Lust Demented

I
T
WASN’T EASY TO RECOGNIZE
Percy. On first glance, somebody had stabbed him several times, stuffing him with what looked like ritualistically chosen snippets of absurd literature. Pages placed inside him similar to the way a grandmother cut slices into a ham roast and stuffed garlic. Blood dried in branches of rosemary. Body crushed and crumbled on the splattered step.

What really made me gag were the mutilated pages. Books on the floor reduced to binding. Shelves torn from the walls. I fell into a sneezing fit trying to blow the stench of death out of the room. The exposed brick came alive with sinister people trapped within frames. Spotted up snapshots of Percy’s hanger-ons. Their cavernous eyes. Their glimmering fangs. Percy always bragged that he had a lot of enemies. He never once mentioned a friend.

One picture stood out from the rest. It was of Percy and Missy lounging together on a deserted beach. Clear ocean swallowed up by a curtain of depraved sky. Missy occupied another dimension, deep off in the starlet pose with everything overflowing. Percy appeared ancient, a mere bystander next to the dime piece.

Now I was a mere bystander… outside of the frame… still waiting for Missy to come in and scream. Nausea in waves…

“Freeze!”

“Lava will turn us all to stone. A hundred times more terrible than what happened in Italy or Iceland.” Missy was beyond convinced that the world would end in the same place it began for her. A monk found her wandering the shores of Heaven’s Lake on Baekdu Mountain. He named her Eun Young.

“It means Missy in English.” It wasn’t true. It means one who always gets luck and protection from the king.

“On the ground! On the fucking ground!” Squinting through the charcoal haze, the officers closed in with their weapons drawn. A stomach of earth. I’m kissing the floor. Percy’s leaky corpse was staring me down. I couldn’t make out the blurry fuzz. The cuffs were cold and tight on my wrists.

“I didn’t do this.”

“Maybe you didn’t.”

“I did…”

“What?”

“I did know them.”

“Who’s them? I only see one body.”

Curiosity awoken, the neighbors watched my heels skid to the patrol car taking sips from their tulip glasses. Scandals were common in this part of town. Crimes were rare.

“Duck asshole!” They reminded me a second late. I crumbled in the fetal position. The pigs floored it, only to slam the breaks. A few more times, a few more bruises. A trickling stream of brutal stop and go. The city was a self-absorbed amoeba. The ride couldn’t have lasted shorter. No matter where you happened to be in NYC - a jail, hospital, or bank were only a few blocks away: The holy trinity of the modern age.

Down a hallway of echoes… the muffled chatter of the human zoo… not even placed in the cage for a hot second… the slavemasters take me out to look me over… not too interested… not too thrilled… a busy night in the neighborhood… I want to plead innocence… just can’t raise my voice over all the others doing the same… intimate confidants packing the pasture… their smudgy windows leading to cunning ways out… their sunken eyes accused… their savage intentions glorified…

A room opens up. A psycho exited grumbling, “So the fuck what… suck it…” incoherently possessed he tries to bite me… I don’t flinch… I doubt he can bite me into a coffin… go fuck yourself we make acquaintance… now to look the cops in the eyes… the two that led me into the cramped room… the pale redhead… cartoonish curves… kung-fu swagger… emerald marbles in the sockets… the dark man…slits squinting… shoulders that widen door frames… a warm inviting host of a voice.

“Take a seat.”

I closed my eyes letting them watch me reverberate in the echo of past voices. They knew I would rather listen to them talk. Missy was missing and maybe I knew and maybe I didn’t. Either way they’re shaking the wrong tree for coconuts.

D
ARKNESS
WAS THE WORLD I
was no longer a part of. Sgt. Bethany Powers had the light in my face with a glare of scrutiny

“Make any sense of this mess Farrow?” She waited for me to break the silence.

“You’re perfect except for the uniform.”

Sgt. Bethany Powers smashed my face off the table. The room trembled. I was back on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens watching the trains pass each other in the night. Jumbo jets swept down from above. Everything moved around me in immediacy, but I stayed frozen: Just another dissolving hologram.

“So Farrow… what made you come into the city tonight?” Her soothing voice took its sweet time slicing through the stale air.

“I came for
A Greater Truth
.” The severity of the situation was squandered. Squandered in years of writing rising from the concrete maze. Squandered in the mocking sky constantly caving in. Squandered in the sagging marshland bubbling to swallow me up.

“Did you get it out of Percy before you carved into him?” Their efforts to unwrap me, felt routine, unimportant.

“I heard you were more than familiar with Percy’s wife, Missy.”

“His wife? It’s been years.”

“Years?”

“Missy fucked me over. A year’s passed since I’ve seen her.”

“A year almost to the day. Nice anniversary you planned.” A dose of serum. I wondered where she got her information and how the hell it was so relevant and exact. After the fleecing Missy ran on me with the help of the lecherous high society literary czar Percy Featherton, I lost all concept of time. I had to lead the conversation into insignificance.

“It’s not my style to badmouth the black widow. None of this woulda ever happened if…”

“What woulda never happened, Farrow… Percy would still be alive?”

“We better not find Missy taking a dirt nap in your backyard.”

“I hope she’s okay. I hope she gets everything…”

“She deserves.” Det. Anderson grimaced, patient and methodical.

“I hope she gets everything she desires. Everything she thinks she needs.” I used Missy. She used me. It usually went that way in love. The idea that she was in danger made me cringe, but the cops would do little to help. If anything, clarifying what they didn’t know could only complicate the disaster.

“How did Missy fuck you over Farrow? It seems to me she found a more successful man. A gentleman that adored her. A successful man that helped her gain the recognition that she deserved.”

“It seems if anyone did anything to anyone… it was you Farrow. Tell me. Just how did Missy fuck you over?” Sgt. Powers went after my insecurities. It made my blood simmer. I couldn’t resist. I had to hear the words out loud.

“Missy fucked me over by…”

“Come with it.”

“Don’t keep us waiting.”

“By stealing my book…
A Greater Truth
!”

“Your book?”

“
A Greater Truth
?”

“Yeah. Did you read it?” An image of my book’s last passage brought a smile to my face. “Either of you?”

“Actually to be completely honest, I feel like I’m reading it as we speak.” Sgt. Powers humored me, attempting to turn me inside out. “But, I don’t believe you wrote it. Not a fucking chance.”

“I don’t believe you read it… not a fucking chance.” Our doubts appeared out of nowhere… threatening to spread into a local plague… popping up on the cankerous faces of the Grand Central commuter rush… splotching over the skin of the staggering tourists drunk on Times Square’s radioactive waves… climbing out the scabrous loudmouths of bluebeasts in riot gear ducking flaming bottles.

“Farrow, can you prove that you wrote it?” Detective Anderson ended on a long pause, listening intently as if his life, not mine depended on it.

“Do a mother’s eyes match her baby’s?”

“Sometimes they do match Farrow. Sometimes they do.” The only place that offered any escape from the morbid meditation was Sgt. Bethany Powers’ green eyes, where of course I found my reflection. Too bad she was against me. Too bad she only cared about the dead.

T
HE
CHOKESMOKE NYC AIR HIT
my lungs offering up a different lick of instinct. I had to watch my every impulse, as the people that would be doing the same were not to be trusted. Smooth survival was making sure to walk with purpose at all times. Detective Anderson followed me through Gramercy with the swiftness. He wasn’t undercover. He knew I knew he was watching me. He wanted me to know.

Percy’s designer clothes felt soft against my skin. I didn’t snatch them up today and I didn’t steal them. The old conniving bastard actually gave them to me. It was his idea. Absurd, that after all the years of trying to infiltrate the world Percy controlled, he was the one that approached me. At first I thought he was guilty about Missy choosing him over me. Then I came to my senses and realized he looked at her as more of a literary whore than myself. It was a competitive stable of a brothel: This incestual world of words. Percy, a writer himself, was under the same blessed curse. He wanted to give me a place to live. Give me clean clothes. Thing is: He forgot how he became what he was. I could live anywhere. I could wear anything. So I felt nothing about the Queens coffin he placed me in.

Detective Anderson slowed to my creep. Every time I caught his eyes a dozen ways to ditch him entered my mind. I wondered why he just didn’t cuff me to the scaffolding of Featherton Publishing. Was he nervous I would try to take the whole building down with me? Was he afraid I would wither away of starvation and heatstroke like a mangy hyena in the Serengeti? There are more convenient maneuvers to antagonize the grim reaper.

I didn’t have the key to Gramercy Park, but it was easy enough to hop that pathetic fence. I wasn’t sure if they were trying to keep people out or in. For some reason I expected Detective Anderson to do the same. Instead he just reached in his pocket and whipped it out, shutting the gate gently, so not to bring notice of his presence to the others patrons.

I was exhausted, overwhelmed. I collapsed in the first available spot that was more grass than dirt. Detective Anderson towered over me like a sentimental grizzly.

“Farrow most murderers return to the scene of the crime.” The statement made me want to lie down in the middle of the A-train’s tracks and chant doo-wop with the subway rats.

“This wasn’t the scene of the crime.”

“Close enough.” I could feel the Featherton townhouse radiating hellborn vapors beyond the gates. Shut your eyes and everything will go away. My head was a heavy shell. I was fading fast. Let the lids ease closed. A little bird was bouncing in front of me. They were all over the city. Easy not to notice. Squeaking and tweeting. Fade to inner silence… come easy dreams...

“I met someone that can help you.” Missy and I were on a rooftop somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen. It was summer, but not the summer of the current year. The buildings hanging in our shadows had a superficial incandescence. I already had my share of the conversation from the sharp breath of entry, but Missy wouldn’t let up.

“Oh yeah…”

“Featherton Publishing mean anything to you?”

“Who is it? An editor…? A mail clerk…? A family connection…? A friend of a friend of a friend…?”

“Featherton himself Farrow. He tried to pick me up. I didn’t realize who he was at first, until he told me, and when I did - I immediately thought of you. Percy Featherton…” I could feel her poking me as she moaned his name.

“Percy Featherton is de…” I woke up mid-sentence. The finger poking me belonged to Detective Anderson. He was standing over me with mysterious urgency. His jaw was clenched. His eyes were crossed in the most disturbing fashion.

L
IGHTS
FLASHING, A BLACK UNMARKED
Ford Explorer stopped short on Irving Place with all its windows down. Chaotic radio breaka breaka filled the air.

“Long time no see Farrow.” Sgt. Bethany Powers squeezed the pulp out of the wheel.

“The pleasure is mine.”

“Anderson, you didn’t tell him yet!”

“I didn’t want to disturb his sleep. Guy’s our number one suspect and he’s nodding out in rush hour.”

“Tell me what?” I figured I was being arrested. I’d be cuffed at the wrists and ankles, tossed around ragdoll, and dragged from sweaty cell to sweatier cell.

“Farrow they found Missy’s body.” Detective Anderson spoke slowly in a windy cemetery voice, laying his hands on me with the conman chi of a Reiki healer. My body slumped over… head curling into chest… lava skin… liquid pain… bones molting. Detective Anderson opened the back door of the squad car for me limo driver style. I could hear the engine’s purr and nothing else. It was more soothing than distracting. Sgt. Bethany Powers hit the sirens. Peeling out, she took a wild left onto 18
^th
street. Memories bombarded me…