Love in the Time of Metal and Flesh Page 3

  “Hello!?” Markus shouts, his voice echoing off the soft walls and the cavern roof. This is a subway tunnel for dank brown cars that might slide southward and outward.

  “Can you hear me?”

  After the peevish liver and the emotionally detached testicle, he is not sure what to expect. There is nothing but a deep pipe-gurgle, the world moving around him.

  “I’m looking for Danni.”

  Danni. Who is Danni? Not himself.

  “Danni,” groans a voice, long and slow and low like a pipe organ gone feral. “Danni is here.”

  For one moment he thinks the colon means that Danni is here inside him. The medical image, the black machine scan of his head in Dr. Thompson’s hand, shudders in his vision—a thing to be avoided, a thing to be feared, a thing to possess the mind and worry the body. Like the idea of Danni inside of him.

  Has he eaten her?

  Who was she?

  “Danni,” says the voice again. It echoes off the vault of the colon, whispers down the twisted corridors amid the sloshing waste. “Markus. You cut her to the quick, Markus. You wasted her love, Markus. You drove her away trying to pull her too close, Markus.”

  “No.” He argues, knee-deep in unquiet filth. “I did not.”

  “Love cuts both ways.”

  Memory: a flash of knives, an arc of blood, laughter on the tight, screeching edge of fearsome madness and maddening fear. Orgasms can erupt from any slit in the body, not just the tips and gashes nature intended.

  “We always sewed ourselves shut again,” Markus says.

  “Seamster. Tailor man.” The colon seems distantly amused, almost scornful. “What would you make? You wasted her love. You wasted her.”

  “I just wanted her close!” he shouts, heart pounding, mind spinning out of control.

  “Close.” The colon gurgles loud, then settles down. “What is close?”

  “Close is love.”

  “Close is pathology. Stand alone, man, stand alone.”

  He realizes he is literally arguing with a shithole. “No. I don’t want . . . this.”

  The colon does not seem to resent his opinion. “It is too late to decide what you want.”

  “It’s never too late,” Markus grumbles.

  Then the wave washes higher and higher, he tumbles downward, outward, southward, flying at speed into the wasteland of futures past.

  “You know where she is,” the colon echoes after him in a foetid blast.

  History 102

  The first time Sail sewed Markus with a needle was the night of his tenth birthday.

  Most Saturdays she set the girls to sleep on the porch or in the car, if it was cold enough. She kept Markus in the house those nights for their quiet evenings together. That his tenth birthday fell on a Saturday was something Sail saw as a cause for extra celebration.

  “I’m sorry you don’t have a party, my little man,” his mother told him that afternoon. Anna and Tildy sat at the card table with Markus and Sail, the four of them sharing a cake made from oatmeal and molasses, with Crisco and brown sugar frosting.

  “I’m sorry, too, Momma,” he said, hands folded on the table. A year behind in school, Markus was always too tall, too gawky, too old, too slow, too big.

  Too. His entire life was toos.

  At least she’d let Anna and Tildy go to school on time. There the three of them were, first, second and third grade, though he should have been in fourth, or maybe even fifth, by his age and size.

  The house had changed over the years, too. Sail had taken up painting, mostly on pieces of silk from the Goodwills in Lockhart and Austin, which she sold for enough money for dope and beer and food, in roughly that order.

  Saturday nights, if he was good, and good to her, Markus got to share the dope and beer.

  When she didn’t have silk, she painted the walls. Eventually, she stapled bedsheets over the paintings and painted more, but the staples tended to work loose, so that the walls became a billowing, sagging blouse of color and pattern, great abstracted sunflowers and little VW microbuses with almost-Deadhead bears dancing behind them like a Jerry Garcia ulcer dream, crossed with purple-eyed unicorns and louche Aztec maidens with brown-tipped breasts that were all too familiar to Markus, and a dozen other fevered visions beside.

  It was like living inside the shipwreck of someone else’s imagination.

  “Happy birthday to you . . . ” the girls sang, as far from key as two little kids ever got. The family mashed their way through the tune, celebrating another year in a life that Markus already saw little point in happiness for.

  Later, the girls were outside giggling over dirty magazines in the back of the Mercury. Markus wished he was with them under the blankets, rubbing shoulders and hips and sipping from a wine bottle.

  Here inside, Sail leaned over him, her breath smoky with dope.

  “I got a present for my little man,” she whispered. “His own little works. But you’re too young for cousin white, my little man.” She showed him a curved needle, almost a half-circle, thick and stout. It was threaded with something that glinted pale in the moonlight. “Hold very still for Momma.”

  She took his right hand in her left, grip trembling as she shoved the needle into the ball of his thumb. “Let it hurt, little man,” his mother whispered, her tongue flickering across his cheek.

  He watched unicorns dance in the moonlight and listened to his pain, while his mother’s hips twitched as she settled her weight onto him. Somewhere in the middle of it, he heard his sisters laughing outside so loud their voices carried through the windows of car and house alike.

  The laughter carried him forward past the peeling rainbows until it was time for dope and beer and slow kisses beneath cool sheets.

  iii: Love in the Time of Flesh

  Later, bloody, they fucked atop the squelching, rotten boxes in the office. As Markus thrust into Danni’s ass, hands gripping her shoulder and hip, another cow died in the slaughterhouse with a bovine scream. He pulled her close, her sphincter dry of anything but his spit and a quick swipe of her cunt, moving slowly so the friction wouldn’t tear or hurt. The animal blood on his chest, still warm, smeared on her back. She moaned with the sensation.

  “I . . . love . . . you . . . ” he muttered with the thrusts. The ends of the bars in her inner thighs met his skin with every push as she wriggled backward into him.

  “Fuck . . . off . . . ” she gasped back, shivering her orgasm.

  So he grabbed her orange hair and pulled hard until she squealed and bucked, pinching his dick tight as she did.

  Somehow their screwing dissolved into a fight then, punching and slapping and pinching, until she landed a solid clip across his chin that rolled him back against one of the desks in a shower of asbestos fibers and rat shit.

  He lay there, cum oozing from his bloody, shriveled dick. “God, this place stinks.”

  “Daddy Nekko thought you’d like it,” she crooned, tracing her hand across the blood on his chest.

  “Fuck Daddy Nekko.”

  “Daddy Nekko doesn’t fuck,” she said in a prim voice. “He’s gone beyond that.”

  In the distance the chainsaw stuttered to life, then immediately yowled as it met resistance.

  “Who the hell goes beyond fucking?”

  “Oh, there are much greater refinements,” she said. Her voice was taut, reedy, and thin, as if she were ready to cum again right then. Her hands strayed to the bars in her legs, as if she were going to masturbate just from touching the metal. “You’re a cutter, Markus. You know the rush.”

  “Yeah.” Needles and thread, kitchen scissors, a hot glue gun—his whole young life had been filled with the rush, the gift of pain. It was perhaps the greatest thing his mother had done for him—showing him that path through her own guilt and fear.

  “Listen . . . ” Danni crawled close, her tongue in his ear, her fingernails pinching the same lobe. “You’ve been wanting to cut for a long time. Really cut. What did you learn here, toda
y?”

  What had he learned? That flesh parted tough but smooth under the right knife. That joints pulverized beneath a sledge. How to take apart a hip with a chainsaw.

  And on the second cow, he’d learned he could cut while the blood was still hot. Learned he could dig, and draw—not just pig skins from the bodega, but on living canvas. Living art. Make it his.

  Maybe . . . maybe . . . make it of himself.

  The cow’s bloody eye had rolled, it had drooled spit and cud and bile, it had whuffled out its pain despite the drugs, while he’d worked, while London and San Francisco had laughed and New York had smoked a PCP-laced joint, until they’d made him crack the head with a sledge so he didn’t ruin the meat with stress hormones.

  “I learned I can cut,” Markus said slowly, and he was hard again. “Cut anything.”

  Danni grabbed his balls, pinching so hard his vision spotted up and his gut went deep-sick. “Cut you. Show me you can cut you. And I’ll show you what I’ll do for you.”

  “What?” he breathed, balanced on a knife-edge between passion and eye-rolling pain.

  “Anything at all,” she said. “Anything at all.”

  Later at his place, showered and somewhat clean, they made love in a fashion which was almost distressingly ordinary. Sometimes that felt good, too. Two adults, nude, rolling on a mattress, kissing, fucking, touching, pinching, and slapping a little—no cutting, no pain that meant anything.

  Like someone’s parents might have fucked.

  He wondered what it would be like to have parents who were normal. Went to church on Sunday, went out for drinks on Friday, sent the kids to the Saturday matinee so they could stay home together.

  “Hey, Danni,” he whispered, lying across her body, both of them spent again.

  “Hmm . . . ?”

  “Tell me about your family. You know, when you were a kid.”

  She went stiff, scared or angry. “Get off me, Markus.”

  “What?”

  Danni pushed at him. Small as she was, she pushed hard, then punched his ribs. He rolled away, freeing her.

  “I’m going,” she told him. “Don’t ever ask me any questions again.”

  “But . . . ” He was sorry, very sorry, he’d said anything. “Listen, I didn’t mean it.”

  “I don’t ask you shit!” she screamed, pulling herself into her leather jeans. Her tiny breasts bobbed as she hopped on one leg then the other. “I never ask you fuck about where you came from or who the fuck Sail is or why you cum in your sleep while you’re crying for some girls I never fucking heard of in the back seat of a car somewhere. So how fucking dare you ask me shit about shit, you stupid fucking shit!”

  “Danni!”

  She pulled her jacket on, not even bothering with her shirt. “I’m outta here, dickbreath. You ever get right with me, you ever get serious, you’ll know where to find me. But I’m not holding my breath.”

  She slammed the door so hard three glasses fell off the counter in the kitchen.

  Markus lay there a while, wondering what had possessed him to open his mouth. He didn’t want normal. Whatever the hell that meant. People who’d never stepped beyond themselves.

  After sitting and thinking for a long time, Markus decided it was time to stop just planning his first serious cut. He went and ran the shower, hot and hard, and found the bull dykes in his tool drawer, with the blue electrical tape on the handle. And some duct tape to bind his foot, along with a big swig of Jägermeister to get him going.

  He would mail Danni something she wouldn’t forget. Something that would bring her back to him. And fuck Daddy Nekko.

  Just fuck him, Markus thought, as he made his way to the steaming edge of the tub, tools in hand.

  The Sins of Markus Selvage

  Pride

  Envy

  Gluttony

  Lust

  Wrath

  Greed

  Sloth

  Fornication

  Incest

  Mutilation

  Masturbation

  Self-Creation

  Dishonoring the Sabbath

  Animal Cruelty

  Suicide

  Or was it murder?

  Superego: Desire

  I meant to do it. I wanted to do it. I needed to do it. It became me. It became here.

  Consider pruning shears. Nineteen dollars and change down at the hardware store, plus a pair of spiffy rubber gloves with that powdery texture and new-latex smell. Yet they can bring so much pleasure.

  After the toe, after the trough in my thigh, Danni believed. She came back. But she wanted a bigger cut. A real cut. Something she could believe in. Something she could take part in.

  We put down forty mil vinyl sheeting, duct taping over my entire living room to seal the floors and baseboards. I brought the blowtorch up from the basement. I bought the pruning shears and gloves, and a lovely duck at the Wing Fat Oriental Market on Guerrero.

  Danni and I would dine well.

  Then we did it, by God, naked and breathing hard, touching one another’s bodies, masturbating one another, her fucking me with the handle of the shears until my ass bled, then me fucking her until she squealed from the hurt, then we set my left hand on the Formica dining table, duct taping it palm-up to the surface except for pinkie and ring fingers—the cut that would be an undeniable public statement of who and what I would become.

  The cut that would make her love me forever.

  The cut that would bring us together.

  The moments before I took the shears in my right hand and did the deed, the moments before my life truly changed, were the most perfect of my existence. My love for Danni, her love for me, balanced in that instant as nothing ever had before, and I suspected, ever would again.

  Then the blades closed down on the pinkie joint between my third knuckle and the palm of my hand. The metal cut in hard, the pain shooting through me like an angel’s orgasm, and I screamed as she did, until the finger dropped off and a red fountain of blood flowed from the stump, our love mixed together as she slobbered and cried and kissed and climbed up on the tabletop to shove her quivering vagina onto my bleeding hand while I cursed and reached for the blowtorch before I lost too much blood and pain to do the other finger and consummate our love, our pact, who we are and who we might become.

  Daddy Nekko: a Transcript

  A: “Subject is, uh . . . Daddy Nekko. Is that an alias?”

  (crosstalk)

  A: “Never mind. Got to be a God-damned alias. Nobody names their kid ‘Daddy.’ Subject is Daddy Nekko, Asian-American male about fifty years of age, estimate three hundred and fifty pounds . . . can you pull that in for a tight shot? And get someone to look at the weight issue. Jesus, I’ve seen smaller pianos.”

  B: (unintelligible) “ . . . a shithole, Burris.”

  A: “Shove it. You want to do this?”

  B: “No. I’ll go find . . . ” (unintelligible)

  A: “Offhand, I’d say cause of death is exsanguination due to multiple wounds, but there’s also a significant degree of mutilation here. Something like a . . . uh . . . ritual murder, maybe? Most of the parts seem to be present.”

  C: “I’m not doing the fucking inventory.”

  A: “I’m working here, you mind?”

  C: “Sorry.” (cough) “This is creepy shit.”

  A: “You can always transfer over to fucking parking and traffic.”

  C: (unintelligible)

  A: “You too, pal. Uh . . . Hey, Ransom, do a slow pan of the stiff for me? Good.” (long pause) “Setting is a . . . body modification shop. Looks like our boy did a lot of the work. There’s a plus-size stool over there next to the tool tray. Maybe he had a customer didn’t like the outcome. Need to remember to check the piece count for extras. Our boy was into some . . . weird . . . shit. Ransom, what are those chain things with the razors for?”

  C: “I haven’t the faintest fucking idea, Burris. Why don’t you try them and find out?”

  A: “Ass-hat
. Take the fucking pictures and shut up.”

  B: “Hey, there’s a wheelchair in here!”

  A: “What? Huh. That explains the legs.”

  B: “Oh, shit. More dead guys, too.” (retching) “Oh, Jesus.”

  C: “My God, look at the size of that thing.”

  ε: Love in the Time of Metal

  Knife blade, long gleaming thin horizon of bright pain and beautiful edge, leading him onward into razor edge. Once there was stump, bone-bright beneath the thin-stretched skin, and he knew that if he anchored a titanium bolt just so and worked wires in just there and used a combat-grade neural interface exactly here—black market surplus and wicked costly—he could carry a knife with him everywhere. Anchor cabling and tensioners along the remnants of the radius and ulna, allow the long muscles to bond around the surgical steel tang with the help of a slather of stem-cell prep, and it becomes part of one.

  He could love himself, so shiny and sharp and beautiful inside the pain space. He could love himself ever-ready to point the way toward a punctured future at the expense of whoever might move too close, step too tightly inside the circle of his love.

  Power is pain, pain is power, and the metal edge is the purest instrument of a mother’s love. He becomes the knife, becomes the bolts, becomes the wires, finds his way inward.

  (Yet still love is a fountain, not a mass of chilled metal.)

  He feels his way toward some other future.

  (Danni.)

  He knows the pain is not enough, not an end in itself, but merely a means toward something greater. Something higher.

  Endorphins.

  Adrenaline.

  The sorrow and the joy of a deep cut, the washing wall of pleasure, even the simple irritation of healing.

  (If God had not meant us to cut, why would He have given us blood that clots and skin that closes over?)

  He has lost her, even the knives know that. Dr. Thompson knows where she is, but he does not. The beeping machines know where she is, but he does not. The dank, slow breath of dying around him in the terminal ward carries her name on every rattling exhalation, but he does not know.

  Did the knives flash, cutting her up?

  (Images of Sail, Momma, crying out her last.)

  Did the knives flash, driving her away?