Page 25 of Grimdark Magazine Issue 48

Money’s no problem; Ray has money. Too much, some might say—too much free time, and a bit too little to do with except obsess, jerk off, plan. The idle rich are hard to entertain, Vinnie ...

Things do keep on escalating, though, often and always. And escalation can bring a bad reputation, especially in some quarters.

Which made it all the more lucky Ray and Pat happened to find each other, I suppose—for them both.

And for Lyle, of course, albeit from a very different point of view ... Lyle, to whom falls the onerous yet lucrative task of facilitating this genderswitched post-Millennial Death And The Maiden tableau they’ve played out every day this week, given or take; same one that would surely re-run itself constantly behind my eyelids if only I still had either eyes to see with, or lids to close on what I didn’t want to see. Same one you might well already have seen already, if you’re just hip and sick enough to have paid Lyle’s “finder’s fee” up front—or bought the bootleg DV8 tapes he peddles over the Internet, thus far unbeknownst to either of his silent partners.

Like Lyle, I never saw that original “audition” tape on Pat’s shelf, either. But as the run-down above should prove, I’ve certainly heard its precis often enough: Why I Like To Get Screwed By Dead Bodies For The Amusement Of Total Strangers Even When The Money Involved’s My Own, in fifty thousand words or more. Ray’s confession/manifesto, re-spilled at intervals—after various post-post-mortem Bone Machine-aided orgies, usually—over binges of beer and weed which sometimes culminate in fumbling, gratitude- and guilt-ridden, mutually unsatisfying attempts at “normal” sex. Pat lying slack beneath a sweating, huffing Ray, trying to will her internal temperature down far enough to maintain his shamed half-erection even as her own orgasm builds, inexorably. Cursing the demeaning depths this idiot hunger for him can make her sink to, while simultaneously feeling her fingers literally itch to seize the Machine’s controls again and do the whole damn thing over right.

Part of me wonders exactly how much detail I need—or care—to go into here, vis a vis Pat’s “art” and my rather uncomfortable place in its embrace. But then again, close as “I” may get to it in flesh, most of the Bone Machine’s complex structural workings will probably al-ways remain a mystery to me. Bolts screwed directly into bones, wires strung like tendons, electrical impulses jumping from brain to finger to keypad to central animatronic switchboard ...

Pat pulls the strings here, as in all else. When my dead body’s making “love” to him, it’s her moves, her ideas, her smoothing, gentle touch translated through my flesh, which keeps Ray coming back time and time again; “I”’m just the medium for her message, a clammy six-foot dildo powered by rods and pistons. A deadweight sex-aid soaked in scented lube to hide the growing spoiled-meat smell, the inevitable wear and tear of Ray’s increasingly desperate affections.

But Ray, like any true fetishist, ignores whatever doesn’t contribute directly to the fulfillment of his motivating fantasy. He knows our time together’s on a (necessarily) tight schedule, so he tries to wring every extra ounce of pleasure he can out of the experience while Pat watches and fumes, trapped behind her rows of switches. He loves the mask, not the face; the made, not the maker. Decay’s his groom, and he doesn’t want even the shadow of anything else get-ting in the way of this so-devoutly desired consummation, this last great graveyard gasp.

It’d be sort of tragic, if it wasn’t so—mordantly—funny. Together, Pat and Ray have all the requisite common interests and obsessions, plus a heaping helping of that brain-to-groin combustive spark which so many other relationships are made from; if she was dead (or had the right equipment required to rock his world), they’d be perfect for each other. But her hole just doesn’t fit his socket, or vice versa. So the only way she can touch him ... and make him want her to, at least ...

... is with my hands.

And more and more, that very fact is already making her dream happy dreams of someday taking a bone-saw to “my” wrists. Of burning them in some Haz-Mat crematorium’s fire, like plague-infected monster grasshoppers.

Ray told Pat he was literally up for her ultimate piece of performance art, to bravely go where none of her other co-conspirators were ever willing to, not even with three condoms’ worth of protection. She told Lyle, who instantly cheered her on, visions of Ben Franklin dancing in his money-colored eyes; he paged his pals down at the M.E.’s office, and the deal was struck—cash for flesh, tickets at the door and a fresh new co-star every week, after the old one finally started to rot.

And so it went, a neat little cycle, a perverse new rhythm method. Pat called the shots, Ray did the dance, Lyle racked up the take; they soon got into the habit of partying later, while Lyle was on his way to the bank. Pat, using Ray’s addiction to feed her own, like any pusher trading “free” product for not-so-free favors, while Ray replays his own earlier performance for both thair benefits.

It was, and is, a match made in Gomorrah, or maybe Gehenna: Pimp meets girl meets boy meets corpse(s). And everybody’s happy.

Everybody alive enough to count, that is.

All that changed once Pat and Lyle fixed Ray up with my mortal coil, though, and he “fell for” it ... telling her, ferverishly, and repeatedly, how this hunk of otherwise nondescript white male meat which just happened to come with my restless spirit attached was the end of his search, the literal embodiment of all his most cadaver-centric daydreams. Suddenly, his fetish had narrowed and shifted to allow for only this one particular corpse or nothing at all.

And: “You know tomorrow night’s gonna have to be curtains for Mr Stinky, right?” She asked him, briskly, after yesterday’s post-show pas-de-deux.

Ray, frowning: “How so?”

Pat reclipped her bra, sponged sweat from her cleavage; I saw the angels’ halos reflected in her throat’s shiny hollow, a wet white crackle of phantom jewelry. “’Cause he’s starting to fall apart, same as the others. Already had to re-wire his joints twice just to get him limber enough to limbo—and his scalp’s starting to peel, too. Now it’s just a matter of time.”

“But if you’re keeping him refrigerated ... ”

“Yeah, sure. But there’s only so far that goes, Ray. No freezer in the world’s totally fly-tight; nature of the beast, man.”

A pause. Ray stood silent as Pat wriggled back into her jeans, then shot him the raised eyebrow: You comin’, or what? Shook his head. And replied, finally—

“Then I guess we’re looking at goodbye for me too, Pat.”

At that, Pat turned fully, both eyebrows up. “You’re kidding.”

“No.”

Because... this is the one. Remember? The one and only. No substitutes need apply, not even—

(well, you, sweetheart) Ahhhh, true love.

He feels like he’s having a dialogue with it, that’s what he’s al-ways told her. Like he’s finally being privileged, through this nightly series of gag-makingly contortionate sex show antics, to vicariously experience the ecstatic transformation my corpse is al-ready undergoing—the transition from flesh to fleshlessness, an all-expenses-paid tour through time’s metaphorical flensing chamber. To share in the experience as it sloughs the residue of its own mortality off like a scab, revealing some clean, invisible new form lurking beneath.

My body, my husk. My shucked, slimy former skin.

It’s not pure, though, for fuck’s sweet sake. It’s not perfected. It has no “secret wisdom” to impart. And as for powerful, well ...