Debaser

by Max Frick

him through forty-five degrees. Ryan’s upper body slumped sideways down the couch back in an arc. Billy, meanwhile, was inspecting the camera.

  ‘Em, where did you get this?’ he asked.

  ‘My ma’s,’ said Tony, glancing over both shoulders at the floor behind him. ‘Shift that table, will you?’

  ‘It’s not exactly state of the art, is it?’

  ‘And move they cans.’

  ‘Does it even still work?’

  ‘Aye it fuckin works! Will you shift the fuckin table?’

  As Tony backed up, Ryan’s lifeless body fluidly adhered to the couch’s every contour. His head slipped smoothly from the arm to the cushion and from the cushion onto the floor, where it hit a plate there with a clatter.

  ‘Careful, man!’ urged Billy, who had been tracking his descent through the camera’s viewfinder.

  But Ryan never stirred.

  ‘Don’t fuckin worry! He can’t feel a thing.’

  There was a sudden flash of brilliant light and Billy looked blamefully at the camera.

  ‘Oh, it does work,’ he said.

  Inside, tiny machinery clicked and whirred, and, haltingly, very faint as yet, a photograph creakily emerged from the narrow slot in its front.

  ‘Don’t fuckin waste them!’ complained Tony. ‘There’s only a few left!’

  Pinching it by the border Billy drew it out and watched the image develop, the washed-out colours growing uniformly bolder until soon their potential was reached. Apart from his own outsized knees occupying the foreground in each of the bottom corners it showed Ryan from the waist up, amidst the general clutter, being dragged across the carpet to his fate. He was flat on his back at the base of the couch, eyes closed, mouth open, his hands above his head palms upwards, and his tracksuit top had ridden up to reveal – on what would not so long ago have been a tanned and depilated midriff – a tattoo, some word or other, and number, maybe, arching over his belly button in plain blue lettering. Peer as he might, holding the photo now nearer his face, now further away, Billy could not bring the writing into focus.

  ‘MADCHESTER ’89!’ bawled Tony suddenly. ‘Who’s he tryin to fuckin kid? What would he have been then? Fuckin four? Look at it, man! The thing’s still fuckin weepin!’

  Having reached the back of the room, he had wheeled Ryan through another forty-five degrees so that his back, his own back, was to the window, and let fall his legs. He was now crouching down between them as he spoke, unbuttoning matter-of-factly his, Ryan’s, fly.

  ‘I’m tellin you, man,’ he was saying, ‘there’s nothin cunts like this wouldn’t do for... Whoa! The cunt’s not got any pants on!’

  He looked across at Billy with Mock horror. Billy was looking dubiously back at him, flitting his eyes between face and fly.

  ‘Em, what are you doin?’ he inquired.

  ‘What does it fuckin look like?’ answered Tony, tug-tug-tugging at the waistband of Ryan’s jeans and pulling them down onto his thighs.

  ‘Is this, em, part of the, eh, lesson?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘The same lesson you were goin to teach him in the club?’

  ‘Better.’

  ‘And what if he wakes up?’

  ‘He won’t.’

  ‘But what if he does?’

  ‘He won’t.’

  ‘Aye, but...’

  ‘Don’t fuckin start! We’ll deal with that if and when it happens. Now, come round here and give me a hand.’

  Tony stepped out over Ryan’s left leg and crouched down at the side of him, slipping one hand under a shoulder blade and the other under the small of his back.

  ‘A hand to do what?’ asked Billy, rising from his chair.

  ‘To get him into the...right...position.’

  Ryan was rolled face downwards a body’s width from Tony. His left palm slapped the carpet close to Billy’s feet.

  Billy looked back up.

  ‘The right position for what?’

  Tony rose, and as though mulling the question over looked along and back along the entire length of Ryan’s prostrate body.

  ‘Basically,’ he said, ‘I’m goin to fuck him.’

  And setting rounded flesh aquiver beneath the sole of a roguish foot, added:

  ‘Doggy style, of course!’

  With the same foot, he now flicked Ryan’s left leg up from off his right and again stepped in between them. To widen them he gave each a casual kick or two until, like the stays on a stepladder, the waistband of the jeans pulled tight.

  On the off chance that his ears had deceived him Billy requested clarification.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said breezily. ‘You’re...?’

  ‘I’m goin to fuck him,’ repeated Tony. ‘Listen, here’s the deal.’

  And as he stood unbuttoning his own jeans he explained the deal to Billy.

  The deal was, simply put, that while Tony was doing what he would be doing Billy would be taking pictures, and these pictures would, at the earliest convenience, be forwarded anonymously to every single tabloid newspaper up and down the land.

  He pushed his jeans and pants down to just below his knees.

  Billy could not suppress a titter.

  ‘What?’ challenged Tony.

  ‘Nothin.’

  He knelt down and clasped his hands underneath Ryan’s midriff.

  ‘Right, come here,’ he said. ‘Stand round there at his head. Right. Now, you push him by the shoulders and I’ll pull him up towards me.’

  Tentatively, Billy set down the camera.

  ‘Do you not think you’re takin things a wee bit too far?’

  ‘On three, you ready? One, two...three!’

  But midway through this manoeuvre Tony released his grip, and Ryan’s belly flopped back to the floor.

  ‘Wait,’ said Tony, sitting thoughtfully back on his heels. ‘This is not right.’

  Billy was still holding the shoulders.

  ‘You think?’ he said.

  ‘It feels wrong.’

  ‘It is wrong.’

  ‘No, but, it feels wrong!’

  ‘It is wrong.’

  ‘I mean somethin’s lackin.’

  ‘Self-control?’

  ‘Music!’ exclaimed Tony, raising an index finger. ‘We need some fuckin music!’

  Twisting from the middle he began rummaging through the scattering of CD’s on the floor behind him, just beside Ryan’s right foot.

  ‘The Pixies, man!’ he was saying. ‘We need the fuckin Pixies!’

  ‘It’s already in,’ said Billy. ‘You were listenin to it this mornin.’

  Tony pressed ‘open/close’ on the CD player. Smoothly, silently, the drawer slid slowly open.

  ‘So I was,’ he said, ‘aye.’

  He again pressed ‘open/close’. Silently, smoothly, the drawer slid slowly closed.

  ‘I know just the fuckin song for this type of situation! Exactly what’s fuckin needed!’

  He pressed ‘play’ and turned back to Billy, who, with a wry nod remarked that, em, maybe something else was needed in this type of situation.

  Tony glanced down.

  ‘Don’t fuckin worry about that!’ he said. ‘I’ll rise to the occasion all right! Now, on three, you ready? One, two…three!’

  The song burst forth, pounding loudly out of the speakers, and instantly the opening cords, plucked out in bass notes, rolling, thunderous and sinister, felt, in Tony’s stomach, like the thrill of anticipation. Ryan was made ready, so that his back end was level with Tony’s groin while his head remained on the carpet. His arms were stretched out in front of him, the palms of his hands flat downwards, as though in humblest worship before some almighty, revered idol. Tony made one or two minor adjustments to his own position and waited. Staring straight ahead he wore a gravely serious expression, literally breathing in the music: the urgent wailing of the two lead guitars layered indelicately over the bass line, the drums in short rhythmical bursts struck aggressively and fast, the cackling, maniacal, dis
turbed, tormented vocals. He literally breathed it all in, and it shook the walls of his heart no less than those of the room and set every cell of his enraptured skin a-tingling. It infused him with its sublime demented energy and, with regard to the task at hand, at once began to fire his blood, firm his resolve, stiffen his upper lip and give him a steely, almost adamantine, determination.

  Having once again picked up the camera, Billy took a few steps backwards, holding it up to his eye, now horizontally, now vertically, endeavouring to best frame the shot.

  Tony lowered his head, and taking careful aim allowed a spumous gob of saliva to fall thickly from between his pursed lips onto Ryan’s coccyx, dragging its tail behind it. He waited, watching, as it trickled down the cleft of the buttocks to its target. Then, bracing himself, he boldly took the plunge. Mouth tightly closed and eyes fixed, blazing, he slowly eased forward his hips, gingerly, probingly, wincing and cringing as he did so, driven valiantly onwards (or, in this case, inwards) by some grossly misconceived sense of duty which, endorsed by the pounding music, transformed this basest of acts into the noblest, most heroic of deeds.

  ‘DEBASER!’ screamed the CD player goadingly. ‘DE-BASER!’ it screamed again.

  And Tony thrust forward violently.

  For far too long now people, like himself, had maintained a dignified silence in the face of so much mass (-produced) hysteria, allowing more than enough time for the rot to really set in, or (since any suggestion of depth here would be wholly inappropriate) better say spread, spread like an infection, like some debilitating brain disease, over such a large area that whenever now they did try to speak (those people like himself) they found they could no longer be heard, that their sane and rational voices were smothered beneath the incessant effervescent delirious clamour, leaving silence, dignified or otherwise, their only alternative. But