Lust Demented

{I}

IT WASN’T EASY TO RECOGNIZE Percy. On first glance, somebody had stabbed him several times, stuffing him with what looked like ritualistically chosen snippets of absurd literature. Pages placed inside him similar to the way a grandmother cut slices into a ham roast and stuffed garlic. Blood dried in branches of rosemary. Body crushed and crumbled on the splattered step.

What really made me gag were the mutilated pages. Books on the floor reduced to binding. Shelves torn from the walls. I fell into a sneezing fit trying to blow the stench of death out of the room. The exposed brick came alive with sinister people trapped within frames. Spotted up snapshots of Percy’s hanger-ons. Their cavernous eyes. Their glimmering fangs. Percy always bragged that he had a lot of enemies. He never once mentioned a friend.

One picture stood out from the rest. It was of Percy and Missy lounging together on a deserted beach. Clear ocean swallowed up by a curtain of depraved sky. Missy occupied another dimension, deep off in the starlet pose with everything overflowing. Percy appeared ancient, a mere bystander next to the dime piece.

Now I was a mere bystander… outside of the frame… still waiting for Missy to come in and scream. Nausea in waves…

“Freeze!”

“Lava will turn us all to stone. A hundred times more terrible than what happened in Italy or Iceland.” Missy was beyond convinced that the world would end in the same place it began for her. A monk found her wandering the shores of Heaven’s Lake on Baekdu Mountain. He named her Eun Young.

“It means Missy in English.” It wasn’t true. It means one who always gets luck and protection from the king.

“On the ground! On the fucking ground!” Squinting through the charcoal haze, the officers closed in with their weapons drawn. A stomach of earth. I’m kissing the floor. Percy’s leaky corpse was staring me down. I couldn’t make out the blurry fuzz. The cuffs were cold and tight on my wrists.

“I didn’t do this.”

“Maybe you didn’t.”

“I did…”

“What?”

“I did know them.”

“Who’s them? I only see one body.”

Curiosity awoken, the neighbors watched my heels skid to the patrol car taking sips from their tulip glasses. Scandals were common in this part of town. Crimes were rare.

“Duck asshole!” They reminded me a second late. I crumbled in the fetal position. The pigs floored it, only to slam the breaks. A few more times, a few more bruises. A trickling stream of brutal stop and go. The city was a self-absorbed amoeba. The ride couldn’t have lasted shorter. No matter where you happened to be in NYC - a jail, hospital, or bank were only a few blocks away: The holy trinity of the modern age.

Down a hallway of echoes… the muffled chatter of the human zoo… not even placed in the cage for a hot second… the slavemasters take me out to look me over… not too interested… not too thrilled… a busy night in the neighborhood… I want to plead innocence… just can’t raise my voice over all the others doing the same… intimate confidants packing the pasture… their smudgy windows leading to cunning ways out… their sunken eyes accused… their savage intentions glorified…

A room opens up. A psycho exited grumbling, “So the fuck what… suck it…” incoherently possessed he tries to bite me… I don’t flinch… I doubt he can bite me into a coffin… go fuck yourself we make acquaintance… now to look the cops in the eyes… the two that led me into the cramped room… the pale redhead… cartoonish curves… kung-fu swagger… emerald marbles in the sockets… the dark man…slits squinting… shoulders that widen door frames… a warm inviting host of a voice.

“Take a seat.”

I closed my eyes letting them watch me reverberate in the echo of past voices. They knew I would rather listen to them talk. Missy was missing and maybe I knew and maybe I didn’t. Either way they’re shaking the wrong tree for coconuts.