Stop.
This was his conscious, direct thought.
Stop moving, feet.
It was strange to address a part of your body as if it had its own will, no different from telling your asshole not to let fly with a fart in a crowded elevator. But he was asking now—begging. His arms and legs had been disconnected, their controls rerouted.
“Stop.” His breath came out in a harsh pop. “Goddamn it, stop.”
But he kept on. Staggering more than walking, part of him putting on the brakes while the other part, the more powerful one now, continued to grind his body forward. You’d think the earth was lined with fucking ball bearings, the way he kept slip-sliding ahead.
Oh, Cy… come on, baby, we’re gonna have us a time. A real screamer.
He’d seen Carlene a few years ago, back in Carbine. Sitting outside the dairy bar with a couple of her runny-nosed, scabby-elbowed kids still shitting in diapers. A human trash pit, it must be said. Oh, how the mighty, y’know? Big flappetty tits hanging off the front of her like two gunnysacks kicked down a bad stretch of road. She didn’t look dewy then, not one bit. More like doody.
He wasn’t surprised. She was nothing special. He remembered her ass had been dimpled with cellulite when he had finally seen it in the woodland moonlight. Like the cratered surface of the fucking moon! It had been like opening a really pretty box to find a dog turd inside. But the way she wore her jeans back then, you’d never know. Well, Cy knew. There had never been a damn thing special about her, which is what pissed Cy off the most—she’d sold him a bill of goods, which had put him on the hunt in the first place. But she was the same ignorant, ditchwater-dull bitch that you’d find anyplace. She hadn’t been worth his time or interest, and he held his old obsession against her.
He had sat down beside her kids, who were clearly the sort who would spend the rest of their bitter, useless lives in that tar pit town. Carlene’s eyes went wide with that old fear at the sight of him.
You’re a shell of your former self, he’d said to her, then got up and sauntered off.
It hadn’t even felt that good. Not like how he’d wanted. Life had already ripped the spine out of every dream she’d ever had. How much could the truth really hurt?
“Virgil,” he moaned now as his feet propelled him helplessly toward the fence, hoping his partner might hear. But it was the dead of night and Virgil was probably asleep, the pudding brain. Cyril felt a little sorry for Virgil. Dumb as a box of hammers, that one. He’d be lost without Cyril. Then he had to ask himself: Where am I going?
At the fence now. It ran fifteen feet up to the razor wire. Cy hooked his hands into the chain link. The sensation of his fingers clawing through that rough industrial metal washed a dry taste of horror through his mouth, as if he’d taken a big gulp of shitty wine.
Come on now, baby. We’re gonna have such fun…
He started to climb. The terror shot through him sharply, a bone-deep electricity radiating from every nerve center. He tried to jerk himself backward, hurl himself to the ground. He didn’t care if he broke a leg, or both legs plus an arm. Anything was better than being dragged toward that voice like a man chained to a winch.
He saw something in the trees. Carlene Herlihy. The pride of Carbine, Alabama. Naked as a jaybird. Jesus please us. He’d never seen a woman so goddamn lovely. Creamy-dreamy red bikini. Breasts not all droopy and sucked out, but firm and high. A nice tanglebush. Boy howdy, Cy would walk twenty miles of busted glass to lay one kiss between those legs.
Except her eyes. Yes indeedy, there was something a bit queer about those.
He was up the fence now. He’d scaled it like a blackie up a coconut tree, hadn’t he? Climbed it faster than that fairy English nigger ever could. Cyril paused, his body trembling, then started to crawl through the razor wire. Oh fuck. Stop. STOP! The wire was studded with long sharp blades just like the ones his father used to shave with. They effortlessly slit Cy’s clothes. Blood leapt out in greedy bursts.
He kept his eyes on Carlene. That traffic-stopping body. Those inhuman eyes. What would she do to him with that body—more important, what would she do with those eyes?
A razor raked his throat. Blood pissed out his neck, a shiny redness spritzing against the night. Fuck it all to hell. He didn’t even feel it. Carlene’s hands were moving between her legs, fingers feathering that space between. Her breasts were so big—way bigger than he ever remembered, though he was an ass man by trade—so big they threw round shadows down her rib cage.
There came the sound of a wet, shredding, rubbery fart—Cyril almost yelped laughter. Sweet Jesus, someone just ripped their britches! A real denim-burster. Except he knew that wasn’t it. In a far-off, unreal, daydreamy sense, he understood that some other part of his anatomy was responsible for that noise. It was the sound of something opening up, and something else slipping out. In some distant chamber of his mind—which sat beside a second chamber where something small and helpless gibbered in mindless fear—he realized that he also had a thudding erection.
A stiffie, as they were called. A peg-pounder. A cunt-corker. A bon—
He saw someone else now. Standing behind Carlene. A bigger shape. Tall. Pale. Kind of pear-shaped.
Playing some kind of musical instrument. A flute, was it?
Cyril was halfway through the razor wire. It was slicing him to ribbons. Who cared? It was good. He would go to Carlene and she would fix him. With her lips and tongue and tits and her perfect pink pussy. Her love. More than anything, that’s what Cy needed. The love of a good woman. That’s why he’d gone wayward. Followed the bad path. But he’d change all that. Him and Carlene together.
Cy jerked his leg. There was a long cold sizzle down his calf, and then that leg was free. He climbed down the other side of the fence. He felt heavy all over: the soddenness of his clothes, sopping with blood, plus a bricklike heaviness of mind. But it would be over soon. It would be fucking beautiful.
He staggered toward Carlene. The lights of Little Heaven reduced until there was no light at all. When he spun, laughing a little, he couldn’t see the chapel or bunkhouses. Just that vast darkness peering back at him.
Who gave a flying fuck, anyway? He had Carlene. Jesus, he’d treated her bad, hadn’t he? He’d been young. An animal. Could you fault him? Any creature is only the sum of its instincts and interests, right? But Cy could change. She could declaw him. He’d be okay to stand for that now. He’d be a kitten for her. He’d curl right up in her lap.
Dimly, so dimly now, Cyril understood that he was dead. Or he would be soon, in a way he had never imagined. The human mind lacks a capacity to embrace such oddities of fate. He was a mess, woozy as blood leaked out of him from a dozen fleshy rips. He smiled, the dopey grin of a child. But a small, helpless voice, locked in the deepest cells of his brain, continued to scream without ceasing.
And Carlene was right fucking there. Just… bam! Ripe as a plucked peach. The years peeled away and they were both young again. Wouldn’t that be just the best? To live forever as you once were, back when you could run half a mile at a dead sprint, drink a six-pack, and then fuck like a rabbit? Yeah, that was the ticket!
She opened her arms. The flute’s music rose to a weird pitch that made his ears itch.
“Carlene…”
Baby…