A Mutual Friend Read online

  I asked Flannery for verification. “Was he like this when you got him from the Happy Hour?”

  “No!” Flannery protested. “I swear, he was just your garden variety stiff, really cold too because Dr. Moog kept him in that chest freezer. I can vouch that he did not have a slice down the center of his chest.”

  In a lower voice, King asked me, “What did he take, can you tell?”

  “The heart,” I said right away. Taking Lily’s knife, I drew back the flap with the tip blade even farther to reveal a gaping cavity where the heart should’ve been. Barclay had made clean cuts of aortas and vessels and the cavity had filled with blood, but there wasn’t as much as there should’ve been. King and I looked from each other to the stovetop, then back at each other.

  Then back to the stove.

  We became galvanized at the same split second, hurling our bodies toward the stove. I think Twinkletoes got the picture at the same time, but he yelled, “Oh, gross!” and ran for the protection of the doorway, as if an earthquake were about to hit.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” shrieked Thalhammer, coming up behind us with Flannery and Lily.

  King had his hand on the blender full of atria and ventricles. He looked like a game show host presenting a prize, that’s how smooth he was. He said to Thalhammer, “We kid you not, Thalhammer. Barclay Samples removed Crusty’s heart and blended it into a smoothie.”

  From the safety of his doorway, Twinkletoes yelled, “What did he add to it? Kale?”

  Lily even giggled. “Chia seeds?”

  The dodo king had seen enough. “That’s fucking it! Flannery, come with me! No, wait. Better yet, you stay here to keep an eye on Crusty. Make sure that weirdo doesn’t eviscerate any more of Crusty’s innards. We don’t have money for cremation, but we can bury him up in the mountains somewhere.”

  “The Bent Zealots will pay for cremation,” I said as Thalhammer stalked out. “Barclay is their charge,” I added, weaker. I was pretty sure the Zealots would be glad to do it when they heard about this bullshit.

  “Listen,” said King, “can you do some hocus pocus in Barclay’s room? The rest of us can move this body downstairs to the accounting kitchen. I think electricity’s still on down there.”

  “Yeah, it is,” said Twinkletoes. “I used their bathroom after Thalhammer ate chili at the Pour House and made our bathroom uninhabitable. But let me come with you, Antonio. I’m of more help with spirits than bodies.”

  “I saw that thing in Barclay’s room,” Twinkletoes said confidentially as we headed down the hall. “It had scales. Looked like a reptile. No eyes, though.”

  “Yes, that’s it. Over by the coatrack, right?”

  “Right. Why’s it got such a thing against your dildo?”

  I shrugged. “These entities don’t like it when people have fun. That black mass is the most common way a demon shows itself. They try to drag us down to their level that rejects all that’s positive in life.”

  “What’s their point? Just plain evil?”

  “Yes. Their goal usually is to possess a person’s body or drive them to commit murder or suicide.”

  Twinkletoes paused, my hand on Barclay’s doorknob. “Uh,” he said.

  I smiled my most assuring smile. “It’ll be okay. This thing is attached to Barclay Samples. Just stand behind me and imitate what I do. Back me up. We’re going to be loud, angry white men.”

  “Oh, I can do that,” said Twinkletoes as I turned the knob.

  The room was so cold that I breathed out visible puffs, and the smell was so rancid my nostrils actually recoiled. But I felt confident. I’d dealt with worse than this before. This thing that called itself Beelzebub was one of the seven princes of hell. If true, it was the Lord of the Flies.

  “God does not allow this to happen,” I called out to no one in particular. “People allow it to happen. A demon can’t force you to act against your will. But it can influence someone like Barclay to commit acts he might not otherwise."

  “Like the dogs,” Twinkletoes breathed, behind me.

  I removed the cross from my neck and stood tall. Twinkletoes’ silhouette etched the doorway like the more famous exorcist. I bellowed, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I demand you show your true identity. In the name of Jesus Christ! Are you a demon?”

  “Beelzebub,” oozed the thing as it fluctuated by the coatrack.

  I walked swiftly to the blanket covering the window and yanked it down, pushpins flying. The light, oddly, didn’t reveal any more features to the black hole of the demon. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! Are you a demon?”

  Twinkletoes pointed at something past my shoulder. Still holding out my cross, I craned my neck. Unbelievably, it looked like some lights, Christmas tree style, had been arranged on the London Bridge to form an upside-down cross. Those lights must’ve been fifteen, twenty feet high! Yet I knew it had to be a major coincidence, a prank committed by some local kids.

  “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!” repeated Twinkletoes. “Are you a demon?”

  This time some drawers came sliding out of the attorney’s desk. They had stops to them, so couldn’t fly out of the desk altogether, but the contents were shaken around and boxes of staples and paper clips arced through the air.

  In response, I grabbed one of Barclay’s black candles and lobbed it into the fluorescent hallway. I quoted Deuteronomy. “’Let there not be found among you anyone who immolates his son or daughter in the fire, nor a fortune teller, soothsayer, charmer, diviner, or caster of spells, nor one who consults ghosts and—”

  “Who do you think you are?” roared the viscous blob with no discernible mouth. “Consults ghosts and spirits or seeks oracles from the dead. Anyone who does such things is an abomination to the Lord.”

  “You are being enabled by Barclay Samples,” I shouted. “I command thee, you unclean spirit, O Serpent of Old. By the judge of the living and the dead. By the Creator of the—“

  “Hey, what the fuck’s going on in here?”

  Barclay Samples appeared behind Twinkletoes. This seemed to set off something in the demon, for it rushed as I’d never seen it move before. It darted past, or almost through, Twinkletoes, and from thence down the hallway, I imagined.

  “Whoa!” yelled Twinkletoes.

  “There’s that fucking thing again!” Barclay shouted.

  I took three long strides to the doorway. “We’re trying to get rid of that thing for you, Barclay, did you see where it went?”

  “Yeah, the kitchen,” both men said in tandem.

  “By the way, buddy,” I heard Twinkletoes say behind me as I raced down the hall, “we know what you did to those dogs. You’re lucky we don’t turn you over to the Humane Society.”

  Or the police for immolating a corpse.

  In fact, I didn’t see the demon in the kitchen, but Barclay rushed right up to the fridge, which someone had set back upright, and tore open the door. He obviously didn’t care if we knew there used to be a heartless corpse in there. That was a sign of the true psychotic—that he didn’t even try to cover his tracks. Barclay’s face betrayed the most emotion I’d seen in the kid yet. He was truly shocked that his beloved source of blood had vanished, although of course the inside of the fridge was awash with gore and squirming maggots.

  Barclay reached in and smeared his fingertips all over the crusted blood. He rubbed what he had on his newly bald head, then shoved his fingers in his mouth and sucked. He yelled something unintelligible at us.

  “Don’t speak with your mouth full,” said Flannery, entering the kitchen.

  “Yeah,” agreed Lily. “Spit it out.”

  But Barclay continued going mum odi is issin. His free hand scooped up more blood which he patted atop his head like a yarmulke. King, arms folded across his chest, nodded. What did he know that I didn’t?

  “Sorry, buddy, but that wasn’t your body,” he told Barclay. “The reason it’s miss
ing is because we can’t allow you to cut it up any longer.”

  Barclay and I got the same idea at the same time. We both made a leap toward the blender of heart smoothie. The lid was off, and Barclay grappled so violently for it, the drink sloshed around in the glass container, spraying both our faces with bloody blobs. When King came to elbow Barclay out of the way, we won, and we both jumped to dump the contents down the sink.

  Barclay slapped his forehead, creating a halo of blood. We’d never be able to eat in this kitchen again. His eyes looked dilated, as though his Haldol had just kicked in, and he uttered, “Mysterium Iniquitatis.”

  “The mystery of evil,” I said, almost with disgust. “Listen, Barclay, don’t you think it’d be better if you were back at Mencken? You liked it there, didn’t you?”

  “Mencken isn’t equipped for me.”

  “I’ll say,” snorted Flannery.

  “I bit the heads off birds. They read my diary and called me Dracula.”

  Flannery did a spit take. “You think?”

  I held up a calming hand to the neo-Nazi. “Tomorrow I’ll go talk to them. Wouldn’t that be nice to have a safe place to stay?”

  “A place with no blood!”

  I could see that even if I succeeded in getting Mencken to take Barclay back, he would not go lightly. Many of their inmates probably didn’t. If Beelzebub followed Barclay to Mencken, maybe I could continue the work in a safer atmosphere. But here, with clashing squatters at each other’s throats, and two wannabe bikers who’d rather jump on each other and rip each other’s clothes off, well . . . the tension was so thick you could cut it with a two-by-four.

  Now Barclay was saying, “My dad pays for my bills. He pays my rent here.”

  “We have no rent here,” said Flannery. “That’s the point.”

  “I’ve never had to work. I have more time to watch the flying saucers from the roof of this building. I could never go back to my mother’s house! It’s surrounded by Nazis that were all over my high school, out to get me for my Jewish heritage!”

  Flannery stepped up, displaying a flexed bicep. “How’s about this ink? What do you think about that?”

  Barclay shrugged. “It’s very nicely done. Maybe I should tattoo my head.”

  Flannery said, “These three triangles are neo-Nazi symbols. It’s the Valknot, the knot of slain, showing my willingness to die for the Norse God Odin, probably in battle”—he looked around meaningfully from Lily to me to King—“like Crusty did.”

  I said, “I think Flannery’s point is, Barclay didn’t react to his tattoos. Is that right?”

  Flannery nodded. He looked as if he wanted to spit on Barclay. “Bogus piece of shit. He’s just apeshit, that’s all. No UFOs or Nazis.”

  King snapped, “Aren’t you going to go squat with your buddies in the sporting goods shop?”

  Flannery sneered at King. “Maybe. I want to stick around to make sure this crazoid is safely delivered to some sort of institution. Even if it’s jail.”

  That night, I moved my room so I’d be next to King. He had some definite sleep disorders that could only be compounded by the presence of the entity.

  Flannery moved in next door to Lily.

  L

  H

  aving somewhat reconciled with Anton, I relaxed and became very sleepy. Although two couches in the reception area must have drifted into the middle of the room and engaged in sexual positions, and a fire started spontaneously in a bathroom garbage can, I fell right to sleep. Nothing had been touched in my room the whole time I’d been in the Nichols Building. In my mind, to protect me and my office, I envisioned a sort of white light keeping out evil. I had heard about that technique, somewhere in California of course.

  I must’ve slept a dreamless sleep for the first several hours. It wasn’t ‘til near sunrise that I had the most incredible experience of my life. Well, it didn’t start out that incredibly. As happens a lot in dreams, I was walking down my high school hallway, looking for a class I was late for. When I pushed the classroom door open, I took note of my hands. “A dream! This is a fucking dream!” I thought. I was aware within the dream.

  My soul was filled with possibilities. I didn’t need to attend that stupid class! Bliss and energy surged up inside me as I turned a different doorknob. I knew that I could create anything behind that door. The options were endless!

  I was stumped when the open door revealed a brick wall. Was this symbolic? Then I remembered what had triggered the awareness inside the dream. I looked back at my hands and became consumed by them. My palm was an enormous canyon, each print a row of gullies. My consciousness zoomed through them like a microscopic speck of energy. Canyon walls towered above me, but at the same time I knew they were the prints of my fingers.

  Rocketing here and there, I was having the time of my life, but I popped back to the school room. I wondered what I should do next. Feeling a massive urge to fly again, I took off like a missile through the roof. The sensation of invincible power was overwhelming. Was I levitating, like the saints? I zipped through fluffy clouds, past rainbows of indescribable hues, colors not seen on this earth. I saw no one else, but I didn’t feel alone. It was almost as though the landscape was populated with cheery friends. As in a little kid’s book, the rainbows were my pals.

  It ended so abruptly I must’ve gasped when I woke. Raising my torso, I rubbed my head. Something was off about the room. Maybe I was still dreaming. But no, Anton sat behind me on the floor.

  “King. King. You were making noises. Were you having a nightmare?”

  As I swiveled my torso to face Anton, I saw what the problem was. Someone had ransacked my duffel bag and tossed the contents all over the room. Law books from a shelf were strewn on the carpet.

  “What the hell happened here?” I asked. Then I noticed Anton only wore boxer briefs. His well-developed chest boasted a silken carpet of black hair converging into that exquisite arrow down the center of his tight abs. He sat back casually, as though he were accustomed to dangling one wrist on a knee, his thighs splayed. His thick slug of a cock filled his crotch nicely at half-mast. I never closed the blinds, preferring to see the bridge. Now I noticed a long, thick slash down one of his arms. “What happened to you?”

  Anton cupped my chin in his palm. “I’m more worried about you. Another of those sleep paralysis things?”

  “No, not at all.” I forked my fingers through my hair, knowing it was a ginger mess of a cloud. “The opposite, actually. I was flying through the ozone at warp speed. It was great. Doesn’t look like this office was having such a great time, though. Did you hear any of this shit hitting the floor? Those are some heavy books.” I wrapped my fingers around his wrist, indicating he not remove his hand.

  He scooted closer to my sleeping bag. I couldn’t tear my eyes off his half-erect dick lolling against his thigh. It was obvious where I looked, but I didn’t care. “Yeah, I heard the books. I thought you were having some kind of hissy fit in here.”

  I grinned lazily. “Not at all. But what’s on your arm?” I cradled his shoulder in my palm, so we were sort of locked together. My dick hardened under the polyester down of my sleeping bag. It twitched with such animation Anton’s eyes momentarily flickered to watch it. We were swimming in oxytocin, and neither of us seemed to want to deny it.

  He looked into my eyes. “That happened when I first entered your room. It’s like you’ve got a friend in old Beelzebub, and he didn’t want me coming in here. A giant claw hit my arm, but I saw nothing.”

  I allowed my gaze to drift out the window. “Sun’s rising. Our demon pal should be gone by now.” I looked back at Anton. I wasn’t about to make the first move again. I wasn’t about to ask for a kiss, even though he’d apologized. Everything was up to him.

  He inched a little closer, still caressing my chin. The elegance of his Catalan accent was enough to plump my dick to a full erection. I wanted to fling back the sleeping bag and display my desire for him, but I held back. “King. I wa
s incredibly rude to you yesterday. I just got out of a relationship where I was the sub and I thought that had something to do with Noel not wanting me.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone not wanting you,” I whispered.

  “It was my refusal to stand up for our relationship that came between us. I need to have the conviction of my beliefs, King. I need to admit to the world, and to these fucking neo-Nazis especially, that I crave you.”

  Emboldened, I put my free hand on his thigh just inches from his twitching penis. “I crave you too, you fucking priest. But I don’t know where it’s going. I’m going to be in deep shit with the Zealots. My father needs me back home. My back is fucked, but I have to work.”

  His thumb traced the outline of my lower lip. “We’ll figure it all out, King. We’re fighting a completely wicked wisdom in this building, and we’re here to save Barclay Samples from it, if we can.”

  “Not if it means killing or injuring ourselves. Look at your arm.” My thumb traced a swishing pattern on his thigh, too. His big dick shuddered at my touch. I wanted nothing more than to grab a giant handful of his meat and squeeze it for dear life, but everything hung in the balance now.

  He shrugged. “I’ve been beaten up worse by demons. Handfuls of hair ripped out, giant claw marks across my back, a grandfather clock fell on me.”

  “A grandfather clock?”

  His grin was so seductive. “It pinned me to the ground like a squashed bug.”

  His eyes flickered, and he sucked up my lower lip. I finally exhaled with relief, taking his upper lip between my teeth and nibbling. My hand on his shoulder slid up to cradle his skull, my fingers massaging circles beneath his thick black hair.

  And my hand had a mind of its own. It jumped up to grab a handful of cock, firm and hot beneath the thin covering of his briefs. My thumb massaged the stiff ridge of his corona, eliciting a groan deep in his throat.

  His tongue slithered past my lip, and I sucked on it. We were just two ordinary men making out, neither one leaping to dominate the other, the scales perfectly in balance. How long would that last? How long until I, the born Dom, flipped him over on his knees, whipped down his briefs, and spanked that muscular ass ‘til it was beet red? Or would Anton, the wannabe Dom, straddle me flat on my back and slap my face with his big ballsac?