Clyde tossed his head at the bas.e.m.e.nt.

"Ah," Brian said, and he felt an erection, a real blue-veiner. Something warm moved from the tips of his toes to the base of his skull, foamed inside his brain. It was as if his bladder had backed up and filled his body with urine. Old Clyde had actually killed somebody and had no remorse, was in fact proud. Brian liked that. It meant Clyde was as much of a Superman as he expected. And since Clyde admitted the murder to him, he knew he trusted him, considered him a comrade, a fellow Superman.

"What happened next?" Brian asked. It was all he could do not to lick his lips.

"Me and the c.u.n.t moved in. Couple guys I knew wanted to come too, bring their c.u.n.ts along. I let them. Before long there's about a half dozen of us living in the G.o.dd.a.m.ned bas.e.m.e.nt. We got the caretaker to see we got fed, and he did it too on account of he was a weenie, and we kept reminding him how much we like little-girl p.u.s.s.y. I got to where I could describe what we wanted to do to her real good."

"Anyway, that went on for a while, then one day he doesn't show with the grub.

Found out later that he'd packed up the dumpling wife, the two ankle-biters and split. So I say to the guys-by the way, don't ask no c.u.n.t nothing, they got opinions on everything and not a bit of it's worth stringy dogs.h.i.t, unless you want to know the best way to put a Tampax in or what color goes well with blue ... so, I say to the guys, this ain't no way to live, and we start a little storm trooper campaign. Scared p.i.s.s out of some of the old folks, roughed up an old lady, nailed her dog to the door by its ears."

"Didn't the cops come around?"

"Yeah. They came and got us on complaints, told us to stay out. But what could they do?"

No one had seen us do a d.a.m.n thing except those complaining, and it was just our word against theirs. They made us move out though.

"So, we went and had a little talk with the manager, made a few threats, got a room out of the deal and started paying rent. By this time we had the c.u.n.ts hustling for us, bouncing tail on the streets and bringing in a few bucks. Once we start paying rent, what can they say? But we keep up the storm trooper campaign, just enough to keep it scary around here. Before long the manager quit and all the old folks hiked."

"What about the owner?"

"He came around. We paid the rent and he let us stay. He's a slumlord anyway. It was the old folks kept the place up. After they left, it got pretty trashy, and this guy wasn't going to put out a cent on the place. He was glad to take our money and run. We were paying him more than all the old codgers together. The p.u.s.s.y business was really raking in the coins. And besides, he don't want to make us mad, know what I mean?"

"Some setup."

"It's sweet all right. Like being a juvenile. The courts are all f.u.c.ked up on that one.

They don't know what to do with us, so they usually just say the h.e.l.l with us. It's easier to let us go than to ha.s.sle with us. After you're eighteen life isn't worth living. That's when the rules start to apply to us too. Right now we're just misguided kids who'll straighten out in time."

"I understand."

"Good. Let's go upstairs. Got some people I want you to meet."

"Yeah?"

"A girl I want you to f.u.c.k."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Got this one c.u.n.t that's something else. Thirteen years old, a runaway or something. Picked her up off the street about a month ago. Totally wiped out in the brain department, not that a c.u.n.t's got much brain to begin with, but this one is a clean slate. But, man, does she have t.i.ts. They're big as footb.a.l.l.s. She's as good a f.u.c.k as a grown woman."

"This going to cost me?"

"You kidding? You get what you want, no charge -money anyway."

"What's that mean?"

"I want your soul, not your money." Brian grinned. "So who are you, the devil?

Thought you were Dracula."

"I'm both of them."

"Do I have to sign something in blood?" Clyde laughed hysterically. "Sure, that's a good one. Blood. Write something in f.u.c.king blood. I like you, Brian, I really do."

So Brian saw the dark rooms upstairs, and finally the one with the light and the people.

The room stank. There was a mattress on the floor and there was a nude girl on the mattress and there was a nude boy on the girl and the girl was not moving but the boy was moving a lot.

Another girl, with incredibly large b.r.e.a.s.t.s and large eyes, and a stocky-looking boy sat nude on the other side of the mattress and watched the boy on the girl. They lifted their heads as Clyde and Brian came in, and Brian could see that they were stoned to the max.

The two smiled at them in unison, as if they had but one set of facial muscles between them.

The boy riding the girl grunted, once, real loud. After a moment he rolled off her smiling, his p.e.n.i.s half-hard, dripping.

The girl on the mattress still did not move. She lay with her eyes closed and her arms by her sides.

"This is Loony Tunes," Clyde said, pointing to the boy who had just rolled off the girl.

"This is Stone," he said, pointing to the stocky boy. "If he talks, I've never heard it." He did not introduce either girl. "This is all we got around here right now, cream of the crop."

The girl on the mattress still had not moved.

The one called Loony Tunes laughed once in a while, for no apparent reason.

Clyde said, "Go ahead and tend to your rat killing, me and Brian got plans." Then he snapped his fingers and pointed to the nude girl with the big b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the silly smile.

She stood up, wavering a bit. With ten pounds and something to truly smile about, she might have been pretty. She looked like she needed a bath.

Clyde held out his hand. She came around the mattress and took it. He put an arm around her waist.

The one called Stone crawled on top of the girl on the mattress.

She still did not move.

Brian could see now that her eyes were actually only half-closed and her eyeb.a.l.l.s were partly visible. They looked as cool and expressionless as marbles.

Stone took hold of his sudden erection and put it in her.

She still did not move.

Stone began to grunt.

Loony Tunes laughed.

She still did not move.

"Come on," Clyde said to Brian, "the next room."

So they went out of there, the big-eyed girl sandwiched between them. Brian never saw the girl on the mattress again. And for that matter he never saw the dirty blond girl with the big brown eyes again after that night.

There was a small mattress in the closet in the next room, and Clyde, feeling his way around in the dark with experienced ease, pulled it out. Clyde said, "Keeping in practice for when I quit paying the light bill, learning to be a bat."

"I see," Brian said. The blonde leaned against him. She muttered something once, but it made no sense. She was so high on nose candy and cheap wine she didn't know where she was or who she was. She smelled like mildewed laundry.

After Clyde had tossed the mattress out on the floor, He took his clothes off, called them over. The blonde leaned on Brian all the way across the room.

When they were standing in front of Clyde, he said, "This is the big-t.i.ttied, thirteen-year-old I told you about. Looks older, don't she?" But he didn't wait for Brian to answer. He said loudly to the girl, "Come here."

She crawled on the mattress. Brian took his clothes off. They all lay down together. The mattress smelled of dirt, wine and sweat.

And that night Brian and Clyde had the thirteen-year-old and later, when Brian tried to think back on the moment, he would not be able to remember her face, only that she was blond, had ma.s.sive b.r.e.a.s.t.s and dark eyes like pools of fresh-perked coffee; pools that went down and down and down into her head like wet tunnels to eternity.

She was so high they could have poked her with knives and she would not have felt it.

She was just responding in automaton fashion. Clyde had it in her a.s.s and Brian had it in her mouth, and they were pumping in unison, the smell of their exertion mingling with hers, filling the room.

The girl was s...o...b..ring and choking on Brian's p.e.n.i.s and he was ramming it harder and harder into her mouth, and he could feel her teeth sc.r.a.ping his flesh, making his c.o.c.k bleed, and it seemed to him that he was extending all the way down her throat, all the way through her, and that the head of his p.e.n.i.s was touching Clyde's and Clyde's p.e.n.i.s was like the finger of G.o.d giving life to the clay form of Adam, and that he was Adam, and he was receiving that spark from the Holy On High, and for the power and the glory he was grateful; made him think of the Frankenstein monster and how it must have felt when its creator threw the switch and drove the power of the storm through its body and above the roll of thunder and the crackling flash of lightning Dr. Frankenstein yelled at the top of his lungs, "It's alive!"

Then he and Clyde came in white-hot-atomic-blast unison and in Brian's mind it was the explosive ending of the old world and the Big Bang creation of the new . . .

Only the sound of panting now, the pleasant sensation of his o.r.g.a.s.m draining into the blonde's mouth.

Clyde reached out and touched Brian's hand, squeezed his fingers, and Clyde's touch was as cold and clammy as the hand of death.

Clyde drove Brian home. Brian stole silently into the house and climbed the stairs.

Once in his room he went to the window to look out. He could hear Clyde's '66 Chevy in the distance, and though it was a bright night and he could see real far, he could not see as far as Clyde had gone.

And later back at The House the girl Clyde and Brian had shared would start to wail and fight invisible harpies in her head, and Clyde would take her to the bas.e.m.e.nt for a little swim.

The body of the girl on the mattress would follow suit. Neither managed much swimming; and there would be a series of unprecedented robberies that night all over the city; and in a little quiet house near Galveston Bay, an Eagle Scout and honor student would kill his father and rape his mother; and an on-duty policeman with a fine family and plenty of promotion to look forward to would pull over to the curb on a dark street and put his service revolver in his mouth and pull the trigger, coating the back windshield with brains, blood and clinging skull shrapnel; and a nice meek housewife in a comfortable house by Sea Arama would take a carving knife to her husband's neck while he slept; would tell police later that it was because he said he didn't like the way she'd made roast that night, which was ridiculous since he'd liked it fixed exactly that same way the week before; and in their tiny apartment, Monty and Becky Jones would frantically attempt to make love, but Becky wouldn't be able to find the mood and Monty wouldn't be able to find an erection. It seemed like an awful bad moment for the two of them, but this was because they had no idea how bad things were going to get.

All in all, it was a strange night in Galveston, Texas, A lot of dogs howled.

(2).

THE COUPLE.

ONE.

In early May, Becky and Montgomery Jones went to Galveston Beach. They took picnic supplies, a l.u.s.ty appet.i.te and a lot of nostalgia with them. Galveston Beach was where they had met years back. It had been May then too, and hot.

As Montgomery had admitted to Becky many times, the first thing he had noticed about her that day was the black string bikini she was wearing. He also admitted there had been quite a number of other bikinis he had taken notice of, but hers had quickly become his favorite when she'd walked by the towel where he was lying and he had watched her pa.s.s, enjoyed the shimmying twin moons of her a.s.s split by the black eclipse of her bikini.

Because of this view, he had been forced to quit lying on his stomach, as things downstairs had rapidly become uncomfortable. But when he rolled on his side he found that his bathing suit was flying at half-mast, and had he rolled on his back, it would have looked as if he had erected a small pup tent for hamsters over his hips. So, he was forced to roll back on his stomach and ride the rail. From there he continued to watch the eclipsed moons until they pendulumed out of sight, were lost among other bodies, flashes of towels and rubber life rafts moving to and from the sea.

The bikinis that came after were merely wonderful or incredible, but nothing like the one that had fallen out of sight. Try as he might to focus on other nice hips and long, brown legs, those dual eclipsed moons his eyes had lost would not leave his mind.

Gathering up his suntan lotion, radio and towel -which he had draped across his shoulder in such a manner that it fell across his chest and erection- he made his stiff-legged way up the beach in search of that absolutely perfect bikini.

And lo and behold off the starboard bow, thar she blows, two soft, eclipsed moons were sinking slowly into the sea.

For the first time Montgomery began to think with the big head instead of the little head.

Lifting his eyes beyond the natural homing point of s.e.xual interest, he saw an absolutely gorgeous waist, bosom and face-for she had turned to climb toward land again, and as she came the water foamed mad-dog spittle around her legs and hips and she was as beautiful and mythical as that painting of Venus exploding from the sea. Oh yes, she was one fine-looking woman.

No. Fine wasn't the word. Fine meant: of superior quality or excellence. That had a near proper ring to it, but it just wasn't enough.

How about perfect? That was in the ballpark, but no closer to home plate than the home run fence- well, maybe, just maybe, as close as center field, but not an inch closer.

Nope, the English language, the French language, the German language, etc., etc., were short on words for a woman like this.

She had . . . magic.

Then he thought: Maybe I'm just being starry-eyed. Up close she'll probably have the kind of teeth you could open a can of green beans with, or maybe a nice, bright bald spot on top of her head, or the kind of bad complexion that begins at the bone.

He decided he had to get closer, secretly fearing that up close his angel would turn out to be a moon howler.

Glancing down at his swim trunks he said to himself, "Lead on, Little Head."

As he went splashing out into the water he thought about the old trick of running into her and saying, "Excuse me, didn't see you wading there," but considering there were only three other people in the water in the immediate area, and they were about thirty feet away, the idea lacked charm.

No, he was going to be cool about this. Splash out to her like some sort of n.o.ble water G.o.d, make some cute Gary Grant remark and win her heart and soul immediately.

He threw out his chest.

Oh G.o.d, the sunlight was. .h.i.tting her hair and she was absolutely gorgeous; it looked as if there was a halo around her head, and He fell.

No way to turn it into a dive and look casual. He had stepped right into a nice, slushy ma.s.s of sand, turned his ankle and fell.

One moment he's looking at the angel, next he's coughing salt and water and there's a sand burn on his knee and shin.

A wave washed over him, carried him back a yard, pulled his bathing suit down over his b.u.t.tocks. He clutched at the suit, pulled it up as the water pushed him to sh.o.r.e.

He sat up. His towel was stuck to him and he had lost his suntan lotion and radio, but at least he had managed to pull his suit back up and, maybe, with more than a little luck, the angel hadn't gotten a flash of his lily-white a.s.s sticking out of the waves. He hoped not. It was bad enough to be clumsy and lose your radio and suntan lotion (why hadn't he remembered he was carrying the G.o.dd.a.m.ned radio and suntan lotion?), but to expose one's lily-white to an angel was unforgivable.

He looked around and saw her.