Mr. Glamour, a five-star experience

Green note: You can see the novel Mr. Glamour as a symbol of the primordial mechanism of obsession with aesthetics, acquisition, and exclusivity. Or you can consider the man, Mr. Glamour, as the intelligence behind that mechanism. Either way, it or he is illusory and self-perpetuating. Ultimately, that will be the chill that Mr. Glamour leaves in your bones…

Richard Godwin wastes no time in “Mr. Glamour.” He begins with a lyrical slice of the killer’s thoughts, a hypnotic tease, “…Welcome to my world, Only I know the rules”, but the induction is so artful—the gleam of a Maserati, the flash of a blade, the blood, thick as the crime scene tension—that you’re straightaway a fly in the spider’s parlour.

“He worked with blood, but the mirror was clean. His hand was still as it held the image. The camera zoomed in on the open window and captured her as she stood in violent twilight.”

There’s nothing to be done but to brace yourself for the barrage of brilliantly plotted scenes that are interwoven throughout with an ingenious subplot, and an outstanding cast of characters—a mix of millionaires, masterminds, beauties, big shots, sickos, plodders and crims—all in the usual states of psychological damage but not usual themselves, for there are no cookie cutters in Mr. Godwin’s world.

“She fled from herself into the bedroom where she lay with her back to the mirror, seeking refuge from the knowledge of who she was.”

Fans of Godwin’s dark prose will not be disappointed. The “Apostle Rising” legacy lives on in “Mr. Glamour” only tighter and faster through the twists and hairpin turns, and broader and keener in its psychological exploration.

“Flare felt the skin, the puckered flesh like a terrain of calluses against his fingertips. He moved his face one way, then the other, watching his twin selves.”

In addition to all of this, Godwin has painted a magnificent, vivid portrait of London. It is allegorical, satirical in its analysis of class, entropic in its acute awareness of decay and fundamentally the most unusual novel you are likely to read all year.

“Watch the crimson blood bead there, lustrous in the light. Surprising how much blood the bloodless have.”

There are lyrical depths here, there are exquisite expositions of character, unrelenting and uninterrupted until the fireworks of revelations at the end. Never mind genre—crime, horror, psychological thriller, police procedural—Mr. Godwin has created a new genre.

“Have you ever paused to consider as the pictures of you dance across screens, shop windows, bright metals, nail polish, how altered you are? The mirror makes identity.”

“Mr. Glamour” is a great novel by a modern master of Gothic.

Fin

After-party Notes:

Mr. Glamour is available at Amazon US and UK. See also Mr. Glamour on Goodreads for buy links to other online stores.

Also, good news for crime fiction fans: Richard Godwin’s “Apostle Rising” will be coming out in all eReader formats in a couple of weeks.  “Well, finally!” is what I say about that.

Parent Directory

Green note: outside of work, I been sloshing around, thinking, reading new authors, failing to post book reviews like I said I would, revisiting Kerouac, wondering about Jack Ketchum and Linda De Luca, posting on Oneword and other sites, ever planning a comeback to the grand Big Little where I was born.
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Photo credit

 

In the blackness between worlds, Miriam flapped and kicked amidst alternating blasts of burning and icy winds. Below, she could see her husband Hal, fighting to maintain his position near the outer rim of a hole dense with swirling numbers and symbols. She dropped altitude to get closer to him but pulled back up as soon as she sensed the gravitational field. Hal was losing his fight, his mouth wide with horror and the yelling of words lost in the fire and ice winds.

Miriam woke up screaming, “I can’t hear you!” Her heart was beating so hard and frantic she thought maybe she was dying. She sat up, cried out for Hal, looked desperately around her. Hal’s place in bed was empty. She jumped up, her pulse jamming and pounding. She looked everywhere, the basement, the attic, the yard, the shed, no Hal.

# # # # #

The intercom on Hal’s phone buzzed and he heard his buddy’s voice coming over it in an ominous whisper, “Better run, bud, she’s on her way over to your cube.”

Hal caught Zara in his peripheral, shimmying her Miss Wyoming ass while balancing two mugs of coffee.

Hal hunched over his keyboard. Don’t sit down, don’t sit down, don’t—

Zara sat down carefully on Hal’s visitor chair. She put one coffee on Hal’s coaster, gave hers a slurp. “Hey-ya, Darlin’! How’s my favorite engineer?”

Hal banged the keyboard with both hands. “Fuck!”

“Bad day, Darlin’?”

“Listen, Zara, I’m on a deadline.”

Zara drew back, feigned fear, then bust out laughing. “Aw, listen Hon, take five, it’ll do you good.”

“I can’t spare one let alone five.”

“Well hey, Darlin’, maybe I can help.” She sipped her coffee, squinted at Hal. “I mean, for sure sometimes jus’ takin’ a break, you know, a step back, can give you a fresh outlook.”

“Seriously, Zara, this project is due by COB and I still have to get it to the programmers to code it before I can—”

“You know, I been meanin’ to ask you why a super-intelligent man like yourself don’t do your own code!” Zara leaned toward Hal, both hands on her mug. She lowered her voice and said, “I know you aren’t just all good looks!”

Hal pushed back a bit. “It’d take too long and I’ve got no time. Thanks to all the layoffs, I’ve now got fifty-six projects on my plate!”

Zara sat back and smiled. “You know, I could teach you all the code you’d need for your type of projects…”

“I appreciate the offer, but the programmers are pretty good about turning my projects around when I need ‘em.”

“You’d have complete control over your projects from start to finish,” Zara singsonged.

Hal looked at his watch. “Listen, I’ve really got to get a move on.”

Zara stood up. “Well you think about it, Darlin’.” She winked at Hal and shimmied on back to the admin pool.

# # # # #

A couple of days later, Hal was in the break room getting coffee. He heard that step coming across the tiles and cringed.

“Hey-ya, Darlin’!”

“Hey Zara.” Hal stirred his coffee, turned toward the trash and dropped his stirrer in.

“I coulda got you that coffee, you only have to buzz me!” Zara put her hands on her hips with a huff. “I thought you was busy!”

“Oh I’m busy alright. Boss just dumped nine more jobs on my desk!”

“How d’you figure the programmers are gonna keep your pace? They got projects of their own!”

“I know,” Hal said. He turned to leave. “I’ll find a way.”

“Stop right there, Mister,” Zara said.

Hal looked back at her, surprised.

“Hal, I flirt with you ‘cause I like the reaction I get, but I respect you as a colleague as well as genuinely like you, and I see you strugglin’. I know what your end product is and I know the code you need. In just a couple of hours I could show you all you need to know to complete your projects, start to finish. You’re smart. It’s that easy.”

Hal was blown away. He shook his head like to clear it, and laughed. “Christ, Zara, I always thought you were trying to jump my bones!”

Zara smiled. “I know you’re happily married, Hon. Like I said you give good reaction!”

“Well how would you teach me? When?”

“We could go to my place after work one day,” Zara said.

“Forget that. Miriam wouldn’t like it and neither would I. Why not here?”

“Conflict of interest.”

“How so? You’re just an admin…right?”

“Just? Most of my work here is for the gaming division.”

“Sorry.”

Zara winked at him. “No worries, Darlin’. How about an internet café?”

“OK, that sounds kosher.”

# # # # #

Zara shimmied into the Cozy Café, laptop over her shoulder. She looked around, saw Hal and grinned. She got herself a giant Cozy-Carmel Macchiato and went over to Hal’s table.

“Hey-ya Darlin’.”

“Hey, Zara.”

Zara pulled out her Squadron X7200 and fired it up.

“Thanks for this, Zara. Very much.”

“Don’t thank me now, Hon, you ain’t been through the wringer yet.” Zara looked up from her laptop and winked. “Just kiddin’. Now, send me the project document you just finished and we’ll use that as an example, OK?”

“Sure.” Hal attached his file to an e-mail and sent it.

“Got it.” Zara said. She opened it and scanned it. “OK, Hal, did you download the programming editor I suggested?”

Hal looked at Zara all skilled and serious. He smiled. “Sure did,” he said.

“OK, open it then open your document.”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

“Cursor in your document, hit Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C. Cursor in your editor hit Ctrl-V.”

“Done.”

“Save it the file name you want, making sure you choose the extension Hyper Text Markup Language file.”

“Done.”

“OK, first we’re going to code all your special characters. Write this down as your first step.” Zara waited, licked her lips.

“OK,” Hal said.

“Highlight an instance of a left-hand double quote mark, Click on Find, and in the Replace field enter ‘& rdquo ;’, then click on Replace All.”

“Got it…OK…Oh very cool!” Hal’s face was lit up.

“See? It’s all this easy, just take down the steps. OK, now do the same for the right-hand quote. It’s ‘& ldquo ;’.”

Hal hung in there, sharp as an after-work tack, through the left-hand single quote, the right-hand single quote, the en dashes, the em dashes and all manner of else. He felt a sense of reward and hope until they got into the tougher stuff and he felt his brain slow with each command task.

His eyelids felt thick like loaded syntax and when he looked at Zara her head seemed pointed and large and precarious on the end of a stretched neck, her features golden, like a long ago queen.

He saw himself climbing a Parse tree and pruning it exactly as the queen had ordered, and when he’d got to the top of it he realized he’d come a long way from the parent directory and he panicked. He tried to talk. “Where is the parent directory?” he slurred. “I can no longer see it, I can’t find it, I can’t—” His eyes started to roll back in his head.

Zara reached out her hand and clamped it down on the top of Hal’s head, her nails piercing his skin. Tiny little trails of blood leaked slowly down his head. “Welcome to Zargoth, Earthling.” She blinked golden lids over black eyes, threw her head back from her long neck, and out of her mouth came a funhouse laugh. “You have been assimilated!”

Hal became Panic, the origin of it along with Hopelessness and Desolation. He became the absolute end of a man as he was turned and turned like a spider’s victim by the clawed, golden hand.

But even in the turning, in not knowing his top from his bottom, with each turn, his face up, he could see Miriam reaching out to him, and with eyes wide and horror-filled, he yelled to her, “Find the parent directory!” and then he was gone, sucked down into a whirling vortex of numbers and symbols.

Fin

Click here for more on prompt “#324 – Parent” from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

Psycho Liza after Dulville: Give it over

Green note: Here’s another fast job. Just trying to get down ideas for Psycho Liza episodes (you can read the first episode here).  This is another idea that kicked off via Oneword then came here. Like Slade, who is definitely going to be part of the Liza story. Lance and the Judge’s kid are coming up. Bits and pieces. Chapters on the loose.

“Let’s see where the little bastard threw it today.” Herb opened his front door and peered out. He threw up his hands. “Goddammit!” He sinched up his bathrobe and shuffled across the veranda and down the steps in his slippers.

The morning air was pressurized. Herb looked at the sky for signs of a front. It was blue as ever and the sun was just beginning to work its way up. He shook his head, scuffed down the walkway and grunted as he stooped to pick up the newspaper.

He unfolded it and started reading on his way back up to the house. “Shit fire!” he bellowed.  His wife snapped open the kitchen blinds and darted her wide eyes around the yard.

Herb held the paper up to her and shook it. He hurried into the house and threw it down on the kitchen table. “Don’t that just take the rag off the bush!”

“Good Lord, Herb! What on earth has happened?”

“Look here, M.” Herb pounded the paper with a great, long index finger.

Martha raised her glasses to her nose and began to read the headline out loud, “Woman Holds Up 7-11 With Voodoo Curse.” Martha gasped and put one hand to her breast. She looked up at Herb. “The 7-11 just over on Myrtle and Main?”

“The very same, Herb said. “The Dooley kid was working the cash register. Says here this wild-lookin’ woman came in and said somethin’ to him and he jus’ give her all the cash in the till, no gun, nothin’.”

########

Psycho Liza flew out the door of the pub and disappeared into the side alley. She kept to the dirty narrows like a rat to sewer corridors and she worked her way artfully through the heart of Dulville until she reached the blackness beyond the town’s edge.

Clouds threatened the light of a near full moon and the air was a cold sweat that smelled of rust and dogwood.

Liza strode over the back roads and sprang into the ditches at the first glow of car lights on the horizon. There she would wait, barely breathing, until the noise and lights had bled back into the night.

She pressed on until she began to smell the stench of the Darby paper mill and the power of midnight had grown so close and strong as to be unbearable. She could see Highway 319 ahead and she stopped and turned to the waxing moon. Her eyes glowed with its yellows and she whispered to it.

O Ningal, I have thy husband’s power!
Soon we shall sup as queens at table
And all the kings as dogs shall cower
Underneath the blade of Ereshkigal

The wind rose and blew Liza’s long black hair out from her curvy body. She raised her arms to the heavens and her eyes transformed to the blue and indigo of white hot.  Then she plumped up her creamy breasts and clicked her sharp black boot heels South on Highway 319.

Liza heard a car coming far off behind her. She turned and walked backward with her thumb out. The car came on fast then skidded into the shoulder in front of her. It was a beat, old Ford Falcon. She ran to the passenger side and got in.

The driver was a drunken, middle-aged man with beady eyes and a patchy, dirty beard. His sweat was heavy with the smell of ammonia and he had a nervous little laugh. “Well lookee here, if it ain’t Elvira, Mistress of the Dark! Heh heh.”

Gale force storms rumbled in Liza’s head and the moonlight that filled her eyes became obscured by blackened clouds.

“Don’t say much, do ya?  Heh heh.” the drunk said.

Liza’s black eyes pelted the drunk with the torrential rains of her sickness.

Your one and only purpose is come
For soon you shall be divinely birthed
No longer drunk and howling hokum
As Ningal severs your ties to this earth

The drunk leaned back from her. His eyes had seen her silky black wrap. “Say is that blood on your coat, girl? Heh heh.”

“Why no, Hon,” Liza cooed. “It ain’t.” She shimmied her wrap from her shoulders and took it into her hands. The silk caught the moon’s light as she moved it like water flowing. She winked at him. “Let me show you the pleasures of the dark like only I know how,” she said all smoky.

The drunk perked up. “Well now yer talkin’! Heh heh.”

“I’m Liza”

The drunk offered his hand. “I’m Percy. Heh heh.”

Liza grabbed his hand with an unnatural force and twisted it to the right. He howled with the pain and followed his ripping arm, turning with it out from under the wheel and into her lap and she entwined and held the wrap like a vice around his neck until he stopped kicking and fighting like a wild beast.

She snatched the keys from the ignition and dragged dirty Percy out of the car and around to the back of it. She unlocked the truck, hoisted him up into it and slammed the lid down. “Drunk fuck,” she said.

Liza got into the driver’s seat and took off down the highway. She drove until the needle twitched on a quarter of a tank and she looked for exits to gas stations. She got off at exit 25 to Wrightsville and screeched up to the pumps at a 7-11. She stepped out and squinted wild yellow eyes around to gauge the action.

Her hair whipped in a sudden wind and she clicked her boot heels up to the door and yanked it open. She blasted in and stopped with the wind. Everyone froze. She fixed her eyes on the cashier and hissed, “Yahdoh machte spiro shakti,” and he opened the cash drawer, gathered everything into a bag and mechanically handed it to her. She snatched it from him and tore out the door, filled the tank and drove off, South on 319.

Fin

Click here for more on prompt “#273 – Give” from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

The spirit of Slade: The next step

Green note: This guy Slade popped out in a Oneword earlier this month and he dogged me to the point I used SS #271 to explore him more.  So here he is, the proprietor of Painted Ponies body shop, in his first flash.

Photo from IMCDB

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It was just mid-morning in Iron City, Georgia and already it was 100 degrees.

Even with the fans going full tilt, it was 90 degrees inside the Painted Ponies body shop.

Slade pulled his head out of a big Cutlass 442 and grabbed a shop towel, ran it around his face and the back of his neck.  He walked to the front office like a cowboy off a two-month cattle drive and banged on the side of a vending machine he’d rigged up.  A can of Budweiser banged its way down through the machine and bounced into the tray.

The shop grunt looked over at Slade, hotboxed his cigarette and shook his head.  “Why don’ you jus’ keep yo’ beer in the fridge, Boss?” he said.

Slade just looked at him and pulled the tab.  Beer sprayed into his mouth and face and hair.  He grinned and shook his head like a dog and growled, “That’s why, you unimaginative bastard.”

The grunt rolled his eyes, flicked his butt onto the dirty linoleum floor and ground it out with his boot.  “Guess I’ll git back to work seein’ as I’m borin’ you with my mundan—”

“Shut up and listen, Lance,” Slade whispered.

“What Boss?”

“If that ain’t the sound of a 1977 Super Duty 455 V8 Trans Am comin’ our way, then slap my ass an’ call me Sally!”

Slade strode all excited out the front door and past the gas pumps, almost to the road, and he stopped.  He threw his head back and hollered, “Whoooeee!”

Lance ran out to look, shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand.

A mint condition 1977 black-and-gold special edition Trans Am tore into view and fishtailed to a stop just a few feet from Slade.  A wiry kid rocketed out of the driver’s side door, ran at Slade and grabbed both sides of his leather vest.  “Slade, dude, ya gotta help me!”

Lance postured for a fight.

Slade brushed the kid’s hands off his vest.  “Whoa now, boy, you don’ just come on a-grabbin’ a man like tha—”  He squinted at the kid.  “Say, ain’t you Judge Beeman’s boy?”

The kid panted, “Yessir, Slade, sir.”  He gulped for air.  “An’ like I said ya gotta help me please I got drunk and stole this car outside a shack near Andalusia, Alabama and hell the keys was danglin’ from th’ ignition jus’ a-beggin’ me to take ‘er and I been drivin’ all night and ya gotta help me and paint this here car real quick-like.”

Slade spat on the dirt.  “You fool kid!” he growled at the boy and slapped him hard upside the head.  “It ain’t as easy as that.”

The kid staggered back, panting and rubbing his ear.  He looked like he was gonna cry.  He whined, “What then, Slade, what’ll I do?”

Slade pulled gloves out the back of his jeans and put them on.  “The next step is to look for a LoJack,” he said, “and if I find one, it’s too late for you, Bub.”  He motioned to Lance to get gone.

Lance nodded and scrambled on into the shop to make ready.

Slade grabbed a couple of tools out of his pocket and opened the passenger door.  He unscrewed nuts and bolts, got up in the glove box hole and unscrewed some more and scoured the dash then looked under the seats.  “A shack in Alabama,” he grumbled.  He leaned into the back, pulled up the seat and looked.  “Fool been drivin’ all night.”  Slade pulled the hood release and jumped out of the car.

The kid was wringing his hands, walking in circles.

Slade lifted the hood and scoured the engine bay.  “It’s 9 o’clock now.  Dude owns this car mighta heard you takin’ it and called the police as many as 5 or 6 hours ago!”

The kid stopped his circling.  His voice was shaky.  “Oh man, dude, well I put ‘er in neutral and pushed her a long way down the road ‘fore I started ‘er up and anyway I don’ know if anyone was even home.”

Slade pulled his head up out of the engine and growled, “You don’ know if anyone was home and you even think of stealin’ a car like this?”

Two steps and he was at the kid’s neck.  He gritted his teeth in the kid’s face and snarled, “You stupid little fuck!  Now give me the keys!”

The kid just stared.  His lower lip quivered.

Slade shook the kid silly until the keys fell out his cold sweat hands and onto the red dirt.  He pushed the kid out of the way, grabbed up the keys and opened the trunk.  He jumped back like he was on springs.  “Sweet Jesus!” he hollered.

He turned and took the kid in.  Maybe 20.  Almost six foot and skinny.  Peach fuzz on his face.  Baby eyes that hadn’t a clue.  “Son,” he said to him, “There’s a dead woman in the back of this ‘ere trunk.”

The kid snapped out of his daze.  “Oh no, God,” he said.  He rushed to the trunk.  His eyes got the size of half dollars.

There was a middle-aged woman, her eyes staring, big and dull.  Her cracked red lips were parted, like in mid-sentence.  A pool of blood congealed around her teeth.  There was a gaping hole in her chest and her heart was hardening in one of her clamped hands.  Below her skirt, her knees were caked with blood and her feet had been cut off.

The kid’s face was green.  He stepped back falteringly, his stomach waved and heaved.  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, whispered, “I dunno what this is, man, and I swear to you on my mother’s grave that I didn’t do this.”  He shook with weeping.  He let out in sobs, “What…will…I…do?”

“The next step will cover your ass,” Slade said.  “It’s all you have to know, Bub.”  He knew the kid didn’t do it, and he suspected the killing fucker what owned this car didn’t have a LoJack, but he ripped out the sides of the trunk to be sure.  Then he lifted up the panel to the spare.  The body rolled to the back.  He tore up every place there and under.  Nothing.  He looked toward the shop.

Lance gave Slade a thumbs-up from the window, then walked out to take care of the kid.  He had a bottle of Jack in the back of his pants and a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled up in each T-shirt sleeve.

He sauntered up to the kid.  “C’mere, man,” he said.  “Slade’s gonna take care of your five-finger ride.  Now I need to get you the fuck away from here.”  He offered the kid some Jack and he gulped it like a thirsting, dying man.  “You’ll be safe, man.”  Lance lit a smoke and offered it to the kid.  He sucked on it like breathing to live.  He walked the kid to his piece of shit pick-up, helped him in and drove off.

Slade got in the Trans Am, fired it up and drove it with the dash in his lap back behind the shop.  He pulled up under the ceiling of turf Lance had raised and he pulled a transmitter out from his front pocket.  He pressed a button and the freight elevator took him down while the raised turf above him lowered and clamped down to ground level.

Fin

After-party notes:  no time to proof this but at a glance back, it looks like there’ll be more to this.  Just like with Liza.  Maybe the two will meet.  Maybe cool dude Slade, who I enjoy writing about, will lead me to Psycho Liza by surprise.

Click here for more on prompt “#271 – The Next Step” from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

Thursdays in Dulville, GA

Green note:  I’m bringing Psycho Liza home.  The idea of her came to me in January of 2010 and I gave her a timid spin in May, but she didn’t get to show her true colors until the Brazill gig this January.  Truth is, I’m scared of Liza.  Trouble is, it’s obvious ‘Thursdays in Dulville, GA’ is not the end of the line for her.  Bringing her here puts me under the gun.

Photo from concentrate media

The door to the pub flew open and hit the wall with a sound like a single shot bang.  Everybody in the place jumped a mile high and looked toward the source of the commotion, their nerves jarring their limbs like jackhammers.

All eyes locked on the wide open doorway filled part way with a mini-Elvira, her big creamy breasts askew in their confines and most of her ass-length black hair loosed from its clip.  She looked like she’d been chased out of Hell, hounds on her heels, into a snare of silence and stares.  She was motionless but for panting and darting her savage eyes back and forth, gauging the danger.

“Do something for crissakes!” Boss Barker hissed at Hal.

Hal laughed nervously from behind the bar.  “Evenin’ Miss Liza!” he hollered over to her.  “Come on in and take a load off, won’tcha?”

Liza’s eyes darted to Hal.  He could see the damaged gears clunking in her head and he felt her disease spinning off them like mud.  He cleared his throat and lied, “You’re lookin’ mighty fine tonight, Darlin’.”

Liza swept her eyes back across the barroom, and by sheer do-or-die desperation, the staring, mute folks jolted themselves back to drinking and jawing as much like usual as they could muster.

Liza blinked and took one step inside.

Hal let his breath out, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.  He poured a glass of merlot and held it up to Liza.  “Here you go, Darlin’.  It’s on the house.”  A smile quivered on his lips.

Liza blew a strand of hair out of her face, plumped up her breasts, and clicked her tall black boot heels across the floor toward the bar, her black, silky wrap fluttering out to the sides.  She took the wine and smirked at Hal.  “Thanks, Hon.  You still my man ain’tcha?”

“Oh you know it, Miss Liza.”

“Ain’t no one at my table is they, Hon?”

“No ma’am,” Hal said, “it’s reserved for you ever’ Thursday.”

Liza turned her back on him abruptly and clicked her sharp heels toward a raised section of the barroom in the back corner.

Hal snapped, “Someone go shut the goddamn door.”

Jim Colt slid off his barstool.  “I got it.”

Buck Walsh quit peeling the label off his beer bottle.  He leaned into the bar and said real low, “I told y’all somethin’ was wrong, I mean real wrong, like to make Psycho Liza this late for her usual happy hour, like maybe she got fired or got herself in a car accident or got raped or maybe—”

“Or maybe she done snapped the rest of the way to crazy,” Boss said and bust out laughing.

Jim hopped back onto his barstool.  “Oooowee, this place is packed.”  He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder and said, “Theys even some outta-towners in here tonight.”

Buck whipped his head around, got a bead on the strangers, a man and his woman at one of the tippy cocktail tables having a good time.  He turned back around quick and whispered fast and scared, “You think we oughta warn ‘em ‘bout Psycho Liza and the game she play, well it’s not a game to her but it is to all of us, an’ you know it’s the best fun we got in this fallin’ down town since the Bijou went bust an’—”

“Idiot!”  Boss slapped Buck upside the head.  He shook his jowls in Buck’s face, “Think about it, you moron!  We go tell them folk that shit an’ what the fuck do that make us look like?”

“It’ll be alright, Buck,” Hal said.  “Jus’ give ‘er some time with that wine an’ she’ll calm down.”

“I dunno,” Jim said, “Look at ‘er.”

Liza stood beside her table squinting at the lights in the stained glass valence that hung from the ceiling all the way around the bar.

“She gonna sit down and start or what?” Boss grumbled.  “Missus say I gotta be home by nine.”

As if she heard him, Liza turned slowly from the lights, her eyes glowing with the reds and oranges of them.  She set her wine glass down on the table, pulled out the chair and arranged herself on it.

All the folks in the barroom watched her out of the corners of their eyes.  And they waited.

Liza dipped a finger into her wine and touched it to her forehead.  The wine drop ran down to the bridge of her nose and cut left through smudged eyeliner and on down to the corner of her mouth.  She snapped it up with her tongue and lifted her wine glass and drank half of it down.  And when she looked up, the cool fires of red and orange had transformed to the blue and indigo and violet of white hot.

Here am I, you defenseless man-beasts,

Holding high court, queen of your Lust,

While you piddle with unworthy sows

Cast your pearls not there, nay, but avow

To lay them before me with a wink and a kiss

Liza looked around the barroom, man by man, catching their attention with the heat of her eyes and winking and licking her lips at them.  They winked back and smiled and that made them hers.  Then one by one the women reached out to touch her men when she wasn’t looking, seeing how close they could get before the fire in her eyes burned them.  It was a delicate balance, tricky to pull off.  Only Victoria Parsons had come the closest, almost kissed a man before Liza caught her.  Liza stood up and made like she was gonna tear Vicky up, but she sat back down when Vicky ran out the door.

Liza blew a kiss at Jim Colt and he smiled and winked at her and followed her eyes over his shoulder to the strangers.  They were animated in conversation, their eyes sparkling and tickling each other’s fancy.  Their laugher rang out joyous and quieted to chortles and then down to whispers at just inches away.

Blackness filled Liza’s head.  Smoke from firestorms rumbled across her eyes, and she became as a blowtorch, blasting the stranger-man with the whole of her sickness.

Look to me, man, and take my cup, for

I am the only woman, the feminine source,

Of your endless desire, the fount of your fulfillment

Over and over, and I say when, I hold the key

Look to me now, man, now man, now man

The stranger-man seemed impervious.  He reached out a hand across the top of the cocktail table and the stranger-woman took it and time stopped its onward march for them, a blissful breath taken in and held.

Obey your lust, you man-beast

Ever only a knee-jerk away, just

Do as I say, mantis prey

I am Kali, the black Shakti!

I am the One Eternal Woman!

Dance for me, fertilize me

Feed me!

The strangers opened their eyes and withdrew slowly from a kiss, their smiles full as apple flowers dripping with nectar.  They took up their wine glasses and prepared for a toast when the stranger-man felt the heat of Liza’s stare.  He looked in the direction of the heat and his head jerked back involuntarily, his eyes widened, slathered with horror.

The stranger-woman rescued the wine glass from her man’s trembling hand and she leaned in close with grave concern.  She touched his arm, asked him what’s wrong, and in absence of his words she followed the line of his dilated pupils to the pathological laughter of Psycho Liza.

Jim Colt cried out, “Oh sweet jesus!” and Hal dropped a bottle of Old Crow onto a stack of glasses.  He turned in slow motion amidst crazy witch laughter and breaking glass and patrons’ gasps, and he saw Psycho Liza moving from her table like a panther along the limb of a tree.  Her eyes were yellow and slitted with evil, and she picked up speed through the parting people.

Her black, silky wrap flapped out from her sides like helpless crows with broken wings.  They brushed the stranger-woman’s cheek in a flurry and batted hard against the stranger-man’s head.  They flew out the door, their wingtips red, leaving peals of laughter and disease trailing after.

All movement within the barroom stopped on dropped jaws and hands clamped to mouths.  All hearts missed a beat when the stranger-woman screamed.  And in a collective sweep, all eyes turned from the door to a rush of blood flowing from the stranger-man’s neck.

Fin