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— I’ll think it. One second. Hold on. Okay, there. Shit.

  — Jesus fucking Christ.

  — Ow, ow.

  — Do you feel that?

  1:07: One of ’em’s killing me.

  1:08: Oh, shit.

  1:09: No, other one stopped him.

  1:10: One of ’em’s screwing me.

  1:11: That one hates me.

  1:11: Dead.

  1:12: No, other one woke me up.

  1:14: One of ’em’s taking a piss on my face.

  1:14: Other one stopped him.

  1:15: One of ’em’s strangling me.

  1:17: Scared.

  1:20: Okay now.

  1:23: Same one’s strangling me again.

  1:24: Other one loves my ass.

  1:24: Other one hates it.

  1:29: One’s kicking my ass. One’s kissing my face.

  1:30: Other one’s strangling me.

  1:30: Just died, I think.

  1:31: Dead.

  1:33: Yeah.

  1:33: One of ’em’s hugging me anyway.

  1:35: Other one hates me.

  1:37: One of ’em’s mad at the other.

  1:38: They’re fighting.

  1:40: Can’t see ’em.

  1:45: All alone.

  1:49: Bored.

  When Bob got home from creating his firewood, Nate was bizarrely collapsed on the shack’s wobbling porch. I’m fucked, he said weakly. He tried to sit, but, getting maybe an inch off the slats, he flopped down again, feeling more octopussy than ever. That house, he said. It’s evil, and—

  Shh, Bob said. He hoisted Nate over his shoulder, then stumbled inside, laying him, crack, on the big wooden table. Nate lifted arm, arm, leg, leg, so Bob could undress him. Turns out there was only a head wound too lite to be fatal, yet too reminiscent of George’s to leave him alone. Sorry.

  Leon, Nate said. He— Then telltale hands grabbed, halved, and squashed his ass into that girlier, screwable one that faked George’s or some such. Go ahead, he mumbled. Maybe it’ll distract me. He meant from Leon, whom he’d only that very minute decided he loved. Ow.

  Leon walked into the crosshatched room light of the general store and pulled out the gun. Then everything in front of him smudged. Fucking weird. Thanks to the crystal meth damage or something. Or that’s how he explained the effect. Like aftershocks in the eyes. Nothing he could do about it. So he held up the gun, stuck it way out in front of him. It got totally lost in the smudge. But the clerk saw it, didn’t he? Yeah, uh-huh. ’Cos loose change sort of sprayed across the countertop. Greasy coins, a few dollar bills that disintegrated like lint when he grabbed them. Wiped the loot into his knapsack, missed one stupid nickel. Noticed it lying there. Shit. Don’t know why he even thought to retrieve it. But he was prying it up. Or attempting to. Greasy little thing. And it hit him. How the light had gone dead. Just like that, just as vague as that sounded. Not just gone out of the nickel. It was too fucking hard to describe. Shitty fantasies. Fucking crystal meth. Concentrate. Gone out of the venture, the love, sex, murder, Satanism, robberies, okay? Like that. So he handed his gun to the clerk, and said, Fuck it.

  Leon stared at the glare, focusing on the spot where he’d last seen the sheriff’s impervious face before light ate it up, and kind of sunned his eyes, opening them wide, so their pupils could suck at the light, which had obviously done what it set out to do, since he’d just confessed to loving Satan, and helping Nate murder Dagger, and beating the shit out of Nate, ’cos he no longer cared about prison and death row and that, seeing as how all that beautiful light had erased shit.

  Nate lies by the road. It weaves off into the mountains out there. And it reeks. He’s been here for hours, partly obscured by the brush, awaiting the right car to pass, and a nice passerby. Someone in elegant clothes, whom he can fleece. God forgive him, he’s broke. The sun’s creepy, a hard piece of scalding red shit that has no consciousness of its own, so Nate can’t tell it anything real like, Go away. Everything should have a mind. So he could communicate with it. So he could say, Grass, get taller and cover me better. Or … School bus, stop here, right this second, and dump all your passengers out on the road so I can fuck, rob, or kill them. He wouldn’t mind if the bus said, No way, you’re too fucking lowly a jerk to waste time on. Or if the sun said, Oh go ahead and burn up, you asshole. Or if he could say to this road, Hey, can you glisten a little? ’Cos that would look so unbelievable. And it would glisten for Nate, to be nice. Then it might say, Okay, now you walk on my surface awhile. And Nate would, even if it got him arrested. ’Cos the road is so peaceful or something. Anyway, everything understanding everything. People’s guns saying, No, not him, asshole, kill him. And Nate’s pistol would swing itself around and do the shooting for him. And he’d just go, Well, hey, I didn’t make the decision. And his gun would go, Yeah, I made the fucking decision. And what could the cops do? Melt down the gun? Well, they could. And maybe that would be sad, ’cos if the gun had a mind, Nate just might be attached to it. Shit, he can’t win. There’s no way the world’s ever gonna be totally perfect, unless nothing and no one had minds. If everyone just kind of lay there, only moving around when the wind kicked them up, or if the rain got too hard, or if there was a flood. Natural things. Nate would lie in the grass here for days, weeks, spacing out, then some storm would move him twenty feet that way, and his world would change, and he’d get to know new blades of grass and new dirt and new flies or whatever. He wouldn’t die, just change. Dry out, get wet, smell one way, smell another way. No boredom, no love, no fear, no being broke, no Leon, no … nothing. Maybe that’s what will happen at world’s end, after one of the millions of viruses sneaks in folks’ bodies, and no one, no matter how total a genius, can cure them. They’ll just … collapse where they are, and never see, feel, or do anything, and eventually everyone will lose sight of each other’s existence, and just become … what? Lumps of nature. In Nate’s case, a small, smelly thing lying out in some brush. A stupid thing drifting through history, no worse or better than trees or the bugs or his gun. Oh, he longs for that day. But until then he just loves this road.

  Circled

  The Chevy van’s one good headlight drew a circle on Nate. He had stoned eyes, long hair, ripped blue jeans, and a t-shirt with two faded words on the chest. The Omen saw their typeface, and swerved onto the shoulder. Nate gawked, climbed in back, shared two joints with some Goth kid, and crashed on the throne of a drum kit. Then they drove into the outskirts of some foggy, minuscule town. When the buildings grew too numerous, The Omen turned down a dirt road. It dragged on and on, gradually shrunk to the size of a trail, and drew an ever more treacherous course through the woods.

  9:42: Dead.

  9:44: It’s like nothing.

  9:45: Scared to move at all.

  9:47: My leg hurts.

  9:48: Gonna shake it a little.

  9:48: Okay.

  9:53: Nothing to say.

  9:59: Gonna stand up.

  9:59: Can’t see what I’m writing.

  9:59: Excuse this.

  10:01: Gonna walk some.

  10:03: Fell.

  10:06: Lying here.

  10:10: Wood floor.

  10:10: A building, I guess.

  10:12: Don’t understand.

  10:14: It just is?

  10:15: Nothing to say.

  10:18: Bored.

  — This fog’s too thick. It’s creeping me out. Not to mention the cold. Hint, hint.

  — One second. You sure you don’t want a turn?

  — Honestly, I have no idea what it feels like to lionize fucking some kid.

  — Maybe you don’t pay the right kind of attention.

  — To what, the simple pleasures?

  — Look at me. I look electrified, right? That’s his effect. And look at him. Look what I’m doing to him.

  — He’s less cute. You made him ugly. Consequently, you feel like you’re seeing the real him, the deep, incontrovertible him. Blah blah blah.


  — Blah blah blah. Exactly. Give me a second.

  — You finished?

  — Wait.

  — Dum di dum di dum …

  — Okay, he’s yours.

  — Thanks. Hey, you. What’s his name again, Duke?

  — Fuck if I know. Wait. Tristen.

  — Hey, Tristen. Gothic asshole. Do you believe in Satan?

  — What?

  — No, keep jacking off. I just need some information. Tell me, are you posing inside this deathliness, or do you honestly wish to send your soul into the Hell of our music?

  — I don’t—

  — Are you just trendy, or are you a poem?

  — Shit, I can’t believe I’m with you. I love the way you guys think. It’s so—

  — Shh. You’re not our fan right now, you’re our subject. Do you want to be absorbed into our imaginations? Do you want to become something that can only be identified through our descriptive powers?

  — Oh, God, sure.

  — You want to shed your body and become the blackest butterfly in the world?

  — Are you talking about sex?

  — In other words, if you could become the hallucination that your stylistic affect sketches out—

  — Yeah, whatever. I can’t keep up with you guys.

  — Alright, put it this way. Choose between your life and our art. Which is more important, the poetry mapped by our songs, or the slow accumulation of meaningless detail that constitutes your specific identity?

  — I don’t know. The former.

  — Right. Hold his legs, Duke.

  — Like this?

  — Exactly. Have you ever been in Las Vegas? You, fuckhead.

  — Yeah, last year.

  — That’s the only time?

  — Yeah. Oh, God.

  — Watch. No, keep jacking off. Watch the knife. There they go.

  — Shit, fuck.

  — See, look at his face now. That’s the deep, deep him. And what does it say? Zilch.

  — Fuck, Jesus.

  — Whatever, Henry. You hit an artery.

  — Charming.

  — You’d better finish it.

  — Right. You all set with the camera?

  — Yeah, go.

  — I’m losing it. That was nothing. Take a left here.

  — Where the Hell are we?

  — Some town. You were saying …

  — I said I’m losing it.

  — No, you’re not. We’ve been through this.

  — I’m a total self-parody.

  — What are you talking about, the band or the other?

  — Either one. Both. They’re the same thing at this point. It’s like I’m fated to act out some Gothic freak show, even when I adore what I’m doing. Or something.

  — Maybe what you feel isn’t the point. Certainly that’s true with the band, right? Trust me, as a relative adjunct, I can say it was quite the little nightmare.

  — That didn’t bear any relationship to a nightmare.

  — Think of it this way. How many years have we been playing the same set, more or less? Three, four? I’m a zombie, you’re a zombie, but the show itself functions each night, or it must.

  — Yeah.

  — You’re forgetting that each crowd is different, however minutely. Same thing with each murder. Sure, your tastes are incredibly narrow, so the kids look alike. But they’re unique. So there are these subtle little differences.

  — Okay.

  — Alive, then not alive. That’s a huge transition. As far as they’re concerned, no one else has ever died. To them, the situation is fresh by default. You don’t matter. You just have to look cold and consumed, and you do.

  — That’s good to know.

  — Give it a day or two.

  — But I used to love killing. Remember? I wouldn’t be able to speak.

  — It was a little more epic back then, it wasn’t necessarily better.

  — No, I don’t believe that. You got to know the situation more thoroughly. You got to see all that emotion in their eyes, and in mine. But now I—

  — I think it’s more generous now. To me, I mean. It’s less about the relationship between you and whoever, and more about the relationship between whoever and his death.

  — Yeah, but that’s the thing. Why keep doing it—

  — Look. Hitchhiker. Your type. Three o’clock.

  — … if I’m just—

  — Look.

  11:21: Been walking forever.

  11:21: There’s just so many rooms.

  11:21: Real dark. Can’t see.

  11:23: It can’t be this big.

  11:24: No way.

  11:26: Tired.

  11:27: Just sat down.

  11:29: Wish I brung my coat.

  11:33: Bored.

  11:33: Gonna walk some more.

  11:35: Just walking.

  11:38: Wait.

  11:44: Something.

  11:44: No, someone.

  11:45: Yeah.

  11:46: Yeah.

  11:48: God?

  11:48: Don’t know.

  11:50: Gonna run there.

  11:53: Running.

  — How’d you get this scar?

  — How do you think? The police operated on my brain. You know that. They knew about the genocide. They programmed me to kill my friends, but it didn’t work. There’s this whole conspiracy with the neo-Nazis, man. You’re not Jewish, are you?

  — No. Duke, get his jeans off.

  — Straighten your legs, asshole.

  — There’s a systematic conspiracy to destroy the white race. I’m part of it. They programmed me to act it out. I haven’t, but it’s hard. I hear these voices telling me to do things from what they implanted in me. I used to be intelligent. I used to be really smart. My nickname was Calculus. You know what I’m talking about. You know about the voices.

  — Sure. Sure, we do.

  — Yeah, they’re in the Internet. That’s where they come from. They should never have made the Internet. That’s the way they control everything. I can’t be near computers. That’s why I live in the park. We’ve got to start over. The Blacks and the Jews, they’re lost. The homosexuals too. I was programmed to kill them. I hate them, you know. We’ve got to be pure. That’s the only way to stop it. But we can’t stop it. They can’t get into the park, though. We proved that.

  — So you don’t like to leave the park.

  — No, I leave. I can leave. I learned how. You want to take me out of the park, go ahead.

  — You’re already out of the park.

  — Yeah, right, that can happen, yeah. I need money, you know. I don’t have any money. I’ve got to eat something. You’re going to give me some money, right? I know I’m not intelligent, so it doesn’t have to be much. Fair’s fair. Fair’s fair.

  — Do you want to die?

  — Do I want to die.

  — Wouldn’t you love to find some peace? To stop worrying about everything?

  — Are you talking about heroin?

  — I want to do it now, Duke.

  — What?

  — I said you seem pretty intelligent.

  — Thanks, you think so? No, no, I’m not. I used to be a revolutionary.

  — Get him on his hands and knees.

  — You know what I’m talking about. Now I’m a reactionary.

  — No, hands and knees.

  — I used to do what I wanted.

  — You ever been to Las Vegas?

  — Fuck, no. That’s where they want me to go. I only do what they tell me not to do. That’s not intelligence. I’m just surviving.

  — Look at that.

  — Beautiful.

  — I’m just holding on. Wow. Nothing happens. That’s all I ask for. Because I’m not even here. This isn’t me. No, no. I’m the in-between. That’s what I think. I’m the in-between. Yeah. I’m cold.

  — You’re not cold. You’re something else. It just feels like cold. Duke, give me the knif
e.

  — No, I’m definitely cold.

  — You are going down, you psychotic prick. Camera?

  — All set.

  — What?

  — Pull off the road there. We can throw him in that swamp.

  — I see it.

  — Are there gators around here? Hey, what’s your name. Hitchhiker. Sleepyhead. What’s his name, Duke?

  — Nate, I think.

  — Hey, Nate.

  — What? Sorry. No, I’ve never seen any gators. Just wolves and dogs, wild dogs sometimes.

  — You alright back there?

  — Yeah, I’m just tripping out. I mean he’s so fucking dead. You can see he’s not thinking. And that his blood’s not moving.

  — Well, “him”’s not the accurate term anymore. Calling that “him” just trivializes whatever that is, if you know what I mean.

  — Not really.

  — Okay, that looks like a guy at first, sure. But the longer you look, you realize that can’t be a guy. It doesn’t meet the criteria. So then what the fuck is it? Well, you remember that chunk of Mars they found in the Antarctic? It’s like that. It’s a crude piece of something that we can’t understand. It only strikes us as a guy because that’s our best point of reference. Christ, listen to me. Duke, this is exactly what I was talking about before.

  — Shut up, Henry.

  — It’s like a gift to him or something, isn’t it? It’s weird. I really like it. I’m amazed.

  — Yeah, whatever. Forget it. Park right here.

  — This friend of mine … well, boyfriend and I killed someone once, but we were totally out of our league, I guess. Because he didn’t look like this at all. I mean he wasn’t even close.

  — What do you mean league? Here, Duke, help me.

  — You have to move out of the way, Nate.

  — Oh, okay, sorry, yeah. It sounds kind of pretentious, but we’re into Satan. Not as heavily as you guys.

  — Grab his feet. That’s it.

  — Alright, let’s just … You can keep talking, kid. Just follow us.

  — It doesn’t matter. Shit, it’s cold. We did this sort of spell where I sacrificed a guy we knew to Satan in return for him making me immortal. I don’t know if it worked, though. Maybe it did work. Jesus, now I don’t know if I’m immortal or not.