So while he was talking to the fire chief, I took all I could salvage and split. He was going to have to sue me, provided he could find me.
Sitting in the parking lot, seeing my burned-out apartment and thinking about how easily I could have died and the innocent people I might have taken with me, I suddenly wanted more than I had in a long time to push a big fat needle in my arm and be done with it, ride that magic carpet so far away I could never find my way home. Sayonara, you fucked-up old world, yâall are better off without me. Instead, I turned around and drove out of the apartment complex before the landlord spotted me sitting there feeling sorry for myself, mooning over my miserable life. He used to watch out the windows. He never caught a single burglar or car thief, but he always knew you were home when you were behind on your rent.
Money was going to be tight after tonight. I had probably ruined my relationship with Michi. Not that I particularly cared for him. I never was convinced the old perv wasnât a pedophile, no matter what the DA thought. I had busted Michi for buying a book of photos of nude boys. Art , they said, but what kind of art was that? If Michi wanted art, couldnât he find something that didnât skate along the edge of kiddie porn? And what about his boizu âthose college-age young men who lived out of his house like gypsies and alley cats? He gave them money and a place to stay in exchange for their participation in his rites. Being physically incapable of engaging in a sexual act didnât stop him from entertaining the most profound sexual perversions. The least of these, to my knowledge, involved his infamous Monday-night bukkake parties with eleven young men dressed up in football uniforms. Thatâs what we had interrupted tonight.
But Michiâs boizu were adults, if only just, and they were willing participants, so who was I to judge them or, for that matter, him? They probably needed Michiâs money as much as I needed it. I hated my need, but maybe they hated it, too. For several years now, Michi had been buying my photos of the dead. He always paid more for violent deaths. He paid best for suicides, especially hangings, and especially if they were still hanging. I donât know what he got out of it, but in some way I could almost understandâhe had seen too much and hurt too much and now the only things he could feel through the numb calluses on his perverted heart would blast the eyes of any ordinary mortal. It wasnât sex. It was far deeper, darker, gone beyond simple fetishism or even carnal depravity, down to a place where the acts performed in the conjuring chambers of his seven-gabled house might actually summon The Devil Himself to watch and sing along. Or so I sometimes imagined. Honestly, I didnât know what he did, and I didnât want to know. But I needed his money just to keep my head above water, so I catered to his death fetish and sold him the graven images for his midnight sabbaths, even if it damned my soul.
It was all too easy to forget the people I had photographed, all the bodies and parts of bodies, the human wreckage of so many lives thrown away. I had become numb to them, except the Playhouse Killer victims. For most of the others, it was a job. I took the pictures and sold them to Chief Billet, to insurance companies, to people with lawsuits and personal injury lawyers, and to Michi Mori. Meanwhile, every drowned baby and every bloody smeer on the road chipped away at me until almost nothing remained but a cold lizard brain, flicking its tongue and tasting an opportunity to make a buck. The money took the pain away for an hour or two. I couldnât stand to see a dead dog on the side of the road but it was nothing to shoot photographs of some bum cut in half on a train track, because I knew Michi would write me a fat check. But no matter how I tried to kill the horrorâwith drugs, sex, oblivionâit
Sitting in the parking lot, seeing my burned-out apartment and thinking about how easily I could have died and the innocent people I might have taken with me, I suddenly wanted more than I had in a long time to push a big fat needle in my arm and be done with it, ride that magic carpet so far away I could never find my way home. Sayonara, you fucked-up old world, yâall are better off without me. Instead, I turned around and drove out of the apartment complex before the landlord spotted me sitting there feeling sorry for myself, mooning over my miserable life. He used to watch out the windows. He never caught a single burglar or car thief, but he always knew you were home when you were behind on your rent.
Money was going to be tight after tonight. I had probably ruined my relationship with Michi. Not that I particularly cared for him. I never was convinced the old perv wasnât a pedophile, no matter what the DA thought. I had busted Michi for buying a book of photos of nude boys. Art , they said, but what kind of art was that? If Michi wanted art, couldnât he find something that didnât skate along the edge of kiddie porn? And what about his boizu âthose college-age young men who lived out of his house like gypsies and alley cats? He gave them money and a place to stay in exchange for their participation in his rites. Being physically incapable of engaging in a sexual act didnât stop him from entertaining the most profound sexual perversions. The least of these, to my knowledge, involved his infamous Monday-night bukkake parties with eleven young men dressed up in football uniforms. Thatâs what we had interrupted tonight.
But Michiâs boizu were adults, if only just, and they were willing participants, so who was I to judge them or, for that matter, him? They probably needed Michiâs money as much as I needed it. I hated my need, but maybe they hated it, too. For several years now, Michi had been buying my photos of the dead. He always paid more for violent deaths. He paid best for suicides, especially hangings, and especially if they were still hanging. I donât know what he got out of it, but in some way I could almost understandâhe had seen too much and hurt too much and now the only things he could feel through the numb calluses on his perverted heart would blast the eyes of any ordinary mortal. It wasnât sex. It was far deeper, darker, gone beyond simple fetishism or even carnal depravity, down to a place where the acts performed in the conjuring chambers of his seven-gabled house might actually summon The Devil Himself to watch and sing along. Or so I sometimes imagined. Honestly, I didnât know what he did, and I didnât want to know. But I needed his money just to keep my head above water, so I catered to his death fetish and sold him the graven images for his midnight sabbaths, even if it damned my soul.
It was all too easy to forget the people I had photographed, all the bodies and parts of bodies, the human wreckage of so many lives thrown away. I had become numb to them, except the Playhouse Killer victims. For most of the others, it was a job. I took the pictures and sold them to Chief Billet, to insurance companies, to people with lawsuits and personal injury lawyers, and to Michi Mori. Meanwhile, every drowned baby and every bloody smeer on the road chipped away at me until almost nothing remained but a cold lizard brain, flicking its tongue and tasting an opportunity to make a buck. The money took the pain away for an hour or two. I couldnât stand to see a dead dog on the side of the road but it was nothing to shoot photographs of some bum cut in half on a train track, because I knew Michi would write me a fat check. But no matter how I tried to kill the horrorâwith drugs, sex, oblivionâit
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