A Host of Shadows

by Harry Shannon

  Honey dropped the hammer. It bounced off the hood and clattered onto the garage floor. She yawned. “I’m going back to bed,” she said. “Just let yourself go and totally get it over with. No offense, but it looks like you didn’t have much to live for anyway, right?”

  “And you’re young. You’re going to be a star,” Jack said.

  Honey searched his beaten face for sarcasm. Jack forced a nod. “I can understand that, Honey,” he said. “You’re probably right.”

  “That’s so cool,” she said. “Good night, then.”

  “Wait. Can I have the pain pills?”

  Honey considered. Finally she shook her head and walked back to the steps. “You know what? I really need them for myself, to come down. I have to get some sleep.”

  “Please. It hurts, Honey. Please.”

  Honey hesitated. “All right,” she said. “I don’t want you to think I’m, like, heartless, or anything. You said you were thirsty. You can finish my tequila. Will that help?”

  A harsh spasm rolled through him. For a moment Jack thought it was over, but the hurt subsided. “I’m thirsty,” he whispered. “Yes.”

  Honey picked up the quart bottle. She approached, swinging her hips, bent over the hood and held it to his lips. Jack drank like an animal, ignoring the pain, until he felt the welcome heat of the alcohol hit his stomach. He put away enough to quench his thirst—and dull his agony for a while. He closed his eyes. Honey patted his head. She sounded like a vet about to put down an old dog.

  “Good night sweet prince,” she said. Then added: “That’s Shakespeare.”

  “Violent delights,” Jack whispered. It came out sounding like something else entirely, almost gibberish. He could feel himself slipping away, and his own fear lessened. Maybe dying isn’t so bad after all.

  “What?” Honey said. He sensed her leaning closer, hoping to hear something profound. He whispered again, almost inaudibly.

  “I can’t hear you,” Honey said, sadly.

  Jack used his remaining strength to seize the ponytail with his right hand and the shard of broken glass with his left. He cut her scalp and blood spurted down her cheek. Honey screamed and struggled. Jack giggled. He felt something warm spurt from his nostrils. Honey was athletic and strong for her size. She struck his shoulder with the empty tequila bottle: Once, twice. Jack held on and then cut her scalp again. She howled with pain and fear as some tender flesh peeled away. The bottle slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor.

  “No, don’t!” Honey cried.

  Jack grunted with pleasure. He slammed her head down on the hood. Dazed, Honey looked up as if about to beg for mercy. She saw that the remainder of Jack’s cheek had been ripped completely away; his white skull and yellowed, grinning teeth were fully exposed. Honey, looking into his bulging, merciless eyes, shrieked like a young girl at a rock concert.

  “Please don’t hurt me anymore!”

  Jack giggled and heard that odd rattle again, deep in his chest. He took a deep breath. With his bloody left hand, he began to peel away the skin of her pretty, pretty face, all the while chanting aloud in a hoarse, cracked voice: “Child, what you fear will come to get you, in the night, that’s right…” He was halfway finished when he died.

  Honey lived.

  _______________

  “These violent delights have violent ends.”

  —Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet II, v, 9

  Mobius Dick

  with M. Stephen Lukac

  I am seldom out and about. When I am, people stare. That is because of the way I look…and the way I look is because of the dreams.

  My Aunt Harriet was a large woman with giant arms and a sunburned nose. When I was a boy, she would chop the head off a chicken, and then whistle as it ran aimlessly around the yard, decorating the dying grass with squirting gouts of blood. With a slack-jawed, Zen-like concentration, she would patiently pluck every single feather from its pimpled gray flesh, her plump tongue protruding obscenely from the corner of her mouth, with exclamations like “There! Good! Aha!” punctuating every extraction. I never knew what to make of her bucolic enthusiasm. I had nothing against the poor chicken, but she always made me stand and watch, as if the slaughter had an important lesson to impart.

  I remember music on the radio, generally Merle Haggard or maybe old Hank Junior whining on about a girl with a cheating heart. Aunt Harriet would hold the pallid corpse up and examine it carefully. If it seemed clean enough for her, she’d take her knife and, with a deep grunt of satisfaction, slice it from neck to anus, allowing the smelly guts to fall out into the metal bucket waiting between her pink, chubby knees. Then she’d truss the chicken and toss it in a steaming pot to boil the flesh to bits. Naturally, these were my first steps on the road to vegetarianism.

  To this day, country music makes me think about red blood, boiled white flesh and containers of blue-black entrails. The only thing missing from such horrific visions is the chicken. Allow me to explain.

  First, I want you to picture a middle-aged man—and I use the term ‘man’ loosely—who is tall, wide and generally considered handsome in an arrogant sort of way. This man owns a large, brutal entertainment company called Ouroboros, whose logo is a bastardization of the fabled sign of a snake eating its tail, then contorted into a Mobius strip.

  Our movie mogul dyes his graying hair monthly, and works out weekly at the local gym. He drives a burgundy BMW convertible, and lives in a rustic mansion in the Hollywood Hills. His home has all the Tinseltown basics: A plasma screen television with surround-sound and a top-notch DVD player, the ultimate stereo system with tiny but powerful speakers concealed throughout the house and surrounding property, and of course the requisite California hot tub. The owner has a taste for fine wine, expensive drugs and fresh lovers of all kinds…provided they are inexperienced and underage.

  His name is Richard. And he is a ‘dick’ indeed.

  Our Dick is obsessed with his quest for the ultimate sensual moment. His work as a player in the film industry is merely a way to make large amounts of money with little physical or mental effort. Power affords him his lifestyle and funds his pursuit, which is all that really matters. Dick believes that somewhere beyond the far horizons of legality and the current limits of pharmacology lays the penultimate orgasm. He is determined to find, capture and experience that.

  In a cold, mental twilight, let us float above the rich and famous of Beverly Hills. We sail down Sunset Boulevard and into trendy Laurel Canyon just as the sun is setting. It is raining, and the city is white lights and pastel fluids. We pass the gauche Grecian columns of a lame condominium complex and skip like a stone into the rolling hills. A few blocks to our left, two to the right and there is Dick’s bachelor pad, nestled into the greenery and protected by a high metal fence topped with razor wire.

  It takes more than money and imagination to feed Dick and his habits. On the heels of that thought, a dark limousine splashes through a puddle and enters the driveway, low rap music pounding four to the bar DUM DUM DUM DUM. The crude beat shocks mother birds out of their nests and into complex flight patterns designed to lure predators away from their young. Motion sensors activate as the car passes and mega-watt halogen lamps illuminate the path to the door as the wet gloom shrinks back on its haunches like a nervous panther.

  The limo driver, tall and naturally lean, braves the rain and steps out of the car to open the rear door. He is a shy young man, uncomfortable with the moisture penetrating his black uniform but even more uncomfortable with the evening’s passengers.

  The first passenger opens a Gucci umbrella as he exits the vehicle. He looks more like an attorney than a pimp; his mask is that effective. The man is white, short and round; he wears thick glasses now smoky from condensation. He carries a briefcase. He is dressed in a dark blue Armani suit. For a split second, we see a disapproving frown cross the driver’s face, but the ‘attorney’ doesn’t notice. For him, the driver is a feature of the car, worth no more attention than th
e power windows or wet bar. The attorney’s only concerns are his delivery and his payment for having made it.

  The attorney reaches back into the car, and helps a stunning young girl slide out of the back seat. The second passenger belongs in middle school, not Dick’s driveway. If we were to scrub away the thick eye make-up and put her in blue jeans, she would look all of twelve years old.

  Our Dick is a dick, remember?

  We might expect the girl to hesitate at the car door, perhaps forcing the Doctor of Juris Pimpus to pull her into the freezing rain, but the young lady breezes past him. Gangly teenaged legs propel her away from the limo and up the stairs leading to the double mahogany doors. Her teased hair immediately collapses into wet string. The lawyer scratches his bald pate, puzzled by the ingénue’s sudden change of demeanor, but he shrugs and follows, annoyed to be getting his shoes wet.

  Meanwhile, the disapproving limo driver re-enters the car, changes the radio station, lowers the volume, and settles in to wait. After a moment, the lights switch off again and he sits alone in the hungry dark, listening to the rain pound on the roof.

  Now, pretend we can turn back the clock a few hours, before the sky darkened, and see the young girl as the attorney first saw her: Standing in the arrivals lounge of the Los Angeles Greyhound Terminal. Her lack of motion draws our eye as it did the lawyer’s—an island of inactivity surrounded by the bustle of passengers dashing to and from idling AmeriCruisers, a Laura Ingalls refugee thrust into a world of Britney and Ricky wannabes, paralyzed by SoCal frenzy and invisible to SoCal revelers.

  The attorney’s radar finds her almost immediately. He notices her quivering lower lip. He notices her scared, darting glance as she surveys the concourse. He notes the fact that, except for the plastic purse clutched to her undeveloped bosom, the girl has no luggage.

  The girl also has no ticket, but the attorney doesn’t know that. In our ethereal state, we witness what the attorney’s predatory senses miss: The girl lacks more than a ticket stub. One minute before the attorney’s arrival, the girl doesn’t exist at all. Indeed, the space she occupies when the attorney’s eye falls upon her is vacant during those seconds it takes him to cross the concourse. Somehow, what he needs to see is there only when he needs to see it.

  His approach is practiced, methodical and ultimately successful, as he knows it will be before he begins. As the clouds gather and he commences his pitch, he’s mentally counting the zeroes on the cashier’s check he’ll receive as his finder’s fee. As lightning flashes and the girl resists his initial advance, he’s deciding between a table at Koi and a booth at Moonshadows. As distant thunder growls and the first drops strike the pavement, she takes his hand to follow him to the limo parked at the curb. Meanwhile, he’s mulling over swordfish or Black Angus. Other menus have already been set…

  Now back at The House That Ouroboros Built, Dick’s dejuner d’jour marches up the front steps in the pouring rain, lays a freshly manicured hand on the door handle, and turns under the yellow porch light. The glow enhances her youth, yet she gives the attorney a very effective “are you coming or not” glare.

  Stanley—although we never get a peek at the attorney’s curriculum vitae, I think we can agree that he looks like a Stanley—hesitates with one wet foot perched above the bottom stair. He feels a chill of foreboding. Because his predatory instincts served him so well earlier in the day, perhaps another, more primal warning sounds in his head as he regards the latest vestal virgin to be sacrificed in Dick’s quest for the Perfect O. But then he plants his Gucci loafer on the damp, polished marble tread, the line of zeroes pulls at his other leg and places the wet loafer’s mate on the next higher step. Gucci follows Gucci; the caveat goes unheeded. He’s thinking: May as well get out of the rain.

  The attorney completes his soggy ascent. The young girl, oblivious to the downpour, opens the door for him. The attorney shakes his head and motions for her to cross the threshold first. Minos in Versace, meet Charon in Armani. Stanley chuckles to himself; any residual trepidation from his climb vanishes. He follows her through the door. The porch light goes off automatically, plunging the steps into printer’s ink. The relentless rain continues.

  The foyer is huge, dominated by a grand staircase that sweeps up from the floor to clutch the second-story balcony that circles the perimeter. They stand and wait, wet and miserable. No butler rushes to welcome them; no maid offers them refreshment. Their only greeting is the noise of their heels clicking against the Italian marble floor.

  Then Dick appears. He is a grinning shark in a leopard-print dressing gown, belt tied haphazardly across his belly. As he walks down the stairs, his bulk widens the gap in the robe, revealing matching boxer shorts. His torso has enough hair on it to qualify as a throw rug.

  “Stanley!” he bellows as his bare feet slap against the polished steps. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

  “Hello Dick,” the attorney replies. He lowers his eyes in feigned deference. Important clients require proper ass kissing, and Dick has a lot of ass to kiss. Stanley doesn’t mind; after all, the downward glance spares him the sight of his master’s girth bouncing down the stairs.

  “And what do we have here?” Dick asks, crossing the foyer and circling the young girl. “Stanley, what delicacy have you brought me today?”

  “One I trust you’ll find acceptable,” Stanley says in his best lackey tone. He is still watching the floor.

  “That’s what you said last time, and I still haven’t completely forgiven you for that mistake.”

  Stanley looks up, worried. “Dick, some things cannot be anticipated. He met all your specifications…”

  “But,” Dick interrupts, tracing sweaty circles around the soggy ingénue, “he didn’t meet all of my needs, and that’s what counts, isn’t it Stanley?”

  “Of course.”

  Dick cups the young girl’s chin in a meaty paw. “He kept trying to talk with his mouth full.” He lifts her head, locking eyes with the girl. She does not look away, which excites him. Dick continues: “Hopefully, you’ve got better manners.”

  The girl gently twists her chin out of Dick’s grip. She pulls her head back between hunched shoulders and bats her eyes: Message received.

  “Is there somewhere I can freshen up?” she asks, her voice a symphony of innocence and naiveté. “It’s raining like hell out there, and I’m cold.”

  Not as cold as you’re going to be

  , the attorney thinks, a bit sadly. This kind of situation always ends the same way. Dick’s been a client for a long, long time.

  “Use the can over there,” Dick waves to his left. “But don’t take all day.” The girl hurries away. Seconds later, they hear the click of a door latch.

  “You better hope she’s better than the last one,” Dick growls. He picks a loose string from the end of his belt.

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Stanley soothes.

  “She’d better be. That little punk bit me.”

  “He seemed compliant enough to me.”

  “Yeah…well, you never know how compliant somebody is until they’ve got your cock in their mouth.

  Stanley clears his throat. This is dangerous ground. “Did that new…cleaning service work out?”

  “Well enough,” Dick acknowledges. “Do send my respects to Don Antonio and tell him I am grateful, as usual, for his assistance in an awkward situation.”

  “I will.”

  Dick leans in close. He stinks of cologne. “She’d better be good, Stanley.”

  “She will be.”

  “I’m paying you a lot of money to bring me the best.”

  “I know.” The sound of plumbing echoes through the cavernous foyer. The attorney coughs into his hand. “Speaking of which.”

  Dick reaches into the pocket of his robe and withdraws a folded cashier’s check. He places it in the attorney’s outstretched hand. “I’m heading out to the Jacuzzi. When the princess is done in there, show her the way and then get the fuck gone. I’l
l let you know if you earned that.”

  Dick walks away; we follow him down a long hallway, past the drawing room, the formal dining room and the caterer’s kitchen. He strolls through a sliding door and onto a flagstone patio lit by recessed, colored lighting. An oversized spa sits within an even larger gazebo. Hot steam rises to meet cold runoff from the roof, turning the air humid and reddish. Another motion detector senses Dick’s passage and flips on both the blue spa lights and some cheesy 1970s Barry White music.

  Dick doffs his robe and the matching boxers, and we learn that there are sights far worse than the producer jogging down a staircase. With a contented sigh, he submerges himself, hippo-like, until the water reaches the level of his many chins. He floats in the bubbling jets of the Jacuzzi, beneath red and blue lights, listening to the rain slap the roof. He contemplates both his plans for the young girl and the area immediately around the spa.

  Dick owns assorted dildoes, most phallic-shaped, but many sporting attachments and extensions that God never envisioned when designing the genuine article. Next to those lies a variety of restraints, from fur-lined handcuffs to blindfolds and ankle locks. There are custom-made wire ties, which are brilliantly designed to dissolve in hot water after a few hours of exposure. Next are riding crops, razor blades, clamps and smaller items whose purpose we dare not imagine.

  The sound of the sliding door interrupts Dick’s gleeful rumination. He looks up to see the young girl, hands behind her back, pulling the door shut.

  She is nude, and she steps out into the rain and twirls. A flash of lightning accents every delightful curve and crevice. We expect the girl’s nakedness to bother us, but the sight transfixes us. The promise of womanhood, once draped in Versace and hidden under layers of Este Lauder, stands before us in the flesh, and we realize a moment before Dick, that this is no young girl. This is Woman. Ageless. Defying definition. The epitome of the double-X chromosome.