Lust Demented Part 12

THE COPS LEFT ME ALONE to die on the street. I couldn't remember if I signed the statement or not. The pen was still in the gutter, which I guess could be a good sign. I tried speaking. Nothing came out. It was strange to have no voice. I held my hand up and stared through the hole in my palm. The top half of my body had lost most feeling. I could only move my legs. I kicked my legs up, bouncing my feet on the pavement as they pa.s.sed. The tunnel was a chamber of sound.

I could hear footsteps and gossip blend together. A couple's outline flashed down the sidewalk across the street. I could hear them cough and shuffle along. They were coming closer. I flopped wildly like a fish in the sand. Our eyes met. I pleaded for an ambulance. They looked away wishing their eyes were playing tricks on them. Wishing they were blind and belonged to a different world.

"Farrow will you stop leaving these f.u.c.king pages everywhere." Missy rolled the vacuum over the pages I left on the floor.

"I'll write them again. Next time they'll be even better." I was lying sideways. Exhausted after a long night's voodoo possession. Watching the vacuum gag on the pages, should've made me sick, but instead brought me pleasure.

"You're a demented child scribbling on everything you see. Look at me. Don't you like women anymore? You used to want me. Now all you love are books. All you l.u.s.t for. Sober up Farrow. You exist here. Streets aren't paper. Skies aren't computer screens. People's hearts don't beat to the rhythm of typewriters."

Missy's fingers stayed perfectly still as she held the needle under the plastic lighter's blue flame. Gently, she pressed the tip of the needle against my skin. It fell below leading the thread to follow in loops. After a rapid barrage of st.i.tches, her whole body tensed up theatrically, leaving the job half done.

Scanning the area, Missy gravitated towards the pen until it was in her hand. She placed it in her mouth, loosening the tip with her teeth. With a flick, she tossed the vial of ink in the street. Resting the empty pen on my chest Missy began feeling around below my wounded throat, stopping in the soft valley of skin below my Adam's apple. She jabbed the scissors in, quickly throwing them to the side. Next she held it the empty pen up, carefully positioning herself. I was lost in the pen's beauty.

Air returned into my lungs. As it spread blissfully through my body, I noticed Chiara still on Missy's back. She didn't seem bothered by the sight of me. Just the opposite she reached out towards me with a silly smile as Missy tied the remaining st.i.tches to close the wound on my neck.

{LI}.

THE RISING SUN BLED THROUGH the two small windows of the ambulance. The stretcher and cabinets filled with medical supplies rattled bouncing its way through the b.u.mpy streets.

"What do you make of that pen in his neck?" A thick woman spoke in a loud voice that could send a rabid bear back into the brush. Her tattooed partner shrugged jabbing me with a needle. "You're feeling good now. Aren't you?"

I tried to motion to them that the pen stuck in me was the only way I could breathe, but my body was completely paralyzed. Whatever they used to sedate me had the stopping power to freeze a lioness mid-growl. The garbage came on to me as a faux spiritual revelation. Some kind of pharmaceutical soft pa.s.sage not worth knowing. My mind was stalling. The world that started spinning so fast, slowed down warping words. Whether they were meant directly for me or not - the words hung in the air. Naked skydivers sucked the wrong way from gravity... propelled towards far away planets... when they were only planning to come back home.

"Those stiches creep me out."

The driver came around to swing the doors open. They hopped out of the back of the ambulance almost spilling me out on the curb. People stared, eyes widening and faces contorting as the paramedics rushed me into the hospital.

Observing for a second before pouncing, a triage nurse hung over me like a knockoff bag salesman on a Ca.n.a.l Street.

"What's his deal?"

"Throat was slit. Lost a lot of blood. Need to bring him right in." The freckled paramedic talked tough expecting resistance.

"Take him in." The triage nurse left my stretcher heading back over to the door to b.u.m-rush the next one. The sound of the gurney's wheels spinning strangely put me at ease.

A rainbow of volcanic ash. The clear sky turns to smoke. A death died a thousand times. Alone on Baekdu mountain on the sh.o.r.es of Heaven lake: The picture perfect place to turn to stone.

A few more nurse and doctors types surrounded me. I could see up all their noses. Count the hairs in their nostrils. Feel the warmth of their hands. Tell you what they'd had for lunch. "He's already st.i.tched up?"

"Is this your Dr. Frankenstein work?"

"What kind of sedation is he under?"

"Looks like he's barely there."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to jump off the pushcart and run away. I wanted my mind to shut off, but wouldn't let it because maybe that would mean death. No body justifies paralysis. No mind equates shock. I started the simple exercises in my head. It wasn't enough. If only I could remember how to apply chemistry to everyday life. The current moment of doubt called for a concise interpretation. Quantum physics would merge into the surroundings, united.

A musty draft travelled the emergency room. Orbs danced in my mindsight. A cacophony of curtains yanked open and shut. Patients peered out, flooding the room with fear and hopelessness, relieved when they were in better shape than their neighbor. There was moaning, but not the screams we were waiting for. I wanted to be the one to let loose, but my moment had yet to arrive. My throat felt unbearably sore like my entire head was trapped in the gap between the 3 train and the platform.

"I know you can't talk back, but just try to relax."

"What's your take on it nurse?"

"Missed the carotid arteries and internal jugular. Luckiest guy in here all night. What's with the stupor? Either he's like that all the time or someone gave him too much Morphine or Fentanyl.

"Pupils aren't constricted. Breathing is still rapid. It's something else What happened to his hand?"

"Cop shot a chunk of it off."

"Blood levels?"

"Amazingly under control."

Another poor sucker gets wheeled in. He looks at me sympathetically like he knows me. I think I recognize him, but I recognize everyone now.

"Hey buddy what the h.e.l.l are you doing here?" Brodie was bleeding from a head wound. Both his hands were bandaged at the knuckles. He was p.i.s.s drunk.

"You know this man?" The nurse immediately cut in.

"I do. This guy saved my life. A lion tracked me and tried to do me in. Thanks to him I'm still ticking."

"A lion? What's his name?"

My body began jerking around with no control. St.i.tches threatening to burst. The air was inside me, but it wasn't travelling right.

"He's convulsing."

"It's shock." A team rushed around me again.

"Pulse is weakening."

"Close the window. Bugs are getting in." It was the first beautiful day since winter killed everything alive and Missy was trying to shut us in.

"Go kill some mosquitoes then. That's what you're good at."

"If you want some air. Why don't you go outside?"

I left on her command... returning a few hours later. Missy was waiting for me like only seconds pa.s.sed. She left the dead mosquito on both palms. Smudged against her skin to make her point.

"You have to know when to quit Farrow."

"Six thirty-eight." The doctor stated my time of death and left the room.

{LII}.

THERE WASN'T ENOUGHT ROOM FOR me in the morgue. Nude under the half-zipped body bag, I waited on a gurney in the hallway. Bodies were quadrupled up on the trays. The heat wave was doing us in. A cloud of flies travelled in a swarm. An itchy feeling slowly brought sensation back to my skin. I couldn't move to scratch it. The chemical paralysis was wearing off. I was beyond dehydration. The two lonely workers chipped away at their duties. Speed metal and merengue poured out of their headphones. The last thing they would expect is for one of their cadavers to get up and stumble out of the joint. I was sure they fantasized about it. I highly doubted they would notice me gone.

"NYPD. I'm looking for a John Doe." Sgt. Bethany Powers dropped in like a regular at a local dive.

"We got a few dozen. Take your pick." The guy working didn't give a s.h.i.t, but enjoyed the relatively warm female company.

"Male. Early thirties. Throat slit. Decrepit."

Decrepit. I would remember that. Take that to my grave. Sgt. Bethany Powers rolled my gurney behind the largest stack of bodies she could find.

"Farrow, I know you're still with me. See your mind works, but your body doesn't. You know why you're in a waking coma? A pharmacist I brought in traded me this for skipping a court date. Evil genius." Sgt. Bethany Powers waved a cloudy ampule labeled Evil Genius in front of my face.

"We brought Missy in. She filled me in on everything. I'm on her side Farrow. You're not even human. You're just a book. Paper and lines. A recluse losing his mind. And some books are better off not existing. They're better burned." Sgt. Bethany Powers shook the hair out of her face, looking back over at the two workers.

"Make sure he gets picked up for cremation. I'm paying for it personally. That was his last request." Then she leaned over and gave me her lips. It was a long kiss. The kind that wakes up every nerve in your body. The kind that ends in a bite so vicious you have no choice, but to fall in love with the black widow.

{LIII}.

ALIVE AMONG THE ROTTING. THE morgue workers shook off the chills and got back to work. The waking coma drug seemed far-fetched. Science made perfect sense and for that fact alone was light years behind this town. Life was floating in and out of consciousness regardless.

"I'm here for a pick up. A guy with a slit throat." I couldn't make out the voice and it bugged me out how I was more popular dead than alive.

"You got a coffin? No corpses leave without a coffin."

"In the hea.r.s.e." The voice became almost recognizable, but I'd heard so many.

"Alright sign for him and he's all yours." Something familiar. A pen scratching paper. The body bag zipped over my head. The wheels were rolling again.

"Humans are flawed Farrow. You desert people when they need you most."

The world saw me as dead. The inside of the body bag left a whole lot of nothing to be desired. I could feel the car cruising down what felt to be an expressway. I wondered if it was really a hea.r.s.e. Dodging the definite possibility, I visualized a red Ferrari cliff hanging through the Swiss Alps, an orange Super Bee blowing dust past the Laredo border. I wondered who was driving. A land of too many faces. Why could I only see my own? An ancestral scream, no longer repressed tries. I felt the wound on my neck start oozing. No sound comes out to find the future.

"I've never deserted writing Percy."

Covered in fireflies, I sunk into the casket's mattress somewhere within the stone maze of Calvary Cemetery's arrogant tombs. Gotham's peaks appeared to be in arms reach. A lunge towards the skyline beaming through the sinister opacity. Clenching my free hand around the Empire State Building. Trembling and twitching - more insect-like than human.

Brodie was shoveling into the dirt a few feet away from me. A beaten up hea.r.s.e idled at his back. Its headlights carved light out of darkness. I flexed the muscles in my abdomen. I was beyond hungry. Beyond disfigured. Almost beyond life itself.

"Writing never deserted you Farrow."

I regained consciousness staring up from a claustrophobic grave. Dirt was dropping from eight or ten feet above. My legs were nearly covered. The soil splattered on me. The coffin was missing. It couldn't have fit anyway, which I guess is why I was planted here without it. Brodie's loyal obsession to bury me alongside heroes and villains was unnerving. He grunted laboriously refusing to catch his breath. More dirt fell. There was no fight. It caked inside my mouth.

"It's a world you had to enter Mikey." Featherton patted my back with such force that I ended up in the shallow fountain. My hands immediately filled with pennies.

"Angel of the waters... you know Farrow. The fountain's sculptress was the first woman commissioned for a major work of art in NYC. I published a lot of writers under the Featherton label, but Missy will be the first woman I've sold." Percy stared emptily into the tunnel with pillared arches.

{LIV}.

REENTER FLESH. ENERGY PULSATES BELOW the crust. Night sky cuts into the grave. The sound of paws digging up chunks of Earth. The sky was the other direction. The great cat was clawing the wrong way. The lioness pulled me out of the dirt only to gently drop me in a patch of gra.s.s encircled by homes for the rich. I fall out into the gra.s.s dry heaving. It takes supreme focus to bring the air back in my lungs.

Wasting no time, the lioness tramples the "No Pets" sign, before taking a quick p.i.s.s on it. Sitting, stretching, digging up gravel - she can't seem to get comfortable. Restlessly pounding her hips into the pole flying old glory. I can hear her heart beating through her chest. She's taking fervid breathes.

Birds are chirping on the grotesque trees. Footsteps blend with the wheels and engines outside the fences. Squirrels poke their heads out of the bushes spying on the lioness squatting. The sweet smell of flowers gets me soaring. I see the cubs head emerge from the great cat. I can't f.u.c.king believe it. Here in the middle of New York City where anything can happen and routinely does. The lioness begins cleaning the cub with her tongue. She checks on me while purring, concerned with my presence. I don't want to move. An echoing roar designed to wake up the whole insomniac town gets me on my feet squeezing the leather strap of the duffle bag.

I gently close the iron door behind me. I'm facing the townhouse where I first stared into Percy Featherton's lifeless eyes. I cross the narrow street. The waist-high gate swings open with a squeak. I stumble up the stoop. Somebody left the door open for me a crack. I give it a slight push with my bandaged stub of a hand coming to grips that I am entering the center of my soul.

{LV}.

A BREEZE OF PURITY DRIFTS through the townhouse. A peace I've never known. Shoes are lined up at the door. Next to Missy's boots are Chiara's sneakers. I put down the heavy bag and bend over to pick up the tiny shoes. I cup them in my palm. Sparkling white and clean, only a baby's shoes could look like they've never been worn.

Placing the shoes gently back where I found them, I spread open the Louis Vuitton bag at the teeth marks. The money is missing. All I can smell is mold. Something of obscene value replaces the government's secret dirty green recipe. I dump the bag upside down. Paperbacks of A Greater Truth spill out onto the floor. I wonder what happened to Missy out of habit realizing the woman herself is upstairs in the flesh. As far as she knew I vanished to the land of no return, so why wouldn't she come home?

Keeping a copy with me, I stand up, immediately captured by the photos on the wall. Percy is missing from the shots. I stand there in his place. Whether I like it or not: I am living his life.

Light fills the first floor of the townhouse. There's no volcano erupting. Lava fails to rush in. It's the same sun that rises every day. The sun that is so f.u.c.king hard to ignore when it's blaring in your eyes. The sun that is just as easy to forget, overlook, and even resent.

A pair of scissors sparkle on the kitchen table. They are the same ones that sliced into my neck. I pick up the scissors, snipping at the air. Dry blood falls as the blades lock. A little more drops when they reopen. The wound on my neck itches ruthlessly. I wish I could take my whole neck off. Somehow the murder weapon metamorphisizes into a pen. A pen that is already moving. A pen that can do damage on empty s.p.a.ce. A pen that can create boundless worlds. The page fills in front of me with characters who question the possibility of my success with the same tenacity they welcome my descent. The pen was never there. I'm carving into the oak table with a pair of scissors. In a flash the table turns to flesh. In a blink it returns to oak.

I put the scissors down, walking up the spiral stairs leading to the second floor and then the next set up to the top floor. The third floor smells of fragrant lotion and soap. I let loose a sneeze that could wake a sleeping lioness. I wasn't sure how Missy would react to the realization that I was so hard to kill off.

Reaching the sanctuary in the high clouds. Missy is sprawled in bed nude sleeping. Chiara seems to expect me. Bobbing up and down, full of energy, she's banging a paperback against a glowing tablet. I slide into the covers next to her. I want to get to know what she's all about, but she just wants to show me her books. Chiara starts with the tablet, flicking her hand back and forth, pausing at the t.i.tle: A Greater Truth by Missy Featherton.

One day you wake up in a new world. A new world that didn't form while you were sleeping. A new world that was always there. A bright sunrise blazes through every window. Missy and Chiara are sleeping at my side. I run my hand over my throat searching for the scar, but can't find it. I clench both hands into a fist, fanning them out to find ten fingers. I look at the apartment floor impressed by the lack of cemetery dirt.

Somehow love crawled into my arms and that's all that matters. I hold Chiara over my head, but she begs for the paperback that is lying next to her. She's too young to read, but just the right age to chew on the corners. Every few bites, she takes a break to laugh in joy. Slapping down at the cover. Laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. She can say it better without words. She's new to the world and already knows... there is something greater than the truth.

"I love you." I tell them both with the same breath.

"I love you too Percy." Missy whispers lost in a deep dream.

With Love.

for

Yuan and Salina.

l.u.s.t.

DEMENTED.