1. The Playroom
"Ever notice the neat way that bones are stuffed with flesh? It doesn't
simply hang there; every crevice and joint and hole, filled with pus. And
you know, after this fellow decays" -- (he kicked the splintered rag-ball
on the floor) -- "there'll be others just waiting to take his place."
I'd heard tangents like this before. "I'm tired, shut up, go back to
your tombs, or whatever. I'm going to bed."
"But you always *say* you want to hear about what I've been doing lately.
I've been killing."
"Shut up."
His expression turned ugly. Scary. "Lisssssen, my time with you won't
always be, ugh, wine and roses." A sudden move. I backed up. "So
then tell me about your day, your brief tenuous blot on the earth, a wage-slave,
a bone-slave, and see it it isn't *me* that's disgusted, Food-For-Worms."
I couldn't help it, nervous giggles choked me; it'd been my favorite rhyme
as a kid. "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, da-da-da-diddily-da-da,
da-da..."
It broke his temper, his features relaxed. But maybe it wasn't really funny.
In the light of a bare bulb there was a dead thing on the floor at his feet.
I felt ill and leaned against the cold cellar wall. "Uh, time to go."
---
I slept upstairs in his house that night and dreamt of his leftovers rotting
one floor beneath me. Up until the show-and-tell in the basement the evening
had been swell, all talk and tease. I might have gotten drunk. I woke up
with small puncture wounds on one little finger, and didn't give it a second
thought.
After all, my life is covered with bandages.
2. Souvenirs from The Playroom
"Please excuse the air conditioning in here, I keep it running all
the time now. Only way to control that musty smell."
Popsicles are warmer I decided. Besides which, he was wrong; the windowless
room smelled worse. Damp cold. Sweating walls.
"Look at the pretty things I keep, all the things that I... find..."
(he opened a closet door) "and by the way stop whining, I'll see that
you come to appreciate the cold. What are you fidgeting about?"
"Something just ran up my leg."
The rest was a let-down. Hangers full of clothing, clean and pressed, most
showing recent repair. Neatly stacked shoes. Nice ties. Shirts with collars
still stained a faint pink. Doubtless each garment represented an obscene
humilation, whether negotiated off its wearer before or after death. (Note
to myself: *always* have on clean underwear.)
"Nice stuff, creep."
I gotta wonder about his dry cleaning bills.
3. Playtime's Over
Then there was the time I listened to him rave in an emergency room while
his dinner died ecstatic upon a stretcher, to the dismay of internists and
nurses up and down the hall. I was driving that night and had seen it happen
(visible yes in the rear-view mirror.) He had studied his meal, a broken
man, bleeding across his lap all the way to the hospital.
"The promise of evil is this:" -- his voice absorbed and flattened
by the waiting room linoleum -- "Give up everyone but yourself and
I will show you Wonderful Things, answers to mysteries. Like Faust you will
strive alone in the world til unholy love controls you. Care about none
but yourself and you'll know at last the secret of death -- the foremost
being that death is universally private. Believe only in your ability to
experience death in your own way, and you'll never fear it again. My gift."
-----
Weeks later he said that he had also whispered those same words to the dying
man, and that was why the mortal left life with a smile.
What crap.
4. All Work and No Play
I was busy picking at a scab on my arm when I got off work late, and didn't
see him waiting in the lobby, dark hair above the cushions of an institutional
sofa.
It would have been smarter to have retreated into the elevator, ride back
upstairs to my cubicle and oh I don't know, order a pizza delivered, whatever,
anything rather than walk (run) within his line of sight.
You had to wonder everytime you made eye contact with him. Eye contact is
crucial to a predator, to determine if its prey is aware of danger nearby.
"If I can't see that glimmer of panic in their eyes, they haven't *really*
seen me," he'd say. He prefered those that were already bleeding through
their eyes, spilling lifelong needs and anxieties from expressive sockets
-- so that every desire was instantly recognized, and granted...
Sometimes even I'd have to look.
---
"Promise me?" his victim's eyes would beg.
"Certainly," he would say.
---
So I woke up this morning in my cubicle after all, face down on the drawing
board. Fresh little baby scabs-to-be decorating me in new places.
This overtime is killing me.
5. Redemption in The Playroom
"I need a confessor, I need a confessor!" -- he was shouting wildly
and I had to know why. "Because oh because because (giggle) I need
a confessor because I've discovered the secret of inner peace for immortals..."
"Yes?"
His grip relaxed upon my arms so suddenly that I might have been standing
before another, new creature; hysteria had passed his face. "It's simple
physics: unburden yourself of your sins -- feed them to another -- hire
a whore, betray a friend -- it doesn't matter. When the energy of your everyday
murders enters another, you become free, free --
...free to go out and do it again."
This was while he was still frothing pink after some feast, probably upon
one of his... confessors.
I said "honey, there are generations-old religions based on stuff like
that. Don't validate them. Keep and swallow your sins, with each bite of
mortal man."
---
So I only had myself to blame. Later I should have closed my eyes but I
love to see the moonlight shining on sharp teeth.
Moonlight didn't make bleeding any more, uh, *romantic,* however...
6. The Mirror on The Playroom Wall
Yes if I'd been packaged differently I could hide the memory beneath a beard.
As it is, I select my lipstick to match a long ragged slice from ear to
chin.
Once I wanted to see perfection, and so I spied on him. Do monsters preen?
Gestures he threw off like sparks, as he stood before his mirror, to smooth
hair so oiled by smoke and rain that I can taste it even now. There's no
imagining what he saw reflected -- did clotted stains whet his dreams? Would
matte lapels blend with the shadows where his next meal stumbled and fell?
From my hiding place I witnessed only bruised nails pulling tattered cuffs.
Do monsters preen? The mirror was too short to reveal to him the gore he
tracked across the tile, yet it was wide enough to flicker with candlelight
from the damned keyhole. Do monsters preen? The price of knowing has healed
over and daily ropes the tendons of my smile.
Who said scars make a face more interesting.
7. Coming Home from The Playroom
I love puking on the sidewalk, I really do. Oh sure. Yep, nothing compares
with dragging a shaking leg up and under myself just long enough to get
my damp face into position to spew reminders of broken promises. Hurling
every buggered intention, to the rending sound of some deep, deep tissue;
gagging punctuated by regret over *what else* might be happening inside.
Maybe if the crimson goo pooling around my knees doesn't come out in the
wash, well then maybe the next night I'll remember and know better.
It does, I don't.
Cry cry cry, repent repent repent, do it all again again again. That vascular
soup, mixed from his playthings' heartwine with the bile he calls his own
-- what happens when I finally keep it down? Does a monster watch unseen
tonight, while I crawl through red smears on my way toward the pavement's
end?
...Only if I'm lucky. After all, I'd hate to have to call a cab.
8. Chez Playroom
It caught up with me caught up with me caught up and my lips only mumbled
with the drink bubbling up, back up, never going down down for good, down
forever, for all time and time and --
And then the dream is over.
---
When I stood up I saw a glove forgotten among the overturned furniture,
so pale it was. Mmmm, a long white glove, elbow length -- oh my, but there
was an elbow, too. The glove, a glove of skin for bones bent in subtle ways.
In the air above the body floated plinking noises from a near room, as if
someone played the wires of a broken piano. Seemed likely, judging from
the torn upholstery and strewn pillows I waded through.
The dining room was nearly intact by comparison. Plenty of soiled linen
to stuff into my collar to check the bleeding there. "Don't be shy,
pull up a chair" -- his invitation delivered from a shadowy seat at
the end of a table, where darker and contorted shapes lay heaped upon the
floor nearby. "Better yet, have mine. Good night."
No harm done in admitting I was thankful to see him go, leaving me to spend
the rest of the night alone, no harm, right?
That's when I noticed the table's scattered china... a setting for *eight.*
The tortured piano-string playing in the background was joined by laughter
and the crunching of glass.
I wish they'd dine *out* more often.
9. The View from The Playroom
"Black hearts among the young are so charming. The energy invested
-- such sincerity, such creativity! But evil doesn't really get ugly until
it gets older." More nonsense, another damn sermon, delivered this
time from the edge of a pier that he rhythmically chipped away with a small
knife. Thock. Thock. Thock. Each uncurling of his lazy wrist advanced the
damage. As he lifted his arm I could see his shirt cuff. Gawd it was filthy.
"And the older one gets -- you'll find this out for yourself someday,
I'll ssssssee to that -- the older one gets, the less like a pose evil becomes.
Once I thought that was simply because perfidy is habit forming."
Thock, thock. "But I know now a junkie rush isn't what the Old Things
feel." Thock. "They feel -- nothing. Perversion is as humdrum
as rain, as decay, as insects crushed underfoot. Life ends without contemplation.
The daily ordinariness of it all is what makes our satiations evil... and
easy."
Easy? Me: "Really. Well I'll tell you what I think. I think you old
shits are just getting _lazy._"
His reply was a wink in ghastly parody of intimacy against the background
of grey-green river water beneath us. I turned to look up instead at the
Cascade mountains to the east, illuminated as if from within by the sunset's
failing light. Lights-out here in Rain City, lights-out for the flannel
brats, and the suicides, and the caffeinated habitues. Good night sleep
tight better pray that only bed bugs bite.
Thock, thock. Him: "Lazy... ah then, let's go somewhere... different.
Take me to a street that's fresh. Your choice." Thock. "Surprise
me."
Ha.
Sure, I'll drive. But I won't pimp.
© leslie h.
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