As I Die Lying (29 page)

Monique saw someone she knew and got into a
sloppy conversation. I excused myself and slipped up the stairs.
The party was getting its second wind. It was a giant beast ready
to rise and prowl the darkness, flexing its legs and jaws for a
twilight hunt, a dragon anxious to slay errant knights.

Xandria perched at the top of the stairs. She
put a Virginia Slim in her mouth and one of her bookends stepped
from the shadows to light it. “If it ain’t the average white boy,”
she said with a playful sneer. “What’s up?”

“
Hi. I like your bass
playing.”

She shrugged, straining the leather straps
that girded her chest. Loverboy watched her breasts rise. Mister
Milktoast eyed the bookend, appalled at the mauve fingernail
polish.

“
Just another skin,
Richard,” Xandria said. “It helps to have a few extra
personalities. Makes life interesting.”

“
Tell me about
it.”

The singer yelled at Xandria from the foot of
the stairs, telling her it was time for the next set.

“
Jimmy ain’t finished yet,”
she yelled back at him. She drew on her cigarette and exhaled, and
the smoke joined the blue-gray layer that wafted at
eye-level.

“
Have you seen Beth?” I
asked.

Xandria gave me a cold look. Then she jerked
her head toward a door at the end of the hall. “Door Number
Three.”

The guitarist for the Half-Watts started
strumming “Wild Horses” as the singer did a country-Cockney accent
on the vocals. I walked down the hall with the same slow-motion
rhythm of the song, like Jim Morrison’s pseudo-autobiographical
killer in “The End.” Fuck Jim Morrison and his fake autobiography.
You won’t find me floating dead in a bathtub or getting called “The
Lizard King.”

The crack under the door was dark. I knocked
lightly.

Little Hitler tumbled and twittered. He tried
the handle. It was locked.

Bookworm put my ear to the door.

Moans.

Little Hitler hoped they were moans of pain.
But Loverboy knew better.

Rusty bedsprings, in the rhythm of
babymaking.

Gasps came from the other side of the
door.

A whimper, a name.

Beth’s voice, husked with passion.

I wanted a dollar’s worth of candy. I hurried
away.

Drowning. Reaching the point where I knew I
couldn’t hold my breath any longer, but the surface was too far
away.

Xandria shrugged as I passed. “What can you
say? She likes drummers.”

The Insider came out of the back room of the
Bone House, where he’d been busy typing. This was even better than
the crap he was making up.

You still love the bitch,
Richard. I know. I OWN your damned heart
.
Here’s a plate of shit.
Eat.

I stumbled down the stairs, knocking a dryer
hose off a guy who was dressed as a robot. He cussed me, but I
barely heard him.

Monique was waiting by the keg. She had
refilled her cup and was starting to wobble a little. She didn’t
notice that my face had gone rigid. Stoned in the stone house,
boned in the Bone House. Unscrewed.

“
Where you been?” she
asked.

“
Talking to an old friend,”
I said.

“
Did you find
Beth?”

“
You didn’t tell me she
likes drummers.”

“
Figured you’d better find
out for yourself, before you got any . . . ideas.” Monique swayed
and leaned against me. She felt good in Loverboy’s arms. I took her
cup and drained it all down. The Coldiron Curse tasted sweet and
bitter and made it easier to be nobody.

“
Feel like a ritual?”
Loverboy asked.

“
A ritual?”

Loverboy kissed her, quick and cruel. “Or
would you rather ride my broomstick?” he whispered.

CHAPTER THIRTY

I reach to stroke your curly hair, so soft
and stark against the pillow. The moonlight spills into the room
like an ogling eye, making sharp and jagged shadows. Richard’s top
hat is on the cluttered desk and your witch’s dress hangs limply
over the back of a chair, like a shadow whose air has escaped.

You look at me with open eyes, deep eyes,
eyes that run across distant moors. I lean close and feel the warm
breath from your nostrils. You don’t flinch. Trust is such a
foolish thing. Will you never learn?

Our lips touch. Sensations swarm. The edges
of awareness cackle with electricity. Tiny hairs stand on the back
of this human neck.

Time slows, nearly stopping. Each second
stretches with too much information. The butterfly flicker of your
eyelashes, the moist flutter of your tongue, the gentle swish of
your hair on the smooth skin of your shoulders, all drowning me. I
can feel the cells of your body as they divide and slough off. I am
alert, alive beyond life, dead beyond death.

“
You’ve bewitched me,” I
say, parting my mouth from the honey of your lips.

“
Shut up and kiss me,” you
say, your voice hoarse with illicit passion and a gallon of
beer.

A sledgehammer pounds my chest, working the
molten iron of my heart. Outside, a breeze plays against the window
screen and the curtains whisper in the music of autumn. It is a
dirge, a death-rattle of wind chimes and oak leaves as clouds sneak
past the moon. They call this the end of October.

A taste like old pennies lingers where your
tongue has been. My arousal strains, seeks, takes a separate
life.

“
Hold on a second,” you say,
and my heart suspends, explores its stopping, and then continues
its headlong rush.

You light a candle. The first match goes out
before it reaches the wick, as if some sinister gale has summoned
itself from under the bed. An acrid thread of gray sulfur trails
across the milky moonlight. The second match flares and the candle
catches and flickers crazily, the flame hopping like a
forever-damned ballet dancer on a stage of hot coals.

Outside, the night rain falls. Each drop
plays a minute part in a grand percussion symphony. Small, sharp
pellets ping off the mailbox while fat globs plop softly on the
asphalt. Drops patter on the wooden porch rail, and others slither
weakly into the grass with a muted hiss. A drum roll of water
rumbles across the gutter while the downspout carries off the
finished notes with a discordant tinkle. Occasional distant thunder
anchors the bass end by adding timpani to the score.

I gently lean you back on the bed. The
pillows have fallen to one side and lie there like an old married
couple. Your pupils are large and dark, two deep wells. A twin
reflection of the candle floats in the still waters. Beneath the
surface, your memories, dreams, and secrets swim. I must draw them
out, pump them forward, make them mine.

Little Hitler drinks the heartbreak, Loverboy
tastes the fruit, Mister Milktoast sizes you up for a brown
hat.

Bookworm pens a flowery passage. Richard
rides the roller coaster. And I...

I simply need. It’s always the first time.
It’s always this way, the borrowing and taking of life, the
stealing of light, the swallowing of the juicy pain.

It’s as near to being human as I ever wish to
get.

But don’t take it personally. Because I’m not
a person. And this is the way the universe has always been, a
bright bang and then collapse into darkness. Dream me alive,
Richard. Build me with your words. Make me.

My hand trails down your flat pale belly.
Dark hairs curl around the edge of your panties. Your breathing is
fast and shallow, and I feel your pulse race through the swell of
your breast beneath my hand. Your heart is sprinting against time,
a race in which there can be only one winner.

I reach beside the bed, to my coat lying on
the floor. Your hands are at my waist, then lower. My mouth has
found yours again, and I feel the urgency of your desire as our
tongues thrust and parry softly. You pull me toward the forge of
your body. I go for your center, the nursery of stars, your
steaming galaxy.

My right hand touches cold hard steel while
my left finds liquid fire.

I raise the blade and the sudden movement
feeds a gust of oxygen to the candle. The burst of light becomes
the flashbulb for the photograph that Richard’s eyes are
taking:

...the gorgeous plateau of your flesh, a
territory waiting to be mapped.

...your eyebrows arching, making a question
mark of your face.

...your lips, parted in unspoken
confusion.

...your chest, tensing to draw air for a
scream that will never sound.

...your eyes...

...your eyes remain two deep wells, but now
the waters ripple. Now the surface is disturbed as your secrets
swim. Now the fear roils underneath, a leviathan awakened from long
slumber. Now your black monsters break the water, pouring forth in
torrents from the depths of your eyes.

Now I can feed. Now I can eat the light.

“
Monique,” Richard moans,
helpless, pathetic, taking control of his own mouth. “I’m
sorry.”

I shut him up and bring the knife down
swiftly, with an unforgiving arm, with Little Hitler’s viciousness,
with Loverboy’s passion, with Bookworm’s fascination, with Mister
Milktoast’s petulance.

Richard delivers you unto me.

In a flash of bright silver, the blade
strikes home, a violent explorer in the valleys of your skin. Your
arms lift in futility, almost in supplication, embracing the coming
pain as if it is an old lover.

The oldest lover.

The knife is in your chest and a brilliant
geyser of crimson erupts, and too soon it is over. Your light is
mine.

Your eyes fix on the ceiling and the ripples
in the two deep wells dwindle and fade, their waters now forever
calm.

I can’t resist. “Was it good for you?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“
You walrus hurt the one you
love,” Mister Milktoast said. “And then bury Paul. Goo goo ka
joob.”

My head throbbed as a thick black sludge
pounded through my veins. I just wanted to rest my head on my
pillow and sleep until my flesh rotted off the bone. I wasn’t in
the mood for Mister Milktoast’s wit, and I was worried about the
Insider’s purple prose, which virtually guaranteed we’d never sell
the book.

“
Big time fuck-up, Tricky
Dick,” Loverboy said. “You didn’t even get a little pop tart
first.”

“
Knock it off, you guys,”
Bookworm said. “It wasn’t Richard’s fault.”

“
There you go again,
sticking up for that useless bootlicker,” Little Hitler. “It was
just like old times from where I was sitting. Father was just a
warm-up act. And that Shelley slut, she deserved it if anybody ever
did.”

The sun stabbed, spitting fire through the
window. Sunday morning. A holy, quiet time. Starlings chirruped on
high power lines outside as November crept in on cold bare
feet.

I had no memory of coming home in the night.
Those hours were a fog, lost in a stupor of alcohol and multiple
personalities and endless revisions. My head throbbed from
drink.

But the Insider made sure I didn’t forget
Monique. Her wide staring dead eyes were seared into my brain,
branded there by a red-hot iron, stapled to the Bone House walls
like a Led Zeppelin poster. The Insider was lost in the mist of my
pain, engorged and ecstatic. Fat on light. Fed on my dead hope.
Bloated by bloodthirsty, barbaric bliss, and typing up a storm.

It had won. But the outcome was never in
doubt. How could any human defeat such a monster? How could you
outsmart your own omniscient narrator?

“
I told you the answer,”
said Bookworm.

“
Shut up.”

“
I suppose writer’s block
isn’t an option?”

“
Bookworm, I don’t know who
to believe anymore. How do I know you’re not the Insider, playing a
game just for the sheer hell of it? After all, we all sound alike.
In fact, we sound like me.”

“
You’re only in the Bone
House once in a while, when one of us takes over. But I’m in here
all the time.”

“
And I pity you for
that.”

“
Don’t take this the wrong
way, Richard, but you’re just a little too human to really
comprehend.”

“
Damned with feinted
praise,” Mister Milktoast said, from some dusty corner of the
closet.

“
And you, Mister Milktoast?
Whose side are you on?”

“
Hey, Bookworm, I’m the one
who drove Richard home. I’m the one who made sure we didn’t leave
any incriminating evidence at the scene. I’m the one who cares the
most about us. After all, I’ve been here the longest. If we’re all
psychic vampires, then I have the most at stake.”

“
Why are you afraid he’ll be
caught? Maybe that’s the best thing that can happen to Richard. The
book will sell at auction, Fox News will push the story, Barnes
& Noble moves product, and the murders will stop.”

“
I promised to protect him.
The boots still walk. They just have a different pair of feet in
them.”

“
Fuck both of you,” Loverboy
said. “And I don’t mean that the way you think I do. You
diddledicks couldn’t screw your way out of a wet dream.”

Little Hitler snickered.

Open house in the Bone House, come one, come
all. Except that thing in the back room, typing, typing, typing.
When writers are really in the zone, they wouldn’t know it if a
jetliner crashed into the house.

“
It’s only in your mind,”
Bookworm said. “And that’s the worst place of all.”