Hungry hellhounds snarled in the wind. There would be a sacrifice. They had smelt it. A harvest moon lit the tree in front of the Smoke Eater’s bungalow. The staging could not have been better; one-eyed nature was watching.
“Good night for it,” said Artie.
“Are you sure this is what you want?”
“I’m sure. You read my book, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
Artieglanced at the rope in the Smoke Eater’s hands, then instinctively rubbed his neck.
“I would have preferred a sword.”
“I don’t have a sword.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I really am thankful.”
The Smoke Eater tugged casually at the rope. His cold eyes glinted in the moonlight, casually devouring the man kneeling in front of him.
“What are friends for?”
***
Kelley arrived home just after sunrise, staining the banister with a bloody finger as he hobbled up the stairs. His mother wouldn’t care. She never noticed those kinds of things. She was a stable woman. In her house, everything was okay. Order was maintained in the sense that disorder was systematically ignored. It annoyed him a lot. He could light fireworks in the house and she would sleep right through it. Those pills were powerful stuff.
Shutting his bedroom door, Kelley collapsed in a fit of rattling coughs. He hadn’t seen a mirror yet, but from the flakes that fell when he moved his face, he could tell he was in rough shape. So what? Not a whole lot he could do.
He peeled off his clothes and shoved them into a garbage bag. Unsalvageable. He would toss them out later. The room spun as he swayed over to his bed, losing consciousness before his head hit the pillow.
No dreams, just black. And then pain. Freezing pain. His eyes fluttered open. A gray woman straddled his naked body, her curves oscillating like an industrial machine, the shining light on her flesh like a stream in midday. Her black eyes smiled at him as she slid his paralysed cock inside her tight tundra of a cunt, riding him for mere moments before he came violently inside her, his hips bucking wildly and veins near bursting.
With a small and knowing wave, she dissolved back into nothingness. There was no longer anyone on top of him, just his own watery mess pooled on top of his stomach.
It was difficult to move. Everything hurt. He picked up an old t-shirt off the ground and wiped himself down. He had not seen that woman in years. It was the blood. He had lost too much of it, and now all the old faces he thought he had put to rest were returning to take advantage.
Fighting through the pain, he reached under his bed and pulled out a porcelain Russian doll with familiar black eyes.
“There won’t be a next time,” he told it, before letting it drop to the floor. Horrible little thing. At least now he knew. Before he returned to bed, he made sure to prepare himself. Closing his eyes, he saw ghostly white faces laughing behind the dark of his eyes. Pock-marked devils with fat gums and tiny teeth. Fucking loser freaks. He’d burn them all one day. Just not tonight. Within moments, he fell back into unconsciousness.
Beneath a ruby red sky lay the decimated remains of the city, rusted iron bars sprouting from the crumbled concrete like fresh grass. Kelley picked at a tough slab of meat, his hollow cheeks pregnant with undigested sinew. He felt so weak. Emaciated. Nothing but bones. Jesus, if only he could chew this shit.
“Hey.”
A boy with a bone powdered face looked at him haughtily. Kelley wrinkled his nose, then turned away to ignore him.
“We’re hungry too. When are you going to give back?”
“Give back what?”
The boy held up his arm, strands of flesh hanging like stalactites.
“That’s me you’re eating.”
“I need it.”
“It’s my arm. I need it! If you won’t give it back, then give me yours!”
Panicked, Kelley grabbed the boy by the neck and screamed, wringing his vocal chords raw until they burst like cheap glass. And then he woke, sweating from the fever that had gripped him during sleep.
He hadn’t had that dream since he was a child. He had gotten over it. He had gone deeper. Much deeper. Fuck.
January had done something. He was all fucked up. All his progress, his “spiritual development”. It was all out of sync. With every dream he had conquered, he had proven himself stronger than whatever spirit had made them. And now he couldn’t conquer shit.
It’s temporary, he told himself, gritting his teeth. Relax.
He glanced at his phone. It was six AM. The next day.
It was time to get on with it. He had rested enough. It was a new day. Empty house. Mom out for her morning run.
The shower melted some of the pain in his joints, and his bruises stung in just the right way. Though his body still creaked as he climbed down the stairs to the kitchen, every step lessened the stiffness.
Making himself a breakfast of eggs and fried tomatoes, Kelley grimaced at the prospect of school. Was it worth it? He had a year left. A whole fucking year. He tried to think through it logically. Just get through it. At seventeen, a missing boy is a tragedy. Dogs chasing you through back alleys and shit. At eighteen, a relief. Turning to put the eggs on his plate, he accidentally kicked over an empty bottle of vitamin water, where it rolled and knocked over several others. It was like this every time she went for a run. Would it kill her to toss them out?
Placing the bottles in a plastic bag, he went over his plan. He would probably come in late. He only really went for attendance anyways. He wanted to go see the Smoke Eater before class. See if he could help him out with his new problem. January.
“Hey John,” he said to himself, lightly stabbing the egg yolk and watching it drip off his fork. “How do I get this reverse-mermaid motherfucker to stop bleeding me dry?”
He would work on it. It wasn’t as nonchalant as he wanted. It was hard to fool the Smoke Eater, and he didn’t want him to think he was worried over some demon.
On the bus was a bald man with open wounds over his face and arms. He sat in priority seating, near comatose until a woman in a bright flower dress came on and sat across from him. He became animated, beads of sweat sprouting over his liver spots as he fidgeted with his hands. She looked at him. Feeling the inspiration, he took a carrot from his bag and began to twist it as deep as he could into an open arm sore.
“I wasn’t born,” he yelled to the bus, but mostly to the woman. “I was in the CIA. I was programmed. They programmed me to kill. And so I killed myself. Here.”
He bit the carrot. Something hair-thin and white wriggled out from the slick, orange end. The woman stared blankly, mouth slightly open. He offered her his carrot.
“Eat me. Eat my flesh, like a good Christian girlie. Then shove it in your cunt. It’s my cock.”
He bobbed his head erratically, chin pushed tight to his neck.
To Kelley’s surprise and horror, the woman took it and bit off another piece. The sore-ridden man erupted into delirious laughter, sounding off like a honking goose. He didn’t expect it either.
Kelley looked around. No one else was watching. All gazes looked straight on, or at a phone or at a window. He wished he could do the same but he couldn’t. It felt like every day the world drifted a little further into madness, and he was the only one who noticed.
He got off around the time the woman lifted her dress. He couldn’t stand the awful stench, nor the puss that began to seep from the man’s open sores.
He felt sick.
“This god damn fever,” he complained, touching a hand to his clammy forehead. “I need air.”
He would walk the rest of the way to the Smoke Eater’s house.
The sky was a blurry pastel, with soft pink clouds swimming in baby blue. It was still early morning by the time Kelley made it to the bungalow. His head was pounding. In the front yard lay a six-foot long mound of dirt next to the old tree. Kelley eyed it suspicious.
“Kelley!” greeted the Smoke Eater from his porch. He wore a white t-shirt with faded jeans. Thin, crane like neck with a pot belly. With his wool colored hair, it made him look near transparent. “How are you? I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Good morning.”
“Please, step into my office.”
He invited Kelley into his living room, a cozy den littered with knotted dream catchers, unmarked urns, and the overpowering scent of incense. Kelley plopped down on a bean bag chair. The Smoke Eater handed him a cup of coffee.
“I haven’t seen you in a while. Have you been going to school? Helen is worried.”
He flushed at the sound of her name.
“She came here?”
“Yes.” The Smoke Eater squinted his eyes. “You look kind of green.”
“There’s a lot of incense in the room.”
The Smoke Eater laughed.
“No, it’s not that. You’ve been here before. It doesn’t usually bother you.”
“I saw a guy on the bus fuck his arm with a carrot.”
“Really? How far did he get it in?”
Kelley ignored the question.
“I never used to see stuff like that in public. And now it’s almost every day. Is the world getting crazier or is it just me?”
The Smoke Eater smiled. Then he opened his mouth, trying to catch a few curls of incense.
“It could be you. There’s something new about you I noticed. Something silver on your wrist.”
Kelley almost shot out of his chair, spilling a few splashes of coffee over his shirt. He had almost forgotten about the dream. He glanced at his wrist. As far as he could tell, there was nothing there. He turned to the Smoke Eater.
“It was this woman in a dream. I told her I had swallowed January and she–”
“You swallowed January?”
He had never heard the man raise his voice like that before.
“Yeah,” mumbled Kelley, looking away. “That’s why I’m here.”
“You idiot. No wonder you look sick. He’s slowly tapping you of blood, isn’t he?”
Kelley grinned.
“He’s trying.”
“Geez,” The Smoke Eater paced back and forth for a few moments, before diving behind a curtain. Kelley could hear him tinker with various vials.
“I know something that might help. But I don’t remember the right amount. That was Artie’s job.”
Kelley looked behind him, as though he were about to be pranked. “Where is Artie?”
“Oh,” said the Smoke Eater, poking his head out from behind the curtain. “He’s dead. He killed himself two nights ago.”
There was a long and eerie silence between them. Kelley was stunned.
“He’s dead?” he finally said.
“Yes”
“And you let him?”
“Let him? I tied the noose.”
“Christ. I feel sick.”
“Relax, he left you a postcard.”
Kelley’s eyes dropped to the floor. There was a tiny silverfish scurrying in and out of the carpet strands.
“He didn’t seem, you know, sad.”
“He wasn’t,” said the Smoke Eater, coming back from behind the curtain with an armful of vials and plastic bags filled with powders. “He had done the math, and figured that life wasn’t worth it. As he said, he didn’t care for the result, but the math doesn’t lie.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kelley, he wrote a book.”
“I didn’t read it.”
The Smoke Eater sighed, gently spilling the contents of his arms onto the coffee table. He then reached into a bowl and popped a few purple petals into his mouth.
“I think it went something like this,” he said, chewing his petals. “While alive, you have the ability to change. It’s different when you’re dead. You can’t change. Your soul is stuck. And if you happen to be dead, but want something better for yourself, well, you’re going to have to find a way to live again.”
“Like reincarnation.”
“I guess so. Who knows, huh? But Artie’s thought was that if he had reached his peak, he would do himself a disservice by staying alive. It’s not unusual, people do it all the time. Have you never heard someone say they want to die a ‘beautiful death’?”
“I can’t imagine it was beautiful.”
“No, it was very messy. It was my first hanging.”
“Why did he think he reached his peak?”
“I know you didn’t read it, but he was very proud of that book.”
“He could have written another one!” Kelley shouted.
There was another long pause between them.
“This really upset you, hasn’t it?” said the Smoke Eater, grinding black seeds with a mortar and pestle.
Kelley rubbed a temple with his palm.
“I just don’t understand it.”
“All I’ve ever wanted,” he said glumly. “If for a death to sadden me. Or I fear I’ll never be satisfied. I can’t lie, Kelley. You make me envious.”
He handed a postcard to Kelley.
“Here,” said the Smoke Eater.
A pair of skeletons in sunglasses gawked at him from an idyllic beach, a drink in each hand. ‘BONE VOYAGE‘ written underneath in thick cartoon letters. On the back was Artie’s handwriting.
See you soon.
Kelley scrunched his face.
“Is he telling me to kill myself?”
The Smoke Eater glared at him from the top of his lids.
“He knows about your dreams. And he thinks, like I do, that if you dig deep enough, you’ll find the land of the dead and more. That you’ll find someplace special. He believes in you. Isn’t that nice? And so he’s saying, ‘if you don’t understand, come ask me yourself’. Ah, there we go. That looks pretty good.”
The Smoke Eater eyed the grey powder mixture as if it were a crystal glass he meant to polish.
“That should be right. More or less. Take a spoonful before bed.”
“What does it do?” said Kelley, bristling. “I’m not looking to flush January out. I can still use him.”
“What does it do,” repeated the Smoke Eater. He got up and went to the bathroom. He came back holding a towel and tossed it at Kelley’s sweaty face.
“It’ll calm your nerves is what it’ll do. Look in a mirror. You need to relax. Mix a spoonful with water at night, and then meditate for an hour. You have been meditating, right?”
Kelley grumbled as he wiped down his face.
“It can’t all be an adventure, Kelley. Sometimes you have to put the work in.”
“It’s boring.”
“If you can conquer boredom, that’s a good first step.”
“You’re asking way too much. Almost everything is boring.”
The Smoke Eater’s face softened.
“Good. Then it shouldn’t be hard to practice.”
Kelley let out a breathy laugh that rattled his chest.
“Okay, I get it, I get it. How much for this stuff?”
“50 bucks.”
“Alright,” said Kelley, flipping through his wallet for bills.
“Give my best to Helen,” said the Smoke Eater. “She’s scary when she’s mad, isn’t she?”
Kelley turned slightly red.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
As he left for school from the bungalow, he took the postcard out of his pocket. There was something about it that bothered him. It was funny. Artie wasn’t funny.
Though he had been missing for a week, no one seemed to notice. He joined his classes long enough for attendance to be taken, then got up and left the moment it became unbearable. He mulled over the conversation they had had, about conquering boredom, but this wasn’t boredom, it was masochism.
The previous year, one of his classmates was found shivering in a meat locker in a local Chinese restaurant. Horse tranquilizer in his system. Since then, both students and teachers left Kelley alone. He had no idea how the rumors started, but it didn’t help that he did it.
That night, he slipped the powder into his tea and readied himself for sleep. Closing his eyes, he saw red fractals swirl and burst like flames. And then the faces began to manifest, the same ghostly faces he had seen the previous night. It was different this time. They were scared of him. They cowered from the red fractals licks until they dissolved back in darkness.
He soon found himself in front of a familiar, desolate cityscape.
“Have you given thought to the sacrifice?” said a voice behind him. “Are you going to stop being greedy and pay your dues?”
The boy with the powdered bone face looked a lot smaller than last night. Kelley looked at his arms. They looked like his own again, strong and vascular, no longer anemic muscles clinging to chicken wire.
He thought of what he needed, then suddenly felt it in his hand.
“Yes, I’ve thought about the sacrifice,” he said, grabbing the boy by the hair. With a clean motion he slit his neck.
“I offer you.”
The body fell to the ground like a limp puppet.
“I reject this world. Having nothing to offer it, I offer it to itself. Let the earth drink from its own blood and become something worth embracing.”
The spilled blood began to eat away at red clay, collapsing the ground. The body of the boy jerked every which way, contracting tighter and tighter until it was little more than a small, black cube.
Cellar steps appeared where the blood had eaten away at the ground. At the bottom, a wooden door. The next rung of the spiral.
Inside was a pitch black room. A shiver ran down Kelley’s spine. There was a sickly sweet smell in the air. Hardly noticeable at first, but getting stronger. Something about it was familiar.
Out of the blackness crept a luminous figure. Oiled from head to toe, the woman with skin marbled with bright minerals, a body sculpted from the dreams of countless men. All previously drained of spirit, fallen into a deep obsession. He could see the dusty echoes of their bloated or emaciated bodies skim through the air.
“You’re filth,” he said, trying to maintain composure. He couldn’t stop his heart from thumping.
The succubus bent her supple arms behind her head. As she did so, rivers of pink, lubricated flesh spilled out behind her, filling the enclosing room with her scent. The walls pounded with her pulse. She smiled.
“Try me.”