Stiletto

He moved his husky frame through the dark on too skinny legs. He stalked along 11th Avenue, gliding along buzzed. The late summer’s night was still dewy as wet, humid air off the Pacific abutted against the Cascades.

“Betty Lou,” he said to the moon and readjusted the backpack slung over one shoulder.

His finger slid back and forth in his pocket. The tip of an index finger traced over the olive wood scales, picked over the brass bolsters, gently fingered the safety slider and push button release. No fancy-fuck tactical jimping or G-10 handle.

Chester breathed in the cool damp air, letting himself go. His eyes played over Cal Anderson Park to his left. The air pungent with the smells of pot, curry tofu, and unwashed sweaty copulating bodies soaked in patchouli.

The rubber soles of his Chucks made no sound. A ghost in this world, even here in the CHAZ.

Or is it the CHOP? We’re in the CHOP now.

Lost and found amidst the anarchy.

We are free.

But I have always been free. You and me, free. Every since mom got sick of my shit and kicked me out at 18.

We are not free.

Not really.

A refreshing night wind cut through his tattered black jeans. The same jeans he had been wearing since he left Oklahoma two years ago.

Kicked us out, she did, the evil old bitch. Always going on about us getting a better job than Old Man Reilly’s Conoco.

Yes. I know.

She always somehow managed to get a new boyfriend every couple of years in that two-stoplight town. Big dick trained my pervy boy asshole.

Uncle Fester likes to pester the bad wittle boys.

“This is Uncle Fester speaking, touch me, touch me.”

Something Chester read once, back there in that two-stoplight town, in between shifts at the gas station, back there with the cigarette stacks in his own little world, books from the library feverishly read as serial killer podcasts blared in his ears.

“It is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangeroue anamal of all to kill something gives me the most thrilling experence it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl…”

Angry, excited sweat broke out over his body. His mouth dried up. He fingered the brass bolsters.

A mad phrase recycled its way through his mind, again and again.

“ebeorietemethhpiti”

“ebeorietemethhpiti”

“ebeorietemethhpiti”

His heart swelled. Such pride at all they had accomplished. The riots. The destruction. Beating the pig cops down. Smashing all those pig bosses, like Old Man Reilly. Smashing the corporate power.

The Autonomous Zone. The Occupied Protest.

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair!

Chester skipped his way down 11th Avenue, silent as he went, singing rang through his mind. Glorious choruses of “hallelujah” intermingling into refrains of: “IN THE YEAR 2525! IF MAN IS STILL ALIVE! IF WOMAN CAN SURVIVE! THEY MAY FIIIIIIIND!”

He struggled, like all guilty whites should struggle. Bending and twitching, he about hurled in the middle of the street.

I can’t feel, really. Nothing to feel. Just what they tell me.

A dreadlocked chick on the corner under one of the few still-functioning street lamps curled her lip up in a sneer. Her lip ring glinted in the light.

His struggle session, her entertainment.

She looked like Chester’s Korn kid mommy.

Fuck her!

We’d like to fuck her. In the ass. Make her shit creamed corn bits.

We could cover her in scum. Jizz up her nose, shit on her chest, smear her face in blood.

Whose blood?

Who cares?

Her’s, asshole. Make that white privileged bitch bleed.

Huh, huh, huh, white girl bleed a lot.

Cut the throat.

Play with her guts.

Sam wants it. Richie wants it. Saucy Jacky really wants it.

“Just let it out, man. Don’t fight it,” some beak-nosed skinny white dork on the street corner next to dread girl shouted at Chester. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like an erection.

Chester doubled over, sweat pouring out, tongue played over the backs of his teeth feverishly probing. Chester ripped a huge fart.

The couple on the corner laughed.

Give us some medicine, daddy.

Yes, boss.

Yeah, light it up.

Go hard or go home.

This is home.

Home is lies.

Oh, just fucking smoke some ganja already!

Long, spindly fingers fished through his pocket, the other pocket. And out came a spliff into his mouth, sucking down huge lungfuls of hot resinous smoke.

His head shot through the fucking clouds, his neck extended on a massive suborbital erection.

Jerking and twerking his way over to the couple saying, “Yeah baby, yeah.”

Chester loomed over them.

“What’s up, man?” the manboy said.

“I’m Chester, just came to the CHOP, and it’s cool. Like, I really dig that load you’re carrying.”

“Uh, thanks. What load?” manboy said.

“That load of everything. You just need to chill.”

The dread girl said, “Kind of a funny thing to ask, but what are you smoking?”

“Embalmed Purple Haze, child,” Chester said as careful, quick fingers fetched another joint for the couple. “Here, partake. For you and yours, truly and deeply.”

Manboy took it and chuckled. “Dude thinks he’s an old timey hippie.”

Partake, you little rude fuck. You and your filthy tiny-titted slut.

Manboy stuck the joint in his mouth and touched a flame to the end. Sucking deep, he then passed it to his polyandrous girlfriend.

They took power hits enjoying each puff and suck.

Manboy’s mouth felt numb. His head felt light, too light. Eyes focused sharp one second went blurry in the next.

“I have to pee pee,” Chester said, “where’s the bathrooms.”

Lips and tongue heavy, Manboy slurred out, “Over here, we’ll show you. Me and Drea.”

The boy and girl led Chester around the corner. He followed, a skip in his step. Manboy and dread girl had problems, like walking-through-molasses-on-a-cool-fall-day trouble.

Giddy and stupid, manboy smacked the end unit of a row of porta potties. “Here you-p gooOOoooo.”

Drea projectile-vomited all over the sidewalk.

“My girls no so good,” manboy, blank-expressioned, stammered out.

Chester’s face melted in concern, “Oh no, dude! Help me.” Chester took Drea’s arm and led her towards the rear of the porta potties. Manboy took her other arm. “Sure, man, I guess back here is good for her to spewwwww.”

The space between the toilets and the buildings was a channel of darkness.

Drea spewed forth more shit, an amazing volume of filth for such a small body.

Manboy lost his grip. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her. Not feeling so good myself.”

“Probably just the belladonna we put in that joint you two split,” Chester said.

“Wha—?”

Snikt!

The keen high-polished six-inch blade slipped under Manboy’s breastbone, piercing his heart. He froze, his body processing that the heart’s beat was jammed up, the blood no longer pumped, everything blocked up in an instant.

Breath stopped, muscles locked in shock.

And Manboy fell over, a dying brain in a dead body.

Drea puked in fits, each wave of nausea shocking her, each period of non-vomitous calm relaxing her body into corpse-like stillness.

Until Chester Japanese-strangled her from behind.

He yanked her to her feet, letting her weight seal off her trachea.

Once she was passed out, he stripped off her oversized hoodie. Chester worked her out of her leggings and slipped the blade through her back.

Again.

And again.

Hey, Jacky, just like you said: kill their lungs before they come to. No breathe, no scream.

Good boy. We’re very proud of you. Just like that first time in Salt Lake City.

57 times Chester pierced Drea’s body, then carved hashes from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, stripping off lacy, bourgeois black panties to take extra care in “decorating” her buttocks.

There, in the dark channel, Chester could enjoy the shit smell, the black blood in the moonlight. Her naked white flesh growing cold. He commandeered her hoodie and pulled her panties over his face like a mask.

Her blood blacked out his face.

Aye me, that’s a good ‘un, makes me old hoot feelin’ good.

Time for a hunt, time to hunt the big game.

The big game, ya boi!

We’ve been watching, we know where to go, we know where to wait. There in the dark, where they won’t look. You are protected, we are invisible to your enemies.

Yes. Mr. Sam told me so. Him and his dog.

Cool air flowed over Chester, drying the blood on his face and hands, a stiff, sticky crust on his exposed skin.

He chanted an incantation to the ultimate man of mystery:

“Oh Cheri Jo, don’t ya know?

cut.

clean.

if red /

clean.

blood spurting,

dripping,

pilling;

all over her new

dress,

oh well…”

Chester stomped his foot and pirouetted, finishing the verse, “…it was red
anyway.’”

In the street before Chester ten yards away was a man in a black square hood, a white cross in a circle emblazoned on his chest, mirrored sunglasses reflecting twin moons, slow-dancing while rolling his fists.

Mr. Z, you came!

Two pitch-black Doberman dogs, their glowing red eyes flashed in the darkness, pierced Chester’s soul. The .45 in its holster and lengths of rope fastened to Mr. Z’s belt fluttered in time with the dance as he sang, “…He’s coming home late, yeah, he’s coming home late. And he’s bringing me a surprise…”

Chester admired the big, beautiful knife hanging at Mr. Z’s waist.

The black dogs bobbed their heads in time with pumped-up kicks.

A calm pulsed through Chester and he walked on past Darlene Farrin’s bullet-riddled corpse while go-go dancing.

Such a nice girl, always so friendly, so full of life.

Richard Ramirez sat on a park bench and shared a crack pipe, his buddy a goatman-like demon.

Richie shouted out to Chester, “You go, Chesty, me and Baphomet believe in you, and our father below watches over you. None shall touch you until it is time. Cousin Mike told me so from the pit.”

Chester’s heart, joyful, leapt out of his chest.

He passed many people in the Zone. So many souls under the dark sky called forth by Chernobog who closed their eyes to Chester’s passage. Those who recognized him held their tongues, smiling and nodding, their own guardian demons winking.

Chester stopped a moment and watched a coven of witches dance naked in an intersection cursing Donald Trump.

A young, scraggly-bearded Oriental man stopped Chester saying, “I know you! David told me you would be coming by, brother. It is a beautiful thing you do. But Mr. Berkowitz says I have to wait because,” the Oriental fellow looked around and tapped the butt of the Charter Arms Bulldog in his waistband, “we can be a bit loud.”

Poor man; Mom’s sister liked to shove her fingers up his little boy ass and squeeze his little boy balls.

The chubby demon denim-jacketed man next to the Oriental said, “We have to go; Sam and his doggie has something for us to see by the toilets.”

Corpses in the blood-filled gutters stared up at Chester. Severed heads smiled from the curb. A beast sniffing through a mound of offal gave him an “OK” sign.

All these things and many more the residents of the CHOP could not see.

In Cal Anderson Park, Chester passed Jeffrey Dahmer eating a roasted dick on a stick.

“Doesn’t taste right without the smegma.” He cocked a thumb and forefinger at Chester.

Chester slipped through the black crowd in Cal Anderson Park. Their eyes could not perceive him in his mask of blood.

Raz Simone handed out ARs from the back of a Beamer.

Chester stood in line and awaited his gift from the big, tough black man who talked like a whiny social worker.

The adrenaline bit deep into Chester’s stomach as he whipped out the stiletto in a jolt, slashing Raz’s stomach and ripping open a diagonal welt severing his belt.

Raz’s pants dropped to his knees and he ran.

Chester stabbed at Raz’s ass, tearing open his buttocks and hamstrings.

Raz tried to fight back, turned, and flipped off the safety of his pot-metal AK.

Chester sliced the muscles on the side of Raz’ neck. Raz’ head flopped off his shoulder.

Chester jumped onto Raz, bringing both knees down on his chest, raking the blade along Raz’s throat like salami until it was bloody ribbons.

Whores screamed behind him as he felt the fire’s heat on his back. He could smell the burning flesh. The Oriental fellow was shooting girls with dark hair parted in the middle.

Bullets ricocheted off the asphalt as someone went Charles Whitman.

A group of black guys went all Zebra on the witches.

All in all, it was a wild night in the CHOP.