Tom Piccirilli: Clown in the Moonlight

Ricky's jean jacket is stained with dried spatters of mud and blood. It's frayed at the collar and singed at the cuffs especially. Wherever he's got his blade stashed, it's well hidden. He's got on a black T-shirt and blue jeans and sneakers, just like me. He hasn't taken a shower in at least a week and he stinks like a sewer. He smells like Gwen's asshole too.

I offer the book back to Ricky and he tells me, "Keep it."

I say, "No thanks."

"I insist."

"You can't."

"What?"

"You can't insist upon someone who won't allow it. You can only insist upon someone who acquiesces. Like Gary."

The name just makes Ricky's face twist more crazily. I wonder what the Acid King sees when he sees me. He grins a baboon grin. He refuses the book.

I stuff it back down between the cushions. I wait for him to try to put his hand on me. He doesn't. I know he wants to go for the blade. He just keeps staring, features contorting in a variety of ways. Sometimes I recognize the expression, sometimes I don't. His features contort so much that I wonder if the juice I drank was spiked with LSD. He almost seems to be melting.

He's puzzled by me, and he's got me curious. If he wasn't a crazed murderer, we might be on our way to a solid friendship here. He cocks his head one way and then the other. His eyes half-close. He bobs his chin in time with the music. The lead guitar is performing a painfully simplistic solo that's got the punks worked into a frenzy. They're playing air guitar. Ricky's fingers move like he's striking chords. Then he sinks back, relaxed. For a minute he sleeps. He snores heavily. The music is loud enough to bring the cops down on us, but they don't come. The neighbors don't call. They're afraid of kids.

Somebody puts in a new cassette. More weak metal. The lyrics are just as bad as before. The Devil is leading children through the forest. The Devil will return your love tenfold. God is dead. Paradise is a lie. The world is hell and that's so beautiful. The theater of the inquisition is open to all. Prepare for pain.

The girls try to dance but it's not the kind of rhythm you can really move to. They gyrate and sway in a sexless manner. The punks bang their heads. Long hair whips back and forth like the cat o' nine tails that tore Christ's back apart. Ricky puts his feet in my lap the same way that Linda did in the car. Maybe it's a sign of affection. Maybe he's trying to push buttons. He fails on either count. I wait him out. We're like that for a while. He breaks before me. He hops off the couch.

Maybe this is it. I watch for the blade. It doesn't appear. Ricky likes an audience, but only if he gets to lead them to the stage one by one. He laughs his mad monkeyboy laugh, his hair coiling into his eyes like serpents.

His face goes bleak. "What's your name?" he asks.

I don't tell him. Names have power.

His crew tightens around him. Now I see who the other members of the Knights of the Black Circle are. They've been here the whole time, but somehow hidden among the gatherers. Not in the corners, I always check the corners. Hiding in plain sight, but somehow not there either. They're shadows without light, they're mutts like all the rest but nothing like the rest at all. Ricky leads them through the throng. They cluster at the far side of the living room and make their way down the corridor to a distant den. They follow him without a word. They seem incapable of speech, like they've been walking the deserts of the earth for ten millennia in silence, with swords drawn. Their lips are set, mouths nothing more than bloodless lines, eyes as empty as Lowers's sockets. They slam the door.

I stand and put my back to the wall and shut my eyes. I press my concentration beyond the noise, the babble, the pizza guy still retching, the rain slashing at glass. I hear Gwen and Linda in the bathroom, washing and bandaging each other. They whimper because the peroxide burns. They whimper because some of the marks are bound to scar. Gwen might need stitches. Linda's knees are still weak. They worry about pregnancy. They worry about what they may mother with me as the father.

I focus hard enough that I can hear Ricky talking to his knights on the other side of the house despite the din.

Ricky's done a little homework. He knows the names of the infernal orders, the black popes, the archdukes that sit in great central dome of Pandemonium. He discusses offerings. Ricky mentions Gwen's name. She's on his kill list. The others concur with the choice. Their voices are guttural and grating. The language they speak hardly sounds like English. More names are tossed into the mix. They're either agreed upon or dismissed.

My focus is so sharp that Ricky notices.

He says, "Someone's listening."

The door opens. They check the hallway. Ricky's got to know it's me, but what fun is it not to play a little hide and seek. I fade into the crowd. The Knights of the Black Circle exit and drift among the partygoers. I pretend to dance with a burnout chick with big tits who's barely shuffling in place. I draw her to me and put my lips to her throat. I nibble. I suck. I bite. She grunts and jerks in my arms.

She says, "I like you. I think you should take me home."

"Sure."

"But no fucking. I'm on the rag."

"Okay."

"But I'll jack you off if you want. I like you. I'll do that for you."

"You're sweet."

I walk her out to the Mustang and the moment she crawls into the passenger seat she passes out. It's just as well. I'm not up for anything else, not even a hand job. I'm raw and clawed. I check her wallet and read her driver's license. I realize her name is on Ricky's kill list. I lift her eyelids and stare at her blank eyes, thinking about them in Ricky's fist, being squeezed, being thrown away.

I drive her home through the storm and leave her sleeping on some Adirondack furniture under a roofed patio. I sit with her smoking a cigarette. I take a drink from the hose. I stuff the stolen bags of PCP into her pockets, thinking, what the hell. Maybe she and her friends can have some fun with it.

I decide not to go home. I don't want to see my father. I don't think I ever want to see my father again.

That night I stay in Cow Harbor Park, under the gazebo less than a half-mile from Lowers's corpse. I stare out at the waters of the Long Island sound and see that someone has already started to carve up the woodwork.

In one of the benches, a full inch deep, are the words SAY YOU LOVE SATAN.

My dreams are mostly vapid, sexual half-memories. They mean nothing beyond the obvious. Ricky visits in vivid detail. He tries to set fire to my socks. My mother arrives, her face holding answers, but before she can say anything, I jump awake as a cop taps on the bottom of my sneaker with his billy club.

The crows wait in the trees for my undoing. I nod to the cop but it's not enough. He wants to put me through my paces, go the full route.

"Let's see some ID."

I hand him my driver's license. It's not enough. It's new, less than a month old. It's so fresh he actually holds it up to his nose. He gestures for me to give him my wallet. I turn it over. He goes through it, checking each fold and pocket. He pulls out a photo of my mother and holds it up close to his eyes, turns it over to see if there's any writing on the back. There isn't.

"You carrying any drugs?"

"No."

"Why are you sleeping here in the park?"

"I had a fight with my father."

He leans in and sniffs my breath. I sigh in his face. He seems satisfied there's no liquor on my breath. Any residual stink of marijuana that might be on my clothes is covered over by the water and fresh rain fragrance on the brush.

But he makes me walk the line, say the alphabet backwards, do all the other little monkey dances. I jump through the hoops the way I'm supposed to, even though, technically, my car is parked. I'm not driving drunk. There's no call for this, but he has his mind set.