Snuff

  Yelling at his cell phone, Mr. Bacardi says, “My fans don’t want any new face. My fans want me!”

  I’m her son, I said to Cassie Wright. The baby she gave up for adoption.

  “Told you so,” said the guy holding the juice.

  I’ve come here because she wouldn’t answer my letters.

  “Not another one…” said the guy balancing the camera, his voice buried behind the metal and plastic of it, his lens so close in my face I could see myself talking, reflected in curved glass.

  Recorded. Being filmed. Watched by people, forever.

  When I opened my lips to speak, Cassie stuffed her nipple in my mouth. To talk, I had to twist my head away, saying, “No.” The taste of salt on her breast skin, the flavor of other men’s spit. I said, “I’m here to give you a new life.”

  And the stopwatch girl lifted the clock from around her neck and with her thumb pressed the button on top. She said, “Go.”

  How I feel is how the sex surrogate looked with all her air leaked out. Flat. Crumpled. Before my adopted mom shook the pink skin in the face of my adopted dad and both of them shook her in the face of Minister Harner, turning my secret, most favorite love into what I hated most in the world. Not my adopted dad’s tiny, hand-detailed crack whores, or my adopted mom’s cherry-vanilla-frosted pussies, it’s my pink shadow showed to everybody.

  The only thing that made me special, now my worst shame.

  To prove I’m me, I showed Cassie the gold heart Branch Bacardi wore. Undoing the chain from around my wrist, I pried open the heart and showed her the baby picture of me inside. The cyanide pill, I dumped into one hand and made a fist around.

  Cassie Wright’s smiling face – looking at the baby picture, her face got old around her eyes and mouth. Her lips went thin, and the skin on her cheeks sagged to bunch against her neck. She said, “Where’d you get this?”

  Irving, I told her.

  And Cassie Wright said, “You mean Irwin?”

  I nodded yes.

  She said, “Did he give you anything else?”

  My fingers fisted tighter around the pill, and I shook my head no.

  That’s me, the baby inside the heart, I told her. I’m her son.

  And Cassie Wright smiled again, saying, “Don’t take this too hard, kid,” she said, “but the baby I gave up for adoption wasn’t a little boy.” She snapped her heart shut, taking the locket and chain. Cassie lifted both arms until her hands met at the back of her neck. Clipping the chain, she said, “I told people it was a boy, but she was a beautiful little girl…”

  The stopwatch click-click-clicking to make minutes.

  The camera lens reflected me so close up all I could see was one big tear roll down from my eye.

  “Now,” Cassie Wright said. She pulled the bedsheet off her bottom half and said, “Be a good boy, and start fucking me.”

  In the basement waiting place, the Dan Banyan guy says, “So what did you do with the cyanide pill?”

  I don’t know.

  I put it in the crotch of my shorts. First wadded on the floor. Later, for safekeeping, held under my balls.

  And the Dan Banyan guy makes a face, saying, “How can you expect anyone to put that in their mouth after it’s been in your dirty shorts?”

  “It’s cyanide!” yells Mr. Bacardi, holding his phone to his chest. He says, “A little sweat and smegma is not going to make it any more poisoner.”

  Punch-fucking Cassie Wright, hard, one leg bent back so far her knee’s in her face, I heard the stopwatch girl say, “Time.”

  Still fucking her, rolled over and nailing her on her side, her legs jackknifed, I heard Cassie Wright say, “This kid fucks like he’s got something to prove.”

  Stuffing her doggy style, on all fours, my hands grabbed full of her wet, loose ass-skin, I heard Cassie Wright say, “Get this little bastard off of me!”

  Hands came around me from behind. Fingers dug my fingers out of her thighs. Folks were pulling me back until only my dick was still touching her, my hips still bucking until just the head of my dick was inside her, until I popped free, my ‘nads jumping out ribbon after ribbon of white ooze across her butt.

  At the far end of her, Cassie Wright’s mouth said, “You guys getting this?”

  The director said, “This is one for the trailer.” He sipped orange juice from the cup’s bendy straw and said, “Careful, kid, you’re fixing to drown us.”

  Cassie Wright said, “Somebody wipe me off.” Still on her hands and knees, she looked back over one shoulder, saying, “Good to meet you, kid. Keep buying my movies, okay?”

  In the basement, a voice says, “Number 600?” A girl’s voice. The stopwatch girl says, “We’re ready for you on the set, please.”

  Into his cell phone, Mr. Bacardi yells, “I made your lousy agency.” He yells, “It’s not the money, it’s the disrespect!” But he starts toward the stairway, the stopwatch girl, the set.

  Before Mr. Bacardi can head up the stairs, I reach into my shorts, feeling between the tight elastic crotch and the baggy folds of my ball skin. I say to wait. And, fingering my nuts, I jump the one, two, three steps up to where Mr. Bacardi stands.

  I say to kill her. Kill the Wright bitch. To murder her.

  “You can’t kill her,” says the Dan Banyan guy. “I’m going to marry her.”

  Mr. Bacardi folds his phone shut, still saying, “Twenty lousy bucks…”

  Just how he planned, I say to fuck her to death. And I drop the pill into his hand.

  ∨ Snuff ∧

  27

  Mr. 137

  Wouldn’t you know it? I’m not even married to Cassie Wright and already I’m about to become a widower. To the young actor 72, I say, Please. Please tell me that was merely an M & M candy he gave Bacardi.

  “Potassium cyanide,” says the talent wrangler as she leans over to pick up a paper napkin off the floor. “Found naturally in the cassava or manioc roots native to Africa, used to tint architectural blueprints in the form of the deep-blue pigment known as Prussian blue. Hence the shade ‘cyan’ blue…”

  Hence, she says, the term ‘cyanosis’, used to describe the blue tinge of someone’s skin after she’s been poisoned with cyanide. Instant and certain and forever, death.

  On the monitors hanging above the room, echoing and empty save for the three of us, a full-breasted Cassie Wright plays a stern ward nurse, righteous and tyrannical in her starched white uniform and sensible shoes, who brings joy and freedom to the residents of a men’s mental hospital by giving them all blow jobs. A classic of adult culture called One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nuts.

  I say how much I love this movie.

  And the young actor 72 says, “What are you talking about?”

  He says the film we’re watching is about a feisty young pitcher who earns herself a starting spot on an all-male softball team by giving her teammates blow jobs.

  Squinting, standing on my tiptoes and peering to see the screen above us, one of my hands still clamps on the edge of a folding buffet table. My anchor. A landmark in the dark room.

  Actor 72 says, “This movie’s called The Bad Juiced Bears.” He says, “Are you blind?”

  It doesn’t matter if Bacardi gives Cassie the pill or not, the wrangler says, stacking paper cups and stuffing them with crumpled napkins. She says the production might already have its dead body. A dead man, walking. Some man about to collapse at any minute. Cyanide, she says, travels as ions through the bloodstream, binding to the iron atom of the enzyme cytochrome c oxidase in the mitochondria of muscle cells. This union changes the shape of the cell, denaturing it to the effect the cell is no longer able to absorb oxygen. Effected cells, primarily the central nervous system and the heart, can no longer produce energy.

  For my reality show, after Cassie and I are married, I ask, How about calling it Sex Pot and the Private Dick?

  Gathering empty potato-chip bags, balling them up, and stuffing them into a black garbage bag, the talent wrangler says, �
�Most cyanide poisoning occurs transdermally.” Looking at actor 72, she says, “How do you feel?”

  Any weakness? Any loss of hearing? Weakness in his hands? Sweating, dizziness, or anxiety?

  Cyanide is what killed those nine hundred people in the Jonestown mass suicide of 1978. Cyanide killed the millions in Nazi concentration camps. It killed Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun. During the Cold War of the 1950s, American spies were issued eyeglasses with thick, clunky frames. If captured, they were trained to casually chew the curved earpieces, where fatal doses of cyanide were cast inside the plastic. It’s these same horn-rimmed suicide glasses, the wrangler says, that inspired the look of Buddy Holly and Elvis Costello. All those young hipsters wearing death on their nose.

  The moment the wrangler says ‘Jonestown’ the actor and I look at the punch bowl, half empty, cigarette butts and orange peels floating in the pink lemonade.

  About my new reality show with Cassie, I ask what if we call it Under-Cover Coupling. I ask does that sound too racy for network television.

  And actor 72 says, “What’s trans…”

  “Transdermal,” the talent wrangler says. “It means ‘through the skin’.”

  Wiping up crumbs with the edge of her hand, clearing the buffet tables, the wrangler says how most cyanide poisoning happens through people’s skin. To the young actor, she says, “Smell your hand.”

  The kid cups one hand over his nose and sniffs.

  “No,” the wrangler says, “smell the hand in which you held the pill.”

  The actor sniffs his other hand, sniffs again, and says, “Almonds?”

  That smell of bitter almonds is the potassium cyanide of the pill reacting with the dampness of his hand to form hydrogen cyanide. Already, the poison’s leaching into his bloodstream.

  “I’ll just wash my hands,” the actor says.

  And the wrangler shakes her head, saying that’s not the only place the pill touched. Not the only sweaty spot on his body dense with pores and nerve endings.

  About my future reality show with my future, maybe dead wife, I ask why don’t we call it Mrs. Curves and the Flat Foot.

  Actor 72 looks from the wrangler, tucking his chin to his chest to look straight down at his crotch, saying, “No way.”

  The wrangler blots a puddle of spilled soda, using a handful of napkins.

  The wrangler picks up unopened condoms, red, pink, and blue condoms, and drops them into an empty popcorn bag.

  Actor 72 sniffs his hand again, then leans over. With his other hand he stretches out the waistband of his briefs. Bending over, his spine a curve of knobs under his skin, the actor inhales a long breath through his nose. He bends over again and takes another long, long sniff. Standing straight, he says, “I can’t get close enough.”

  To me, he says, “Do me a favor?” He says, “Sniff my nuts?”

  The talent wrangler is grabbing up handfuls of spilled candy – jawbreakers and candy corn and gum balls rolling around loose on the buffet tables.

  “Please,” actor 72 says to me, “my life depends on it.”

  Wouldn’t you know it? This would happen only after I found out I was heterosexual.

  If the young man ate candy, the wrangler says, that’s probably what’s kept him alive so long. Glucose is a natural antidote to cyanide poisoning. Based on anecdotal evidence, glucose binds with the cyanide to produce less toxic compounds.

  Actor 72 sprints to the buffet table and stands next to my hand where it’s clamped on the table’s edge. There his fingers scramble to collect the leftover Lemonheads and Skittles, the fun-sized Butterfingers and Hershey Kisses, and cram them into his mouth. Chewing Red Vines licorice and jelly beans, his mouth gummy and sloshing with spit and sugar, the actor turns to me, saying, “Please.” Around wads of thin mints and chocolate turtles, he says, “Just smell me, okay?”

  The mad monk Grigory Rasputin, who seduced and manipulated the women of the Russian court with his reported eighteen-inch penis, the wrangler says the corrupt monk survived several plots to kill him with cyanide because each assassin mixed the poison in something sweet: sugary wine or candy or pastries. Mixing the toxins with their most effective counteragent.

  At this moment, the wrangler says, Branch Bacardi would merely need to insert the pill inside Cassie Wright. Whether it was swallowed or otherwise, Cassie would suffer giddiness, confusion, headaches. Cassie’s skin would turn a faint blue, and her heart would race as it tried to feed her cells more oxygen they couldn’t absorb. She’d lapse into a coma, suffer a heart attack, and be dead within a few words’ time.

  “Even if you do sniff his nuts,” the wrangler says to me, “not every human being can detect the smell of hydrogen cyanide.”

  From outside, somewhere above and beyond this place, comes the wail of sirens, getting louder, sirens getting closer.

  The talent wrangler reaches across the table, picking up half-eaten cupcakes. Pizza crusts. Soggy maple bars licked clean of their frosting.

  The sirens arrive here, wailing just beyond the concrete walls.

  “If you intend to approach Ms. Wright,” the wrangler says, speaking to me, “don’t imagine you can just waltz into her life.”

  She stoops to pinch something off the floor. Frowning at it, held between two fingers, she says, “Some crazy person chewed up the condoms…?”

  And I shrug and say, It takes all kinds.

  Scraping up a wad of gum, using the toe of her shoe, she tells me how it took her months of trying to meet Cassie. How Cassie mentioned a child she’d given up for adoption, how that was the biggest mistake of her life, something Cassie could never repair. It wasn’t too much effort to guilt Cassie into making this movie, to leave that lost child a fortune. To wrap up and clean up the mess of Cassie Wright’s sad, wasted life.

  The sirens so close by now, so loud, the wrangler has to shout.

  Still wiping up crumbs, scrubbing sticky strands of candy off the tables, the wrangler shouts, “It’s only hate makes you that patient.”

  She shouts that nothing except a lifetime of festering anger and hatred would give you the determination to wait around corners for hours, rain or shine, to loiter at bus stops just in case Cassie Wright happened by. To get revenge.

  The sirens cut off, leaving us in silence, the wrangler, actor 72, and I looking at each other in the empty room.

  And, whispering, but still loud in the new quiet, actor 72 says, “You’re her.”

  The actor 72 swallows his mess of sugar and spit and says, “You’re Cassie Wright’s lost baby.” Saying, “And Cassie doesn’t even know.”

  Crushing an empty aluminum can in one fist, the wrangler says, “Correction…” Smiling. She says, “As of this minute, I am that very wealthy lost little baby.”

  The talent wrangler – her nose is Branch Bacardi’s long, straight nose. Her black hair is his. Her lips are his lips.

  I ask how come she knows so much about cyanide.

  And wouldn’t you know it, actor 72 sprints to the bathroom to scrub his balls.

  ∨ Snuff ∧

  28

  Sheila

  Maybe one cigarette before I bring in Branch Bacardi, our anchorman, Ms. Wright points a fingernail at her cup of orange juice. Hooks her finger for me to bring her the cup. Waves one, two, three quick waves for me to bring her over the juice, fast.

  The cup with the straw, I bring it. Bend the straw to the level of her mouth.

  Ms. Wright curls a finger for me to lean in closer. Near enough I can smell her sweat. See the gray roots of her blond hair. In one breath, smell the low-tide stink of old semen. In another breath, the dusty powder smell of condom latex. The bright smell of orange juice. Her lips, ignoring the straw, they say, “I know.” They whisper, “I’ve known since we met at the coffee shop.” Soft as a lullaby, Ms. Wright says, “I almost cried, you look so much like me…”

  True fact.

  Twisting her head sideways, dodging the drinking straw, Ms. Wright smiles her lipstick at me
and says, “To quote that last young man…I wanted to give you a new life.”

  She says how Richard Burton was almost killed while filming Night of the Iguana with Ava Gardner in Mexico. At the height of the third act, Burton was supposed to cut the rope that trapped a live iguana and let it escape into the jungle. Of course he cut, but the trouble was the iguana had spent weeks and weeks with hard-boozing Ava, Richard, and John Huston. The lizard didn’t run anywhere. To make the scene work, the crew wired the iguana, and the moment Burton set it free, they hit the lizard with 110 volts.

  Trouble was, Richard Burton was still touching the iguana. He took the whole charge, through the lizard, and was almost electrocuted. The world’s most famous actor and a creepy, scaly, cold-blooded reptile almost fried to death by the same surge of electric current.

  True fact.

  At this, Ms. Wright smiled and said, “Enjoy spending all that life insurance money…”

  And before she could say another word, I shoved the plastic drinking straw into her mouth. Stuffed it all the way to the back of her throat. Gagged the witch into silence.

  ∨ Snuff ∧

  29

  Mr. 72

  The stopwatch girl steps her feet left, then right, then left down the stairs, the fingers of both hands cupped over her mouth. Overlapping each other, tight, like to keep something inside her mouth. Her eyes go big around and forget to blink, so dry they don’t shine except the little bit that glass might shine. The glass in her hanging stopwatch. Her fingers pressed until the skin’s gone white, any blood pressed out of the skin of her fingers and face as she steps down, left then right, each foot lower.

  I don’t know.

  Anytime you need to watch somebody die, die for real, check out how they get their orgasm at the end of a porn. Their mouth biting to get just one more inhale of air. Their neck roped with veins and strings of muscle to make the skin webbed, and their chin working, their teeth reaching out and digging the air. All the skin of their cheeks pulling their lips back, stretching their ears back, skin crushing their eyes shut, as their front teeth try to bite off the biggest next chunk of life.