Devil Entendre Page 10

  This tirade stops the creature dead cold in its tracks, Gustav’s scathing honesty leaving it trembling with…uncertainty? Is that the expression crossing its face? He can tell that right now this foul beast is seeing something far worse than what he sees in it.

  It cautiously backs away, receding into the office beyond, and closes the door. Gustav listens to the lock slide into place, then leaves.

  After days of remorseful pacing, of painstaking preparation, Gustav is below the city’s surface, directly under the basilica. He’s gathered sundry explosives—not enough of any one type to raise suspicion. Of course, some things he had to create himself due to the fact they’re flat-out illegal, like plastic explosives. Mixing the sodium chlorate petroleum jelly was brow-drenching business.

  He’s here today to make amends with the Almighty. Those things he said the other day, those horrible words that spilled out, he didn’t mean any of it. Deep down inside he knew that he was investigating the horrors in the church because of his belief in the Creator, and the need to serve the Lord. Only with the way the world wears a person down he has grown numb over the years, has told himself one lie on top of another to explain the cruelties of his fellow man. The fact of the matter, however, was that they simply didn’t see the corruption. Didn’t comprehend. That’s what Jesus Christ had come to show humanity: the correct way to view themselves, and the world.

  With that vision in mind Gustav has resolved to remove one eyesore from the face of the planet. He would sink the den of iniquity deep into the bowels of the Earth, send it crashing down onto the roof of Hell itself. At long last his brothers will discover what has been lurking in their midst.

  Looking around at the hundreds of gallons of gasoline, the gunpowder, the saltpeter, the TNT, all of it, he says, “Seek ye the Lord and be strengthened: seek his face evermore.” And, so saying, he detonates.

  Within a week the excavation process begins to yield even more corpses, deep within the rubble where the authorities didn’t expect to find any. Strange, unidentifiable corpses. With the recent diversion of resources to Homeland Security the medical examiner’s office declares them to be “religious relics” and investigates no further.

  As for the bodies of the children, their scattered remains far beyond identification, authorities attribute them to a visiting school trip. Notices go out to school jurisdictions worldwide.

  While the basilica itself is a great loss, the citizens are reassured by the fact that The Order already has another in development, only months from completion, on the other side of town. Groundbreaking on this one went unannounced, so as to prevent terrorist acts like this one. The new basilica is bigger, better, and will boast even more beautiful bells than its predecessor.

  Gustav, his name does indeed go down in infamy, with his countrymen remembering him as the monster who brought the war on terror back home to the United States.

  Futui Vitium

  The pictures I take of myself. At night, in the cemetery. They speak to me with the incomplete syllables of a priest in the confessional. Masturbating and muttering, alone as he chokes on incense.

  The pictures I take of them. The recently departed, their legs even more recently parted. They speak to me in the retro-punk soft fuzz syllables of angst-ridden confusion. Well, angst isn’t the only thing that rides them when we’re alone in the dark.

  Myself, a picture of them. Freak-souled and shrieking, mine are the wails of an infant reverberating through the jungle at night. Calling for comfort. Summoning only predators.

  Them, a picture of myself. Soulless husks, freakishly shambling in the half-light. Crowding around like priests let loose in an orphanage, taking advantage of the darkness. Taking advantage of the weakness. The weakness of my flesh. My flesh tearing like soggy photographs between their bloodless fingers.

  The Hiroshima Maidens

  INTRODUCTION: ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SKIN

  They crawl on porcelain hands and knees, voluptuous tumors screaming through their skin. These are the Hiroshima Maidens, made by American heroes, familiar with every den of iniquity spanning the globe from here to Nagasaki. Through swollen and oddly displaced eye sockets the Maidens perceive our pleasure: we—the men who gather for a nominal fee, paying a pretty penny for such an ugly opportunity. A host of procurers ensure safe cover for us through the use of graft, appeasing the local authorities. My mask of benevolence greets the parade of tender, fragile, dolled-up women.

  SOURCES OF BURNS

  Slender and delicately gnarled as they are, I wonder if they secretly desire to murder us? Perhaps their wills softened as did their substance, melted by our broken heat. Irradiation by any other name is beauty among my peers. We gather in secret, yes, but not in shame as ours is a lust which is considered to have ushered in the modern age. Even so we are cognizant of the fact that the fallout from public exposure could be debilitating. All the inflamed discussion infecting the media regarding dirty bombs has missed the point entirely. Certainly public opinion would be far more explosive if only the populace understood how “dirty” a bomb could be.

  RADIATION

  Radiant beauties saunter by, rivulets of flesh ebbing and flowing around male shoals only to be dragged under by an irresistible economic tide; surely theirs is the rarest meat on the market. Underground practitioners of radiology have seen to it, sculpting from rather common women walking wounds, not unlike knowledgeable butchers. For some a gradation of therapy is applied, altering their make-up for a far more refined effect. The brilliant laboratory dwellers are hard at work even now, developing the next generation of Hiroshima Maidens. The desires which permeate this gathering, skulking under rotting rafters, penetrate every cell—we are united by perverse dedication and our numbers grow every day, spreading.

  SUPERFICIAL (First-degree)

  The bulk of the Maidens are in their twenties, not that age is easily discernible in their condition. As I’ve learned this is standard…this knowledge, as all knowledge pertaining to the Maidens, has been burned into my memory. Others are somewhat older, and recently even young girls are being thrown into the mix; you can find any size or shape that suits your desires. But what are our desires, precisely? I suppose that’s what we’re here to discover. Rumor has it that financial giants can have a Maiden tailor-made at a laboratory of their choosing, even hand-picking the Maiden-to-be. Knowing what we intend for them the Hiroshima Maidens do their best not to tremble, averting their eyes to hide the shame, agony, and dread woven into the fabric of their being. The array of colors displayed on the Maidens’ silk kimonos offsets the grizzly terrain of disfigurements adorning each woman. What designs the others have I can only guess as even mine remain undeveloped, clouded like a faulty X-ray. Finally, a keloid bombshell comes into my sights, setting off a reaction inside me.

  PARTIAL-THICKNESS (Second-degree)

  She’s left over from previous batches—I have a discerning eye for these things. Did low-level gropers descended into gynecologic nightmares with her at past locations, not having the money to buy her outright? With a smooth and well-manicured hand I stop the malignant beauty, doing my utmost to appear benign. Her trickle-scarred skin alternately sags and bulges inappropriately. A tassel of raven-spun hair is kept in a tight bundle by silvered sticks and even from here it’s apparent her locks are chunky at best…queer, thickened hair protrudes from the profusion of sores that is her scalp. My caress is black satin spreading over her exposed skin, exploring the anatomical alterations, and a fine white creme issues forth, the consistency of yogurt with the odor of rancid vermin twelve days dead. I consider shaping the spoiled putty just as doctors shaped her; my handful of modern love is instead pocketed for later.

  FULL-THICKNESS (Third-degree)

  What has the penetration of unbound energy wrought within? Are the Maidens so thick-skinned as they appear? Do extra lungs blossom in a cage of distende
d ribs? The thought of administering internal probes is tempered by the whisper lingering at the back of our collective consciousness. Should the women themselves be emitting radiation we might—no, what use are such thoughts, as the very dare is part of the thrill. This one’s diseased heart quivers its impression into me as I lead her away by the wrist. No struggle is offered, her withered spleen likely drained well before this juncture. Watching her being weighed upon a scale the pangs of hunger gnaw at me, even while staring at her discolored and hardened features. Is it true that these are women whose ovaries will produce the most unique caviar, their deranged eggs fetching high ransom from connoisseurs worldwide?

  BURN MANAGEMENT

  Degenerate malingerers purchase whatever cut is available while I ponder this exquisite, ash-white wonder beside me. Even if we can’t spend our whole lives together perhaps we can waste away half a lifetime. A little man and fat boy count the currency but already I’m drifting away from imbibing the finely aged saki of slavery. My Hiroshima Maiden is fueling wave after wave of wicked fantasies, a bombardment spawned by some subconscious meltdown. Anticipation of cutthroat copulation floods my being with inexplicable heat. Silently thanking the luminaries of modern science I cart my Japanese import away. Having secured her in the confines of my bachelor-padded and sound proofed torture chamber on wheels I hop in the truck’s cab and consider calling the wife and kids. On second thought no. It’s always better when the souvenirs are a surprise.

  Neovagina

  Andrew wakes during the full hip disarticulation. One of his surgeons is in the process of saying, “Okay, got my finger under the pectineus…now where’s that tendon?”

  Another chimes in with, “Electrocautery back online just in time.”

  Andrew smells both metal and something moist and organic that should never be exposed to air. He tries to turn his head, eyes bulging and dry.

  “Oh, damn it,” the anesthesiologist says.

  With a trembling hand Andrew studies the Kennedy half dollar at rest on his palm. He tries to avoid thinking about his class trip to the Empire State Building back in the 8th grade, of the admonition the class received from tour guides not to throw anything from the observation deck—or the dark gleam in his classmate’s eye when hearing that coins tossed off penetrated inches into the pavement below. Andrew tries not to contemplate his inaction when the other boy gave him a winning smile while chucking a quarter into the air. The baby in its stroller 1,250 feet below with the hole punched through its belly never allows him peace. Nor do the faces of the baby’s parents, themselves haunted. It had been a boy? Perhaps it had been spared a life of misery.

  Andrew’s pants are down around his ankles. He dislikes undressing with the lights on, even when alone, because of his father. However, something even his father could appreciate now resides in his thigh: a darkness blue at its edges, then purple and finally black toward the center, where a gap in his skin is only an inch long but wet.

  He finds himself back under intense lights. “Are we going to incise this anterior joint capsule or what? I’m supposed to be online cybering the hell out of some Canadian chick.” Just as quickly the lights fade.

  The injury to his thigh should have been treated when it first happened, Andrew understands all too well, but his father bred him for inaction. Girl after girl in the other room, cries and screams muffled. Afterward his father had always said, “Told your mother I wanted a girl. You don’t like what’s happening? It’s your fault. It shoulda been you in there.” Sometimes his father made him watch, or if things got out of control his father made him help dig the hole and pour the lye.

  Insert a coin and watch it shake. From a sex act? From sobbing? From waves of nausea? From another beating? Thick sap is displaced by the coin’s penetration, and the smell invading Andrew’s nostrils is that of skunks and dead vermin trapped in walls and the sewer drain he hid in when he ran away. Dark tears slowly leave a trail through the wiry hair of his thigh: yes, the shaking is due to weeping of a sort.

  The question is, can it accommodate greater girth? A Kennedy half dollar, for instance, his father’s good luck charm. “Best thing ever happened to me was that fool getting his brains blown out,” Andrew’s father remarked when celebrating his own birthday: November 22, 1963. When he carried the coin in his pocket he was unstoppable—that is, until the police caught up to him.

  Andrew packs it into his wound, just the tip at first, then pounding harder and harder despite tearing flesh and the shrieks that may or may not be his. Just like slot machines crusted with elderly smokers’ emphysema it won’t be coming up cherries.

  An insistent child with carbonized steel claws and fangs tugs at the skin of lower abdomen. No…even through the unfamiliar cold on his vulnerable areas and the churning heat next to it, he can tell this is just another suture.

  “I see a certain anesthesiologist losing their boat in the near future.”

  “Up yours, Phil.”

  Andrew’s eyelids flutter. He is willing to admit his thought process hasn’t been quite clear ever since the sweats and swelling began. “I’m sorry,” mutters. “I’m sorry.” The baby parked in its stroller across the operating theater ignores him, preoccupied with fingering its own wound.

  An Ideal Family Holiday

  “Oh you kids, settle down now, settle down. For gosh sakes!” If only Darla could get these children to behave in a manner at least approaching “proper” some of the time so I wouldn’t always have to play the heavy. “Sit down, sit down now. You’re going to miss it!”

  Darla opts to sit on the chair, leaving room on the sofa for the kids to sit next to me. With the familiar sounds of bells and choirs and that crooner from the 1950s coming from the television Darlene and Billy realize that the festivities really are about to get underway. Without further dramatics they plop themselves down next to me, directly across from the screen, quaking with anticipation.

  “I always liked this version of the song better. That rock ‘n roll one they did really stunk to high heaven.”

  “Oh,” Darla says, realization making her sit up straight as a board. “I should have put on the holiday CD. Should I do it now, or later?”

  “Later, later,” I say without taking my eyes off the screen.

  I’ll admit that maybe the child in me still becomes all giddy on the eve of our most important family holiday. On the dinner table wait the alluring holiday puddings, homemade, their comforting aromas making it all the harder for us to sit still. The coffee table directly before us holds a number of utensils, some of my tools, and the children’s pencil sharpeners, those little plastic ones which fit over the pencil. I really wish they would learn to empty the things before bringing them out here; wood shreddings leak all over the place. On the television some pseudo-celebrity—Gassley, I think his name is—fades in surrounded by the large crimson-petaled flowers of the season. What are they called again? Grow in dark places and all that.

  “Darla, honey, what do you call those things again?”

  “What’s that dear?” she asks, not entirely answering me.

  “I said, what’re those—”

  “Quiet, quiet,” little Darlene says. “They’re starting already!”

  Normally I’d give her what-for if she interrupted me and I almost do, but then thinking of what is about to happen stops me. I should just let the holiday spirit take over, right? What’s more is I can’t remember if we all took our holiday vitamins.

  “Greetings out there across the land, and welcome to our holiday special!” Gassley proclaims, his eyes boring into the camera. “I’m Edmund Gassley here to wish everyone a very Gassley holiday!” What’s that supposed to mean? He looks out of place in that red outfit with the white cuffs and boots. ”My oh my what a program we have in store for children of all ages to enjoy. As usual we’ll be starting the holiday festivities right here natio
nwide on live telebroadcast, so I hope everyone is ready. But first let’s turn our attention to the past to remind us just what it is that makes this season such a special time of year, all the wonderful memories that we’ll always treasure in our hearts, and let us turn our heads to our loved ones to remind us of what we hold precious here in the present.”

  The host of this evening’s program pauses as if in contemplation; I don’t think he’s smiled once. A soft musical interlude follows during which the serene scene in the studio is intercut with slo-mo clips of past holiday specials.

  Billy huffs, “When are we getting to the good part!”