Frisk: A Novel (Cooper, Dennis) (12 page)

The bed jiggles. Pierre rolls over, squints. Marv's on his feet again. "We've discussed this before," he says. "And I don't know what you're going on about. I'm gonna adjust the temperature of the oven." He splits, slams the door. Typical. Pierre rolls over onto his other side, watches the curtains billow up and deflate around an overcast sky X'ed with telephone wires. He tries to sob, can't.

Eventually he gets up, traipses down the hall. Marv's sitting at the kitchen table reading my letter. Pierre takes some cranberry juice from the fridge, sits down opposite. The stove reeks of broiling chicken. That blends curiously with the taste of the juice. He sips, sniffs, sips, sniffs in quick succession a few times. The combination's, uh, Middle Eastern in some vague way. Oh, so what?

Marv's reading the letter, eyes bugging, brows arched, forehead crumpled. "Any new developments out Amsterdam way?" Pierre asks. Marv shakes his head. "Same old apocalyptic porno. Maybe a little more detailed. The part I'm on now, the victim's real young. Here." He holds it out. "No." Pierre slugs some juice. "I'm so over that sex-and-death stuff. When you're through with it, toss."

Pierre tips his chair back, sips. Marv reads on. His face does its pseudo-shocked vaudeville act. That's the problem, Pierre thinks. You can get used to anything. Then you stop feeling, you just respond, your brain reduces the world to ... whatever ... comedy? He sniffs. Hmm. What's burning? "Marv, what's ... ?" His lover tosses my letter down, flies at the stove with his hand out.

NUMB

1989

Dear Julian,

Maybe you remember. In the early to mid-'70s we used to fuck and hang out for a few years, then you moved to Paris. Years later I ran into you at a club called The Open Grave in New York when I'd renamed myself Spit. We wound up fucking in your hotel. For the record, my first name is Dennis again. Spit was a really brief thing. He existed for maybe a year at most. I'm writing because I suspect you're the one human being I've ever known who'll understand what I'm trying to say, since I feel like I learned virtually everything when we were lovers. I know I seemed weird in that Spit phase, sorry. I'm writing in part to let you know how important you were and still are to me. I should have said so that night, but as you could tell by the pseudonym, I wasn't into connecting with people. I cut off everybody I loved or who loved me. I had to. I'm not sorry I did. I think you'll probably understand why if you just keep reading.

As you can tell by the stamp on the envelope, I live in Holland, Amsterdam to be exact. I originally came over here, meaning Europe, to find you. I spent a couple of weeks down in Paris. My address for you was two or three years out of date, but I eventually located your boyfriend who said you were vacationing in Morocco or something. I trained up to Amsterdam planning to kill time until you got back, but I ended up finding a place.

Anyway, the point is I'm writing to the Julian I imagine you to be. That's a guy who'll relate to the strange, ecstatic situation I'm in. Mainly I'm going to tell you some things because I'll flip if I don't. And I'm going to tell you my story chronologically, to keep myself clear. See how this sounds.

Okay, a year and a half ago I met someone in a coffee shop here where they sell marijuana and hash. They're both legal in Holland, as you probably know. He said he knew a place where I could live for a while. I felt so carefree or insane at that point I thought, Sure, why not live abroad. You'd done it. So this guy guided me to a man who was trying to rent out two floors in a windmill. Problem was the ground floor housed a small brewery, so the upper floors smelled like beer all the time. It's huge and incredibly cheap. Still, the smell's unbelievable, especially during the summer. All I own is a futon, a clock, and some cooking utensils. There's a stove, refrigerator. The floors are two large round rooms stacked on top of each other with a spiral staircase in the center and little porthole-shaped windows. The brewery keeps the rest of the building warm. My mom sends me cash every month via American Express, out of guilt for my fucked-up upbringing, I guess.

At first I just hung around clubs, bars, boy brothels (prostitution is legal), thinking I'd make friends or something. But Dutch guys are impossible, even the hustlers. They have these childishly beautiful faces that lead you to think they'll be open and sweet and so on, but it's a fluke because they're actually closed, repressed, insecure, arrogant people, all of which makes them more devastating to me, for some reason. I've never been hornier. For months I just walked around slackjawed and hard, since every second or third guy's perfection by my standards, but whenever I tried to begin conversations with them, they'd shut up and seem overly intellectual and chilled inside. Still, one year ago this extremely cute, sleepyeyed guy about twenty-one came on to me at an after-hours club. He said I reminded him of an American ex-boyfriend. He was a ditsy, androgynous angel with brown hair, brown eyes, and big lips, just like every guy I've ever fallen for, including you. I forget his name. Call him Jan. When we got back here, Jan couldn't believe I actually lived in a windmill, the ultimate Dutch cliche. He found that hilarious. I toured him through the little brewery, which I'm allowed to keep an emergency key to. There's not much to see, just these four stinky tanks with open tops. After a while Jan said the smell was like sex, so we went back upstairs. He was tall, skinny, big-boned. He didn't smell very much, even inside his asshole. I've always been heavily into rimming. I got that from you, as you probably know. What's rimming about? I can't tell. I'm too obsessed. Anyway, I got wilder about Jan all during the sex, instead of more tired and bored like you're supposed to. It seemed really late. I think I was fucking him dog-style. He was stunning. I think he was moaning. I was about to come. I picked up an empty beer bottle without even thinking and hit the guy over the head. I don't know why. The thing broke. He fell off the futon. My cock slid out. He shit all over my legs and the bed on his way to the floor, which made me weirdly furious. I grabbed hold of his neck and ground the broken bottle into his face, really twisting and shoving it in. Then I crawled across the room and sat cross-legged, watching him bleed to death. I stayed there all night, worn out, vaguely wondering why I didn't go phone the police, or feel guilt or sympathy for his friends. I guess I'd fantasized killing a boy for so long that all the truth did was fill in details. The feeling was already planned and decided for ten years at least. I've never felt less than amazed and relieved about the whole incident. Hours passed. At some point I dragged Jan upstairs to the top of the mill. There's a smallish room shaped like a bell that nobody's gone into for hundreds of years or whatever. I stuffed him inside and washed the stairs, floor. What- ever's left of the body is there. I've never checked. I'm not interested in a dead body's smell, no matter how cute it was. Nothing smells rotten down here, probably because of the brewery, like I said.

About three months later I killed a young boy who was hanging around outside the mill for some reason. He looked about fifteen, but he could have been anything up to twentyone since the Dutch look like kids for a long time. Then, overnight, they turn into old hags. It's weird. I'd been smoking marijuana all day, so I was really relaxed. I found him standing in front of the door, looking up at the wheel, which doesn't revolve anymore and is locked into place. I asked if he spoke any English. He did, but not well. It was 8-ish P.M. Workers leave the brewery around 5, so I asked if he wanted to see it. He said yeah. He was thin and stoop-shouldered with spiked black hair, like a lot of Dutch kids, wearing loose pastelcolored clothes, which is standard attire here. I showed him around, then I led him upstairs. He didn't say much or seem all that interested. We shared my last beer. He must have wanted to ask about what it's like in the United States, but he was too insecure about his English, I guess. I was starving for him. I can't remember why, except that he was particularly angelic. He must have noticed my hard-on. My pants were all bulged out, etc. I asked if he was a rich kid, which made him laugh. Then I asked if he needed some money. He looked at his shoes. I offered him 500 guilders (about $250) to take off his pants and let me lick his asshole. He snorted, still watching his shoes. I asked if he understood. He nodded. I said it wouldn't take long and he needn't get hard if he didn't feel up to it. He snorted again. I decided to just sit there staring at him. Eventually he muttered, 500 guilders. His voice was high-pitched but very flat, like he was answering stupid questions all the time. I said, Sure. Then he shrugged. I asked him to strip. I stood a ways off to make him more comfortable. He took off everything but his undershirt, I don't know why. Would he rather lie down on his stomach or back? He said his back, and stretched out. I folded him into a ball, knees around his ears, weight on his shoulders, and told him to say if it hurt. When he answered, Okay, I decided to kill him for some reason. Then I got so emotionally weird that I almost broke down. I licked his ass for a couple of minutes, half sobbing. He didn't notice. I do this thing where I wet down two fingers and slide them into an asshole then move them apart so the hole opens up all the way to the rectum. I lean over and sniff someone's bowels, I don't know why. This kid's was rank. I closed it up right away. He shut his eyes and let out regular breaths through his nose. I worked my hands under his shirt, which he didn't notice or mind. I played with his nipples. When that made him grin just the tiniest bit, I thought, Fuck it, why not, and grabbed his neck. He opened his eyes very wide. Otherwise he didn't fight me at all. It takes a lot longer to strangle someone than you'd think. At some point his eyes changed. They got kind of empty, fake. I noticed that diarrhea had squirted out of his ass, trickling all down his back. It smelled gruesome. When he was definitely a corpse, I ran over and leaned out a window. Occasionally I'd check to see if he'd moved. He hadn't. He looked so beautiful with his eyes empty, I don't know why. I walked back to the futon, sat down, and gazed into their glassiness a long, long time, daydreaming and numb. I didn't know what to do next, with his body I mean, so I kept it around for a few days pushed up against one of the walls. His skin got this weird dusky color. It was a very rough winter. Maybe that's why he didn't smell the whole time. I had a million ideas how I wanted to carve up and study the kid. I couldn't do it, I don't know why. Eventually I dragged him outside late one night and threw him into a canal that runs by the windmill, assuming somebody would find him and I'd be arrested. I don't know what actually happened because he was never reported either missing or dead in the papers or anything, as far as I can tell.

What's weird is he didn't fight back. He just accepted death. Every single time I've killed a Dutch boy this happens. It must be a part of the problem that makes them so cold and unknowable in general. They're like rabbits, at least in the sense that when a rabbit gets scared it freezes up. You can threaten to kick it, it won't move. If one of these boys ever actually fought with me now, I'd probably have a brain hemorrhage I'd be so shocked.

I just realized that if you're still reading you must be the person I want you-to- be. God, I hope so.

After the second time I got more methodical. That's been facilitated by these two German murderer guys. Jorg and Ferdinand live in a squat not far away from the mill. They're as fucked up as I am, just not as intelligent. They kill guys because it's a kick, whereas for me it's religious or something. I met them at a bar. Germans are more knowable than the Dutch. So I was talking drunkenly about the idea of murder to them and they told me they'd strangled somebody, a drunk, in Koln. That's why they'd moved here to Holland, supposedly. They seemed really calm about things. When I was sure they were cool, I just casually mentioned the two boys I'd killed. They seemed amazed. They wanted to hear every detail. We officially joined forces that night, shook on it, all that. Since they basically don't give a shit who they kill just as long as it's gory, I get to handpick most of our victims and pretty much how the death happens. So I'm much more imaginative and violent now. They're big, muscly guys in their late twenties, but Ferdinand looks younger. Neither guy is particularly cute.

The weekend I met them we killed a guy who worked parttime at a fish market right near their squat. He was a typical Dutch yuppie guy who acted overly snotty whenever they came in to shop. They're kind of scruffy. Luckily for me he was almost my type. Except he was a dishwater blond and had a very light mustache. Stores usually close at 5 P.M.; Tuesdays they're open till 10. He worked on Tuesdays with some older guy. Ferdinand, Jorg, and I drank at a bar up the street. Jorg has a fierce-looking pistol he carries around in his belt. When the fish market closed, the yuppie strolled up the street, past the bar, toward a bus stop. We followed him for a while. Then Jorg yelled, Let's do it. We ran. Jorg put the gun in the boy's back. It was weird, very crime movie. Ferdinand told him to shut up. He stiffened. We walked him rapidly toward the mill. An elderly couple walked by. I don't think we registered in their eyes. He didn't try to escape for some reason. As soon as we got him upstairs, Ferdinand and Jorg started punching and slapping him. They said it was "payback" for treating them shittily at the store. All he did was breathe hard and look frustrated. Jorg broke the yuppie's nose. At least it sounded that way. They kicked every part of his body. As a favor I stood around letting them get their frustrations out. Still, they fucked up the guy pretty bad. It wasn't uninteresting to watch, except I started to feel sympathetic toward him, which could be a problem someday. So I never let them go crazy again. He didn't fight or yell out, which was the most extreme case of the rabbit-syndrome thing I've ever seen. I don't know if it was pride or whatever. He was semi-unconscious when they quit the battering, etc. At my request, they dragged him onto the futon and cut off his clothes with a Swiss army knife, "accidentally" stabbing him lightly here and there. The guy's eyes were rolling around in his head. Once he was naked the Germans went over and stood by the fridge. They opened a couple of beers and started blabbing in German. The guy was all bruised and sliced up, but cute nevertheless, though I've seen better bodies. His legs were too hairy. So was the crack of his ass. The buttocks were saggy and thick. He had the faint beginnings of a beer belly. I rolled him onto his stomach and buried my face in his ass for a while. Jorg yelled, Hey Dennis, and threw me the knife. I stabbed the buttocks a couple of times. They didn't bleed. I rolled him over, pulled down my pants, and rubbed my ass on his face, which drove the Germans insane. They chanted, Shit, shit, shit. So I did, directly onto his mouth, stabbing his thighs every once in a while. Jorg ran over and stomped the shit into his face. I heard more stuff break in his head. I asked if they thought he was dead. Ferdinand asked if I wanted that. I said, Okay. Ferdinand picked up a kitchen knife, Jorg took the Swiss army knife, and they stabbed his chest, making "oof" noises. He bled really wildly. He had to be dead after that. I was standing there watching them, jerking off, when something weird happened that never reoccurred. Jorg came over, knelt down, and sucked my cock deep into his throat. I came in his head. I even thought I loved Jorg for the next day or two, though he acted like nothing had happened between us. Still, at that moment, for whatever reason, Jorg was starved for my sperm. Weird. Anyway, they grabbed the guy's body and dragged it downstairs, yelling how they knew a burial spot and they'd see me tomorrow. I spent all night cleaning the place. They buried the corpse by their squat, apparently. I thought that was risky. Still, we've never heard anything, so I guess it's okay.