Clown in the Moonlight

6

It's what I expect. They fight over me in a silly, endless, half-hearted, territorial war of attrition. They treat me like a pack mule that isn't moving up the canyon trail quickly enough. They beat my back. They dig their nails in, bite, wrench me one way and then the other. They straddle and pound and chomp. I'm bleeding from a dozen tiny wounds. This has nothing to do with me. After a while they begin to go at each other. It starts off mean and eventually becomes tempestuous. It would be a turn-on if it wasn't so predictable. They love themselves, and they're so much alike that they love each other, in a self-hatred kind of way. They're ravenous. I watch for a while. I participate when they let me. They command each other to do filthier and filthier acts. They demand I abuse them. I comply. I pulse. I grow charred. I can't degrade them deeply enough for their satisfaction. Prill is at the door, listening. He kicks at the knob twice but the lock holds. What did he expect? How could he not know? The girls devour me. I clamp my eyes shut and watch the shadows move on the other side of my burning red eyelids. I see Gary Lowers's eyeless face turning in the rain to look at me. He implores me to do something. I don't know what. There's no hope for justice or redemption anymore, he'll never rest, and neither will I. Maybe he just wants a grave, even a shallow one. I could go back and bury him, but what's the point? The dirt has rejected him. The kids will make fun of him just the same. I wuv my mommy. I love my mother too. I miss her more and more every day. My father calls her name out in the night. He slams his fists into the walls like he's beating her again, but she's finally beyond his reach. It's slowly killing him, not having her anymore. He sometimes stands in my bedroom doorway at dawn, but I'm always awake and ready. He wants me dead or he wants me to kill him. Maybe both. I know I'm capable. Gwen and Linda roll across the mattress. They're on the floor, they're on the desk. They're spread against the window. They muffle their cries with each other's flesh. Their nails groove the sill. Branches flail in the breeze, wanting to scratch the girls, wishing them to bleed more deeply. Gwen tumbles across the night stand and Linda pounces. I join her. The bitter taste of blood, tequila, pussy, and shit fills my head. At one point I tear strips from the sheets and use them to bind the girls. First one, while we work on her. Then the other. Until I stand above them, alone, rigid, in the darkness, all the light bulbs shattered. We see each others' eyes by moonlight. Their knotted gags are too tough to chew through. It's not so different from what happened to Lowers, in its own way. Sex transcends itself, a fusion of violence and sacrifice. I stand, waiting, my pulse in tune with theirs, with Ricky's. The walls throb with bass guitars and percussion. Snatches of lyrics catch my attention. I lean over the bed. Linda asked if I'd ever killed anyone. I hiss at her, "Yes." I do things to them with whatever I can find in the desk drawer, in the closet, under the bed, with my body. It's loud and merciless. By the time I cut them loose they're both sobbing, clinging to each other and quivering, sated, terrified and cowed, and I know I have to leave. The storm wants inside. Its force can't match my own. Rain on the window scrawls out my past and hints about the future. The glass trembles as if pecked by the beaks of crows. I imagine my father out there peeking in, wanting in. The girls lick the running blood from each other. They dress me before they dress themselves. They thank me.