She was half-conscious, and could not be sure she saw it just that way, but up he went, end over end, whirling and spinning like a charred leaf.
And the form took firmer shape. Enormous paws with claws and shapes that no animal she had ever seen had ever possessed, and the burglar, black, poor, terrified, whimpering like a whipped dog, was stripped of his flesh. His body was opened with a thin incision, and there was a rush as all the blood poured from him like a sudden cloudburst, and yet he was still alive, twitching with the involuntary horror of a frog’s leg shocked with an electric current. Twitched, and twitched again as he was torn piece by piece to shreds. Pieces of flesh and bone and half a face with an eye blinking furiously, cascaded down past Beth, and hit the cement below with sodden thuds. And still he was alive, as his organs were squeezed and musculature and bile and shit and skin were rubbed, sandpapered together and let fall. It went on and on, as the death of Leona Ciarelli had gone on and on, and she understood with the blood-knowledge of survivors at any cost that the reason the witnesses to the death of Leona Ciarelli had done nothing was not that they had been frozen with horror, that they didn’t want to get involved, or that they were inured to death by years of television slaughter.
They were worshippers at a black mass the city had demanded be staged, not once, but a thousand times a day in this insane asylum of steel and stone.
Now she was on her feet, standing half-naked in her ripped nightgown, her hands tightening on the wrought-iron railing, begging to see more, to drink deeper.
Now she was one of them, as the pieces of the night’s sacrifice fell past her, bleeding and screaming.
Tomorrow the police would come again, and they would question her, and she would say how terrible it had been, that burglar, and how she had fought, afraid he would rape her and kill her, and how he had fallen, and she had no idea how he had been so hideously mangled and ripped apart, but a seven-storey fall, after all. . . .
Tomorrow she would not have to worry about walking in the streets, because no harm could come to her. Tomorrow she could even remove the police lock. Nothing in the city could do her any further evil, because she had made the only choice. She was now a dweller in the city, now wholly and richly a part of it. Now she was taken to the bosom of her God.
She felt Ray beside her, standing beside her, holding her, protecting her, his hand on her naked backside, and she watched the fog swirl up and fill the courtyard, fill the city, fill her eyes and her soul and her heart with its power. As Ray’s naked body pressed tightly into her, she drank deeply of the night, knowing whatever voices she heard from this moment forward, they would be the voices not of whipped dogs, but those of strong, meat-eating beasts.
At last she was unafraid, and it was so good, so very good not to be afraid.
“When inward life dries up, when feeling decreases and apathy increases, when one cannot affect or even genuinely touch another person, violence flares up as a daimonic necessity for contact, a mad drive forcing touch in the most direct way possible.”
Two: Eddie, You’re My Friend
Eddie, you’re my friend, ain’t you?
I mean, it’s been a long time, and we’ve been through a lot of bad shit together, a lot of stuff most guys wouldn’t share, even with a buddy, the way we did. I’m not mad, honest to God, Eddie. You got to believe me. I know you’re my friend; hell, I come to you without even thinking about it, you know? I just said to myself, “Eddie is the one guy who can help me out of all this,” so I just come on over.
You’re all alone, ain’t you?
That’s real good. I wouldn’t want to talk like this if Bernice was around. It’s pretty embarrassing, you know.… Mostly I’m embarrassed because today is Bernice’s and my third anniversary, and I feel really wiped out. With this rain and all that thunder and everything; you know how rain depresses me. It always did.
Like when we were kids and I’d be real down on a day like this and you’d come over and we’d lay around and read all those comic books. And we were so impressed by Plastic Man and Superman and all those other characters that we used to take bath towels and put a big black letter on them with Crayola, and then get one of those little Halloween masks that cover your eyes and your nose, and then we’d go running around the neighborhood pretending we were avengers of justice and stuff. You remember that, don’t you, Eddie?
Hell, we were tight friends even back then!
Sure you remember. It was a day all rainy like today, back on the old block, and we were calling ourselves the Krime Kracker Kids — you know, with all K’s — and we caught Johnny Mummey, the fireman’s kid, and shoved him off his garage roof because he broke some milk bottles on my back porch? Remember?
It was just like today. And boy! Did I get beat up for that. It was terrible. Teddy Mummey caught me the next day in the playground and whipped me bad for racking up his kid brother. He said it was you told him I was the one did it. And you watched him beat the crap outta me. Come on, you gotta remember that. I was kept indoors for a week.
Sore? Hell no, you were my friend … you were my best friend, even then. I knew you only did it because you had to. I never got sore at you, Eddie. That’d of been foolish, to get P.O.’d at a buddy. Your friendship meant more than a lousy week in the house or a busted snot-locker.
But those were cool times, back the old days.
Or — man, you must remember this — the time I threw that party, and hell, nobody dug me too much then, because I got to admit it, I was pretty much of a turkey even then, and you said you were coming, and nobody showed and I had all that cake and stuff all ready, and had to throw it out. You remember, it was a Valentine’s Day or something like that. I was racked, Eddie man. Real laid out. I wanted that party like crazy, you know.
Oh hell, I got a strange memory. I remember all those times we were together. The time at State when we both went out for that frat and I didn’t get it, but you did, because somebody told the committee I was Jewish. You know. That was a blast, too. But, hell, those things happen.
But I remember how we were good buddies even then, Eddie. I mean, like if I came to you, we’d do our themes together, and I’d take those great cool ideas of yours and write them up and we’d both have final themes to hand in. Only that once we got stuck, but at least you got out of it, when the Prof asked who’d copied whose, and he picked me. What did he say to you when he had you alone in that office? Boy, he knew it was me right off. I’ve always thought about that; but I couldn’t figure how that teacher — what was his name … oh yeah, old Mastermans — how Professor Mastermans knew I’d been doing the copying. It wasn’t exactly true, but better just me getting bounced outta school than both of us, right? Hell, that wouldn’t of done no good, both of us getting canned.
The way it turned out, that was the best thing ever happened to me. I mean, I got out and hadda start looking around for a job, and finally took my horn and got with the combo, and that was the start of my career. You know, Eddie, it was like it was supposed to’ve happened that way. Kismet, right?
Then when you graduated it was a natural for you to come on the combo with me, and be the business manager. I mean, I knew you needed a job — Christ, those were rough days for finding work, what with all them vets from the Nam climbing over each other trying to find slots — and I was glad to give you a hand for a change, when you needed it, and it could help.