Moral Zero (31 page)

             
My faith in your word will remain at rock bottom. Even if the truth were told, it wouldn't matter. You would still die.

             
No, no . . . Have some fuckin mercy brother. The man reached out with trembling hands that Johnny glanced at in thinly veiled disgust.

             
There will never be any mercy again. You gave up your right to that when you did what you did. I ain’t your brother. We ain’t even the same species. You are a foul shell, some corpuscular scab. You are the blight that will always be, until I, Death, come to end you.

             
Killin me won't bring your mog back. The man fingered his gun, knowing that it was out of bullets but keeping it as some lonely reminder of safety.

             
I never wished it to. May she be free from all this sickness forever. But, you see, this ain't even about the cat. It's about me. Me and you. And what's to be done.

             
The bandit shivered again and his leg leaked out another pool of sticky thick blood. Don't kill me sir, don't you be killin me now. I'm on a new path now, seen the light. I'm good, I am now. I understand it all, everthin you say. I see what's right. Please. Lemme go. You done proved yourself, you have. There'll be only good and just deeds done on this slate of mine from now on, you got my word.

             
I told you what I thought of your word. It is lower than your own shit. Now get up. Johnny Black beckoned with his knife.

             
Naw sir, please sir, you gonna let me go?

             
Any state of affairs can only come about from you being upright, can they not?

             
The bandit sat for a second more, and then strained himself to his feet, his leg gushing out more blood and he whimpering out.

             
Johnny had the knife at his throat. He leaned in so close the bandit could smell the murder of his comrades. Smoke and death, and hot blood. The noses were almost touching. Johnny started whispering, soft and rushing like some forest wind, trussed up and yet fervent as though words of gospel to the man.

             
Do you hear him there, do you
hear
him? He's coming.

             
H-hear who? the wounded man's voice was stretched thin and tickled hard by the serrated edge of the knife.

             
Do you see him, by God do you
see
him? He's there, he's
coming
.

             
Wh-what?

             
Do you not hear him you sinner, you hopeless soul? Listen now, listen to the world and its noises.

             
For a few seconds there was nothing but breathing, and Johnny was the first to start.

             
He is closer now, do you see him, do you hear him?
Feel
his coming, can you feel it? Can you see Death? Can you hear him come now, can you feel his presence?

             
A tear dropped down the man's face, and it withered itself into the cracks into his leathered skin. It was soon followed by more.

             
He calls for you! You! Can you not feel Death? Despite the heat of the day the warmth of Johnny's whispers burned into the man's own breath, and he took every word right into his own lungs, to rustle and clamp around restlessly.

             
Yes, he replied softly, and none of his own words or breath were taken in by Johnny, for they were weak and without power.

             
Can you hear him now? Can you hear him call to you, that dark angel, that beckoning, that ghost's whisper?

             
Yes.

             
Say I do, say I do now.

             
I do.

             
Louder, you
speck of nothing
! Johnny Black's voice rose up, hard and bristling and spitting.

             
I do! I see, I hear! The man's voice was pathetic, obedient and clutching at the last straw of hope.

             
Tell me what he looks like!

             
I – I don't know.

             
The knife pressed harder into the man's throat, and the tears that had fallen to his neck mixed with lines of blood.
Tell me what he looks like by God
! Johnny Black's voice was a storm in this desert of cruelty, and if it wasn't for the hold of the knife the man would have dropped to his knees and begged and wept and prayed to everything there could be or never be.

             
He is dark! the man cried.

             
Is his hair black like the night? Johnny raised his other hand up into the air as if to call down spirits from the sky.

             
Yes!

             
Are his boots black like a shadow?

             
Yes!

             
And is his hat black like a raven?

             
Yes!

             
And do you
love him
?

             
Yes!

             
Johnny Black laughed, wild and crazed and yet also jubilant, and the knife ripped through the voice box of the man like shredded wheat. It stabbed back, and in and through, and tangled itself in a gristled mess that it did its best to work out of, to the tune of chokes and strangles and wet, bubbling sounds and then nothing except the sound of the blade and the meat, whilst the whole world watched and offered no judgement.

CITY

Red sat down on the girl’s bed and looked around while drinking more of whatever cocktail it was she’d given him. It was an ever-changing hypnotic swirl of colours, and it tasted like sweet tropical suicide.

Her room swayed about him, jumping out at him occasionally from under a blurry curtain. Everything felt heavy and unstable. His body felt like it was on auto-pilot, and any thoughts
of control his brain tried to formulate his body just laughed at.

The
re was an overabundance of pink . . . and garish posters. There were stuffed toys on the bed.

How old are you again?
He turned his head from side to side and tried to make sense of things.

Does it matter?
The girl was reapplying her hot pink lipstick in the mirror.

Kinda.

I’m old enough for you.

Are you . . .
legal?

She laughed girlishly.
What century are you living in?

Red took another drink and attempted to get up, but failed an
d came back to the bed with a thump. Your room is . . . nice, he managed. And I will be . . . goin now. Each word seemed like an effort.

Don’t be silly, y
ou haven’t finished your drink.

He looked at the glass in his hand and was surprised to find a lot more than he had expected. Had she filled his drink back up? A whole party of people could burst in the room and run out again before Red would notice, and even then confusion and self-doubt would be the kings of his perspective.

I have a . . . girlfriend, he forced the words out through his half-numb lips.

You said. Several times.

I should go.

Y
ou haven’t finished your drink.

Red looked back into the spiralling depths and tried to take a sip, but failed. The liquid wet his lips and then flowed back down
into the glass. A discomfort in his jeans made his hand slug its way over, and it was bemused to feel a hard lump that lay like a dead snake on his thigh. His hand felt it and squeezed it, as if discovering the cause under its own artificial volition.

I don’t thin
k you really want to go at all. She was suddenly right in front of him and smiling. Her chest was thrust out in his face and she wasn’t wearing much, but then she never had been. The rest of her room faded into pink obscurity and the pink-orange-white of her flesh became the world, full of curves and full of youth and desire.

It took a minute for him to realise that she had replaced his hand with hers, and continued the movement, the rubbing.

Does that feel good? she breathed. She was bent over at a right angle, her ass stuck out behind her, her big hanging breasts almost falling out of her top.

Uh huh,
he murmured, and his head fell back. With a tremendous effort he pushed it forward again. Her hand did feel good. The pleasure cut through the fog around him and acted as the focused centre point on a swaying world.

She fiddle
d with the belt on his trousers.

Uh . . .
no, he said. He stood up, god knows how; it seemed that suddenly his body was obeying him, or at least humouring him to see what would happen. He downed the rest of his drink and dropped it to the floor, the final drips leaking out onto the carpet. He stared at the door in front of him and willed his legs to move.

There are beautiful things, he murmured, so very quiet. I just don’t know where they are.

The girl – what was her name? – stood in front of him and, strangely, turned her back to him.

Red made an indistinguishable noise.

She bent a little so the cheeks of her ass bulged out from the flap of her microskirt. With a glossy nailed finger she hooked her white thong to halfway down her thighs.

Red’s dull gaze took in the squeezed and shadowed rivulet running down the centre of her ass. He watched like a zombie as she parted her cheeks and bent down further.

The succubus hole. The tempter. The provider. The Great Satan.

Can you remember how I dragg
ed you here in the first place? the girl said from some infinite distance behind the heavenly Hell Red was transfixed by.

Nuh.

You were so interested when I told you how much I
loved
to get fucked in the ass.

Uh. T
he words coming from his mouth were now just instinctual and primal, turning man to ape.

We talked so much about all the things we were both into. How we both liked degradation. And
assfucking of course. Taking it . . . deep . . . in this tight, dirty ass . . . Her voice had grown husky in its femininity, and with each word she bent over more and spread her cheeks wider.

Red felt the surge within him
as though he was conducting magmatic lightning. All that power, all that lust and frustration and anger. That desperation. That
love.
A need so intense he felt as though he could collapse right there, and float unconscious past the edges of the universe.

Years had sailed by him
without respite and now all the rage of his wild, doglike mind came gushing hot and fast to the surface. His primordial thoughts were simple and unformed, making neither words nor reason. They were grunts and thrusts, a wordless, simian language which inside him built a volcano.

His belt was already on the floor, somehow. His jeans and pants were next to follow
and kicked off beautifully without falling over. Within seconds the girl’s breath was warm and humid on his hardness, a half moment later and he had jammed in her mouth, and it was so . . . fuck . . .

He crumbled and became lost. He retched loudly and the girl tried to pull back but he kept her there and grabbed her hair like a fistful of dirt.
She choked and spit bubbled around her lips and he slapped her face again and again and a-fucking-gain so it was the same red as his volcano and her mascara had already began to run like black treacle.

I love you!
his body spoke, and as his mind heard it, played back as if on some slow motion tape, a tear fell down and hit her lips, but the salty taste was left undistinguished.

He threw her off
and by her hair slung her to the bed.

Yes!
she cried, but her words could have been anything and they would have reached his ears the same.

He
got behind her and spit on his cock, and then rubbed it in the rich wetness of her pussy.

Fuck my ass! the girl yelled, or something like it.

Shut the fuck up, he growled, hitting her ass so hard she shrieked.

He got his member in hand, and at that moment it had never felt harder, never felt bigger, never felt stronger or more capable of all the destruction in the world.
He positioned it right, and as he sunk in he exhaled in a manner so fierce and anguished and relieved that it could not be determined whether it was a sigh, a cry or a roar.

He knew from the first moment that it hadn’t felt as good, that it wouldn’t be worth it, that it couldn’t eve
r match up to the caged pleasure of his fantasies. But he drove in anyway, shouting out names to her in attempts to push the experience further, calling her a bitch and a dumb slut and daddy’s fucktoy and a stupid cunt, and she lapped it up and cried as though he was glorifying her, validating her sexual existence, giving her the root of his energies and she was bathing in the blossom of it all, all the leaked excess and imperfect fucking life.