It was autonomy.
Cops rarely messed with homeless. They didn’t want to get their hands dirty. Hell, one time T.J. had gotten picked up for peeking in apartment windows, looking for a good place to leave a peckersnot. “I’m gonna shit my pants, man,” he’d said, reeking in the backseat of the patrol car. “No lie, can’t help it. Sorry if I get shit in your car, it comes out the leg…” They’d expeditiously dumped him off on Midvale, waving his stink out of their pinched faces. T.J. had no hair at all on his head but a great unruly beard. He wore the same overalls he’d jacked out of one of the Stone Electric service trucks a year ago. Other than that, they all looked essentially the same with their unwashed clothes, food-flecked beards, matted hair. You could smell them coming. Willy limped; he’d had his foot crushed a while back when they’d been busting into a hardware store for crowbars. An anvil or some shit had fallen on him. Fuck doctors. Willy just kept himself juiced till the pain died down—now the foot was half to rot, he kept it wrapped up in a towel surrounded by duct tape.
“Shit, T.J.!” Craze complained. “The motherfucker’s only got a few bucks on him, and no credit cards!”
Uh-oh,
T.J. thought. When Craze got his dander up, he was hard to turn off. Craze was schizoaffective and bipolar; all fucked up was another way to put it. They’d lit his brain up for years at the state psych ward with that shock treatment shit of theirs. Why? Claimed he’d knocked some little girl’s head in with a tire iron when he was like twelve. Just felt like doing it so he did it. Then he tore off his first piece of ass, at least that’s what he said, humping this little Tootsie Roll while her brains squeezed through the fracture. T.J. saw no reason to disbelieve him. Sure, Craze knew right from wrong—he just preferred wrong.
The geek groaned, blood on his face. “Let’s do a number, fuck him,” Craze said.
“All right, why not?” T.J. authorized. “Come on, drag him home.” They each grabbed something and dragged the geek to the old church.
Plop!
went the geek when they stuffed him into the side window. Rusted chains secured the once grand front doors. All the pews had been taken out, all the stained glass removed to be covered over with planks. A variety of unchurchly things decorated their abode: countless empty beer cans and wine bottles. Food scraps, chicken bones. And shit. Lots of shit. A few downed planks let in enough illumination from the corner streetlight.
Craze whipped out his carpet razor, was fixing to maybe cut one of this geek’s ears off, or slice off a lip like he’d done to that rich old lady they’d taken down at the Ballard Market last summer. Cut her lips clean off while Willy and Marlon put the blocks to the old bag. Nothing but red teeth showing. Kinda funny.
Marlon lumbered up, picking at his crotch. “Lemme scratch my dick in him first, huh? This shit itches.”
“Sure, Marlon,” T.J. okayed. See, a couple months ago, they’d busted up a whore on Aurora—this bitch was
all
fucked up on crack—jacked her pussy-pouch for sixty bucks, but that wasn’t enough for Marlon. “Shit, man,” T.J. warned. Even homeless sociopaths could be possessed of some prudence. “These street hoes got everything going between their legs. You gotta be crazy to dip into that shit.” Plus, Marlon already had a case of rectal herpes from the joint. Every time he’d take a shit, he’d holler.
But Marlon, all six-foot-five of him, wouldn’t hear of it. This chick was like most of ’em: rack-skinny, little tits on her, and long stringy hair. The usual crack-whore trash for clothes: tight shorts, halter, high heels. Willy and Craze held her down behind the dumpster at Blue Video, but she’d passed out once she got a whiff of Marlon’s unwashed-for-a-year crotch. He’d plugged her hard, left his snot quick, then they’d all pissed and shit on her. But Marlon, ever the completist, just couldn’t be slaked, the sick pup. He’d scooped up a good rasher of their shit off her chest, then mashed it all down into her face. He pressed down good and hard until she smothered. “Fuck it,” he excused himself. “Guess I just got a hair up my ass.”
But the joke was on Marlon. Few days later, they wake up under the Nickerson Street overpass, and he’s got some big pusser on his dick, the size of a walnut. “Told ya so,” T.J. said. “Itches,” Marlon replied. “Just like my asshole.”
Marlon had been in the Nam. Mostly peed himself and fired his 16 over his head during a fire fight. Said he got captured by VC, got the shit tortured out of him. Had something
all
fucked up with his skin, his chest, legs, under his neck—like hundreds of little holes, and T.J. figured it had something to do with the torture. No reason not to believe it ’cos—shit—anyone fucked up enough to do the shit Marlon did
had
to have had a reason. Willy was another story, though. Kinda quiet, happy to sit by himself with his crack or his Mickey’s. Said something once about an aunt or a foster home or something but that was it.
No point crying over spilt Mickey’s,
T.J. reasoned. The past was the past. So, they’d all got themselves bung-holed one way or another. Only made sense to make up for it now.
Willy sat against the lectern post, picking at his foot and sniffing his fingers. “Hurry up and have your butt-fuck,” Craze said, his razor gleaming. “I wanna do me some carving.”
“Shit, T.J., I gotta puke,” Willy complained.
“Then puke, Willy Boy. It’s a free country, and you’re a citizen.”
“Uh, yeah. You’re right.” Willy leaned over right there and—
errrrrrp!
—let his belly rip right about where the priest would’ve stood when reading the lessons. He picked through the vomit, fascinated by the bits of undigested peppers from the macaroni salad they’d ripped off from Safeway. “Why waste ’em?” He began to eat the bits, clipping each one with what remained of his front teeth.
That’s my boy.
T.J. sighed an overwhelming satisfaction. The beautiful night sky showing through the plank gaps, the cool breeze, the whole world open to them. Life was good, and T.J. felt blooming in gratitude when he looked down at his flock.
Marlon was just about to pull the geek’s pants down, when—
CLANK!
—they heard the lock bust and the chain fall.
Then the front doors creaked open and the woman walked in.
(iii)
I’d been following him all the way from the bridge. Something about him. I could smell his heart—a sad heart but a true one. I could smell his brain.
I knew he wouldn’t suffice, I knew that in a glance. I saw honest passions and grand designs. Tainted in sorrow yet too true to his core.
Then I saw the others.
(iv)
T.J. stared at the woman who’d entered the emptied nave; in fact, they all stared. Their crusted mouths hung open at the incredulity, their black-rot teeth glistening in their grins. Shit, she had no idea what she was in for. Right here, in the abandoned church? Who cared how she broke the door chains—they’d been rusted for years, probably gave way with a quick tug.
Marlon’s diseased cock stuck out, his hands frozen above their previous task. “Hell with this fella,” he guttered.
“Yeah,” Craze said, rising to his feet. His carpet razor glinted like a gem fragment.
“The more, the merrier,” T.J. said.
He couldn’t believe what happened next. The crazy bitch just walked right up to him and said, “Do you think I’m pretty?”
Pretty?
Shit!
This chick was a piece of work. Dressed like a whore in the tight jeans and top. Chilly as it was tonight, you’d think she was nuts but that was fine with T.J. and the boys. That cold air perked her big tits right up, nipples sticking out like to poke you in the eye. Couldn’t see much of her face, though, the way her breath turned to steam every time she exhaled.
I don’t give a shit about her face…
“Yeah, you’s real fine, hon,” Craze said.
“
Real
fine!” Willy added, unceremoniously rubbing his joint through his pants and anxiously tapping his rotten foot. But it was T.J. who made the move, reached out and grabbed her shiny red hair and hauled her the fuck
down.
What—
T.J. had her about squashed flat against the dirt-caked floor; his hips dry-humping her as grimy hands struggled to get his Stone Electric overalls off. She didn’t resist at all—this was gonna be way too easy.
“Come on boys,” T.J. said. “Time to get this train rollin’.”
“Yeah,” Marlon guffawed. “All aboard!”
They raped her for hours, taking breaks between the variety of positions. A tough chick, too. After Craze’s first turn he beat the shit out of her good and got to choking her so hard T.J. had to stop him. “Can’t be killin’ this dish, Craze. Gotta make her last, you know? Fun for the whole night.”
Now Marlon was plumbing her good, the biggest of them. Each thrust of the pus-bulbed penis made a sound like Willy scarfing macaroni salad.
“I wanna cut her a little,” Craze excitedly asserted himself. “’Kay?”
“Sure, but just a little.”
T.J. sat back in attendance, amid garbage, hitting off another bottle of ‘Bird while Willy hit off his crack pipe. “Get me hard faster, the rock,” he pointed out, sucking the hot gas into his lungs. The light neatly tinted the scene.
Cozy,
T.J. thought. But—
Yeah. One tough chick.
She didn’t make a sound when Craze started nicking her with the razor, and he knew she wasn’t dead because just then her legs went up and wrapped around Marlon’s hairy back.
She’s…digging this,
T.J. realized.
We’re raping the shit out of her and she’s—
“More,” she breathed under Marlon. “Harder…” Then huge, glittering eyes gazed desperately to Craze. “Cut me more.”
Fuck,
T.J. thought.
She must be from L.A.
The long, curvy body flinched under Marlon’s reeking weight when Craze put the razor to her skin. A long moan fell out of her mouth—Craze cut right through her nipple-tip. T.J. nodded—this was wild, and seeing her flinch like that put some more spark in his meat. He pulled it back out, all seven unwashed inches, and pulled his balls out too. Then he lay down. “Got a lollipop for ya. Get on over here and start sucking.”
Her eyes looked hot at the command. Marlon pulled out, let her up, then she was crawling forward, that beautiful firm white ass wriggling high in the air. Chuckles echoed round the damp, open space of the wasted church. Where faithful congregations once prayed, T.J.’s congregation
rocked.
She slithered over him, a real pro, real whore material.
Probably started out on her daddy ‘bout when she was four.
She sucked the entirety of T.J.’s foul cock while Marlon kneed up from behind and parked his—herpes and all—right into her rectum.
Holy shit,
T.J.’s brained stewed
.
This was primo head; she was sucking on it like a straw in a milkshake, and didn’t seem to give a hoot that it hadn’t been washed since his last shower at the shelter which was, like, last February. This debasement excited him further—he nearly came—so he pushed her head off. “Suck them dirty balls a bit. Got some critters in there for ya.” This second command was obeyed without hesitation. That hot, deft mouth tongued the filthy scrotum, roving through mites and crusts of old sperm. Then she sucked one ball into her mouth, expelled it, sucked in the other, alternating.
Yeah, this was damn fine action…
Craze jerked himself with one hand while the other hand drew red lines down her back with the razor.
Talk about three on one!
In a moment, Marlon pulled out and came on her back, his hand getting shitty as he wrung the last drops. Then he smeared it all around over the profusion of blood from the razor cuts. T.J. felt about ready to have his when—