Tom Piccirilli: Clown in the Moonlight

The fever takes hold, my heart begins to hammer, and I can taste the sweet dollop of murder in the night. I shake my head and try not to laugh. No matter where you go, what you do, you can't outmaneuver your fate. Linda has a tight hold on my wrist as she leads me through the park into Aztakea Woods. She's a powerful little cheerleader, barely five foot tall but all tendon and tit and muscle, and when we make love on the floor of the gazebo or the back of my Mustang, she nearly bucks me off. I've got bruises and welts all over. So does she, but she likes them.

She's excited now in a way I haven't seen before, guiding me down a barely recognizable dirt trail. She knows where she's going, even in the dark. She's been here before.

The wind's risen and I can hear the heavy lapping of the Long Island sound, the salty scent heavy in the air.

"The Acid King showed me," she says, and there's an odd lilt of laughter in her voice.

I'm new to town and still don't recognize all the players. I've known Linda two weeks and they've been fun and freaky days. She tries to draw out the worst in me. It's not difficult. If someone cuts us off on 25a she attempts to goad me into racing or fighting with strangers. She whispers what she'll do to me if I win.

We move into a clearing and the moonlight ignites her perfect teeth. Her pale skin glows as she smiles at me and presents the scene on the ground. She can't help snickering. It's an ugly but sexy sound. She moves against the breeze and her long hair rises against my lips, tickling. I taste fruity shampoo and stale sweat. I glance down and I'm staring at a mutilated corpse without any eyes.

She places her hand on my chest as if she expects my heart to stop. She waits for me to suck in enough air to scream. Her nails dig deep. I like the pain she offers. It's minor and only scratches the surface. Her beautiful face shifts into an expression of delighted anticipation. She expects cursing, crying, or perhaps terrorized whining. Or maybe depraved laughter. It's obvious she's brought other boys here before. Weaker boys, ones she can control, ones she abuses and scoffs at callously. I take a shallow breath and let it out slow.

Apparently she enjoys my non-reaction. She throws herself into my arms and kisses me passionately. Our tongues tangle. Her moans are so loud, full of a kind of torment, that I can imagine them coming from the dead guy. She says my name and couches it in lust and demand. I know which way this is going. Maybe I want it to go there, maybe not, but I won't resist. A growl works down my throat, a snarl works up it. I try to break her hold but I don't try very hard. Her tongue's burying itself in my throat, her breasts heaving. She draws away and gives a rasping cackle. That laugh drives into my head like metal shavings.

The corpse is my age and size. He's got good muscle mass. I'm not paranoid and I don't think Linda's a murderer, she digs the dramatic reveal too much, but I keep my eyes open through our kiss. So does she. Our tongues grapple. I reach for her hands to make sure they're empty.

He's been dead for a couple of days at least. Maggots ravage the flesh in the June heat, the body poorly hidden beneath a thin layer of leaves and dirt.

"Don't tell anyone," she says.

She knows I can't tell anyone about this. I've got what the courts call "anger management issues, " "impulse control difficulties," and "violent tendencies." They've forced my old man to move us three times around Long Island in the past few years. I've been in jail and I've been in Bellvue under suicide watch. All told I preferred my year-long stint in prison to the six-month stay in the psych ward. My father was more embarrassed visiting me in the hospital. He's been in jail himself, which he considers a natural part of the rites of manhood. He's never been in group therapy, which he thinks is for mama's boys and queers.

The face is unrecognizable, utterly disfigured, more like shredded meat than anything else. Whoever did this took his time. I spot teeth marks and a lot of stab wounds, perhaps as many as fifty. The remains of a small blackened campfire sit in a ring of flat stones at the center of the clearing. I can still smell a hint of smoke. The area is covered in muddy footprints and matted leaves. It must've been raining the night it happened. Since then at least a dozen visitors have come through.

The Acid King has brought a lot of folks by to see his handiwork.

Linda reaches under my T-shirt and untucks it from my jeans. She groans and launches herself into my arms again, the scent of her hot cooze overwhelming the stink of the rotting corpse. Death sets her to trembling like razor-wire. There were a ton of guys on C-Block who'd been sent to the bin because of girls just like her. Some of them had regrets. Some of them didn't.

Her upper thighs are wet with need. She tugs her blouse up over her head and throws it towards the body irreverently. She's not wearing a bra and she feeds me her nipples, which are coated in running silver as the clouds part and the moon washes over us. She hikes her skirt up. She's not wearing any underwear either. She knew this moment had to happen. I probably did too somehow. She helps me get my jeans off and we flop over into the brambles, briars scratching me up just as bad as her nails or a leather cat o' nine tails.

The sound of night birds makes me look up through the trees but Linda draws me down. We make a vicious, venomous love that lasts no more than three minutes. It feels like we've fucked forever. It feels like we've fucked beyond death. She laughs through it all or maybe there are watchers in the brush and the trees.

I'm so out of breath I'm hyper-ventilating. She keeps turning her cheek to me as if she wants to be slapped or punched. She doesn't know what she's asking. Or maybe she does.

My rage tries to rise within me and I strap it back down to the gurney. I cage it and quarantine it. In any case, I don't hurt her. I don't hit or bite or bleed her. She glares at me with the fiery moon in her eyes and a grunt of frustration escapes her lips. She slaps me across the face. She's upset I'm not more impressed with torture and murder.

Back in my '66 Mustang Coupe, as we cruise from Cow Harbor Park down 25a, she lights two cigarettes for us, and tells me the story.

They call Ricky Kelso the Acid King because he deals LSD to the kids around Northport. He's a homeless seventeen-year-old dropout loser with a fried brain. He dabbles in the occult, the leader of a loosely-organized band of burnouts calling themselves the Knights of the Black Circle. They supposedly pray to Satan and hold ceremonies in a scattering of old cemeteries lining the North Shore. Ricky's big on human sacrifices, he tells everyone. He was arrested a few months ago for digging up graves and stealing bones and body parts to use in ritual black witchcraft.

He's spent time locked up in Amityville Psych Center for drug rehab and psych care. His parents tried to commit him, but the psychiatrists concluded Ricky wasn't psychotic or dangerous.

When I was in Bellevue, all the patients and the orderlies used to look down their noses at the privileged "guests" of APC, what with their nervous conditions and their lightweight treatments like aromatherapy and massages. In Bellevue, we headcases were hardcore. When we weren't in group therapy or bashing the shit out of clay making bad ashtrays, we were being drowned in the hydro tanks and threatened with lobotomies. We were slicing ourselves from wrist to forearm with sharpened two-inch-long safety scissors used to cut construction paper. The orderlies carried leather strops and chain collars for anybody who got out of line. You didn't get a window, much less a stroll around a manicured estate.