Brian was currently between jobs
and couch-surfing,
with ever-dwindling prospects,
but when his dealer buddy
offered the use of his futon again,
he nervously brushed
the kind gesture aside
and abruptly changed the topic.
That dude was fucking weird
and into some seriously messed up shit.
Last time he stayed with him
he discovered that Ken’s pad
was pretty much wall-to-wall shrines
and religious art. Not like Jesus
and Buddha and shit
that normal people worship,
but there were crude inhuman idols,
and bones and fur and feathers
and rocks and pieces of bark and moss,
and even crazier shit like
spiders and clowns and babydoll heads
and way more puppets
than any grown man should ever have,
or any child for that matter.
The centerpiece of the living room
wasn’t a television set or a sound system
or even a computer desk or fish tank
– it was a buffalo skull with ivy
wrapped around its horns
and a bowl of wine and candles
set out before it
on a red, white and black rug.
Who does that?
Brian could have handled
that loco culty shit,
but that night while he was
setting up the futon and trying not to notice
the cowboy clown marionette’s lifeless eyes
boring into the back of his head
he heard something whisper to him
through the wall. It was faint, muffled,
like there was water between him and it,
and then it grew louder, and clearer.
“Come … play … with … meee …”
It just kept repeating that sentence
over and over, the e stretching out
into wailing sobs before starting again,
and Brian could not tell
if the voice belonged
to a boy or a girl.
Then a fishbelly white appendage
reached out of the wall
and grabbed his wrist,
and its fingers were just as slimy
as they looked,
and he could feel bone
through the squishy flesh,
and jagged nails that cut into him.
He yanked his arm away forcefully
and then the wall was back to normal
and he could see nothing there
but the peeling yellow paper.
He didn’t tell Ken about it
the following morning,
because he had already packed up
and left before the Orpheotelest
roused himself round about
noon or 2:30pm.
