of Keith's friends to pick Kathy up so she'd have her fix and a warm place to sleep. The company she kept was irrelevant. In this, reality's blindness was equal to love's.
And what did it matter? This wasn't a career, just a means to an end. She had ambitions. Early in the mornings as Keith snored next to her, Kathy laid awake imagining herself on the screen with Mark Wahlberg or Tom Cruise. The dream had followed her from childhood. Like Angelina Jolie or Sandra Bullock, Kathy wanted to be a star and see posters bearing her likeness hung on walls by adoring fans and see her name on movie theater signs. Her parents had laughed at her aspiration. They had no time for her "craziness." So, she'd gone into her basement and mimicked whatever movie she'd seen that afternoon, losing herself in a fiction that effectively filled a vacant childhood—at least for small periods of time. In her basement she became someone admired and loved, became someone strong and heroic, became anyone but Kathy Windman. She'd even played Frankie in her junior high school's production of The Member of the Wedding. Of course, her parents had been too busy to attend any of the shows, but her teachers and even some of the other parents had congratulated her beautiful performance. Such an exciting feeling it had been for her, being recognized as an actress.
Sadly, she'd never done another play. Her boyfriend in junior high, Larry, had said it was all so stupid. She'd temporarily abandoned her dramatic pursuits at his request, exchanged them for pharmaceutical dreams. The void she'd once filled with acting was soon plugged by blow, blunts, and a six-pack of Bud.
At fifteen, after Larry dumped her, Kathy hitchhiked from Seattle to the city where dreams were everything. One night while watching the dollar movies in a run down theater on Hollywood Boulevard, she'd met Keith. He'd given her a place to stay, a purpose and a new relationship with new dreams. These dreams offered needles and a cloudy world where pain was not allowed.
Almost a year had passed since they'd met. And now she waited on a corner for Keith's friend. She couldn't remember his name but he was supposed to pick her up.
She was going to make a movie.
The news had disturbed her at first. Although she wanted nothing more than to see her image on a screen, she didn't want to make porn flicks. She knew what happened to actresses who took the easy way out, who jumped at the money and then got the reputation, an inescapable reputation, as a whore. She didn't want that. She wanted to be a star, with all of the praise and respect that accompanied the title.
But Keith wouldn't hurt her. He loved her. He always told her so. He just had a friend who liked to make home movies. The guy was a voyeur. The movie wouldn't be seen by anybody, especially anyone from Hollywood. It was simply a game that this guy played, and besides Kathy wanted to see herself on the screen, even if the screen were nothing more than that of a high-def flat panel Sony.
As she grew concerned that her ride might not show, a gray Lexus pulled to the curb. Behind the wheel, a well-dressed man with silver hair and a fatherly smile leaned across to look her over. "Are you Kathy?" he asked. His teeth were very white and his skin very tanned. Looking in from the tall curb she could see that he wore white pants, which were pressed into sharp creases, and a crisp cobalt blue dress shirt. The sleeves were rolled up along thick forearms.
She nodded, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she stepped off of the curb. The man pushed open the door. She got in the car and as the door closed, the lock engaged.
"You're Keith's friend?" she asked.
"My name," the man said jovially, "is Desmond Silver. And yes Keith and I have something of a history."
Kathy nodded and stared out the windshield of the sedan as the familiar buildings of her neighborhood pulled behind her. The inside of the car was warm and comfortable after the chill afternoon.
"Merry Christmas," she said uneasily.
"And Merry Christmas to you," he replied.
Light cologne, trapped in the car with them, tickled her nose. It smelled like almonds and reminded her of the movie theater back home. The Marquis, a theater down the street from where she'd lived with her parents, sold really good chocolate covered almonds and whenever she hadn't spent her lunch money on cigarettes or make-up, she'd bought a box of the candy from the concession stand. They'd been especially good with a Dr. Pepper.
Wrapping a thin coil of blond hair around her finger, she studied the driver from the corner of her eye. He didn't talk much. That made her uncomfortable, but nothing else about the man seemed threatening. He had a pleasant smile on his round face and really pretty eyes. They were so blue. He didn't look anything like Keith's other friends. Some of them were old, but they looked different. They looked like lizards, and when they smiled they looked like hungry lizards. Most of Keith's friends were really creepy.
This guy—Silver—seemed nice, though. She just wished he'd say something. She didn't like the silence. It made her wonder if the man was having second thoughts about her. Maybe she wasn't pretty enough to appear in his movie. People told her she was pretty but she didn't always believe it. She thought her hair was too curly and her nose was too big. It wasn't like Barbra Streisand's or anything, but it seemed pretty big. At least she didn't have a weight problem and she was a natural blonde. A lot of girls were uglier than her—like the one who lived downstairs from Keith. She had terrible skin and stringy black hair.
"So um," she began, trying to cancel the uncomfortable silence. "You. . .uh. . .you like movies?"
"Oh yes. They are the only perfect form of art. What about you?"
"I love them," Kathy said. She was going to mention her ambition of being an actress, but sometimes it sounded stupid when she said it aloud. So she settled for, "Are you going to be my co-star?"
The man burst out laughing. The car came alive with its rich, deep sound. As he laughed, his round face constricted, producing dozens of tiny wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. He looked over at Kathy and managed to say, "No, but I'm flattered you'd ask."
"You just like to watch?"
Silver considered this for a moment and then shook his head. "I like to create. Watching is part of that, I guess. You see, I choose to expend my energies into the creation of art. Honestly, the thought of anyone actually touching me is nauseating, which is not to say that I am a completely asexual creature." He turned the car and remained silent for a moment before continuing. "The guidance and manipulation of an act, the creation of an impossible scenario is very satisfying to me. Creation and re-creation, fighting over something until it's perfect. That's my passion. I think they call it a God complex."
Damn, Kathy thought. How could you not like being touched?
"Do you have dreams?" he asked in a friendly but stern voice. He took his eyes off the road and fixed her with a crystal blue gaze. "Real dreams?"
"Sure," Kathy replied. Didn't everybody?
Silver nodded and tapped the steering wheel once with his thick palm. "Well this place, this world, doesn't care much for dreams, despite what the poets tell us. It makes no accommodation for them. Dreams, prayers, they guide the young, but life's random inequities separate those who succeed from those whose dreams have been little more than inexpensive entertainment. I couldn't accept that." He shrugged his large shoulders and turned the car again. "It doesn't seem fair to only get one chance at a dream."
"No," she said, perhaps too eagerly.
He grinned at her exuberance. "If you make something and it breaks, well. . . then you've got two choices. If you've got the right tools or the right glue, you can fix it. Otherwise, it's gone. You have to pitch it away. Up until recently, I didn't have the right adhesive. This maddened me. It was like molding a perfect urn only to have the pieces separate in the kiln. But, recently I found a glue that works. I'm very excited about it."
"You make vases?" Kathy asked, uncertain of what Silver was talking about.
"What?" he asked. Then he let his warm chuckle loose to fill the car again. He rocked in the driver's seat obviously pleased by her naiveté. "No," he chuckled. "I was speaking metaphorically. Well, you'll see what I mean. We're here." He turned the wheel one last time and the car left the street.
The Lexus came to a stop in a dead-end alley. Buildings loomed on either side of the vehicle casting deep shadows over the dull facades. Moisture crept down the weathered brick as if the stones cried for solace. A three-story monstrosity stood ahead of them. Condemned and desolate, the three structures comprised a melancholy union in the midst of office towers and gleaming condominiums. Filthy plywood covered shattered windows. Obscure, woven symbols accompanied curses and effigies of genitalia on the boards and brick.
"Perfect, isn't it?" Silver asked.
Kathy made a sound in her throat that she hoped sounded positive; she didn't want to insult her host, but the alley and the buildings that formed it were eerie. Once, she'd gone with a friend of Keith's to an old shack behind a seedy apartment complex in Reseda. One guy took her to a deserted warehouse. The strangest place she'd ever partied was with a bunch of musicians. They'd broken into a fire-gutted apartment building in North Hollywood. A friend of theirs had overdosed in the room a few months before it had burned so the place had meant a lot to them. But for the first time, while standing in that dark alley with the kindest looking man she'd ever met, Kathy felt scared.
"It's such a lonely looking place." He sighed. Then his demeanor rapidly changed. He smiled and slapped his hands together before his belly and rubbed them as if to make them warm. "Are you ready?"
Kathy nodded.
Silver set off across the pavement, his feet breaking a path in the litter. Kathy hesitated, put her thumbnail in her mouth, and then took a step forward. She moved slowly, looking around the alley as she crushed trash under her heels. The old man waited by a doorway. At that moment she realized how commanding he was. His frame all but eclipsed the black space beyond.
Kathy moved a little faster until she stood before him on the small cement stoop of the structure. A dull, musky odor poured from the building. Daylight was consumed beyond the threshold. Inside, only three steps were visible climbing away at a steep grade.
"Ladies first," Silver said. He stepped aside and waved his arm toward the stairs. He made the motion so gracefully, so slowly, like a magician offering a miraculous illusion to his audience. For a moment, it seemed the gloomy chamber had dissolved his arm at the elbow, but when the arc completed, the man stood before her, whole and grinning.
As she stepped over the threshold into the strange space, a fetid urban perfume climbed along her nostrils and down the back of her throat where it coiled in her windpipe. Refuse, urine and excrement and an underlying odor, an animal odor, coalesced into a rank phantom, a malevolent spirit unwilling to allow her breath, and Kathy choked audibly trying to regain control of her throat. She hesitated, putting a palm over her mouth. What little of the stairway she could see in the dim glow, stretched far above her. At the top, a sickly yellow light fought against a dark siege. Tiny shafts of gray from cracks in the plywood blinds cut the air like minuscule threads woven in raven cloth. They illuminated little, succumbing to the hunger of the darkness.
She turned. Silver stood behind her. His face remained a mask of joviality. He seemed so pleased. She wondered about him. How did he spend his days? What did he do for a living? She assumed he wasn't married because of what he'd said about being touched, but who was he?
The boards beneath her feet complained under her weight. Kathy clutched the splintered rail tightly as she led Silver toward the jaundiced glow. Low raspy voices glided in the air above. The words seemed visible, swirling in the thin gray shafts of light. One of the voices burst into laughter, and then the chamber went silent.
She neared the top. Her heart beat rapidly. The struggling light came from a dusty bulb in the hall to the right of the staircase illuminating graffiti raped walls. To her left, there was a brightly lit room at the far end of the hall. Then she saw her co-stars.
They knelt in a circle around a flickering candle, the light of which extended no more than a foot in either direction. Two were busy with a needle, cooking a familiar dish in a blackened sugar spoon. The sight of the brew made her stomach knot.
Keith had told her to wait until she got to the party, and they'd fix her up. Now she felt the craving in her belly growing, gestating like a child. The hunger kicked. It grew into an unbearable ache. Only seconds after seeing the smoking spoon, Kathy's entire body hurt.
The third man, an enormous bald figure with tribal tattoos painting his torso and arms, knelt with his back to the wall. He wore a pair of tattered Levi's and black work boots. He balanced the thin point of a switchblade in his palm. When it dropped, he clutched the handle and retracted the blade. After springing it again, he began to roll the weapon between his fingers as his buddies continued brewing the contents of the spoon.
"Our star has arrived," Desmond Silver announced.
The three men lifted their heads. They regarded Kathy with little interest; their expressions remained flat and bland. The bald man stopped spinning the blade, and it jumped in his hand, landing point down on his palm. His stare caught Kathy's as he executed the move.
"Hi," she said. She tried to smile but it collapsed on her lips. "Is that. . ." she began, "I mean, Keith said. . .Well, he said I could get fixed up. . .I mean, did he tell you? Is that cool?"
"You're the star," Silver said, giving himself a wide berth between himself and the girl as he moved into the hallway. "And a star gets whatever she wants. William, will you accommodate the young lady?"
The thin man holding the spoon over the candle's flame nodded slowly. He had long, shaggy, brown hair that dropped in ringlets over his ears and framed his emaciated face. The black t-shirt covering his torso hung loosely, dangerously close to the flame. On the hand that held the spoon, he wore a leather glove with the fingers removed.
Silver continued down the hall, leaving her in the company of his friends. The man who was not William, placed a needle into the soupy contents of the spoon and fille
d the rig. Kathy rolled up the sleeve of her blouse.
She noticed Silver's silhouette in the radiant doorway of the room at the end of the hall, but her eyes were constantly teased back by the sight of her approaching treat. (She and Keith always called it lunch). The man who was not William stood. Distantly she felt the tourniquet applied to her bicep. A finger tapped rhythmically on the crook of her elbow, but she couldn't take her eyes off of the tiny rig floating before her eyes. The bald man chuckled hollowly. The odors of the building receded under the dusty, fungal smell of her treat. William began chuckling along with the bald man, slapping the tattooed shoulder of his friend. The needle penetrated her skin. The garrote loosened. Something fell in the room at the end of the hall and Silver barked his discontent. Kathy hardly noticed.
A warm cascade showered her and the ache of craving retreated under a deluge of pleasure, which touched and then drowned her senses. For all of the familiarity of this sensation, it was a strange high. Her stomach did not cramp. Her flesh did not become clammy. Rather, she slid peacefully into a chemical sanctuary unfettered by ridiculous notions of fear or pain.
Hands grasped her under the arms and lifted, and her mind continued to rise until it felt as if she floated across the ceiling. A soothing current embraced her and then pulled away, only to return a moment later. Fingers touched and tickled, running over her chest and waist. They were undressing her and as each garment was removed, she sighed in pleasure. The tide of euphoria lapped at her neck and her breasts and insinuated itself between her legs, bringing a smile to her lips.
She closed her eyes and then opened them, but the scene before her hardly changed. Soft colors like the melted wax of festive candles pooled and streamed before her, and at their center was an inviting illumination, a thousand-watt heaven to which she was inexplicably drawn. Kathy's mind cleared some, though the rapture remained. Her new friends were carrying her down the bleak corridor, a dismal tunnel that ended in paradise.
Horror Library, Volume 4 Page 15
