As I Die Lying Read online

  “What do you care?” Little Hitler asked Monique, wanting to add the word “bitch,” but I stifled him.

  “You probably think I’m a bitch. I just thought...I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to do you a favor.”

  I wondered if she was jealous. The Insider said that all humans had their games, everybody played, everybody followed their own rules. But if she was jealous, that meant Loverboy’s instinct was dead-on. She was lying to get what she wanted.

  “Listen,” I said, leaning toward her so I could whisper. But what I was really doing was letting Loverboy sniff the clean ocean of her neck. “I could use another beer. Want to join me?”

  Monique smiled. “I’m on my sixth or seventh. But, hey, the night is young, right?”

  “Is it kosher for a witch to hang with a Ripper?”

  “You might think I’m weird. I mean, I hope you think I’m weird. But I really am a witch.”

  “A real witch?”

  “Yeah. A Wiccan. Earth worshipper, pagan, sort of a roll-your-own brand. This is a religious holiday.”

  “Are you casting a spell on me?” Loverboy asked, already forgetting Beth. But I couldn’t.

  Monique’s eyes sparkled, a diamond glint on onyx. “We believe in white magic. Whatever we give, we believe it comes back three times.”

  “Give me an orgasm and lucky you,” Loverboy said.

  She giggled, and her sleek dress shimmered around her long frame. We filled our cups at the keg. I now understood what Father liked about alcohol, the same dulling ether that Mother discovered. If I drank enough, if I numbed my brain, then there would be nothing for the Insider to probe and poke and sting. He’d be cheated of my feelings. Plus I might have a blackout and miss an important chunk of my own autobiography, which I could fill in as I wished later.

  Monique saw someone she knew and got into a sloppy conversation. I excused myself and slipped up the stairs. The party was getting its second wind. It was a giant beast ready to rise and prowl the darkness, flexing its legs and jaws for a twilight hunt, a dragon anxious to slay errant knights.

  Xandria perched at the top of the stairs. She put a Virginia Slim in her mouth and one of her bookends stepped from the shadows to light it. “If it ain’t the average white boy,” she said with a playful sneer. “What’s up?”

  “Hi. I like your bass playing.”

  She shrugged, straining the leather straps that girded her chest. Loverboy watched her breasts rise. Mister Milktoast eyed the bookend, appalled at the mauve fingernail polish.

  “Just another skin, Richard,” Xandria said. “It helps to have a few extra personalities. Makes life interesting.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  The singer yelled at Xandria from the foot of the stairs, telling her it was time for the next set.

  “Jimmy ain’t finished yet,” she yelled back at him. She drew on her cigarette and exhaled, and the smoke joined the blue-gray layer that wafted at eye-level.

  “Have you seen Beth?” I asked.

  Xandria gave me a cold look. Then she jerked her head toward a door at the end of the hall. “Door Number Three.”

  The guitarist for the Half-Watts started strumming “Wild Horses” as the singer did a country-Cockney accent on the vocals. I walked down the hall with the same slow-motion rhythm of the song, like Jim Morrison’s pseudo-autobiographical killer in “The End.” Fuck Jim Morrison and his fake autobiography. You won’t find me floating dead in a bathtub or getting called “The Lizard King.”

  The crack under the door was dark. I knocked lightly.

  Little Hitler tumbled and twittered. He tried the handle. It was locked.

  Bookworm put my ear to the door.

  Moans.

  Little Hitler hoped they were moans of pain. But Loverboy knew better.

  Rusty bedsprings, in the rhythm of babymaking.

  Gasps came from the other side of the door.

  A whimper, a name.

  Beth’s voice, husked with passion.

  I wanted a dollar’s worth of candy. I hurried away.

  Drowning. Reaching the point where I knew I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, but the surface was too far away.

  Xandria shrugged as I passed. “What can you say? She likes drummers.”

  The Insider came out of the back room of the Bone House, where he’d been busy typing. This was even better than the crap he was making up.

  You still love the bitch, Richard. I know. I OWN your damned heart. Here’s a plate of shit. Eat.

  I stumbled down the stairs, knocking a dryer hose off a guy who was dressed as a robot. He cussed me, but I barely heard him.

  Monique was waiting by the keg. She had refilled her cup and was starting to wobble a little. She didn’t notice that my face had gone rigid. Stoned in the stone house, boned in the Bone House. Unscrewed.

  “Where you been?” she asked.

  “Talking to an old friend,” I said.

  “Did you find Beth?”

  “You didn’t tell me she likes drummers.”

  “Figured you’d better find out for yourself, before you got any . . . ideas.” Monique swayed and leaned against me. She felt good in Loverboy’s arms. I took her cup and drained it all down. The Coldiron Curse tasted sweet and bitter and made it easier to be nobody.

  “Feel like a ritual?” Loverboy asked.

  “A ritual?”

  Loverboy kissed her, quick and cruel. “Or would you rather ride my broomstick?” he whispered.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I reach to stroke your curly hair, so soft and stark against the pillow. The moonlight spills into the room like an ogling eye, making sharp and jagged shadows. Richard’s top hat is on the cluttered desk and your witch’s dress hangs limply over the back of a chair, like a shadow whose air has escaped.

  You look at me with open eyes, deep eyes, eyes that run across distant moors. I lean close and feel the warm breath from your nostrils. You don’t flinch. Trust is such a foolish thing. Will you never learn?

  Our lips touch. Sensations swarm. The edges of awareness cackle with electricity. Tiny hairs stand on the back of this human neck.

  Time slows, nearly stopping. Each second stretches with too much information. The butterfly flicker of your eyelashes, the moist flutter of your tongue, the gentle swish of your hair on the smooth skin of your shoulders, all drowning me. I can feel the cells of your body as they divide and slough off. I am alert, alive beyond life, dead beyond death.

  “You’ve bewitched me,” I say, parting my mouth from the honey of your lips.

  “Shut up and kiss me,” you say, your voice hoarse with illicit passion and a gallon of beer.

  A sledgehammer pounds my chest, working the molten iron of my heart. Outside, a breeze plays against the window screen and the curtains whisper in the music of autumn. It is a dirge, a death-rattle of wind chimes and oak leaves as clouds sneak past the moon. They call this the end of October.

  A taste like old pennies lingers where your tongue has been. My arousal strains, seeks, takes a separate life.

  “Hold on a second,” you say, and my heart suspends, explores its stopping, and then continues its headlong rush.

  You light a candle. The first match goes out before it reaches the wick, as if some sinister gale has summoned itself from under the bed. An acrid thread of gray sulfur trails across the milky moonlight. The second match flares and the candle catches and flickers crazily, the flame hopping like a forever-damned ballet dancer on a stage of hot coals.

  Outside, the night rain falls. Each drop plays a minute part in a grand percussion symphony. Small, sharp pellets ping off the mailbox while fat globs plop softly on the asphalt. Drops patter on the wooden porch rail, and others slither weakly into the grass with a muted hiss. A drum roll of water rumbles across the gutter while the downspout carries off the finished notes with a discordant tinkle. Occasional distant thunder anchors the bass end by adding timpani to the score.

  I gently lean you back on
the bed. The pillows have fallen to one side and lie there like an old married couple. Your pupils are large and dark, two deep wells. A twin reflection of the candle floats in the still waters. Beneath the surface, your memories, dreams, and secrets swim. I must draw them out, pump them forward, make them mine.

  Little Hitler drinks the heartbreak, Loverboy tastes the fruit, Mister Milktoast sizes you up for a brown hat.

  Bookworm pens a flowery passage. Richard rides the roller coaster. And I...

  I simply need. It’s always the first time. It’s always this way, the borrowing and taking of life, the stealing of light, the swallowing of the juicy pain.

  It’s as near to being human as I ever wish to get.

  But don’t take it personally. Because I’m not a person. And this is the way the universe has always been, a bright bang and then collapse into darkness. Dream me alive, Richard. Build me with your words. Make me.

  My hand trails down your flat pale belly. Dark hairs curl around the edge of your panties. Your breathing is fast and shallow, and I feel your pulse race through the swell of your breast beneath my hand. Your heart is sprinting against time, a race in which there can be only one winner.

  I reach beside the bed, to my coat lying on the floor. Your hands are at my waist, then lower. My mouth has found yours again, and I feel the urgency of your desire as our tongues thrust and parry softly. You pull me toward the forge of your body. I go for your center, the nursery of stars, your steaming galaxy.

  My right hand touches cold hard steel while my left finds liquid fire.

  I raise the blade and the sudden movement feeds a gust of oxygen to the candle. The burst of light becomes the flashbulb for the photograph that Richard’s eyes are taking:

  ...the gorgeous plateau of your flesh, a territory waiting to be mapped.

  ...your eyebrows arching, making a question mark of your face.

  ...your lips, parted in unspoken confusion.

  ...your chest, tensing to draw air for a scream that will never sound.

  ...your eyes...

  ...your eyes remain two deep wells, but now the waters ripple. Now the surface is disturbed as your secrets swim. Now the fear roils underneath, a leviathan awakened from long slumber. Now your black monsters break the water, pouring forth in torrents from the depths of your eyes.

  Now I can feed. Now I can eat the light.

  “Monique,” Richard moans, helpless, pathetic, taking control of his own mouth. “I’m sorry.”

  I shut him up and bring the knife down swiftly, with an unforgiving arm, with Little Hitler’s viciousness, with Loverboy’s passion, with Bookworm’s fascination, with Mister Milktoast’s petulance.

  Richard delivers you unto me.

  In a flash of bright silver, the blade strikes home, a violent explorer in the valleys of your skin. Your arms lift in futility, almost in supplication, embracing the coming pain as if it is an old lover.

  The oldest lover.

  The knife is in your chest and a brilliant geyser of crimson erupts, and too soon it is over. Your light is mine.

  Your eyes fix on the ceiling and the ripples in the two deep wells dwindle and fade, their waters now forever calm.

  I can’t resist. “Was it good for you?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “You walrus hurt the one you love,” Mister Milktoast said. “And then bury Paul. Goo goo ka joob.”

  My head throbbed as a thick black sludge pounded through my veins. I just wanted to rest my head on my pillow and sleep until my flesh rotted off the bone. I wasn’t in the mood for Mister Milktoast’s wit, and I was worried about the Insider’s purple prose, which virtually guaranteed we’d never sell the book.

  “Big time fuck-up, Tricky Dick,” Loverboy said. “You didn’t even get a little pop tart first.”

  “Knock it off, you guys,” Bookworm said. “It wasn’t Richard’s fault.”

  “There you go again, sticking up for that useless bootlicker,” Little Hitler. “It was just like old times from where I was sitting. Father was just a warm-up act. And that Shelley slut, she deserved it if anybody ever did.”

  The sun stabbed, spitting fire through the window. Sunday morning. A holy, quiet time. Starlings chirruped on high power lines outside as November crept in on cold bare feet.

  I had no memory of coming home in the night. Those hours were a fog, lost in a stupor of alcohol and multiple personalities and endless revisions. My head throbbed from drink.

  But the Insider made sure I didn’t forget Monique. Her wide staring dead eyes were seared into my brain, branded there by a red-hot iron, stapled to the Bone House walls like a Led Zeppelin poster. The Insider was lost in the mist of my pain, engorged and ecstatic. Fat on light. Fed on my dead hope. Bloated by bloodthirsty, barbaric bliss, and typing up a storm.

  It had won. But the outcome was never in doubt. How could any human defeat such a monster? How could you outsmart your own omniscient narrator?

  “I told you the answer,” said Bookworm.

  “Shut up.”

  “I suppose writer’s block isn’t an option?”

  “Bookworm, I don’t know who to believe anymore. How do I know you’re not the Insider, playing a game just for the sheer hell of it? After all, we all sound alike. In fact, we sound like me.”

  “You’re only in the Bone House once in a while, when one of us takes over. But I’m in here all the time.”

  “And I pity you for that.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Richard, but you’re just a little too human to really comprehend.”

  “Damned with feinted praise,” Mister Milktoast said, from some dusty corner of the closet.

  “And you, Mister Milktoast? Whose side are you on?”

  “Hey, Bookworm, I’m the one who drove Richard home. I’m the one who made sure we didn’t leave any incriminating evidence at the scene. I’m the one who cares the most about us. After all, I’ve been here the longest. If we’re all psychic vampires, then I have the most at stake.”

  “Why are you afraid he’ll be caught? Maybe that’s the best thing that can happen to Richard. The book will sell at auction, Fox News will push the story, Barnes & Noble moves product, and the murders will stop.”

  “I promised to protect him. The boots still walk. They just have a different pair of feet in them.”

  “Fuck both of you,” Loverboy said. “And I don’t mean that the way you think I do. You diddledicks couldn’t screw your way out of a wet dream.”

  Little Hitler snickered.

  Open house in the Bone House, come one, come all. Except that thing in the back room, typing, typing, typing. When writers are really in the zone, they wouldn’t know it if a jetliner crashed into the house.

  “It’s only in your mind,” Bookworm said. “And that’s the worst place of all.”

  “The Insider’s getting stronger,” I said. “We all agree on that.”

  “If it’s so fucking all-powerful, why doesn’t it just drive us all out of here and take Richie over completely?” Loverboy said. “Do some major housecleaning?”

  “You’re too busy reaching for Richard’s penis to figure it out,” Bookworm said. “It needs us, in some crazy way. It’s not just the possession that motivates it. The Insider has to have someone to lord it over.”

  “And the more the merrier, apparently,” said Mister Milktoast. “Four heads are better than one.”

  “Then it struck paydirt here,” I said. “But maybe this is the way the Insider works. How many killers claim to hear voices in their heads?”

  The sun was weakening, growing softer as clouds knit a layer across the sky. Somewhere, a church bell rang, a safe, lonely, human sound. I wondered how many hours it would be before the police found us. A ticking clock always increased dramatic tension. Even that old asshole Aristotle knew that, and he lived back when people used sun dials.

  “Well, I’m starting to suspect that it can also extend those powers beyond the host,” Bookworm said. “Ma
ybe with not as much control, but enough to influence events and behaviors.”

  “That sounds like something you pulled out of Mister Milktoast’s ass just to complicate things,” I said. “Sounds too convenient. Like you’re trying to change the genre so we can publish this as science fiction.”

  “No, listen. It makes things happen. It causes people to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Bullshit, Dickworm,” Little Hitler said. “You’re just trying to let Richard off the hook again. He’s the one who’s screwed up everyone he touches. Let him take some of the blame for a change. I don’t know why you guys are always trying to forgive him. We should be rubbing his face in every steaming ounce of the shit he’s heaped on the world.”

  “Love the skin but hate the skinner,” Mister Milktoast blurted out.

  “And who’s going to take your side, Little Hitler?” asked Bookworm. “You’re glad the Insider has found us. It gives validity to everything you stand for.”

  “What’s this about the Insider affecting other people?” I said, before they started arguing.

  “Remember Virginia? How the voices started after her father began molesting her?” Bookworm said.

  “Of course he remembers Virginia,” Loverboy said. “He fucked up my fuck. All because he was trying to sympathize. What a fucking joke. Just pop ‘em and drop ‘em, Richie-wuss, and the sooner you learn that, the happier we’ll all be. Especially me.”

  “The Insider was in Ottaqua all along, laying the groundwork,” Bookworm said.

  “Who appointed you ‘Mr. Backstory Database’?” Mister Milktoast said through a pout.

  I ignored my oldest friend. “And made Father and Mother the way they were? And maybe it made Shelley come to my house even though she barely knew me?”

  “Do you think Loverboy would get lucky otherwise?” Bookworm asked.

  “Hey, Bookwuss, I resent that,” said Loverboy. “This boy could charm the habit off a nun. It’s you guys that make ‘em duck and cover. Mister Milktoast, the total candy-ass. Richie, the king of navel gazing. And you, Dickworm, the frigging faith healer, the cosmic child, the deep thinker. And Little Squiggler. . .need I say more?”