Marquis De Sade
1st Level Blue Feather
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2007
- Messages
- 5,175
- Points
- 0
For Jo. Who said WRITE MOAR and who also pushed me to write something more along the lines of regular fiction. This is a combination of both.
This is also for anyone who enjoys, what I really hope, is a good story. I hope you all enjoy this and find it entertaining.
------------------------------------------------------------
“Go.”
“I’m booking you out.”
“Details.”
“Later.”
“How far behind are we?”
“Estimate four months. Maybe five.”
“That’s a long time.”
“No shit Sherlock. Why’d you think I called you?”
“How much?”
“Everything you need, you’re being sent.”
“I’ll wrap up.”
“There’s someone I want you to speak with.”
“Have we met?”
“No.”
“Is this a trap?”
“No. He’s in a different department.”
“Who is he?”
“The chemist.”
click
The chemicals begin to mix without my even knowing. Colors become sounds become physical sensations.
Maybe this is how it starts.
Time slows. The instinct like second nature falling like sparkles in a child’s shaken snow globe.
Trying to keep track of every episode is hopeless.
What I know, maybe I don’t.
Maybe this is an addiction to a habit I’ve always had.
This bone deep urge I can’t ignore.
Maybe all I needed was a little something extra.
A little push.
The spark ignites. The impulse whispers through the hollows of my bones and becomes the screaming sound of the universe being split apart at its seams. The end of everything.
Shakes the craving from its sleep.
Takes over me completely.
What I remember, maybe never happened.
What I believe, maybe I can’t trust.
By now this is all starting to sound familiar.
Maybe I did this to myself.
My ritual is as follows:
Clench.
Hold one, two, three, four seconds.
Open.
The ink doesn’t stain the skin so this must be the real deal so I swallow.
Wait.
Medusa was the Dragon and she shook the snakes from her head and said, “If I asked you to, would you chase me to the edge of the world?”
And I told her I would.
I said, “Yes.”
Every breath we take up here, its decades old. You breathe in. I breathe out. Up here, it’s nothing new.
Everything recycled.
These little filtered and re-filtered breaths.
It’s what’s keeping us alive.
I close my eyes and remember you.
My arms around her waist, tight, like how children hug trees in old photographs. I picked her up.
Hauled her across the room.
Her shoulders hunched up on either side of her. She wriggled like an angry snake in my hold. Her body squeezing itself upwards.
Her legs kicking. Flailing.
My arms locked around her elbows as she squirmed as hard as she could. Screaming at me.
Both her arms pressed up against her sides. Her soft palms curled around my forearms. Her rigid grip stiffened like eagle’s talons.
The Dragon closed its eyes and screamed.
She screamed.
Her hands pushing down with all her strength against my arms. Her body writhed powerfully against mine.
With every cry, I felt her ribs expand. With every snarl, I felt her nails dig a little deeper into my skin.
Her legs kicking. Flailing. The earth pulled out from underneath her feet like a carpet as I lifted her into the air.
The Dragon fought me like she said she would. Like she promised she would and like I asked her to.
The Dragon said, “I’m going to make you earn this.”
And I said, “Promise?”
Open my eyes again.
I don’t drink soda but I ask for one anyway.
Me, I’m just curious.
Lean my seat back. Take a long hard look at all the backs of the heads sitting in front of me.
All these rows and rows of different haircuts.
Wait for my peripheral to widen.
Wait for everything to become a still picture.
A snapshot of Now.
Wait for it...
And my can of soda cracks open like an echoing rifle shot. Tears a hole through the curtain of empty seashell white noise static.
Bingo.
Row C. Seat 7.
Six seats in front of me to the left.
The Sky Marshall.
As slight as a practiced reaction, you flinch.
But I still picked you out.
Liquidations and profit margins. Mergers and market share. Stock holders, acquisitions and hostile takeovers.
The basic rules of business applied to ours except I didn’t need to buy seven identical suits with matching silk ties, leather shoes or a combination lock briefcase.
In the outside world, I’d have a slick sheet metal business card with “CONSULTANT” stamped in raised ink under my name.
I’d get paid the big bucks to ask for the skinny on your company and finger-point who fucked up, where, why and how.
Whoever cost you that failed fourth-quarter expectation wouldn’t be able to hide from me.
Numbers don’t lie.
Looking at enough data and I’d tell you exactly where your money is instead of where you wanted or needed it to be.
They call me, Finder.
Stare at anything long enough and you’ll start to see where the pieces have shifted out of place. What needs putting back in order to restore a sense of balance.
This is what I do for a living.
They call me, Seeker.
The Dragon opened its mouth to show me her pierced tongue. A tiny silver droplet, a shiny pearl in a narrow river of glistening pink.
Her tongue began to sizzle.
Foam.
When you kissed me did it burn?
From the little individual brush strokes that make up some low lit track-lighted masterpiece that hangs in a museum to a lifetime’s worth of collected memories that make up the short chiseled dash between the day you came into this world and whatever date you leave, everything to do with you is just a recurring series of events.
One moment after the next.
This is my life and what I’ve done with it.
They call me, Fixer.
I close my eyes and remember you.
Her warm body pressed up against my own. Her heart beating its soothing lullaby into my chest.
Every breath she took was one of my own.
The both of us standing, our eyes closed. Just the two of us in the silent center of swirling galaxies and dissolving timelines.
Every minute collapsing into the past, present and every future we’ll ever know.
What I believe, maybe I can’t trust.
Her long sheered leg wrapped around my own below me, gentle as a serpent’s silent suggestion.
Her one arm draped around my neck, pulling me closer.
Two becoming one.
The Dragon’s other arm was behind her back. In a closed fist she held a secret I’d known about all my life.
Maybe this is an addiction to a habit I’ve always had.
Her breath hot against my ear, she whispered, “You need to know what this feels like.” And she held out her hand.
In her open palm was the beginning and the end of me. She leaned in closer. Her arm pulling me into her heart’s whispered coaxing.
In the middle of her hand was a small blue pill. The outline of a feather stenciled into its sleek coated finish.
She said, “Take it.”
She told me, “Wake up.”
I asked her what it was and she said, “Your deathbed memory.”
And maybe all I needed was a little something extra.
A little push.
So I reached out my hand and she said, “Now clench and count to four. That’s how you know if it’s real.”
The Sky Marshall settles back into his seat. He goes back to not watching whatever in-flight movie he didn’t pay for.
The older woman sitting beside me, she’s droning on and on about something I’m not listening to.
In my head are the words, “Chemical structure.”
And, “It’s basically an individual strain of Entactogen.”
He told me, “It’s wrong to call an entactogen a hallucinogen but it does share similar characteristics as a stimulant.”
I didn’t even pretend to know what he was talking about.
He said, “It’s a form of MDMA.”
I said, “Ecstasy?”
The chemist said, “Bingo.”
I open my eyes again. Look past the back of the man’s haircut in front of me. Scan the articles of the newspaper he’s not reading.
My eyes dart from headline to headline. Piece together the block lettered bullet points:
CLUB CULTURE OR GLOBAL EPIDEMIC?
TRAIN DELAY SHUTS DOWN ENTIRE CITY
POLITICIAN’S SON TO STAND TRAIL
Everywhere, all across the world, everything is crumbling into a million laughing little pieces.
I’m thinking, I can relate.
Every headline, magazine piece, text message, email, blog update, news report or hushed water cooler exchange was just another missing shape of the scrambled jigsaw puzzle that was slowly being pieced back together again by the authorities and general public.
What I do is make sure no one ever sees the big picture for what it really is.
They call me, Problem Solver.
The woman sitting beside me catches her breath and clutches her heart as our plane begins to fall from the sky.
The cabin shakes. The rows of haircuts all bobbing up and down.
Maybe this is how it starts.
A voice crackles over the speaker system, says, “...we’re just experiencing a little turbulence...”
The woman grips the edges of her armrest and the tendons in her hand stiffen. She looks at me, smiles and says, “I hate flying.”
Small talk.
I nod, shrug, smile back.
She says, “No, really. I do.”
I nod, shrug, smile back.
She glances down at my two pairs of hands. My eight fingers laced together. My left palms upturned. My right thumbs drawing a slow circle into the open center of my left hand. My eyes fluttering.
My breath quick.
Maybe I did this to myself.
The woman says, “That’s a very interesting tattoo you have.”
Black-inked deep into the tops of each hand are the scaly tops of dragon’s paws. Inked along the tops of each finger and thumb are talons and sharpened nails.
The mythical creature’s black-inked knuckles match my own.
The rest of the animal’s arms disappearing up into my button-up’s shirt sleeves.
The woman, she repeats, “I said, that’s a very interesting tattoo you have.” And she nods, smiling at me for emphasis.
I nod, smile back and say, “Soda?”
The spark ignites. The impulse whispers through the hollows of my bones and becomes a scream that becomes a craving for more.
This bone deep urge I can’t turn my back on.
She said, “Look closely.” And she opened her mouth. Showed me her tongue ring.
On the ends of both of our tongues were the small blue pills that started to quietly hiss and sputter.
Foam.
Chemical reaction equals chemical compound breakdown.
The chemist said, “Separate the molecules, split the right atoms and electrons and out of cold medicine you have Methamphetamine.”
MDMA.
Ecstasy.
He told me, “What we did is go even further.”
LSD.
Ketamine. Opium.
He said, “Mix and match. Eventually, you wind up with something no one’s ever experienced before.”
I kissed you and the whole world caught fire.
The plane’s oversized wheels below us scream against the concrete and I’m in Japan.
Could be Hong Kong.
China.
By now this is all starting to sound familiar.
The Dragon put up the fight of her life. Her eyes wide, her nails digging deeper into my skin and drawing blood as I carried her, kicking and screaming across the room.
Her legs flailing. Her angry cries, shouts and curses all melding into a screeching sonic landscape of color and emotion that washed over me and cleansed me from the outside in and right through me completely.
Empowered me.
This was something new, something real. Something pure. She said I needed to know what it felt like and I was piss drunk on stolen supremacy and what it does to you it does to me but from the other end of the cracked spectrum of control.
I threw her down into the cool ocean of sky blue silk beneath the both of us and wrestled with its arms and legs.
Her arms and legs.
She tried getting back up again but I grabbed a hold of her hands and stopped her from trying to slip out from underneath me.
I roughly flipped her onto her back. Tightened my grip around her wrists and pinned her arms on either side of her head.
My fingers laced into her fists. All my weight keeping her in one place. I straddled her bucking up and down waist and waited for her psychical strength to become the strength of her will and braced myself for the final reserves of fight she had left.
The Dragon furiously ground her teeth and snarled at me. No words came out of her burning mouth but her beating chest heaved upwards into mine and she groaned into my soul as I leaned down and forcefully stole a kiss I’ll never forget.
I gripped both her wrists above her head with one hand and asked her, “Are you ready?”
And she said, “Go.”
Customs. What’s the purpose of your trip?
To find something I’m looking for.
Something I’m chasing.
Anything to declare?
Trying to keep track of every episode is hopeless.
Get my passport stamped.
I’ve been to Taiwan.
The Philippines.
Macau.
Thailand.
What I know, maybe I don’t.
She clenched her teeth and shut her eyes so hard she must’ve seen the beginning of the universe in all that sparkling darkness.
I tucked a curl of hair behind her ear and circled my finger down the curve of the soft back of her earlobe.
She flinched, turning towards the direction of my finger and she squealed. Laughing.
Her body squirming underneath me.
I traced a slow line only I could see down the length of the side of her smooth neck and made sure to carve the edge of my nail deep into her skin.
She squeezed her eyes tighter and hissed. Her body remembering what it felt like to be alive for the very first time all over again.
I followed the flawless design of her own body. Tracing my finger along the lines, contours and every natural curve of her sculpted chest and the smooth wet skin swathed over her collar bone.
The delicate ridges and bones of her ribs. Counting each one as I slid my finger in an upwards curve. Following her own sliced lines.
Counting one, two, three ribs on either side. My finger becoming an open hand and gently stroking at the hollows between and underneath her ribcage and making her hardened balled fists tighten even more.
Her legs behind me thrashing out of time. The nyloned heels of her feet digging into the mattress but finding no permanent hold.
I tickled her stomach. Her skin pulled and stretched tight over her ticklish body as if her skin didn’t quite fit her.
Her stomach taut. Her belly button collapsing into the bed as I circled my finger around and around.
Her warm hips churning underneath me. She tried lifting her head but fell back into the pillow behind her.
A gasp fluttering out of her lips like a small bird that’d found escape from someplace inside her.
Her crying out, “Please.” Her crying out, “Stop.”
My two sets of hands, one my own hand, the other black-inked and imprinted into my skin became a set of claws and I squeezed the tensed muscles of her pelvic bone and made her pour out her soul in a melodic song made from pearls of immaculate laughter.
The Dragon screamed a scream I’ve been chasing ever since.
The chemist said, “There’s so many different street names for it now. The kids won’t stop reinventing it.”
Everything recycled.
It’s called, Tactus. Latin for Touch.
It’s called, Touch.
It’s called, Tickle.
He said, “That’s one of the more common ones.”
Sometimes, he said, they’ll name it after a woman. Farrah, Edith or ED for short, Felicity, Joy or Trixie.
Anything that means Happy or Happiness.
He said, “Good luck.”
He told me, “Really. I mean it.”
This is my life and what I’ve done with it.
They call me, Tracker.
The money comes from my company expense account. I slide my card and sign my name and find my room and tip the bellhop and lock my door and check all the usual places for secret listening devices.
My room faces the harbor and the city’s night sky is lit up with its midnight skyscraper shine that reflects off the water and turns my dark room a calming neon blue.
I sit. I think. I get up and go to the bathroom. My hands and my body start to shake.
Tremble.
Maybe this is how it starts.
I splash cold water on my face and look in the mirror. The color of my room changes with the colors of the skyline and neon blue slowly morphs into a lighter shade of purple.
I run through a list of everything I know:
My name is Mark St. John.
I was born July 23rd in Los Angeles, California.
My name is false.
My names change in conjunction to the various forms of identity I’ve been provided for each job.
Passport, social security card, driver’s license.
False, false and false.
I started in bootleg DVD’s. Then moved up in rank. I was put in charge of overseas distribution and was relocated to China.
Next to China is Hong Kong. The world’s largest trading port. I oversaw deals with immigration, the INS and government officials both local and in the US and Canada.
I became known as a Chaser the first time the numbers failed to add up and money was missing.
I found him and the money and sent word through the ranks until it reached the people who own silenced handguns and sniper rifles.
Tracking people all over the world through spread sheets and an inventory list is hard work but I have the patience and skill.
This is what I do for a living.
By now this is all starting to sound familiar.
The Dragon held her breath and blinked tears from her eyes as I gripped her narrow wrists tighter and tickled her sensitive sides.
My fingertips scuttling all across her tight skin. Tickling her sides, her stomach and her belly button.
Her body thrashing from left to right. Her flushed red cheeks expanding. I reached behind me and squeezed the thigh muscle of her toned left leg.
The Dragon screeched with laughter. Pure sound discharging from her entire body as she squealed and screamed with all her might.
Both her long nyloned legs violently thrashing and pummeling the battered mattress. Her crying face buried deep in her biceps.
Her sound becoming vibrant colors that I saw radiating from her skin with my eyes and flooded the hallways of my senses with a raging sea of emotions I’d never experienced before.
Chemical fusion equals chemical element release equals a chemical endorphins rush on a whole new level of Holy Fucking Shit.
I reached over and squeezed her other thigh. Made her raise her head and thrust her wet chest upwards towards the sky, every muscle in her trapped body tensed, stiff and rigid as she pushed every thought, every shred of sense and dignity out of her lungs and into the air and filled me with more harnessed power than I’d ever imagined it possible to grasp, hold onto and feed me with the gift of renewed life.
Two becoming one. The Dragon’s essence becoming my own through her forced laughter and hysterical sobbing.
I needed more.
What I believe, maybe I can’t trust.
What I know, maybe I don’t.
My room changes from purple to green as the city’s skyscrapers lining the shore outside my window all switch colors in unison.
A silent symphony of lights reflected off water, reflecting my mood right back at me.
When the phone rings, who I was and who I am right now doesn’t matter anymore. Me, I have no real past, present or future.
One moment I’m on the phone with border patrol making payments to offshore bank accounts to allow multiple shipments of counterfeit brand name merchandise to travel unchecked from Bangkok to the seedy downtown streets of Chinatown in Los Angeles and the next moment, it’s all about missing drugs.
“How far behind are we?”
“Estimate four months. Maybe five.”
“That’s a long time.”
“No shit Sherlock. Why’d you think I called you?”
Four or five months before our company notices a mistake in the books is a lot of catching up.
This is my life and what I’ve done with it.
They call me, Chaser.
The chemist explained a few things:
Cold medicine, allergy relief, acid reflux pills. Everything that comes over the counter is just a little box of hand grenades.
Get the mixture wrong while you’re mixing and matching all of the different chemicals and somewhere in the world a trailer park or an old abandoned apartment complex goes up in an ammonia-fueled fireball.
The chemist said, “We wanted something new. Something that could compete with the designer drugs already out on the market.”
“And?”
“And what we got instead was a fucking gateway to heaven.”
He handed me a sample. A small blue pill with a feather stenciled into its powdered finish glossed with shiny shellac see-thru coating.
“So what’s the problem? Missing shipment?”
He shook his head. “Worse than that. Some geek kid with a science kit in his parent’s basement broke down the chemical structure of these pills and started his own little fucking side project.”
He said, “It’s all over the place. It’s everywhere. And we’re not getting paid for any of it.”
He told me, “Follow the headlines.”
CLUB CULTURE OR GLOBAL EPIDEMIC?
TRAIN DELAY SHUTS DOWN ENTIRE CITY
POLITICIAN’S SON TO STAND TRAIL
Everything, everywhere, all across the world, it was all starting to fall to pieces.
I asked, “What’s it do?”
He lifted his finger, tapped my skull. “It opens this up.” And he made a tiny explosion with his fingers.
He said, “Everything.”
He said, “It opens up your cerebral cortex. The area of the brain associated with the sensations responsible for touch.”
It’s called, Touch.
Tickle.
The kids call it, Caress.
They call it, Embrace.
Euphoria.
I asked, “Like ecstasy?”
The chemist shook his head. “This is different. This works on all five senses. Everything all at once.”
He says, “This is what it’s like to be God.”
My room changes from green to a deep, dangerous crimson. I splash more water on my face and stare at the face in the mirror until I don’t know who’s staring back at me.
Maybe this is what I really look like.
Maybe this is who I really am.
My name is Mark St. John and everything about me is false.
This is my life and what I’ve done with it.
By now this is all starting to sound familiar.
The chemist said, “One thing.”
He explained, “Our copycat kid can’t get the dye mixture right. I make ‘em like M&M’s. Melt in your mouth kinda thing.
With this kid, his dye bleeds.”
He said, “One more thing. His mix is off by one percent.”
I asked, “What does that mean?”
He said, “Means long term neurotoxin damage. Means until we can catch this motherfucker, there’s going to be a whole lot of fucked-up in the world.”
I put the sample in my pocket.
Medusa shook the snakes from her head and screamed and cursed at me as I reached up to tickle her armpits.
Her arms raised above her. Wrists grasped tight. Her hands wound up in tight, pissed off fists.
I smiled, laughed and fed off her own panic until it became my pleasure and scratched the smooth pale skin under her stretched arms with the gentleness of a humming bird’s kiss.
The Dragon closed her eyes and howled. Her shrieks and cries of laughter destroying every thought I’d ever held onto about my past or present and kept me in the right here right now.
Torturing her. Tickling her. Making her scream and cry and beg and howl and screech with determination she never even knew she had.
Chemical receptors detonate with excess neropinephrine becomes an altered state of induced psychotic consciousness.
I switched armpits and tickled her other. The Dragon buried her face in her other arm and sobbed. Her chest exploding in small, rapid little pumping bursts.
Up and down, up and down.
Her legs uselessly kicking out at nothing. She turned her head in slow motion and wept with beautiful laughter.
I dry my face. I take off my shirt. I stare at my tattoo in the mirror. A black-inked dragon design all across my body.
My back and my front.
My mind skips.
I don’t remember where this came from.
I close my eyes and remember you.
But I can’t. I don’t know who you are.
I can see you.
But I don’t remember your face.
Or who you are.
Or who I am.
My name is Mark St. John.
My name is false.
What I remember, maybe never happened.
My hands shake. I reach into my pocket and find what I’m looking for. A small shiny blue pill with a stenciled feather.
I clench my hand and count to four.
“Why the feather?” I asked.
“It comes from the tickling.” Said the chemist.
“Why tickling?”
“Because it produces better sound than touch.”
I gripped both of her wrists and fought her as she fought me as I flipped her onto her stomach and avoided her scrambling legs.
Took in all her delicious screaming.
I wrestled her onto her stomach, facedown. I straddled her again and twisted her arms behind her back.
The Dragon struggled beneath me. Trying to pull her tightly held wrists away and slip out from underneath my weight.
Her legs battered the mattress, sending waves of silk flying up into the air behind us as she raised her head and screamed.
Her sound piercing space itself. Splitting my head apart down the middle so I could experience everything in the world all at once.
Filled my senses with the pure exhilaration of rapture.
Every violent tug or pull of her arms filled me with an enhanced rush of manufactured dopamine.
Serotonin.
Oxytocin. The same hormone released during orgasm.
This was the awareness of touch in all its unleashed glory. In its purest form.
I could taste her, smell her, feel her, see her in the colors of sound, fury and rampant passion.
I clutched her seized wrists and forced my weight on top of her until she couldn’t move. I leaned into her right side.
The Dragon angrily snapped her head to the left.
I leaned into her left and she snapped her face to the right. I held her wrists with one hand again and forced her chin up with my other hand cupped around the bottom of her clenched jaw.
The Dragon’s eyes were wet with tears. Her cheeks blushing dark shades of panic and excitement.
My face hot against hers, her warmth becoming my own. I pressed my lips hard into hers and kissed her rage.
The ink doesn’t stain the skin so this must be the real deal so I swallow.
Wait.
Maybe this is how it starts.
Maybe I did this to myself.
I close my eyes and
drift
to
sleep.
“MMMMMMMMMPPPPPPPHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!” The Dragon’s body thrashing as hard as she still had strength left in her as I pressed my lips harder against hers and stole her precious air.
Her body going limp. Her moan vibrating its way into my awakened consciousness and I drew all of her power from her and made it my own.
Two becoming one.
Weak, beaten, exhausted, The Dragon coughed and spluttered as I finally wrenched my lips away from hers and reached behind her.
I watched her right leg lift up into the air behind her and crash down again, lift and crash, before I grabbed a hold of her ankle and pulled her leg behind her so the heel of her foot dug into the cushion of her butt cheek.
I leaned my weight against her leg, gripped her crossed wrists with my hand as tight as I needed to and ran a finger up the sheered length of her sole.
The middle of her foot.
If this was what it was like to be God than there was no reason for us ever come back down again.
I wake up. I’m in Korea.
I’m in Canada.
I’m in Dubai. Wherever I am the color of morning is always the same and right now it’s gleaming through my hotel curtains.
I get up. I take a piss. I order breakfast and tip the bellhop and take a shower and get dressed.
I check out.
I only need one day. I’m good at what I do.
By now this is all starting sound familiar.
The Dragon’s laughter was loud enough for angels to hear. God must’ve turned his head at that moment and smiled.
This was the language of pleasure and sensation in its purest, rawest form.
Me, tickling her trapped little stockinged foot, her laughter satisfied a hole in me I’d had since before I’d even been aware how much I craved this feeling.
This overwhelming eruption of soma.
This sexual charge of empathogens.
Her foot flexed back. She pointed her toes. Flapped and kicked her ticklish, sensitive little foot about underneath me but couldn’t escape my fingers.
My fingers scampering about the sole of her foot and making her squeal and find new meaning in everything that meant something.
She flexed her foot back and I scratched at the rounded muscle underneath her toes. The ball of her foot.
The Dragon wept and bawled.
She pointed her toes and my fingers scurried up and down her forced arch making her shriek and wail in tears.
No words came. Just sound and sentiment. Feeling flowing over both of us. Transferring from one to the other with every stroke.
With every teasing caress.
Her body underneath my weight shifting as fast as she could as her trapped leg violently tensed and spasmed.
Her other leg lashing and trouncing the mattress behind her.
Her nails digging deeper and deeper into my gripping fingers as I clasped her wrists and pinned her hands against the small of her back to hold her struggling arms in place.
Every little tickle across the sole of her little foot became a ferocious charge of electricity and crackled through her sweat soaked body into my own. Her screaming became mine.
I pinched the fabric of her nylon, leaned down and pulled at her stocking with the edges of my teeth.
Pulling and pulling until the ripping sound mixed with her cries for mercy and she was barefoot.
The Dragon sobbed, “No!” And all of her desperate words broke into shattered little pieces, tiny shards of meaning all catching fire and escalating into a fractured rainbowscape of absolute frenzied hysteria as I dragged my fingers from the bottom of her bare heel up the length of her sole, the ball of her foot and I tickled all her wriggling, flexing little toes.
My head was packed with sound.
Wait for the bell to ring and follow. I’d done my homework before I’d even booked my flight.
I circled every fast food restaurant within a five mile radius of any high school or college and crossed those schools off my list.
Those kids couldn’t afford designer drugs. I was looking for rich bored kids with disposable amounts of cash flow who ordered drugs as if they were modifiable items on a take-out menu.
The kids who knew the difference between Chrome, Care Bears, Blue Niles and Banana Splits.
Between an H-Bomb and Liquid Nexus.
That left me with five of the best high schools and colleges in a four mile radius of the big city.
I tried my luck, went with the second best, set my watch to their four o’ clock bell and watched as hundreds of kids came pouring out all at once onto the city streets.
Every school defined themselves with uniform colors. All the same style just different mix and match colors.
Blacks and whites. Blues and greens.
I followed a group of grays and blacks in between gridlocked cars past stacked clothing shops and cell phone stands.
I’m looking for Blue Comets.
I’m looking for Carols, Carolines or Jocelyns.
I broke off in the crowds and trailed another group of greens and reds through packed shopping malls and city bridges.
I’m looking for Essence.
I’m looking for Chi Diamonds.
Cloud Scrapers.
Heaven’s Gate or God’s Eye’s.
The underground subway. Different buses, different routes. Trains and trams and ferries. From one side of the harbor to the other.
I’m looking for Figure Eights, Giggle Pills.
Laugh Tracks.
Taxis, shortcuts, dark alleyways that smelled like a sewer. Mazes upon narrow mazes of streets, overpopulated walkways and escalators.
I’m looking for Subspace or Domspace.
Slipped a small group of purples and browns some of my unchanged foreign currency and they pointed me underground.
Down the fire hazard staircase of a below-ground cigarette smoke filled arcade game center.
I passed some more money in the electric smoke fumed darkness and asked all the right coded questions.
I’m looking for Amy, Philissa or Mind Fuck.
I’m looking for Kiss Me’s, Electric Strokes and Flash Bulbs.
I’m looking for Blue Lightning.
I walked through block after blocks of illegal market stalls that sold most of our own counterfeit merchandise and I dropped the names of every contact I knew would make a difference.
Everybody on their cell phones and game devices.
There isn’t a drop of silence anywhere.
The Dragon lay on her back gasping and wheezing into the static charged air. Her wet glistening body settled into the shimmering silk underneath her.
Her eyes fluttering. Breath coming in little fissured ruptures between every deepened beat of her heart.
I was straddling her waist still, my arms by my side, watching and listening. Taking in her strength.
Breathing in deeply the spent life force that smoked off of her used body the way the cold wisps from an ice cube when it smothers in the atmosphere.
I could see all of this.
I could hear all of this and smell it.
I could taste her.
The line of the best-dressed wraps around the building itself.
I wait my turn.
The man in a suit with an earpiece and clipboard says, “Okay.” And I step inside.
The night outside becomes cigarette smoke and club beats and strobe flashing house lights.
Dancers in high heels, patterned nylons and twin multicolored ponytails sway their bodies like snakes in a flute-induced trance.
I breathe in every sound.
I separate the beats from the bass lines and electro-synthetic pop swell and I swallow everything whole.
Maybe this is how it starts.
I’m looking for Sadie.
The Dragon closed her eyes and groaned as I nibbled on her ear. Her body writhing underneath my own in time with every heavy thrust.
Every powerful downwards and upwards heave of myself going right down and straight up into her.
Penetrating her body. As far as I can go. As far as she can pull me inside her.
This is as close as we could get to each other and the closest we’ll ever get to seeing heaven before our time.
Her eyes fluttering. She grabs a hold of my wrists and uses my hands to pin her own on either side of her head again.
She squeals, pretending again. Struggling beneath me. Trying to escape. Wraps her long legs around my back and pulls me in closer.
Two becoming one.
She pulls while I push. She groans in while I exhale. She wraps her slender arms around my back and shudders her body into mine.
Every minute collapsing into the past, present and every future we’ll ever know.
She raises her head, bites my neck. Her sharpened nails claw at my back and leave behind fire trails and I feel what she feels and I close my eyes and fuck her even harder.
This is chemical ecstasy.
This is something no proper mix of iodine or cleaning solvents could ever even hope to come close to.
This is opening up a window in the sky and being where you’re from and where you don’t belong at exactly the same time.
The sheets wrinkle.
The mattress violently shifts out of place from the bed itself and together, the two of us collide into each other’s bodies.
Her hands wrapping themselves in silk fists and pulling at the blankets and ripping the fabric.
Her body tenses. She closes her eyes one last time and holds her breath and my mind goes elsewhere.
She leaves handprints in the skin of my back. Her ankles crossed, she flexes her feet back. She arches her body up off the bed.
She holds on.
I close my eyes and focus.
She holds her breath.
She moves faster.
I match her speed.
I squeeze her ribs and time it just right.
“Mark St. John.” He says. “Right? Did I get that right?” He says, “So nice to see you again.”
He isn’t smiling.
There’s a flash of white and my world goes black.
I hear muffled noise before I figure out they’re words and I hear his voice before I see him.
I force my eyes open and my skull feels like a bomb went off from somewhere inside it.
He pulls up a chair opposite the one I’m now tied to and sits in front of me with his legs crossed.
He lights a cigarette.
We’re in a small dark room. There’s a slanted pane of thick glass making up a missing wall that overlooks the dance floor below us.
The room we’re in, it changes from red to blue to green to strobe flashes of brilliant white and pink all in the same half second.
He says, “Sorry about the...” and he motions to the back of his own head with his cigarette hand.
He says, “The last time we met...” and he trails off, shakes his head and laughs. He says, “Anyway.”
And the cherry of his cigarette lights up as he slips the filter between his lips and sucks.
In the air is nothing but muted dance beats. The walls, floor and roof all pulsing with the rhythmic rumble of synthetic bass.
What I remember, maybe I can’t trust.
By now this is all starting to sound familiar.
“How do you know me?”
“Still not a hundred percent, are we Chaser?” And he motions to his head again. Squints at me.
He takes another drag. “What is this? Is this six? Fucking seven? I’ve lost count.”
I shift in my seat. Hands tied behind me and tied to the chair. “Go fuck yourself.”
It’s the best I can come up with.
The man laughs. Shakes his head. “I used to think that was funny. Let’s try that again.”
“How do you know me?”
“You’re asking the wrong questions.”
“No really, go fuck yourself.”
“I can make this a whole lot easier.”
“By burning down your lemonade stand and giving us the change you owe us and offing yourself?”
“By jogging your memory a little.” I don’t say anything.
“You’re looking for something.”
“I’m looking for you.”
“Try again.”
“I’m looking for Sadie.”
“And what’s Sadie, Chaser?”
“Sadie. Trixie. I’m looking for imitation Subspace.”
“Again. Chaser. What’s. Sadie?” And my mind skips.
“Sadie...” And I fade.
“Sadie is...” He leaves the name hanging in the air.
“Sadie...” And it’s. There. Somewhere. Somewhere inside. My hands start to shake.
“Think Chaser. THINK.” And he pushes the side of my head with his finger. “FUCKING THINK.” He shouts, “THINK HARDER.”
And it’s somewhere.
My mind skips.
I filter through random words and thoughts and memories:
Ball
Cat
Kitten
String
Garden
Pencil
Flower
Love
Atomic bomb
Sadie
And my body starts to shake.
Maybe this is how it starts.
He notices the expression on my face and says, “Now. Try again. What’s Sadie?”
“Trixie, Farrah, Edith or ED for short. Names that mean happy or happiness.” And I’m fading.
“And?”
“And Sadie means Princess in Hebrew.”
“Well done, Chaser. That’s why I paid you so well.” And beneath me the floor drops out from where I’m sitting.
Nothing but empty.
Behind my back I clench my hands into fists and count to four.
Wait. “Wait. Who was Sadie?”
He leans forward. “What’re you chasing Mark St. John?”
I shift in my seat. Vision clouds with liquid. “Wait. Who was Sadie?” My mind skips.
He says again, “What’re you chasing?”
“The Dragon.” And he stands, grips the collars of my button up’s shirt collars and rips it right open.
The black-inked tattoo all over my chest, all over my arms. All over my back and my front.
I don’t remember where this came from.
Everything about me is false.
I don’t remember who you are.
Sadie.
I close my eyes and count to four.
Open my eyes.
I close my eyes and count to four.
My mind skips.
He says, “Every time I see you, every time you chase me down to exactly the same fucking place, through exactly the same channels you say the same fucking thing.”
He stands upright. Over me. He says, “WHAT’RE YOU CHASING MARK ST. JOHN?” And he shouts his question over the music outside.
He says, “I paid you. You tracked down missing shipments missing persons and misplaced company funds.”
He says, “My money. My company. I’m your, WAS. YOUR. FUCKING EMPLOYER.”
He shouts, “You were real good Mark. Real good. The only reason you’re still fucking breathing.”
He says, over the music outside, “You solved this problem for us a long time ago Mark St. John.”
For emphasis, he shouts, “A LONG TIME AGO.”
He says, “Case fucking closed already.”
He shouts, “CASE. FUCKING. CLOSED. ALL. READY.”
He says, “DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?”
The chemist said, “One thing.”
He explained, “Our copycat kid can’t get the dye mixture right. I make ‘em like M&M’s. Melt in your mouth kinda thing.
With this kid, his dye bleeds.”
He said, “One more thing. His mix is off by one percent.”
I asked, “What does that mean?”
He said, “Means long term neurotoxin damage. Means until we can catch this motherfucker, there’s going to be a whole lot of fucked-up in the world.”
I put the sample in my pocket.
He kneels down in front of me. Cocks his head to one side and looks sad. “There used to be someone. Pretty girl. Dark curly hair.”
Medusa.
“You guys were something else man.”
Medusa was the Dragon and she shook the snakes from her head and said, “If I asked you to, would you chase me to the edge of the world?”
And I told her I would.
I said, “Yes.”
“You just didn’t know when to stop.”
Time slows. The instinct like second nature falling like sparkles in a child’s shaken snow globe.
“You find me one more time and you’re just another junkie in the streets with a bullet in his head.”
The spark ignites. The impulse whispers through the hollows of my bones and becomes the screaming sound of the universe being split apart at its seams. The end of everything.
Shakes the craving from its sleep.
Takes over me completely.
What I remember, maybe never happened.
What I believe, maybe I can’t trust.
By now this is all starting to sound familiar.
Maybe I did this to myself.
I wake up and I’m in New York.
I’m in San Francisco.
My mind skips. My hands start to shake.
I close my eyes and remember you.
I open my eyes.
I reach into my pocket and pull out a small blue pill.
I clench my hand and count to four.
I pick up the phone.
I say, “Yes. I’d like to book a flight.”
What I remember, never really happened.
Maybe I did this to myself.
Last edited:
