Clown in the Moonlight

2

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.

I feel my first twinge of real disgust for Ricky Kelso.

The dead guy is Gary Lowers. At a party a few months back, while Ricky was passed out on a basement couch, Lowers snagged ten hits of PCP from Ricky's pocket. A few hours later, when Ricky shook out of his hangover, he ran around the house making savage threats. Someone squealed on Lowers. Ricky cornered him a few days later. Despite giving back half the stolen goods and promising to pay off the rest-a total of maybe fifty bucks-Lowers failed to come up with the cash. Ricky stomped him a couple of times but he couldn't shake the money loose.

It put Gary Lowers in perspective. He was someone who wanted to bleed. He was a thief. He could've easily ripped off half a C-note from someone who wouldn't smack him around nearly as much as Ricky did, but Lowers just let it slide. He saw which way things were headed and didn't do anything to stop it.

On the night of the murder, Ricky invited Lowers to Aztakea Woods with a couple of other friends, saying he was ready to forgive the incident. After taking several hits of mescaline, Ricky, Gary, and two other punks whose names Linda didn't know or didn't want to say, made camp along the trail.

Linda's breath fogs the windshield as she speaks. She notices her reflection and takes the time to reapply lipstick, preen her hair. She plucks some grit from her earlobe. The farther we get from the body, the more she returns to her usual shallow, regal self.

A storm's coming in off the water, the spring night almost chilly now. I crack my window and let the breeze brush across my throat. A few raindrops spatter across the interior of the car door and spritz my hot skin.

I pull to a red light and hear the night birds still singing. I shut my eyes and let their song carry my pulse for a minute. The swaying stop light creaks on the wire. A car pulls up behind me and the driver flicks the high beams. I check the rearview and try to make out the driver. The silhouette is large, looming over the steering wheel, crouching forward in an awkward pose. The body language is hateful, but the tightly tapped "toot toot" of the horn is friendly.

Linda says, "The light's changed."

I ease my foot down on the gas pedal. The driver behind lets me get a hundred feet ahead before filing in behind me. 25a has a lot of tight turns. I make three, driving slowly, but the car behind never catches up.

Things were vicious and ugly for Gary Lowers, right from the start, but he must've known they would be. Ricky started a fire using Gary's socks and the sleeves from his denim jacket as kindling for the wet firewood. I pictured it, Gary being forced to take off his shoes and hand his socks over, watching Ricky strike his lighter over and over trying to get them to burn. Standing barefoot in the dank, mossy undergrowth. The cold starlight cascading, his three friends growing more degenerate, abominable. The situation escalated when Ricky suggested they use some of Gary's hair in the blaze.

Lowers should've made a run for it then, but he stuck. He had a death wish. I'd known punks like that before. I might've even been one when I was younger. I might even be one now. You wanted to see how long you could last. You wanted to see who drew the line and who crossed it first. You want to face down the pale rider, you want to impale yourself upon the tips of black wings.

Ricky scuffled with Gary, bit him on the neck, then stabbed him in the belly, face, and chest. It started fast but then slowed down. It had to have gone on for hours.

"What kind of knife was it?" I ask.

Linda says, "I don't know. A switchblade, I think."

It wasn't. A switchblade would've snapped the first time it struck bone. No way could that much damage be inflicted on Gary's corpse with a hinged weapon.

I reach over and place my hand on her inner thigh. I take more tight curves. She's no longer wet. I let my fingers sweep and play. I touch her outer lips. She flinches. She grabs my wrist with both hands as if to stop me, but she isn't strong enough. She lays back in her seat, frowning at me. My thumb finds its way inside her. She grunts softly. She pouts. I wonder if she's about to cry. I've taken her black power over the situation and made it mine.

"Finish the story," I say.

She continues, panting now. She tells me how the others helped Ricky hold Gary down during the attack. By then Gary must've known he was dying, but he still went with it. All four of them tangled together like lovers in the mud and blood. His eyes being torn out, his guts spilling. While Gary lay dying Ricky commanded, "Say you love Satan."

Blind, Gary replied, "I love my mother." Like all suicides, he had a lot of guts.

Linda responds to my kneading, toying touch. She tries to grab my wrist again and stop me, but I snap loose and backhand her across her mouth almost gently. I work my fingers against her tongue and make her taste herself. She sucks on my thumb for a while. I replace my fingers inside her cunt and with only a few flicks of my thumbnail she cries out and cums.

I think about the eye-gouging. Even in prison, even on the ward, nobody ever went that far. Lunatics and cons had some personal restraint. I wonder if Ricky used the point of his blade, a burning sharp stick, his thumbs, or his teeth. Killing someone was one thing, but taking their eyes, that's something else. And Gary, unseeing, gushing, but still hanging on, unwilling to give in.

Linda, having achieved orgasm for the fourth time in the last half hour, stretches out in the front seat and places her feet in my lap. She works her toes against my crotch. I can see in the passing street lights that my palm print is visible, pink against the corner of her mouth. She whispers, "Ricky said that a crow brought him a message from Satan that morning, telling him to do it, to kill Gary." She says Ricky's name with reverence, adoration, perhaps even love. "And when it was done, the trees bent over and bowed to Ricky."

She stares at me, lit by the dashboard, and tries to gauge my reaction, to see if I believe. I shift into third and blaze past a sheriff's car parked in front of a pizza joint. I slow down in the hopes that he'll tear ass after me, give me a little run, really let me put the hammer down, get Linda warbling, but he doesn't follow.

She wants to go back and look at the dead kid's face again. I don't. She calls my name as if I'm very far away. Perhaps I am. The scene not only excites her sexually, she wants to be a part of the violence, the desecration of flesh, the revolt against God. I understand. She starts to masturbate in the passenger seat. She continues saying my name for a while before she switches over and calls out for Ricky. When she's done, she twists in her seat and unzips my fly, working me with her hand at first and then her tongue. I ride her face viciously. I ease down harder on the pedal. She looks up at me and giggles. She wants me to scream. She wants me dead. My cock is rock. My face is unmoved stone. I explode. The moonlight smashes down. I glance through the window at the occasional clusters of deep woods along the road. I see Gary Lowers without eyes, watching me. Linda cleans me off and zips me up. I slam it into fourth.