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I Tell You It's
Love
For Lew Shiner
The beautiful woman had no eyes, just sparkles of light where they should
have beenor so it seemed in the candlelight. Her lips, so warm and
inviting, so wickedly wild and suggestive of strange pleasures, held
yet a hint of disaster, as if they might be fat red things skillfully
molded from dried blood.
"Hit me," she said.
That is my earliest memory of her: a doll for my beating, a doll for my
love.
I laid it on her with that black silk whip, slapping it across her
shoulders and back, listening to the whisper of it as it rode down,
delighting in the flat pretty sound of it striking her flesh.
She did not bleed, which was a disappointment. The whip was too soft, too
flexible, too difficult to strike hard with.
"Hurt me," she said softly. I went to where she kneeled. Her
arms were outstretched, crucifixion style, and bound to the walls on
either side with strong silk cord the color and texture of the whip in my
hand.
I slapped her. "Like it?" I asked. She nodded and I slapped her
again . . . and again. A one-two rhythm, slow and melodic, time and
again.
"Like it?" I repeated, and she moaned, "Yeah, oh yeah.
Later, after she was untied and had tidied up the blood from her lips and
nose, we made brutal loveme with my thumbs bending the flesh of her
throat, she with her nails entrenched in my back. She said to me when
we were finished, "Let's do someone.
That's how we got started. Thinking back now, once again I say I'm glad
for fate; glad for Gloria; glad for the memory of the crying sounds,
the dripping blood and the long sharp knives that murmured
through flesh like a lover's whisper cutting the dark.
Yeah, I like to think back to when I walked hands-in-pockets down the dark
wharves in search of that special place where there were said to be
special women with special pleasures for a special man like me.
I walked on until I met a sailor leaning up against a wall smoking a
cigarette, and he says when I ask about the place, "Oh, yeah, I
like that sort of pleasure myself. Two blocks down, turn right, there
between the warehouses, down the far end. You'll see the light."
And he pointed and I walked on, faster.
Finding it, paying for it, meeting Gloria was the goal of my dreams. I was
more than a customer to that sassy, dark mamma with the sparkler
eyes. I was the link to fit her link. We made two strong, solid bonds
in a strange cosmic chain. You could feel the energy flowing through
us; feel the iron of our wills. Ours was a mating made happily in
hell.
So time went by and I hated the days and lived
for the nights when I whipped her, slapped her, scratched her, and
she did the same to me. Then one night she said, "It's not enough.
Just not enough anymore. Your blood is sweet and
your pain is fine, but I want to see death like you see a movie, taste
it like licorice, smell it like flowers, touch it like cold, hard
stone.
I laughed, saying, "I draw the line at dying for you." I took
her by the throat, fastened my grip until her breathing was a whistle
and her eyes protruded like bloated corpse bellies.
"That's not what I mean," she managed. And then came the
statement that brings us back to what started it all: "Let's do
someone.
I laughed and let her go.
"You know what I mean?" she said. "You know what I'm
saying.
"I know what you said. I know what you mean." I smiled. "I
know very well.
"You've done it before, haven't you?
"Once," I said, "in a shipyard, not that long ago.
"Tell me about it. God, tell me about it.
"It was dark and I had come off ship after
six months out, a long six months with the men, the ship and the sea.
So I'm walking down this dark alley, enjoying
the night like I do, looking for a place with the dark ways, our kind
of ways, baby, and I came upon this old wino lying in a doorway, cuddling
a bottle to his face as if it were a lady's loving hand.
"What did you do?
"I kicked him," I said, and Gloria's smile was a beauty to
behold.
"Go on," she said.
"God, how I kicked him. Kicked him in the face until there was no
nose, no lips, no eyes. Only red mush dangling from shrapneled bone; looked like a melon that had been
dropped from on high, down into a mass of broken white pottery chips.
I touched his face and tasted it with my tongue and my lips.
"Ohh," she sighed, and her eyes
half-closed. "Did he scream?
"Once. Only once. I kicked him too hard, too fast, too soon. I
hammered his head with the toes of my shoes, hammered until my cuffs
were wet and sticking to my ankles.
"Oh God," she said, clinging to me, "let's do it, let's do
it.
We did. First time
was a drizzly night and we caught an old woman out.
She was a lot of fun until we got the knives out and then she went
quick. There was that crippled kid next, lured him from the
theater downtown, and how we did that was a stroke of genius. You'll find
his wheelchair not far from where you found the van and the other
stuff.
But no matter. You know what we did, about the kinds of tools we had,
about how we hung that crippled kid on that meat hook in my van until
the flies clustered around the doors thick as grapes.
And of course there was the little girl. It was a brilliant idea of
Gloria's to get the kid's tricycle into the act. The things she did
with those spokes. Ah, but that woman was a connoisseur of pain.
There were two others, each quite fine, but not as nice as the last. Then
came the night Gloria looked at me and said, "It's not enough.
Just won't do.
I smiled. "No way, baby. I still won't die for you.
"No," she gasped, and took my arm. "You miss my drift. It's
the pain I need, not just the watching. I can't live through them,
can't feel it in me. Don't you see, it would be the ultimate.
I looked at her, wondering did I have it right.
"Do you love me?
"I do," I said.
"To know that I would spend the last of my life with you, that my
last memories would be the pleasure of your face, the feelings of
pain, the excitement, the thrill, the terror.
Then I understood, and understood good. Right
there in the car I grabbed her, took her by the throat and cracked
her head up against the windshield, pressed her back, choked, released,
choked, made it linger. By this time I was quite
a pro. She coughed, choked, smiled. Her eyes swung from fear to love. God
it was wonderful and beautiful and the finest experience we had ever
shared.
When she finally lay still there in the seat, I was trembling, happier
than I had ever been. Gloria looked fine, her eyes rolled up, her
lips stretched in a rictus smile.
I kept her like that at my place for days, kept her in my bed until the
neighbors started to complain about the smell.
I've been talking to this guy and he's got some
ideas. Says he thinks I'm one of the future generation, and
the fact of that scares him all to hell. A social mutation, he says. Man's
primitive nature at the height of the primal scream.
Dog shit, we're all the same, so don't look at me like I'm some kind of
freak. What does he do come Monday night? He's watching the football
game, or the races or boxing matches, waiting for a car to overturn
or for some guy to be carried out of the ring with nothing but mush left
for brains. Oh yeah, he and I are similar, quite alike. You see, it's
in us all. A low-pitch melody not often heard, but there just
the same. In me it peaks and thuds, like drums and brass and strings.
Don't fear it. Let it go. Give it the beat and amplify. I tell
you it's love of the finest kind.
So I've said my piece and I'll just add this: when they fasten my arms and
ankles down and tighten the cap, I hope I feel the pain and delight
in it before my brain sizzles to bacon, and may I smell the frying
of my very own flesh. . . .
Well, that was damn cheery! Head on back here Thursday, September 22, for
another dose of Champion Joe's sunshine and glory!
"I Tell You It's Love" was originally published
in Modern Stories. It later appeared in By Bizarre Hands, a
collection published by Avon Books, and Bumper Crop, a collection
published 2004 by Golden Gryphon Press. "I Tell You It's Love" ©
1983 By Bizarre Hands, LLC. All rights reserved.
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