Tom Piccirilli: Clown in the Moonlight

My mom, she'd press her lips to my brow and say, "You won't always be sick."

But I have been, and so's Ricky. His frenzied gaze roves the room. His expression shifts depending on who he sees. Lust, hate, greed, jealousy, resentment, even some true loving sentiment. He has true friends here among his former classmates. There's trust, laughter, long histories, shared fate.

When his eyes fall to me his face goes slack. For an instant he looks like a child, innocent and full of wonder. He tilts his head in surprise. He frowns in puzzlement. I'm probably doing the same thing.

He begins to move to me before he remembers who he is.

Who he is, what he's done, what his plans are, and exactly how he's going to wind up. I start towards him. The throng gets in the way. That's their only purpose, to hold the two of us apart.

In Ricky's honor, the music shifts. They put on heavy metal. The lyrics are as inane as their conversation. Hair band front men in eyeliner and headbands scream about Lucifer, Abomination, Leviathan, Pandemonium, the arch-dukes of the inferno. Guys around me mimic their heroes, make the sign of the horns, hold up their lighters, and sing along. More weed comes out. More acid, hash, mescaline. Somebody's made a liquor run. My mouth waters for whiskey. The house fills with the sweet stink of burning mary jane, and my head lightens a touch.

Linda is very stoned. We make out in the corner for a few minutes. Then she takes me by the wrist and leads me down the hall to Gwen's bedroom. Gwen is already there, taking sips from a bottle of tequila, smoking a joint, naked in bed.

It's what I expect. They fight over me in a silly, endless, half-hearted, territorial war of attrition. They treat me like a pack mule that isn't moving up the canyon trail quickly enough. They beat my back. They dig their nails in, bite, wrench me one way and then the other. They straddle and pound and chomp. I'm bleeding from a dozen tiny wounds. This has nothing to do with me. After a while they begin to go at each other. It starts off mean and eventually becomes tempestuous. It would be a turn-on if it wasn't so predictable. They love themselves, and they're so much alike that they love each other, in a self-hatred kind of way. They're ravenous. I watch for a while. I participate when they let me. They command each other to do filthier and filthier acts. They demand I abuse them. I comply. I pulse. I grow charred. I can't degrade them deeply enough for their satisfaction. Prill is at the door, listening. He kicks at the knob twice but the lock holds. What did he expect? How could he not know? The girls devour me. I clamp my eyes shut and watch the shadows move on the other side of my burning red eyelids. I see Gary Lowers's eyeless face turning in the rain to look at me. He implores me to do something. I don't know what. There's no hope for justice or redemption anymore, he'll never rest, and neither will I. Maybe he just wants a grave, even a shallow one. I could go back and bury him, but what's the point? The dirt has rejected him. The kids will make fun of him just the same. I wuv my mommy. I love my mother too. I miss her more and more every day. My father calls her name out in the night. He slams his fists into the walls like he's beating her again, but she's finally beyond his reach. It's slowly killing him, not having her anymore. He sometimes stands in my bedroom doorway at dawn, but I'm always awake and ready. He wants me dead or he wants me to kill him. Maybe both. I know I'm capable. Gwen and Linda roll across the mattress. They're on the floor, they're on the desk. They're spread against the window. They muffle their cries with each other's flesh. Their nails groove the sill. Branches flail in the breeze, wanting to scratch the girls, wishing them to bleed more deeply. Gwen tumbles across the night stand and Linda pounces. I join her. The bitter taste of blood, tequila, pussy, and shit fills my head. At one point I tear strips from the sheets and use them to bind the girls. First one, while we work on her. Then the other. Until I stand above them, alone, rigid, in the darkness, all the light bulbs shattered. We see each others' eyes by moonlight. Their knotted gags are too tough to chew through. It's not so different from what happened to Lowers, in its own way. Sex transcends itself, a fusion of violence and sacrifice. I stand, waiting, my pulse in tune with theirs, with Ricky's. The walls throb with bass guitars and percussion. Snatches of lyrics catch my attention. I lean over the bed. Linda asked if I'd ever killed anyone. I hiss at her, "Yes." I do things to them with whatever I can find in the desk drawer, in the closet, under the bed, with my body. It's loud and merciless. By the time I cut them loose they're both sobbing, clinging to each other and quivering, sated, terrified and cowed, and I know I have to leave. The storm wants inside. Its force can't match my own. Rain on the window scrawls out my past and hints about the future. The glass trembles as if pecked by the beaks of crows. I imagine my father out there peeking in, wanting in. The girls lick the running blood from each other. They dress me before they dress themselves. They thank me.

Ricky's passed out on the couch, his bags of PCP about to fall out of his pocket, the Satanic Bible already having worked down between the cushions. I sit beside him and try to picture his dreams.

Lowers isn't in any of them. Lowers is already old news. Ricky's got other things on his mind, trying to keep on the move. From what I pick up from the chattering throng, the cops roust him night after night and force him to move along, park somewhere else. He drives around Cow Harbor Park looking for more friends, more victims. Just to shake the boredom he digs up ancient graves and plays among the bones. Everyone is always searching for a new, or very old, source of power. It's why he deals to children and idiots. It's why he beats up on masochists. It's why he starts fires with your hair.

I dip my hand into his pocket and steal the bags of PCP. It's what Ricky wants. He thinks he's caught a new fish. His eyes flash open and he focuses on me, but he doesn't move otherwise. I make sure he sees me putting the bags in my own front pocket. I wait for him to jump up. I wait for him to try to beat the shit out of me. He can't possibly do it, this rail-thin freak, but I wait. I grin at him. Our eyes lock. We wait. His vicious scrutiny tells me all I need to know about how this is going to play out.

He turns over slowly and his scheming expression shifts into pure psychosis, and then into something unreadable beyond insanity. I don't know what it means, but you're always proud to push the guy beside you to the next stage of his evolution.

He notices my wounds. The rug burns, scrapes, gouges, teeth marks. He whispers something I don't catch. I frown at him. He whispers it again. He says I smell like Gwen's asshole. He's not lying.

I page through his copy of The Satanic Bible . It's been a while since I've read it. It was hokey back when. Now it's even more ludicrous. But it has representations of ancient drawings and the word Satanism has taken on new meaning lately. PTAs all over the country are banning books and music for brainwashing kids. School dress codes are tightening, no more wallets hooked to your belt with chains, no more metal stud, no more pentagrams, devil's horns, or heavy metal lyrics on the back of your jean jackets.

There are kids out there suddenly recalling years of repressed memories. They're claiming satanic cults forced them into slavery and sex rituals involving butchered newborns. If you believe the ten o'clock news, then just about every other church is being desecrated and being used for black masses. Anton LaVey alleges tearing a photo of Jayne Mansfield in half and causing her death by decapitation. Anton LaVey is a fraud who's done a lot of damage. Baphomet keeps a fixed gaze on us.