Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:49:22 -0400
From: A. Cheshire Cat <kierkegaard_is_cool@hotmail.com>
Subject: Hungry For It 7 --

Hungry For It 7 -- The Pathetic Hero/or, The Stuff of Snuff
A. Cheshire Catt
kierkegaard_is_cool@hotmail.com

[Author's Note: okay okay okay, so for all you sex-starved hounds hoping
this is something like the last chapter or the fourth chapter, I'm sorry
to disappoint you. Quite frankly, I'm just glad I got this story
finished. I'm really impressed with myself that I was able to resolve it
all to the extent that I have, but this scene is not really sexual, there
was so much action that had to be covered, so many details, I felt, I
needed to tie up, that I really didn't have opportunity to dwell of
sexualities. I don't care if you hate it, but I didn't want a
nearly-finished story out there in the internet when really I knew how it
was going to end since the third chapter. I hope you enjoyed it. I
apologize for the ridiculous extent I took the whole Charles/Charlie
thing, but really it was an accident of bad editting, but I think I dealt
with it well enough. Can't wait to write more stories that have nothing
to do with this plot ... lol, I couldn't think of anything sexual to say
about these people anymore and really enjoyed pulling the trigger and
smashing the beer bottle. Enjoy the last scene ...]

--- --- ---

Even though the mail was stacked up at the door and hadn't been opened in
weeks, even though there hadn't been a dish washed in the house since the
last one got dirty, even though there were cans of beer all over the
place, bags from weed and blow all over the table, heaps in the ashtrays
and a foul odor coming from the washroom I got up that day and I went
shopping. I bought myself a nice suit jacket and that Saturday night I
dressed up real nice and put the gun I'd used back in the day in the back
of my pants, in the small of my back, cold and dark and heavy with
doom, and hid it all, all my intentions, with my fancy new suit jacket.

My name is Charlie. Now I'm in my forties. I've had a long life. It's
gone by in the blink of an eye. The blink of an eye is an interesting
thing, and the blinking of my eye has caused me more pain than anything
else. Some people they are born into good families and they do right and
they get what they want and have a happy life, and their eyes are open
for it all, they see things, wonderful things, and they have nothing to
complain about when they close their eyes. Some other people though, they
close their eyes, they fear what is there, and that fear holds them in a
darkness that will last their whole life, what can seem like the blink of
an eye turns out to be the nightmare that is their life.

Once upon a time I was a kid too. I had been born into a good family and
everyone in that family falls into the first category. It was in my
mother's womb that I became different than the others. I was born with a
variety of epilepsy. That isn't the reason that at a later age I would
get involved with the bullies in my class, nor is it the reason that I
became a professional thief. I could have applied my wit and intelligence
to almost anything at all, but for whatever reason I applied myself to
crime.

The bank robbery was a job I did for someone that promised to cut me into
the deal. It was a guy that seemed to be good to me but was in fact a
selfish bastard and when I was caught did nothing, though he could have
probably done something, to limit the time I did afterward. The people
that know this sort of thing know the reason I quit is because when the
alarm went off in the bank there was a flashing light that went off and
being that I was looking right at the light for too long I was flipped
out, I went into a siezure and fell to the floor and helplessly twitched
and the police simply came and collected me and put me away.

When I got out of prison I was already in my thirties. I quickly got some
work as the house dealer at an after-hours club. Those were the best
years of my life. I was just settled into this house along the busy road
and there were always people around me that seemed to like me for what I
had. Then one afternoon at the club the lights hit my eye a certain way
and I failed again, I was weak, I had a siezure right at the club. The
head dealer didn't want me working for him anymore, he cut me a deal for
my situation and I settled into a life of anonymity thereafter. The party
trickled to other places, seemed people didn't like me they liked the
drugs. Then in my solitude I perverted myself, a long life spent alone
tends to do that to people. They tend to distort their true wishes into
something more primal and basic, they trail nature to its hiding-place.
That's where, in my life, I found the kid, Charles.

The life I knew with Charles was symphonically sweet. It was the stuff of
Tristan and Isolde's need for each other, it was Pygmalian carving
Galatea, it was the glory of God in a Mormon desert, it was triumph, it
was freedom, it was peace and love.

When Charles was taken from me I didn't know what to do. I freaked out. I
went out after Dude because I knew Dude was the only one who knew the boy
was with me. I chased after him and spoke to everyone that would know his
whereabouts, people that knew who I was, people who didn't realize why I
was looking for him. Anyone that ask was given this look like there was
business between us and they accepted that as fact, and the vermin in the
underbelly of society don't pry, but they eventually figure things out.
See, people were talking about how Dude had come into money all of a
sudden but no one knew how or from where, like I said they didn't ask
questions. Some assumed it was that he had hijacked a quantity of some
drug that could be divided into a cornucopia of plenty. Some presumed
he'd offed some window and made off her with her loots. Some people
suggested that he'd simply robbed someone of something of value ... I
merely laughed, for they were so right.

Then there was an article in the paper about a boy they found in a gully
with his face smashed in and his fingers cut off. He had been disposed of
in a professional manner, I believed that to be my Charles. I gave up.
Then I was a little strange. Till yesterday morning: I saw in the paper
that the house that had been Charles' family's home had been burned to
the ground and I remembered the cold autumnal night when Charles had told
me he would someday do something about them ... I had no idea he would
have done something of this calibre, but there was no one else I could
think of that would have the gumption to do it quite like that ... so I
knew he was still alive and when I knew he was still alive I knew exactly
what I had to do. I planned it all and when I woke up this morning I went
out and bought the suit jacket and I went out into the night to get the
boy back.

Dude was the only one. I found him where I figured I would. I found him
in the middle of the night in that club where I'd once worked. He wasn't
working, he was buying people shots at the bar. He was wearing stylish
clothes and there were girls all over him. The lights weren't so bad that
day, word was the club had suffered financially since the summer after my
siezure so they took down a lot of the lights and the DJs were now just
local jobbies that didn't make music like they used to. I walked into the
place and I walked right up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hey," he turned around all whacked out on something and it took a minute
before his eyes worked right to see me.

"Fucker!"

And I punched him square in the face, smashed one of his teeth out and
because he was all high on loads of shit he started bleedin and bled and
bled and bled.

This didn't stop Dude though, girls were screamin and there were guys
comin after me who didn't know me and it was fuckin ridiculous trying to
defend my honor ... Then I took a beer bottle, smashed it on the counter
and got Dude into such a hold that I held his life in my hands and he
knew it.

"What the fuck you want man, what the fuck you want?"

"I want the kid back Dude and you're going to tell me exactly what you
did with him."

"Fuck, it took you long enough."

I looked around and saw that people were watching us pretty closely. Some
of them were muttering something about 'the kid' and I knew they were
completely misunderstanding the entire situation.

"I've been dead without him you fuckin bastard, don't think it would take
much to kill you."

"Come on man, you don't need that kid, he's fine, he's doing better than
any of us. You can find other kids, you can find other places to have the
kid, you don't need that one. Trust me, it ain't like he's dying
somewhere. Trust me man, you don't want to look for him anymore."

"I don't believe you, I bet he's starving to death in a hell-hole
brothel."

"Fucker, think I'd sell some kid to my pa do you? You know that wouldn't
happen man."

"Where the fuck is he?"

"Why didn't you come ask me that years ago? Why are you comin after me
now?"

"Tell me what you did with him."

"You know what, you can't touch me man --"

But then I did, I fuckin gashed his throat and blood shot everywhere in a
big arc of a circle around him. In one swift movement I'd torn a gorgeous
gash in his throat and tossed the bottle to the ground and then ran out
of the place as fast as I could.

I was being followed and I put this person to a chase. I ran back of the
building, through a parking lot and then ended up on the far side of a
small atrium poked my head around the corner of a statue to see that I'd
been tagged by some scrawny bastard that looked like a poster-boy for
addictions left-right-and-center ... he saw me. He had long shaggy blonde
hair, and a big jaw-line. I knew him very well.

"Hey, fucker, you want the kid back?"

"What the fuck you know about the kid Mack?"

"It's gonna cost ya."

I stepped out of the hiding place and pulled the gun I was carrying out
of the back of my pants. He froze in his tracks.

"I was with Dude the day he did it." "Figures." Mack says, "I hated doing
it man, it's been killing me ever since. I know where we took him but
man, you've taken so long ... I thought I thought I thought you'd maybe
killed yourself or something ... I was being haunted by you and the kid
... I hated my life, and then I would hear him ... I would feel him
touching me in the night ... I couldn't stand it." His skin was crawling,
he was on something.

"Shut up, just shut up. I need you to show me where you took him."

"No man, I said I would never go back there."

I aimed the gun at his head. "Take me there."

Next thing you know we're speedin up the highway and pullin into Little
Italy. And we're driving down the road and we're pulling into some weird
place where there seems to be barely any noise or sign of life at all.
"Wait here man and I won't kill ya where you sit." "You're fuckin mad."
"Shut up and don't move or I'll shoot ya -- or I'll find you and kill
ya." "Ya killed Dude man, you killed him. He's dying right now at that
club."

It is the middle of the night by now ... I run up the stairs and I look
in the window of the door on that second floor landing. I knock. I wait.
I knock again. I see I have blood on my face. I wipe it off and I see
then some movement out of the corner of my eye. Someone's down there
comin out a door at the basement.

I sneak down the stairs.

"Hey, you."

I hide the gun and storm down the stairs. The buddy from the basement is
checkin out the car and then he sees me and he's all attitude and askin
what the fuck we want. He looks kind of scared, a little doe-eyed in the
headlights. The lights are behind me and he has to sheild his eyes when
he looks at me.

"I'm lookin for a kid ... you know where the kid is?"

"What the fuck are you talkin about?"

"I'm talkin about a teenager that was brought by here about three years
ago."

He looked at the car again. "Ya, that was a long time ago, what about
him?"

"What the fuck happened to him."

"Like hell and I know. All I know is he had a tight fuckin ass, tightest
ass I ever fucked. Miss the kid, but I know he's in a better place."

"Who'd know where I would find him?"

"Big Daddy did a deal a few years back, set a few things in motion.
Everyone's living the good life cuz of that kid, money went all around."

"What the fuck are you talkin about? Who is Big Daddy?"

"Don't matter who he is. They're at his coming-of-age party tonight. I
mean, if you know the kid you probably got an invitation."

I didn't get an invitation ... at least ... I don't think I did.

I turned around and hopped in the car. "Drive me to my place."

Typical me ... the one time I forget to check the mail and that's when
the little bastard sends me something.

And there it was, fancy envelope, fancy writing. The place it's inviting
me to is on Wolff Street. Nothing personal, no notes or suggestions or
anything of the like, just this invitation to a little party.

When I went back outside I found that Mack had gone off, probably back to
the club to find out what happened with Dude, to go to hell with his
friend.

I waved my hand and got a cab and then I was off to this place.

When I was driving down Wolff Street I was looking for a crappy little
bungalow or something, I was thinking I was going to trailer trash town
or something where there was a pig with a cage of kids, pokin them with a
stick, teasing them with one of those noisemakers people have at New
Years parties ... or something ... I was so mistaken. What amazed me was
that this place was actually only a few blocks from the house that had
burned to the ground. Next thing I noticed was that I was probably the
only one that came in a cab, the rest of the guests seemed to have limos
like stagecoaches parked outside and there was even a smaller party of
drivers in the front courtyard. I stepped through the wrought iron gate
and joined the drivers there.

"Hey hey hey, you can't just go in there: who the fuck are you?"

"I got an invitation."

"You're late, it's already started."

"What, the ballet?"

"The human sacrifice."

They laughed but it chilled me to the bone.

I went through the door and there was some big black goon there, in a
monkey suit, and he was taking the ticket then, shining it under a black
light like someone might try to forge a ticket and sneak in or something
... "What the fuck is this place?"

The chump gave me an orangutan laugh and held open a door through which I
walked with much caution. He was going to escort me through the main
halls of this place. We passed a dinner table littered with food and
plates where the party must have met before going into the main room.
There were the remnants of what must have been a feast. Mainly bones from
roasts, stained wine glasses, lip-smacked tumblers, the skeletons of
grape-bunches, the rinds of oranges, and the cores and pits of a variety
of fruits. Inside I was nervous though. I could hear music playing far
off. I walked with a certain twitch in my step. I wasn't sure whether to
take a set of stairs up or down but then the goon in the monkey suit
directed me to go down, down, from wher I heard some hoo-haas and felt
like I was about to enter into a comedy: not knowing that it was actually
a tragedy these devils found funny. The corridor spiralled down and down
and I went with the flow until suddenly I arrived at a portal with two
doors and listened through the heavy wood to what was happening inside.
The goon pulled the doors open and pushed me and everyone turned around
to see who'd disturbed them. I blushed and took a nearby seat. There was
the sound of a dead-bolt being replaced at the door. I was trapped in
this.

"Drum roll please ... " A man with a deep voice declared.

There was a large audience ahead of me and then a stage at the front,
just a small theater, probably once used to entertain important people
with plays the likes Shakespeare would be inclined to write. But this
spectacle would be clearly designed at the hand of the devil.

I stayed quiet at the back while a large man in chains was led to the
stage. The clanging and scrape of the metal links was amplified by the
hollow nature of the wooden stage. This large man I'd seen before, this
was Charlie's father. The father that had stormed out that day and
clearly kicked Charlie's mother. Two enormous men with leather vests and
jeans on, men that were clearly large enough to tear this stone house to
shreds, led Charles' father out and brought the bound beast to a strange
bench that they lay him on, his head facing the audience. It made me
think he had been laid there to have his head cut off, a la
Revolution. They then stood back and allowed the audience to witness his
vulnerability. I realized then there was some fantastic music playing, I
peered through the crowd and saw a quartet set near the front, dignified
looking chaps. If I'd known anything about that sort of thing I would
have known they were playing Death and The Maiden.

For the entire length of a single movement we watched as Charles's old
black dog was led out onto the stage to sniff at the man and then to have
the dog mounted on the man's rump where he knotted his dog cock up the
paternal ass, insult to injury.

The one man to Charles' father's left began to undress and revealed a
long cock about 9 inches long. The one on the right undressed to reveal
an aesthetically similar cock, of comparable proportions.  They did a
sort of dance where they went through the motions of facefucking him and
the man on the bench growled with consternation. The slave was gagged,
obviously they weren't going to shove their precious members into his
mouth, this man-beast might actually try to eat them off. The audience
laughed at the man's intense hatred of what was happening.

Then one of them hit him in the face. The other too. They started
punching him really hard. Blood was coming out of his face. He was woozy
looking. Then one went behind him and started fuckin his arse. The man
moaned and whined and make signs that the audience should help him. When
one was fucking him the other was hitting him. Then the other went behind
and fucked him and when he fought the first guy smacked his face.

They were beating him senselessly. It was all rather dull. Then one man
pulled a gun out and shot him, dead. The noise of it rang through the
theater and little gasps escaped from the crowd, moans of pleasure and
intense delight, the noise wolves make devouring a carcass, the noise
the four horsemen of the apocalypse make when they grind their teeth as
they climb over the horizon.

--- --- ---

Dead.

Then an old bald fat man led a boy out onto the stage and pronounced the
victim dead and said, "Now I am the boy's true father. I am his lover and
I will always provide for him."

The audience applauded.

This is when the man at the back of the audience leapt to his presumed
victory. He was lightening running down the aisle, he hit the stage like
a bolt of electricity strikes.  ran The audience watched through opera
glass-objectivity. The man Charlie landed on the stage and made a plea to
the boy, "Charles come back to me."

"Charlie, you came!"

"Of course I came ... I had searched for you for so long, but then I
believed you were dead, but when I saw you'd avenged your innocence by
destroying your family I knew you were out there still so I came looking
again, this time I found you. Come back with me. We will live a long and
healthy fantastic life together, and it will be so beautiful ... I want
you ... I want you to come away from all this perversion and darkness and
horribleness with me."

The whole audience watched. Big Daddy was in the audience, he stood up
and said, "Holy fuck Charlie, you're so slow. You're weak, you're
pathetic. Go back to the hole where you crawled out from. This boy
doesn't need you, he's liberated."

The old man on the stage stepped in front of the kid.

The kid didn't do anything. Man=Charlie thought Boy-Charles would have
run into his arms. When the boy didn't join the man there was an
overwhelming crush of embaressment, he looked guilty of presuming
something, but then he thought that there must be some trickery or dark
magic involved. "Surely you're not thinking straight boy, surely you want
to come back to the life we had the days before. Surely you want the
normal life, I can give you that. I promise, I can show you love." The
gallery laughed, such a promise! It's the typical sort of promise but
it's not possible. .The ugly old fat bald man hideously pet the boy
Charles on the top of his head with a palsied claw, this made the man
Charles want to throw up. "You've brain-washed him, you horrible
monster."

"I've done nothing of the sort, I've merely provided for him the things
he needs to be what he wants to be."

"You're horrible ... Charles, what about love, you knew what it was ...
this is violence, this is horror, this is darkness. Why is it that you
think the love you have for him is any better, or any more wholesome than
the gifts I have given him?"

Charles looked out from behind the back of the oldest man there. He
waited to hear the man's answer to that. When he could tell the
man-Charlie was speechless, the boy looked at the man and said, "You were
supposed to come save me years ago, I've had plenty time to change, and I
can't change back, I can't ... the pleasure I get from the torment this
causes is so great, it's in the eye of the beholder now ... it's mine now
... it's power is great."

"I don't understand you, you're talking in riddles."

The oldest man, Mr. Peterson, the ghost of Wolfe Street, said, "What do
you propose then Charlie ... are you going to save the boy Charles and
raise him up right and make him into a new You?" There was definitely
mockery in his tone.

"I was going to do better."

"You weren't going to let him be himself, you were going to change him,
try to change him into a new You. This boy is a wild flower of a variety
that has never been classed, but to think this flower would not have a
known name does not mean he does not grow at all. And you intend to
transplant him and ruin his chance of prosperity."

"I don't understand."

Then the man-Charles got outrageous. He aimed the gun at the oldest man
there, the one who seemed to be controlling the boy, and to the reeling
delight of the audience, he fired ... and all of them were blind to the
reality of the bullet, all they saw was the wound, the open sore of
serendepity.

The old man fell to the floor between the boy Charles and the man Charlie
and he held his arms out and said to the boy, "The choice is yours, I've
taught you everything and given you all you've wanted." To the
man-Charlie he said, "You've given me what I wanted to accomplish, my
prompt delivery to the next chapter, and with end of this scene I feel we
put out the light, and put out the light."

The audience watched, the house, the building itself seemed to hum and
sag and wearily weep the loss of it master, its lineage.

Then the boy Charles looked at the man Charles and he said, "I thought
you wouldn't come, I didn't know you would bring a gun. But I'm glad you
did come, I'm please that you brought a gun. See, this old man you've
shot is someone that needed a son to carry on his traditions into a next
generation ... darkly through his life I've been borne again and I am
clearing away all my past, my father, and all the potential futures that
might have ruined me: see I didn't know you were coming, but I planned
ahead in case you did."

There was a ruckus at stage-left, a microphone was being turned on, the
sound of high-heel shoes banged the floor where the chains of his
father had scraped before.

There was a drag queen coming out on the stage then, big afro, big hoop
ear rings, short gold sequined dress, total disco, total rocked-out
cocaine glam: Charles said, "This is Janet, Queen of the Disco, she's
going to do a rendition of one of my favorite songs." And with that, in
the closing refrains of this story there is the fantastic
opening flourish of Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive and then the look of
confusion on the man-Charlie's face as everyone in the audience starts
singing along ... and then ... just as the beat starts, with a look of
absolute horror, a strobe light comes on, disco lights start twirling and
whirling madly about and holy lord jesus as quickly as lightening comes
when the thunder crashes in your head, the man Charlie fell to the ground
and twitched and writhed and gurgled and choked and had no peace and in
that last moment he saw the boy take his own gun aimed it down at his
face ... and then the boy fired, instantly killing the pathetic hero. [of
course I mean pathetic in the truest sense of the word.]

And then the Audience Applauded.