William S. Burroughs (24 page)

KAPOW KAPOW

The Mafia proved no
match for the expert assassins of the Johnson Family, all adept at
disguise...A delivery boy, an old derelict, a solid businessman type
with a briefcase, a doctor, a street cleaner
...
The
Mafia never recovered from the blow. They had come to the promised
land. And suddenly the promised land hit back hard. They were forced
into legitimate business or confined their depredations to the
Italian community.

NYC circa
1910...
Concrete evidence of survival after death and
reincarnation has given a new perspective to assassination.
There are ethical brokers who will only take on a case after careful
inspection of the karma involved and selection of the victim's future
parents. In some cases death may even potentiate the power of an
enemy who can now operate through a number of carefully prepared
receptacles. In such cases the manner of death must neutralize the
target.

Strangulation and
hanging are considered the most certain insurance against posthumous
vengeance. The Seminole Indians fear death by hanging above
everything since they believe the soul of the hanged man cannot leave
the body. There are practitioners for every price and every purpose.

Licensed assassins
are the new elite. Here one sits, in a Rajah's palace, having his
toenails manicured while a boy mans the ceiling fan.

"I'm doing my
Lord Alabaster number this week."

He changes
residences constantly. Next week it may be a French chateau, or a
townhouse in Mayfair. He is leafing through offers. He only takes
certain cases. He's
very
exclusive.

"A Mrs. Norton
to see you, sir."

"Tell her to go
away. She wants me to kill her husband, and it's just too tiresome.
Oh, and tell her she can donate her two million to cancer research.
She's got the Bad Disease, and she's got it bad, in case she doesn't
know...
"

Like all top
assassins, he is an M.D. You have to know just where everything is,
the veins and arteries and nerve centers, so you can place a
bullet or a knife-thrust to sever the portal vein or the femoral
artery. It can make the difference between a clean hit and a
disgraceful recovery.

Needless to say,
young agents are trained courtesans, graduates of accredited Sex
Institutes, and many assignments are Mata Haris; "hairies,"
we call them.

"Oh God, not
another KGB colonel, like an uncouth bear all covered with black
hair...
"
He sweeps the slip languidly
to the floor. Rejection slips stir around his feet like dead leaves.

"The Israelis,
ugh,
and the Arabs,
ugher
...
too
starved an argument for my sword."

He selects a cheap
white envelope addressed in pencil, and extracts a sheet of yellow
lined paper:

Dear Mister Kim: A
year ago two cops kicked me in the crotch. I am now N.G. as a result.
I want to off these bastards. I got a thousand dollars saved up. I
know it isn't much but I hope you will help me. Yours truly, Tom
Jones.

Like famous doctors,
Kim takes charity cases: "Pack up, William, we are going to
Chicago."

In addition to
charity cases, we are also expected to do unsolicited and unpaid
C.W.: Community Work. It's our contribution to the health and
welfare of the global community. For example, the poisonous creepers
who put razor blades, needles, and ground glass into Halloween fruit
and candy.

"Let me have a
look at that apple."

A man is trying to
edge away. He finds his way blocked, two fingers hooked over his
belt, a knife pressing against his stomach.

"What is
this...
?"
Boy turns the apple in his
hands. He takes out a knife and makes a quick incision: a needle
glints in dim streetlight. Boy turns to the traitor and raises an
eyebrow.

"Now look, I
found the apple, see?"

Boy hands him the
apple: "Eat it."

"Now look, you
can't
—
I got rights!" A knife
presses against the side of his throat.

"Eat it while
you still have a throat to swallow with."

We took care of
about twenty that Halloween, one way or another, going to and fro on
the earth and walking up and down on it.

And a certain
anonymous letter required expert attention. When a four-year-old boy
was attacked and nearly killed by guard dogs, some vile animal lover
wrote to the boy's mother, protesting the destruction of the fucking
dogs: "It wasn't the dogs' fault. The boy should die soon. I
hope he will."

We talked to the
mother and got the letter and took it to our graphologist: "Elderly
woman
...
recent coronary
...
check
hospitals, narrow it down." We find a blighted area of
semidetached houses with scraggly little vegetable gardens, five dogs
outside; this must be the place.

"Did you write
this letter, Mrs. Murphy?"

"Who are you
men, anyway?"

"And who were
you, Mrs. Murphy?"

SPUT
...
a
dart with organic cyanide compound, almost odorless. They found her
two days later, most of her face eaten off by the dogs. (Wasn't the
dogs' fault
...
hungry, you know.)

We go through the
newspapers, looking for C.W. cases and tossing them back and forth:
"Oh yes,
that's
me...
"

For such louts as
the Mafiosi, assassination is simply a means of expanding or
consolidating territorial rights. The people they kill are very much
like themselves: rivals in the same line of business, with the same
stupid criminal outlook. Lucky Luciano said, about people who
work for a living: "Crumbs. Strictly crumbs!"

It is related that
Cherry Nose Gio, rescued from drowning, spit in the lifeguard's face:
"Crumb! Worka fora living."

The Johnsons kill to
rid the spaceship Earth of malefactors who are sabotaging our
space program. It's like you see somebody knocking holes in the
bottom of the lifeboat and shitting in the water supply.

Kim sets up an
institute to study various so-called psychic or paranormal processes,
to clarify the mechanisms involved, and to discover where possible
practical applications.

The phenomenon of
phantom sexual partners was of particular interest to him since
he had experienced some extremely vivid encounters. He surmised
that such occurrences are much more frequent than is generally
supposed: people are reluctant to discuss the matter for fear of
being thought insane, as they were reluctant to make such an
admission in the Middle Ages for fear of the Inquisition. He knew
that the succubi and incubi of medieval legend were
actual beings
and he felt sure that these creatures were still in operation.
Surveys proved him right. Once people could be brought to talk about
it, many instances emerged. One woman, after the death of her
husband, continued to receive uh conjugal visits, which were fully
satisfying, and he gave her some very good advice on
investments. The evil reputation of phantom partners probably derived
largely from Christian prejudice, but Kim surmised that these
creatures were of many varieties and some were malignant, others
harmless or beneficial. He observed that some were seemingly
dead people, others living people known to the uh visitor, in other
cases unknown. He checked where possible to find out if at the time
of such visitations the uh beneficiary was aware of the encounter. In
some cases not at all. In others partially aware. Quite frequently
the visitor reported an itchy or restless feeling at the time. In a
few cases the visit was quite conscious. He concluded that the
phenomenon was related to astral projection but not identical
with it since astral projection was usually not sexual or
tactile. He decided to call these beings by the general name of
"familiars," which is a term usually restricted to animals.
They were certainly familiar and, like animal familiars,
attempted to establish a relationship with a human host. His studies
and personal encounters convinced him that these familiars were
semicorporeal. They could be both visible and tactile. They also had
the power to appear and disappear. Rather like amphibians who
had to surface from time to time.

The case of Toby,
who haunted an old YMCA locker room...Toby is described by several
observers as blond with rather vacant blue eyes, about sixteen years
old. There are a few pimples on his face which are faintly
phosphorescent. He gives off a rank ruttish animal smell when
aroused. Kim spent a month in this room and enjoyed many encounters
with Toby.

The first time, he
saw him standing naked at the foot of the bed. Kim showed no fear and
threw back the covers to invite the boy to get in bed with him,
which he did. Then Kim caressed the boy, who writhed and steamed off
his skunky smell, which increased Kim's excitement as well. He slowly
turned the boy on his side, stroking the phosphorescent pimples
on his buttocks. The boy emitted a purring hissing sound. No Vaseline
was needed to penetrate the boy's rectum, which opened to receive him
with a soft gelatinous clutch, the feeling being rather like his cock
was between two reversed magnetic fields. That is, the sensation
penetrated his penis rubbing inside and now the boy was slowly
melting into him or rather Kim was entering the boy's body feeling
down into the toes and the fingers pulling the boy in further and
further then there was a fluid click as their spines merged in an
ecstasy that was almost painful, a sweet toothache pain as they both
ejaculated and their rectums and prostate glands squeezed together
and the tips of their cocks merged and glowed with a soft-blue fire
and Kim was alone or rather Toby was all the way in him now.

There were a number
of such encounters and always Toby took the passive role. In the
moment of orgasm they merged completely so that Kim's cock was
spurting in air but he could feel Toby squirming inside him.
Afterward the boy would slowly separate and lie beside him in
the bed, almost transparent but with enough substance to indent the
bedding. Kim concluded that the creature was simply composed of
less dense matter than a human. For this reason interpenetration was
possible.

Toby could speak,
though he seldom did so. And he could follow instructions up to a
point. At the time, Kim was engaged in a bitter war with Mafia hit
men who had gone to the mattresses. Toby was able to find their
lair, which reeked of garlic and unwashed Old World bodies, for these
were Mustache Petes brought in from Sicily. Kim asked if Toby could
use a gun and he said no, "too heavy," but he could cause
gas leaks or a gas explosion. Kim learns later that the familiars
specialize in certain services. Some, like Carl, are electronics
experts
...
though for operations involving
actual wiring they need a suitable human vehicle, usually some
quiet boy who was always good at taking things apart and fixing
circuits. In fact electronics equipment is especially liable to
psychic influence. Carl can stop a tape recorder by looking at
it...Kim finds out that familiars all have
their
familiars
and assistants, though it is not always clear who is the master and
who the servant. Familiars can be very helpful, they can also harass
one unmercifully. Carl, for example, if he is in a sulky mood, can
make the simplest wiring job impossible, he can burn out lights,
trip one up with electric cords, louse up a TV, tape recorder or
hi-fi. And he takes various forms. One is Agouchi, a Navajo spirit, a
little man three feet tall with blazing blue eyes and bright red hair
who squeezes the testicles in the moment of orgasm. Agouchi can
always be recognized by his odor, blending the aroma of leather
shorts slept in all winter by a Scandinavian Force Boy with the ozone
smell after lightning strikes...

Thunder offstage.

Kim studies the
scant sources on Hassan i Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain. This
man is the only spiritual leader who has anything to say to the
Johnsons who is not a sold-out P.R. man for the Slave Gods. Slave
Gods need slaves like a junky needs junk. Only by stunting and
degrading the human host can they maintain their disgusting position.
Above all they must keep the Johnsons out of space. No one must ever
be allowed to leave
their
planet. Hassan i Sabbah was a
member of the Ishmaelite cult, who were viciously persecuted by the
orthodox Moslems. They had already gone underground and built up
a network of secret agents.

Hassan incurred the
displeasure of a potentate and fled for his life. It was during this
flight that he received the vision of the Imam and took over the
Ishmaelite sect with all its underground networks. He spent
several years in Egypt. Once again he was a fugitive. He escaped by
boat and is said to have calmed a storm. He gathered a few followers
and, after years of perilous wanderings, established himself and his
followers in the fortress of Alamut in what is now northern
Iran
...
(the fortress is still there). Here
he maintained himself for thirty years and trained his assassins, who
spread terror through the Moslem world.