CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

A healthy heap of Knox gelatin kept Samuel’s towering blue mohawk molded atop his head—an eggish noggin attached to an underfed frame. He scratched at the emerging stubble that surrounded his appropriated hairstyle. He’d have to give it a nice fresh shave soon, keep it baby-bottom smooth. His attire was perfectly postured punk: a sleeveless, black-gone-grey Dead Kennedys shirt, a Crass patch—despite never actually listening to the band—meticulously sewn to the knee of his frayed jeans and a matching studded-leather bracelet and belt purchased from Fresh Affair—an “alt” store in the Sweetville Mall. A self-aware fashion victim, using his disguise as a weapon of infiltration. He reveled in the art of authenticity.

Music howled in the background of Samuel’s sparse bedroom, just loud enough to be heard in the bathroom. He had already forgotten the name of the band he was listening to. The record skipped incessantly, which sent him into an intense trance that became difficult to break.

He hocked a loogie—tinted pink from Sweet Candy—into the sink and walked over to the turntable to remove the needle, decided he wanted to enjoy the accidentally remixed music a moment longer, swayed with the rapid rhythm, then finally ended it, placed the record into the dust sleeve and tossed it onto a pile of dirty laundry—neglecting to protect it any further. He glanced at his pristine Exploited poster—also purchased at Fresh Affair—taped to the wall. The band’s iconic mohawked skull logo foreshadowed what Samuel might resemble once he was placed six feet under, were he to stick with this particular style. He decided he needed to muck the poster up a bit, so he shot a small spear of snot on it and smeared the globule around. He tore two of the corners and decided this was enough to make it authentic. Anyone who came to buy Sweet Candy from him would be none the wiser. He was just another dirty punk trying to make an extra buck.

Samuel’s current personal directives applied to his recently discovered fad as follows. First, use the cacophony of hardcore punk as a cloak in an attempt to assimilate with the underground. Earn the respect of the local music scene and move freely within it while searching for new Taste Subjects, for there were many lost souls looking for a cure to their psychological ailments. Discarded children who would never be missed. This was not wrong. It would be a near-charitable service.

Second, keep Cypress Glades in check with sex like vaginal Vicodin. She could not be allowed to eclipse his greatness. Though it might be distasteful, a man still had urges beyond even the deific.

As if haunted by serendipity, the phone rang. It was Cypress. She sounded desperate. Not like her normal self at all.

“Samuel? I need some Candy. Now.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in a—” was all he managed to get out as a reply before she hung up. He supposed he should have been used to this sort of behavior by now, but it still irked him every time she pulled this shit.

He dragged himself back to the bathroom mirror and practiced his sneer a few more times. The trick was to make it seem natural, like the whole world was beneath his decadent attitude. His image was not as effortless as he would have liked. Not yet. But it would have to do for now. Most of the people he interacted with would not be clear-minded enough to notice.

His charismatic ways worked wonders on the typical gutter punk, but Cypress Glades was a greater challenge. She was on an elevated level, often too sharp for her own good. If anyone were savvy enough to see through his costume it would be her, so Samuel had to take his approach a step beyond method acting. He had to convince even himself that he was no poser punk.

Samuel sometimes fantasized about persuading Cypress to partake in the act of Eating with him. He would even make sure to offer her only the whitest of meats. He thought she might relish in the experience if she gave it a chance. It would be pleasant to have a partner of equal stature sharing divine meals with him, like a marriage of messiahs spreading the gospel of what was once known as Consumption Enlightenment. But he couldn’t jeopardize his identity. For now, he needed to focus on making her believe in his appearance. Thankfully, she had requested a special delivery of Sweet Candy that she would likely devour immediately, so Samuel wouldn’t have to strain himself to uphold his false persona.

He wondered if it was even false anymore. He was beginning to enjoy this new lifestyle, if enjoyment could even be thought of as a word in his vocabulary. The Sweet Candy customers were plentiful. The women were often willing, if not exactly supermodels. The music was even starting to grow on him. Raw, reckless abandon channeled through sound. This was an approach he could support. He thought, perhaps one day, he could even become a vessel for this music from elsewhere. He could finally be reborn as The Angelghoul and receive the recognition he deserved. In the meantime, however, he enjoyed telling the younger crowd in Sweetville that he had “moved here from Los Angeles.” They would grill him for hours about the punk shows in such a big, thriving city. “Did you ever get to see Suicidal Tendencies with Louiche Mayorga on bass? What about T.S.O.L. before they sucked?” He answered nearly all of their excited queries with an emphatic yes, only offering up an occasional no to make the lie more believable. It was worth going through the trouble of such a balancing act just to see the looks of awe on their faces as he recounted tales that never actually occurred.

Punk really was no worse than any other subculture. Or no better, he supposed, but that was beside the point. Samuel needed to go where he would remain accepted, to whatever degree that might be. Stay at the top of the food chain. Better to be the ruler of scum than to bow down to an unworthy adversary.

He donned a weather-beaten, studded-leather jacket, “borrowed” from one of his more recent Taste Subjects, and headed for the door.

* * *

An hour later, he was huddled in Cypress’s bed, sweating profusely and struggling to ejaculate.

In the last few years, he had upgraded his body to an almost average size and weight, but not enough to strip him of the physicality that was synonymous with his former title as The Angelghoul. Despite this, he was still the antithesis of “in shape.”

Finding new Taste Subjects had become more and more difficult lately, despite the general apathy of the Sweetville Police Department. Samuel had seen too many public service announcements warning the naïve about the dangers of Eaters, and thus he had resorted to his current situation of going incognito. While this drought did not affect his libido in the slightest, it certainly had an impact on his performance.

He had been Cypress’s go-to sex man for several months now, even though she had technically been dating that drug-free dunce Christopher Faith. Normally, Samuel’s prowess was more than enough to make her purr. Today, however, he could tell she was definitely less than satisfied.

“Mmmm… Sammy baby. That was fucking hot.” As bitchy as Cypress could be, she at least had enough of a kind streak to protect his ego. Perhaps she had missed her calling as an actress. She wrapped her naked body in the only remaining cover—a wool comforter with a gigantic Iron Cross placed directly in the center. Samuel wondered if it had been special-ordered or knitted by her grandmother.

“Yes. Very.” Samuel was a stoic man of many deep and intelligent thoughts, yet of little verbalization. He also felt he might blow his cover if he spoke too much. Many of the young men he had encountered within the confines of the punk scene had too much to say with too little substance. Samuel felt he might stand out if he attempted to spread his wisdom too much amongst the peons. Through Consumption Enlightenment, he had learned that none of their armchair politics were worth a damn, though the emotions behind them were often useful passions that fueled their flavorful flesh.

“You know,” Cypress said, “you should come to one of our Hitlerjugend rallies one of these days. We could always use another good white man showing his support.” This was stated as casually as if she were a housewife inviting her neighbor to a weekly book club.

Samuel picked up a doll that was squeezed between Cypress’s bed and nightstand. It wore a home-sewn Klansman outfit, but the sheets were closer to off-white or cream. He removed the hood, only to discover it was a suspiciously tan Cabbage Patch Kid. Cypress snatched the doll from him, shoved the hood on and chucked it to the far corner of the bedroom.

“Hmm. Probably not. But I’ll think about it.” Samuel appreciated clandestine activities and understood the attraction to Cypress’s cause, that purity was something worth striving for. He also knew that such a concept could never exist. All people were bonded by blood and, though that blood may have tasted slightly different from race to race, it was always just a variation of the same theme. Like the difference between bananas and plantains. Or long pig and hairless goat. Not enough to claim one sample was superior to the next. “I thought about it,” he said. “Again, probably not.”

People were all just potential excrement anyway, fertilizer for the soil. For the soul.

Samuel offered Cypress a small handful of the Sweet Candy. “New formula. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

She took the pills, threw them in her mouth, barely paused to chew—just enough to attain a quick high—then washed them down with a half can of lukewarm beer that had been festering on her nightstand. Samuel treated himself to a dose as well.

He asked Cypress to insert the pill as a suppository, but she ignored him. He did not let that stop him from pursuing his preferred method by means of his own hands. Three pills this time as he had built up too much of a tolerance.

“I’d like to take a shower,” he said. Cypress looked at him questioningly. “Don’t take it personal. I just feel a little extra sweaty today. It’s…humid out.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever. God knows you could use one. Have a blast.” Cypress was clearly trying to restrain the Sweet Candy quivers already taking control of her body. She curled herself into a ball, faced the filthy white wall and made gurgling noises.

Samuel, like always, had still been more or less fully dressed when he mounted Cypress. He was ashamed of his undefined, cadaverous body and never felt comfortable letting anyone see the two insignificant nubs growing on his back, just beneath his shoulder blades. He only wanted to reveal them when they reached their full glory. Then, and only then, he would display them with pride. Until that time, the nubs were a hideous embarrassment.

His pants around his ankles, Samuel waddled to Cypress’s bathroom. He nearly tripped on a detached tile in front of the toilet. Once the door was shut, he kicked off his loosely-laced work boots, wiggled off his jeans, removed his leather jacket and tattered shirt, turned the water knob all the way over to the red zone, pulled back the Rainbow Brite shower curtain and stepped into the tub.

The scalding water immediately melted his perfectly coiffed mohawk. The blue hair mopped around his head, transforming him into a reject from Jim Henson’s workshop. Urine trickled from his penis and formed into tiny lemon needles as it rode the shower’s stream. Loose strands of hair rode the shower’s waterfall and wedged into the drain, resembling mysterious aquatic worms. Backed-up brackish water mixed with his own fluids and feculence tickled at his toes, so he soaped and lathered his body, scrubbed it roughly until grew raw and irritated, then rinsed. Then repeated. Rinsed. Repeated.

The water soothed him. He felt the Sweet Candy kicking in. He hiccupped twice, then spit out something black and glutinous, which repeated countless times like a looping videotape. Physical manifestations of musical notes twisted and strutted from between his parted lips, spinning around him in a wet whirlwind. They formed a fanciful merry-go-round. It was a Disney moment. The notes grew bored with their madcap dance and their intentions became decidedly more adult.

They nipped at his nipples and cupped his junk and caressed his buttocks, which was unwelcome, though not lacking a sense of arousal. A large portion of the living, breathing, playful sounds launched themselves down the drain, filling the tub further, while others narrowed their figures and wedged their way into his urethra, which should have been excruciating but was strangely orgasmic.

The tub was now half full, the gap between the water’s edge and the tub’s lip quickly closing, so he eased himself down to submerge his body, ignoring the discomfort in his groin as best he could. He tricked his lungs, allowing himself to approach a state of drowning, knowing he would not perish within the filthy baptism. It would be a temporary death. A modern version of la petit mort. He stroked his shaft in rapid rhythms and emptied what was left in his artesian semen well until it ran dry, and the ejaculate streamed endlessly until the bathwater more closely resembled cheap hand soap. A few moments of private ecstasy, visions of mermaids with liberty spikes, and he opened his eyes and the water had gone down the drain

He pulled himself up and grabbed the first clean-looking towel from the rack and dried himself off, completely neglecting his dripping back. He reached back and stroked his nubs and found that they had grown exponentially. His wings would soon sprout, puffy pillow-white feathered wings. And, oh, how high he would fly.