Jesus. There was one shell left in the eight-shot clip. He bit down on the barrel, tasted gore and Vaseline and the faintly spicy musk of Jesusâ asshole. He closed his eyes and imagined himself asleep in a long wooden box, spinning in a void without weight, without care.
The pain, when it came, was a white-hot supernova filling the vault of his skull, then bursting it wide open. But it felt so much cleaner than the pain he'd had all his life. And it only lasted for a second.
***
Two bodies came into the city morgue early Saturday morning: a Caucasian male in his twenties, underweight, head all but shot off; and a male perhaps eighteen, maybe Asian, subjected to gross trauma by firearm. Both were unidentified, the faces gone to pulp and bone meal. The antique Luger was pried out of the white boy's rigid hand, bagged, and spirited off to the police station. The cop who stole it a few months later would have no way of knowing where it had been; he would simply wipe the sticky patina of Vaseline off the barrel and reload it with ordinary hollow-point bullets.
The bodies were tagged and photographed and scraped into adjacent cold drawers. The attending policemen forgot the white boy as soon as his drawer slammed shut, but they stood gazing at the Asian for a moment, fixing his picture in their minds. The morgue workers had been awed at the corpse's condition, and even the cops had seldom seen a body so thoroughly ruined.
âLooks like this piece of shit pissed off the wrong guy,â observed one.
â Loved the earrings,â remarked the other, with the air of one sharing a choice witticism. He had picked a number of small silver hoops out of the wreckage of the head before the guy from the M.E.'s office told him to stop. Not until he saw a fragment of ear cartilage with something similar dangling from it had he realized what they were.
âMaybe we can get disinfected back at the station."
âDon't scratch your ass, whatever you do."
The cops left the morgue, bantering, and drove back into the clear blue canyons of the dawning city.
King of the Cats
My best friend, David Ferguson, lived with me in the summer of 1995 while assisting with the research of my Courtney Love biography. David is first and foremost a singer, a skinny gay white boy with a big black woman inside him; formerly of Athens, Georgia, band the Go Figures, he recently recorded a solo album, Extra Clean . That summer, though, his band had just broken up and he didn't want to sing. Instead, he wrote his ass off. He wrote short stories and bits of erotica to amuse me. As always, he kept a voluminous journal. He started what would become his first novel.
Meanwhile, mired in Courtneyland, I'd been asked to contribute to a volume of erotic fairy tales for gay men. I desperately wanted to do it but couldn't find the time to produce a draft. Since David was handy in my spare room, I asked if he would script an erotic version of any fairy tale he chose, which I would then revise and color. Appropriately, since we'd both been raised by Siamese, he chose âThe Poor Miller's Apprentice and the Cat.â And we all lived happily ever after.
King of the Cats
by Poppy Z. Brite and David Ferguson
There once lived a young miller's apprentice named Nick. He was one of three hired boys who had worked most of their lives for a rich old miller. The miller had neither wife nor children, and the other two apprentices, Simon and Oliver, argued constantly about who would inherit the mill. Nick cared little for this argument. Though he worked as hard as the other two, the mill's hypnotic motionsâthe golden stream of grain pouring out of the coffer, the inexorable grinding of the great stone wheelsâhad always secretly wearied him.
One day the miller summoned Simon, Oliver, and Nick. âBoys, I grow old. When I die, who will take over the mill?"
Simon and Oliver interrupted, talking over each other. The miller held up a hand to
The pain, when it came, was a white-hot supernova filling the vault of his skull, then bursting it wide open. But it felt so much cleaner than the pain he'd had all his life. And it only lasted for a second.
***
Two bodies came into the city morgue early Saturday morning: a Caucasian male in his twenties, underweight, head all but shot off; and a male perhaps eighteen, maybe Asian, subjected to gross trauma by firearm. Both were unidentified, the faces gone to pulp and bone meal. The antique Luger was pried out of the white boy's rigid hand, bagged, and spirited off to the police station. The cop who stole it a few months later would have no way of knowing where it had been; he would simply wipe the sticky patina of Vaseline off the barrel and reload it with ordinary hollow-point bullets.
The bodies were tagged and photographed and scraped into adjacent cold drawers. The attending policemen forgot the white boy as soon as his drawer slammed shut, but they stood gazing at the Asian for a moment, fixing his picture in their minds. The morgue workers had been awed at the corpse's condition, and even the cops had seldom seen a body so thoroughly ruined.
âLooks like this piece of shit pissed off the wrong guy,â observed one.
â Loved the earrings,â remarked the other, with the air of one sharing a choice witticism. He had picked a number of small silver hoops out of the wreckage of the head before the guy from the M.E.'s office told him to stop. Not until he saw a fragment of ear cartilage with something similar dangling from it had he realized what they were.
âMaybe we can get disinfected back at the station."
âDon't scratch your ass, whatever you do."
The cops left the morgue, bantering, and drove back into the clear blue canyons of the dawning city.
King of the Cats
My best friend, David Ferguson, lived with me in the summer of 1995 while assisting with the research of my Courtney Love biography. David is first and foremost a singer, a skinny gay white boy with a big black woman inside him; formerly of Athens, Georgia, band the Go Figures, he recently recorded a solo album, Extra Clean . That summer, though, his band had just broken up and he didn't want to sing. Instead, he wrote his ass off. He wrote short stories and bits of erotica to amuse me. As always, he kept a voluminous journal. He started what would become his first novel.
Meanwhile, mired in Courtneyland, I'd been asked to contribute to a volume of erotic fairy tales for gay men. I desperately wanted to do it but couldn't find the time to produce a draft. Since David was handy in my spare room, I asked if he would script an erotic version of any fairy tale he chose, which I would then revise and color. Appropriately, since we'd both been raised by Siamese, he chose âThe Poor Miller's Apprentice and the Cat.â And we all lived happily ever after.
King of the Cats
by Poppy Z. Brite and David Ferguson
There once lived a young miller's apprentice named Nick. He was one of three hired boys who had worked most of their lives for a rich old miller. The miller had neither wife nor children, and the other two apprentices, Simon and Oliver, argued constantly about who would inherit the mill. Nick cared little for this argument. Though he worked as hard as the other two, the mill's hypnotic motionsâthe golden stream of grain pouring out of the coffer, the inexorable grinding of the great stone wheelsâhad always secretly wearied him.
One day the miller summoned Simon, Oliver, and Nick. âBoys, I grow old. When I die, who will take over the mill?"
Simon and Oliver interrupted, talking over each other. The miller held up a hand to
Similar Books
