Another desperate night. The sky was so black and starless; a giant's question mark hurled upward eclipsing everything. Nyphx lit a candle behind his eyes—scented with the coppery smell of blood and nettles—and offered a short prayer to his solitude. Another desperate night of being shunned by the whole world and being unable to forget who "the whole world" was.

Leaking pale gray Camel smoke from his lips and nostrils, Nyphx walked along Penhaligon Drive in his crumpled black shirt and his grimey Levis. The inkblot hills above Sunset Boulevard chuckled down on him; metallic with a faintly evil rattle in the sky. Below, the shooting range of headlights threw racing shadows between giant mural faces and stone buildings, edges crisp and cutting. Here, on Penhaligon, stood lower, parceled rectagons with sloping, falling roofs dotting the softer shadows; chipped wood and glass hiding in the shallow blackness; behind them, hiding secret people with their thoughts in their cocks and up their asses or the tighter asses of strangers. The night is a good hiding place. The night is a black buttplug keeping the sun from shining out my ass. Nyphx chuckled as his mind wandered.

He turned upward off the street and followed a narrow path of broken concrete, packed dirt, and weed someone—was it Nameless Guy?—had called The Snake Bone. Rusty heaps of thrashed, twisted metal were strewn along the left side of The Snake Bone. People dragged and threw the unworkable, the useless, and the broken out of sputtering pickups and stake beds, unable or unwilling to pay dump charges. The right side of the path sheared off and down into small forgotten ravines, filled with thorns and scrabble brush, some burned to carbon, some thriving like a sprawling scum of Nature. Like frightened dwarves, a handful of graying, tortured-bark trees poked up from the bramble inviting straying pedestrians to impale themselves on their branches. Nyphx lit another Camel and nodded a vague greeting to the invitation as he always did.

He stepped over the drooping chain across the path, stopped and chucked a pebble against the bent, unreadable sign that hung like a pendant from the center links. He liked the sharp ring and thud it made; for luck, the hunter in him cried.

As he walked, he imagined beside him, heads and bodies loosely lolling with every stride, his favorite ghost fucks. The Chicano named Angel—twenty-two but looking innocent as an altar boy—whose eyes were always half-open, the whites barely showing, teeth gleaming wetly as he whimpered and rubbed his ball sac; and always, too, the questions in his smile that made you wonder what he dreamed. The dirt-crusted bear—Nameless Guy—ranting and chanting his gibberish poetry, filthy and crazy and sweet-mouthed; lips like yogurt, dick like honey, "Let it flow!" he'd shouted. Once. And small, frail, limping Ross Tinsel of the thin cock with a huge head like some pale Medieval war mace who buried his face deeper in his arms when you fucked him hardest.

Where were they now, really? What dreaming? Only phantoms beside him, Nyphx decided, and dreaming of his sweat dripping on their naked backs. He wanted to stop where he stood and listen to their excited whispers, hear them tell him their memories of when he fucked them, smile shyly at their praise of his cock's hardness and prowess. Let their ghost fuck mouths kiss his smile away. No, he told himself, you don't want that. It was time for the real want. He took out the old tobacco can from his back pocket, swished the liquid inside quickly with a twist of his wrist, popped the lid, and took a deep breath from the interior.

Shit! Fry me! He closed his eyes to the flash of the blinding blackness. His trembling fingers popped the lid back down and almost dropped the can before stuffing back in his pocket. Knees bending in a crouch, he had the sudden urge to hurl his head back and howl and vomit and shit at the same time. Whew! The whiff of chemicals he'd stolen from work at the photo lab combined with a few street drugs he'd scored last night was a wicked brew that felt like it was tearing his senses in half like an old piece of paper. His shoulders ached, spine crackled, cock grew painfully hard, and his mind... well, somewhere he guessed, but not in his head anymore. Fried. He loved it.

Hellfire, he felt it. It juiced through his body. He lifted his hand to his eyes and squinted. It was scaly, monstrously clawed, a talon. He grinned at it. "Do it!" he whispered softly, hearing the words echo and pound in his emptied skull. The talon descended, unzipped his jeans, carefully drew out his cock and balls into the chilled night air. " Python," it hissed up at him. "Cobra. Kingsnake."

Now, again, it was good. Every step up the low hill, Nyphx felt the small metal teeth of his zipper bite against his tight ball sac. The night—smelling more rancid as he ascended—enveloped his bared cock like the dark fleshy, chilled cheeks of an ass begging to be fucked. Desperate night, he thought, scratching at his neck. And where are your desperate demon lovers? He paused and spread his legs, head still reeling from the chemical whiff, knowing a pair of eyes watched him from the shadows of the derelict piles of heaped at the side of the path.

"You gonna piss?" asked a hollow voice. "I love piss." Something tall and reeking stepped closer and giggled in a shriek.

Nyphx reared back and spit. "Cobra wants a meat fuck, pisshead."

The something slunk back down into itself, muttering a fading repetitive chant of "Fuck you!"

Nyphx continued up The Snake Bone. His mind was starting to return to normalcy and he considered taking another whiff from the wicked brew in his back pocket, but as he started to reach for it the ghost fuck of Ross Tinsel ran limpingly ahead, dancing awkwardly. "Here, here!" he sang and pointed over the ridge.

"Fuck it!" Nyphx took out the can and repeated his ritual: swish, pop, sniff deeply. It crashed him to his knees this time. His vision whirled, swam circling, a merry-go-round that blurred and crystallized and blurred again, then finally settled into a puddle of spewed vomit on the ground between his knees. The head of his still hard, still throbbing cock poked him in the belly as he doubled over and spat out the last of his bile. "Oooooh, good poison," he said, wiping his mouth on the tail of his tee-shirt. Even his own puke smelled not too terrible—a trace of his lunch burger, more than a trace of the violet-scented lozenges he sucked down earlier. He staggered to his feet again and crested the steep hill.

There it stood as it had for decades. Bold, sharp-edged, haunted, gigantic. "Hollywood." Someone, some night, had told him people had killed themselves on it and he once had a dream of the big sign with corpses hanging from the letters like squiggly scrawls of meat and old shoes. As he neared the rear of the strutted panels, a shadow separated itself from the darkness at the base. The man was dressed much like himself, but with greater care and detail.

Even in the dim light coming from the city below, Nyphx noticed the high lacy cuffs stitched to the jeans, the deep cut of the dark shirt, the bling-bling around the man's neck. As he came closer, the shadows around his eyes looked unnatural and painted, the lashes too long for reality. The man waved his hands and put a finger to his lips, then pointed downward and motioned Nyphx forward.

Together they crept quietly up behind the panels of the second letter of the sign and peeked over the bottom rim of the huge O.

A hundred yards or so away, two large half-naked men were wrestling with a frail man dressed in a suit and tie. The two bigger men laughed in whispers, their voices drifting up to where Nyphx and his new companion stood watching.

"Heh heh. Come on, little bitch, you know you want my hot prick in your mouth, now don't you? Say it." The man swung his hand and the loud crack of skin to skin sounded like a muffled shot. "Say it!"

The man in the suit had fallen to his knees with the slap. He lifted his head and shook it. The voice that came from him was feeble, quavering, and high. "Yes."

"That sounds like shit," growled the other large man. "Man, where's your fucking gay pride? Say it like you mean it, bitch! We like to hear the words."

The man in the suit reared back and sat on his heels. "Yes. I want your...your hot prick in my mouth. Just first, hit me again. Please."

"God, I love a pain freak." One of the big men slapped the man in the suit twice more across the face.

"Gonna kick your ass good before we fuck it," said the other, pulling down his pants. "Talk some more, bitch. It makes me hot."

Nyphx felt the man with the lacy cuffed jeans backing against him as they watched; felt a hand reach down to clasp the shaft of his cock and squeeze. He twitched his hips side to side with a grunt, then leaned forward and whispered in the man's ear. "Take your jeans down now."

"I'm Tommy," said the man in front of Nyphx. "I've got some lube in my pocket."

Nyphx grabbed the man's face. "I don't give a shit what your name is! Just grease up the python and let the cobra spit in your ass."

They both watched as the two men down below pulled the pants off the man in the suit. One grabbed a handful of hair and starting fucking the gaping mouth while the other rammed his bobbing cock in the man's ass. They seemed to lift him from the ground from each end and he looked like a slab of meat on a turning spit over a fire. Even at the distance, Nyphx could see the man at the ass end slapping at the meaty flanks he was impaling. He tried to match the strokes in and out of the man bent in front of him. He'd already forgotten the man had said his name was Tommy.

Suddenly someone gurgled down below and sounded like they were retching. The two large men slapped each other three quick high fives and dropped the man between them. He lay in a fetal position for a long moment, then reached up a hand.

"Hurt," he said. "Hurt me."

The two larger men laughed and began kicking at him as he moaned and whimpered. They circled around him, alternating kicks and punches with pulls at their dicks.

"Look, Hard again," one finally said.

"Me, too," said the other.

"Switcharoo."

Nyphx slid his hands up from Tommy's hips, along his ribs, darted in to pinch his nipples hard, then continued up until they encircled his neck. His hips kept up a pounding rhythm, fucking deeper into the tight ass. Desperate fucking night, his mind repeated. I'm in you now. His hands gripped Tommy's neck tightly, pulling him closer and shoving him away, pulling back again. His eyes were caught on the three men below who, having switched places, were lifting the suit man again, fucking his mouth and ass at the same time. Nyphx felt his python, his cobra, his king snake coil to strike and held back a moment.

He dropped one hand away from Tommy's neck to fumble the can out again. He spun his wrist and popped the lid for one more whiff, took it, held the can under Tommy's nose and felt him buckle, spasm, and crumble all in one instant.

"Shit, man!" Nyphx felt his cock erupt with a jerk. The cobra bit and spit; the python's jaws seemed to chasm open and swallow Tommy's ass, guts, heart, soul until nothing was left but Nyphx standing, cock triumphant, shooting pearly come into the void of Everywhere.

And the howl came out of him like the indecipherable cry of God. Coyote, jackal, wolf, madman. The three men down below looked up toward the sign and then scrambled away as fast as they could run. Nyphx laughed softly. " Boo!" he said to the night.

Tommy lay in a heap, crumpled against the panels of the big O like tossed off rags. He grunted when Nyphx tapped him with his boot. "Too bad," Nyphx said down at him. "Not a ghost fuck yet. Maybe next time."

He pulled up his jeans and lit another Camel. Leaking blue smoke from his lips and nostrils, he walked back down The Snake Bone path, nodding to himself, replaying a tuneless melody in his head. Night was such a desperate, empty thing, needing him and his python, his wicked cobra, his wicked brew, to bring it to life. And The Snake Bone was his lover curling up in debris and ruin around his footsteps home.

 

© 2003 William Dean - Contributor's Bio