Page 28
Story: Kissing Carrion
I shrugged. “Okay, I guess.” Then: “Listen, man—is that her name?”
This time, he had to hold onto the wall.
“Jesus, buddy,” he said, finally. “Next time ask, okay? It seriously helps.”
* * *
That was the same week we cut the demo. The same week I wrote it. We liked to leave things as close to the wire as we could, back then—before the money started coming in, and our lead guitarist started worrying about who our “real fans” still were.
The song was “Skeleton Bitch”—just the B-side, originally—and it broke us wide open, just like we always wanted. Just like nothing we did before ever could, and nothing we’ve done since ever has.
But I’m not here to talk about the band.
* * *
Next time I saw her was at the launch party, wedged between a cluster-fuck of drunken music critics and the kitchen counter, keeping herself amused by making anagrams from mine honorable host’s (a.k.a. our agent’s) Froot-Loop-bright fridge magnets. I slid in behind her, one arm under her breasts, and whispered in her ear:
“I do got a phone, you know.”
“That’s nice,” she said, making S-H-E-S-V-A-I-N into V-A-N-I-S-H-E-S.
Something in her voice told me to gulp my drink, and when I shook the one I’d snagged for her in front of her face, she turned—to study me close, like we’d never even met before.
“That’s nice too,” she said, taking it. Then, sipping: “Do I know you?”
For a minute, I couldn’t speak. Literally.
“Last I heard,” I said, finally.
* * *
Because, Goddammit, it was her. Same white hair. Same white lips. Same cold limbs all a-roll in their sockets, lithe as bones. And her pale, thread-veined eyes, beneath their fresh black diamonds of mascara—still shiny, still blank, like old blood under ice.
We ended up in the cloak-room, that time, doing it like dogs on a pile of coats worth more put together than I’d made in my entire life. She was all slick and tight under that jacket she wouldn’t take off—wet but frozen, her inner ridges icy slipknots, pulling me down. She popped my zip and ripped her tights wide open with one long thumb-nail, sliding back onto me like some well-oiled, key-swallowing lock. And her nipple seemed to burn a hole right through my palm as we fell the full fathom five together, down deep to where the only fish are blazing ghosts and the pressure crushes you flat.
When I came, I heard “Skeleton Bitch” playing somewhere. “Wrote that for you,” I gasped, in her ear.
She just smiled. And asked:
“Wrote what?”
* * *
Hours later, I woke to find Jaime gingerly trying to extricate his date’s velvet cape from the mess underneath me.
“Chris,” he said, “you’re one exotic guy, and I mean this in the nicest possible way—but anyone ever tell you ‘bout beds?”
I coughed, mouth full of cat hair and whiskey fumes. “Her name’s Rictus,” I told him.
“Yeah, great, man.”
And he passed his date her shroud, just in time for me to stumble past them both, not quite making the washroom door before the rest of my brains all boiled up through my nose.
* * *
That was how it went, from then on. She was everywhere, like an itch—capillary-deep, unscratchable. If I’d had any trouble pissing, I would have thought she gave me something.
But I wasn’t getting off that easy.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28 (Reading here)
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102