It took half a day to pack eighteen years of life into a dozen cardboard boxes. Nathaniel sat on the bed with his back to the wall killing time with a pen and a sketchbook. The clock displayed “1:00 PM,” but he wasn’t too irked; Jithinia was always late.

He met Jithinia at a football game, homecoming to be precise, which was bizarre since they both hated the sport. She was fragile beauty, some dark doll all white frills, black ribbons and lace, and long legs in fishnets and high, high heels. Her eyes were old copper, and she made them look big like a Japanese cartoon girl’s. He couldn’t remember exactly what utterance slipped past those pale blue lips that night, but those words were soft, like a cat tiptoeing on an angel’s frosted breath, and they crept in through his ears, tickled his insides, and made him feel warm and all right.

“Watcha doin’?” David said, poking his head around the door like a disembodied ghoul. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” He was two years older than Nathaniel and felt it was his civic duty to give his brother shit.

“Can’t you knock?” Nathaniel said.

“Nay, little brother,” the head said, and then its body appeared. “It’s my civic duty to give you shit.”

When Nathaniel was sixteen, David snooped through his brother’s journal and learned a secret. He tore out March 29th, the day Nathaniel lost his virginity to Jithinia. She was twenty-three at the time. David didn’t tell mom and dad. No, that would’ve spoiled the fun. Instead, he spent the next two years making idle threats and snaking his little brother for fifty bucks a month.

“Le’me see,” David said, reaching for the sketchbook.

“No!”

“Why not?”

“It’s none of your business. Fuck off.”

“The fuck! Give it here,” David said and snatched for the sketch. Nathaniel clutched it tightly against his chest. David pounced on his little brother like the captain of the high school wrestling team and muscled Nathaniel’s head against the mattress. Nathaniel squirmed, turned six shades of flush pink, and pushed them both from the bed to the floor, landing on top of David. The sketchpad hit the floor beside them.

“Fuckin’ faggot!” David barked. He kicked Nathaniel twice in the ribs and flipped him to the floor, and then pinned him down with a pit bull’s grip. “Hoorrrrckt!” David found a loogie in the back of his throat and dangled it over Nathaniel’s face.

“Fuckin’ get off me!” Nathaniel screamed.

There was a knock at the door. “It’s Jithinia.”

“Its open,” David said, and he let his captive free.

“What’s up?” Nathaniel said, straightening his shirt. He sat down on the bed.

“Said ceiling,” was the reply, and like a spider she sat down beside him. “Happy Birthday.” She kissed his still flushed cheek.

“Thank you.”

“It sucks,” David said, dropping the sketchpad into Nathaniel’s lap. He made good use of the door and took his head and body out through it at the same time.

“Can I see?” Jithinia said.

“Uh-huh.” As he handed her the sketch, he pursed his lips together and pushed air in between his gum and upper lip.

“It’s nice,” she said, inspecting the creature on the page. “I like the wings.”

“I think I’ll paint it, maybe.” He stood and found his likeness in the mirror. His hair was a mess, his eyeliner smeared from the skirmish. “I look like shit.” His ribs hurt, and he could see blue-black fingerprints staining his pale wrist.

Jithinia wrapped her arms around his waist. “Huh-uh. You look beautiful.”

Nathaniel smiled at her reflection and then bit his lower lip. “Let’s go home,” he said.

The two plodded up and down stairs, piling boxes by the door. The house smelled sweet with tomatoes and oregano, and his mother smiled like a plastic trinket of the Virgin Mary. “Nate, sweetheart, lunch is almost ready.”

The food did smell good, like nostalgia, but it was salted with lies. “No thanks,” was all Nathaniel could say.

“Honey, you need to eat,” she said. “I made spaghetti, no meat, and I made you a Red Velvet cake. Aren’t you hungry, Jay-thine-ya?”

“It’s Jith-een-ee-ya, and yes, ma’am, I am. We’d love to have lunch.” Then she and Nathaniel stepped outside to smoke a cigarette.

“Why’d you do that?” Nathaniel said, lighting a Lucky.

“Your mom made dinner for you, asshole. She was about to cry.”

Nathaniel bit his lip and looked to his feet. He wiggled back and forth, half perched on his tippee toes. “I’m just ready to get the fuck out of here.”

“I know, angel. It’s an hour, hour and a half tops.”

“It’s fucking cold out here.”

“Don’t think about it,” Jithinia said.

So he didn’t, and it really wasn’t cold anymore. “Hey,” he said. “What’s the difference between a group of Protestants and a group of white supremacists?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Only one group attends church.”

“Cute,” Jithinia said, dropping her cigarette into the snow. “Let’s put those boxes in the car, eat, and get the hell outta dodge.”

The twosome had just moved the last box from the house to the car when Nathaniel’s dad came home. His greasy, graying hair needed to be combed back over the bald spot on top of his head. He wore a red flannel shirt too tight on his large belly, and his face needed a shave. His eyes were brown like a cockroach and bulged out from puffy sockets. His breath and skin smelled sour like rotten cat food. “Who’s that?” he said, meaning Jithinia.

Since Nathaniel was eighteen, and it didn’t matter anymore, David took it upon himself to introduce Jithinia as Nathaniel’s girlfriend. “Pay up,” he said. “I told you he’s not a fag.”

Nathaniel’s dad looked Jithinia over with a sneer across his mug. “You really his girlfriend?” he asked.

“Yes, she is,” Nathaniel said.

“Hush, boy. I’m talking to her. Why you dressed like that? You a witch? You worship Satan?”

“I think I can say I’m just as Christian as you are, sir,” Jithinia said.

“She’s sassy ain’t she? You two need to get your souls right with the Lord. How much’d you pay for her, Nate? Ask me, a buck fifty’d be too much. Trollop.”

“F, f, fuck you,” Nathaniel spat.

Nathaniel’s dad grabbed his son by his shirt and shoved him across the coffee table to the floor. “Take your whore and get outta my house. You need to find Jesus,” he screamed. “Jesus saves boy! I was lost, and Jesus saved me from the Devil. He saved me, and here my boy is going to bed with Satan.”

Nathaniel’s mom started to cry.

“Come on, baby, let’s go,” Jithinia said, as she helped Nathaniel to his feet. His eyes were full of tears, but he didn’t spill one, not until they were in the car.

“I still made my mom cry,” was all he could say.


* * *

Two antiquated apartment complexes stood adjacent to one another. They were identical in appearance, white with ornate gold trim, and separated by a courtyard. Jithinia lived in the right building. She had decked the walls of her apartment with her own photography, mostly Polaroids of the locals. Some were color copy enlargements, dry mounted and hanging one from another down the walls with fishing twine. Others were originals, hundreds of them wallpapering one entire wall. Some she’d framed inside empty Polaroid cartridges, glued magnets to the backsides, and stuck them to her fridge. The top of the walls she had adorned with barbed wire. Her furniture, thrift store gems, was exquisite pieces at bargain prices. She lit the rooms with hanging lamps of brightly colored glass and Christmas lights tacked along the ceiling and floor. She had two aquariums, each spotless and full of magical fish. Her windows were covered with silver-sequined cloth and edged with potted plants. She had two cats, a large black one named Houdini and a small tortoise shell named Lily Munster.

“Fuck me,” Nathaniel said as his lo-mein fell from his chopsticks to his shirt. “I can’t do it.”

“Sure you can,” Jithinia said. “Look, your fingers are too close to the end.” She slid his chopsticks into place and picked up her own. “Now chop, like this.” She clicked the sticks together with ease and then picked up a single grain of rice. “It’s easy.”

Nathaniel tried again, but the slippery noodles still fell from the sticks. “I think if I were Chinese I’d starve to death.” He dug around in the takeout bag and found a plastic fork.

He finished his lo-mein and started to unpack. He unwrapped a sixteen-inch statue, a replica of the famous Botticelli image of Venus on a shell, rising from the sea foam.

“What are you doing?” Jithinia asked.

“Unpacking?” Nathaniel said with one eyebrow cocked above the other. “I want to set up my altars.”

“Uh-uh. No time. We’ve got plans.”

“We do?”

“Well yeah. You can’t spend your birthday unpacking. Have a beer.” She handed Nathaniel a Dos Equis with lime. “We have friends coming over, and then we’re all going to Jack’s.”

“Who’s coming?”

“Purp, Monica, Ian, Moe, and Kara,” Jithinia said as she counted off on her fingers.

“Orchid isn’t coming?”

“She has to work. If you want, you can have the first shower.”


* * *

The bedroom walls were blood red. Heavy black drapes kept the sun completely out. The room was lit by two brass floor lamps, which had red bulbs and leopard print shades that were trimmed with black feathers. A wrought iron bed sat shrouded in a cascade of black mesh imprinted with metallic red spiders on their webs. A huge tri-paneled arch mirror, each section framed in wrought iron, covered the wall above the length of the bed. The dresser was antique, with three paneled arch mirrors. It had two rows of drawers on either side of a small recessed seat. Styrofoam heads wearing rag dolly wigs lined the dresser.

Dripping wet and naked, Nathaniel dug through a box for something to wear. Jithinia couldn’t help herself. She walked up behind him and ran her fingers lightly down his spine. “I love that,” she said.

“What?”

“That,” she said and traced the outline of his back, across his shoulders, down his side, around his bottom and back up the other side. “Do you know why?” she asked.

He thought about the scars on his back, and he really didn’t know why. “Hmm-mm,” he said.

She licked his ear and whispered, “Your curves are perfect like a cello. Come here,” she said. She took him by the hand and had him sit down on the edge of the bed. She arched her back, and her pert breasts pushed tightly against the thin fabric. She reached around to her back and tugged on the zipper, letting the dress slither down to her ankles. “Do you know what else I love?” she asked.

“Hmm-mm,” he said.

“Your big blue eyes,” she said and pressed her forehead to his, making his two eyes into one. She climbed atop him and hovered there, just out of reach, and kissed him, twirling her tongue around his. “Do you know what else I love?”

“No,” he said and chewed his lower lip.

“Your big cock,” she said and took him inside her, pressed his heart to hers, and fucked him like the whore his daddy thought she was.

They fucked themselves out of time for Jithinia to shower. “Fuck!” she screamed. She wrested yet another dress off over her head and tossed it to the pile on the bed. “I have nothing to wear,” she said and started to cry.

“What was wrong with that dress?” Nathaniel said. “You looked nice.”

“Nuh-uh. I look fat.”

“Oh yeah. All ninety-five pounds of you.”

“It’s too poofy.”

“Well let me pick one.” Nathaniel rifled through her closet. “Try this.”

Jithinia squashed her insides into a PVC corset, looked skinny, ribby, bony. She worked herself into a matching ankle-length skirt and finished the outfit with matching gloves that laced all the way up her arms.

“Sit,” he said, patting the edge of the bed, and she did. He teased her hair up with silver ribbons, cleaned the tearstains from her cheeks, and repaired her makeup. “Purrrfect,” he said, just in time, because there was a knock at the door, which filled their apartment with guests.

“I like The Cure,” Ian said. He had a pretty face, pudgy like a cherub’s, though the rest of him was Kate Moss thin. His hair was sandy brown, and he wore it braided like an Indian’s hair. He was tall and lanky and just looked silly in his satin pink dress.

Kara was a bottle blond in rag doll clothes. She wore her hair short like a pixie’s, trimmed her face with a thousand piercings, loved Sex Pistols and Crass, and was proud to be a dyke. “Uhhhhgggg!” she screeched. “They sound like fucking poison.”

“What?” Ian said, staring incredulously. “You want to know why I hate you? Well I’ll try and explain,” Ian shrieked, sounding like a second rate echo of Robert Smith.

Purp lived across the courtyard in the left building of the twin apartment complexes. He was quiet and kind of goofy-looking, with a slight overbite and freaky hair like some bastard son of Rozz Williams or Edward Scissorhands. Oval glasses with black frames encircled his dark honey eyes. He looked like a twelve-year-old girl in those black dresses with his spooky makeup. “Yeah, well, art’s not a real job,” he said to Jithinia, explaining why his parents wouldn’t let him attend Kreepersville School of the Arts as a teenager.

“You don’t need school to be an artist,” Jithinia said. “Anyone who can get a nice frame on their pictures can sell them.”

“That’s true,” Purp said. “Anyone who wears the right mask can sell themselves.”

“Birthday boy!” Moe said to Nathaniel. “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, you’re free at last!” Moe was the town’s only African-American goth. “I brought you a present, my friend.” Moe dug around in his pocket and pulled out a fat sack of weed.

Nathaniel unrolled the bag and stuffed his nose down inside. Snffffftt! Snffffftt! It smelled like oranges and roses, spiced with crystals and red hairs.

“They call it Polio,” Moe said with a big grin. “What?” he said to Monica, who’d been staring at him all evening. “You like lookin’ at me?”

“Yes, I think you’re adorable,” Monica said. A voluptuous vixen, she always wore dresses that showed off her large breasts. She pushed her Elvira hair from eyes that rivaled the sequined curtains.

“Oh great!” Ian said. “You think he’s adorable? I’m funny looking, but he’s adorable!”

“Oh stop it,” Monica said. I meant that in a good way. I like funny looking people; it’s the norms I find disgusting. Take it as a compliment.”

“Oh man! My Lucky Strikes! What the fuck are you doing?” Moe jerked the pack away from Purp.

“What?” Purp said.

“You fucked up the package!”

“It’s just cigarettes. They’re okay.”

“Oh man. I always open ‘em with the Indian facing me. I never crush the Indian.”

“Look. The Indian’s not crushed,” Purp said.

“Did your momma scrub out your anus with a wire brush?” Jithinia asked.

“What. What? Are you saying I’m anal retentive?”

“I think so, Moe,” Kara said.

“No, no, no, no. I never crush the Indian because I respect other cultures, okay. Too many people don’t.”

“I totally agree with you,” Monica said.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m glad you do, and would you stop looking at me?” Moe turned to Ian. “Did you put her up to this when you stopped to get the beer?”

“Oh man,” Ian said. “You don’t know —”

“That’s not beer,” Purp said.

“What?” Moe said.

“What Nathaniel’s drinking, that’s beer. That ghetto brew you’re drinking is piss.”

“Fuck you,” Moe said.

“Let’s schmoke up!” Nathaniel said, sparking a blunt, and they all got high, high like Jithinia’s heels. “I think I know why they call it Polio.”

“Why’s that?” Moe asked.

“’Cause I might as well be in a wheelchair.”

“I think it’s ‘cause it makes you feel like F.D.R.,” Purp said.

Jithinia raised her bloodshot eyes and croaked, “Like he said, wheelchair.”


* * *

“You must be 18 to enter. No admittance without boots or fangs. Dress code strictly enforced. If in doubt, wear black.” was written, in big red letters dripping like blood against a black background, on a sign by the door at Red Jack’s.

The aria, a rhapsody of black ambiance, dripped like sweet ooze from the lips of a banshee. Faces twirled, sworn to silent fantasy, feeling music pulsate. They twirled about and danced with their hands like pagans worshipping. Bodies pressed against bodies, a frenzied torrent of luscious flesh. Strobe and Christmas lights lit the cabaret; a consort of angels and devils playing peek-a-boo with the bared skin of the club’s young occupants; silly boys and girls all pretty with parted lips and dopey eyes. Mannequins encased in glass bedecked the corners, each girl ensconced in her best rubber. Their eyes had been knocked out, leaving jagged black holes in their places.

Nathaniel felt nervous, tipsy, stoned. He felt crazy like a ghost in a dream. He sat in a dark corner on a gold velvet couch, watching, not yet a part of the scene, sipping a rum runner Jithinia had slipped into his underage hand.

“Well, what do you think?” Jithinia asked.

Nathaniel had tried before to get into Jack’s, but his sloppy fake IDs had never gotten him past the bouncer at the door. “It’s big,” he said.

Jithinia started to giggle. “Big?”

“Fuck you. It’s bigger than it looks from the outside.”

“Are you having fun?”

“Yes.”

IN THE SHALLOW HOLES OF A THOUSAND EYES –

Jithinia’s face gushed with little girl delight. “Rozz!” she said, clapping her hands together and bouncing in her seat. “I’ve gotta dance! Come on.”

“No. Uh-uh. No way,” Nathaniel said, and the little girl possessing Jithinia slithered off her face. “Oh don’t be sad. I can’t. I’ll look stupid.”

“I’ll show you how.”

“I know you will, but not now. At home. You can go dance,” Nathaniel said. Jithinia bit her lower lip. “I’ll be fine,” he insisted.

“Okay,” she said, unable to resist the lure of Christian Death. She tousled Nathaniel’s hair and disappeared onto the dance floor.


* * *

Purp twirled with his eyes focused on the marble floor. As he raised his hands above his head, his vision followed, past ghost white faces popping like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, to the face of an angel. An angel statue, with barbed wire and Christmas lights wrapped around its wings, hung from the balcony, but Purp wasn’t looking at that. Just above the statue, a winged boy leaned over the railing.

Eldridge wore a fishnet shirt with tacky angel wings strapped to his back. Feathered, black, and soft to the touch, he loved those ugly wings. He had his blue hair teased up, gooped his eyes in shadows of black mascara and smeared liner ‘cause boys like that. He watched.

Purp needed a drink, so he walked to the bar. “Whisky Sour,” he said. Then he found an empty sofa and plopped himself onto it. He fumbled a cigarette from his pack to his lips and lit up. He looked up, searching for God, but the balcony was empty, and that’s when Eldridge sat down beside him.

Eldridge pulled a cigarette case from his hip pocket, slid a clove between perfect lips, and returned the case in one fluid motion. “Bother you for a light?” he said.

“What? Oh,” Purp said. He found his fire and lit the stranger’s fag. He forgot about his own cigarette still smoking in the ashtray, so he lit another. “I’m Purp.”

“Seth,” he lied and almost smiled. “Thanks for the light.” He smoked his fag like a joint. His fingers were long and bony, like the stems of dead roses, and pale like the moon. “I’ve seen you before,” Eldridge said, smoke curling from his lips like midnight mist.

Purp stared with his eyes dark and wide as nothing and his mouth half agape. “Yeah, um, maybe,” he said.

Eldridge hinted a smile. He placed his lips against Purp’s ear. “You’re a very pretty boy,” he said.

Then he bought Purp a drink and brought him home.


* * *

Eldridge opened the passenger door of his black ‘69 GTO. “Open your eyes,” he ordered as if soothing a wailing child. “I see your eyes are open,” he snapped his fingers next to Purp’s ear.

Purp yawned and looked around the garage through squinted eyes. “Where are we?” he asked. He felt groggy as if dreaming and silly like he wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

The house strobed with candle fires. Space sounds, music like electric ocean ripples, drifted as through thick air. The dope was kinder than most ‘cause Purp still felt high. The walls were spinning. The house looked like his crazy ex-boyfriend’s, except with no color anymore all black, black, black and crooked like Calagari’s cabinet. Purp felt eerie, like déjà vu was eating his insides. A fluffy black cat with a head like the Grinch’s heart plopped down on the sofa next to him.

“That’s DeadGRRR,” Eldridge said. “How’s my boy?” he said to the cat and stroked its back. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Eldridge disappeared into the kitchen. Purp thought about his mother’s god. He imagined Seth a demon who wanted his soul. That doesn’t make any sense, he thought. What does Seth have to offer?

“Shot of Jag?” Eldridge said, handing Purp the glass. It was a start, but not enough to close the deal. Purp tilted the glass above his face and shoved his tongue down inside, but he couldn’t reach the last drop. No matter. Eldridge filled the glass again and again.

Purp slumped back like a discarded rag dolly. Eldridge pulled Purp’s dress off with fingers that felt cold like the dead. He slid his hand around Purp’s cock and brought it to life. Purp writhed like a frenzied flower in a wild wind.

Eldridge tongue fucked Purp’s mouth, who received the penetration with sucking wet lips. He stopped jerking Purp off, and pulled his own cock from his leather pants. Purp fell to his knees and took it into his mouth. The cock felt heavy against his tongue, and it tasted like the ocean smells. He couldn’t breathe, and he didn’t care.

As Eldridge fucked Purp’s face, he stroked Purp behind his ear as if stroking his cat. Abruptly, he made him stop. He pulled Purp onto his lap. He ran his bony hands over the smooth and warm flesh of Purp’s back. Eldridge couldn’t help thinking Purp would scream at the sight of his own twisted flesh. He pulled a bottle from the folds of the couch and filled his hand with its wetness. He found Purp’s hole and slopped him full of lube. Purp tried to relax.

Eldridge jerked Purp’s cock as he slid into the boy’s ass. Purp delighted in being used, and his bottom opened up and swallowed the cock to its hilt. He panted and moaned, and his balls felt heavy and fit to burst.

Eldridge fucked him violently and with no tenderness. He let go of the bruising grip on Purp’s hip to retrieve the hatpin tucked inside his boot. Purp ejaculated all over Eldridge’s hand before slumping like a marionette with snipped strings. Eldridge caught him, held him upright, and kept on fucking him, with the jeweled end of the hatpin still sticking from the poor boy’s ear. He licked Purp’s seed from his hand and spilled his own deep inside the corpse.

Eldridge collapsed, still inside the boy and holding him tightly. He squished his eyes shut and felt as dead as the soul he devoured.