Grefe - Static/Orgone

Copyright 2016 by Jamie Grefe

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

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The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-945373-31-2

Printed in the United States of America

JournalStone rev. date: September 23, 2016

Cover Art: Matthew Revert

Interior Art: Luke Spooner

www.carrionhouse.com

Interior Formatting: Lori Michelle

www.theauthorsalley.com

STATIC

Alina is lost in this tangled mess of gropes: cucumbered clefts, limbs and swells, white cotton stained and sopping, hard-yanked.

A hot sludge.

Sacs dangle like skin bells from strange men. Tonight, this desert house blurts soupy facials, spurts gaping waves of blue static through the walls.

Those among the debauched are the neighbors of the well-drawn shade. They are the colleagues of the creamed tonsil, of the velvet pelt and quivering hip.

Distant radiance of the nameless undressed.

Slip to a pink nipple, a wet lip skittering fluorescent in bath light.

Toes uncurl, a perfect row of red streaks. Cheek to tongue, a flap and lick, milk-jets on the bearskin.

Drinks spill down laps, bleed the shag sticky.

In another room, logs hiss, glow, and pop in the fireplace.

Everywhere, oiled bodies sparkle off dark corners. Liquid seducers. The lamped den shimmers, coating nudes in slick light.

Lek Gardenio smacks, gropes at a wall, oozes from a foggy bedroom to the hall and takes a breath to lean, careful not to drown under his own garbled spasm.

The unseen lurks.

From a side bedroom comes a whip-crack. Palm to posterior. Leks balls still burn. His yellowed teeth clack, coated in muck. Amiss, he stammers forward, trying to stuff the lack with a scratch. There is no way out.

And his mustache of ferment.

And it makes his aching head burn solid jelly around this:

Private desert partya place to ram holes in the doldrums.

A mistake, no doubt.

For there are too many floors to this maze of grunts. Was it something I drank? Oh, what if it was? he thinks. The worm of a thought, perhaps?

Hushed coos resound. Lek, come, Lek, they say, with lusty abandon. Or, How about a hot mound and swig of gin? they say. If its too hoticebox your thermometer, old seadog.

But, who exactly mouths this summons for this shirtless, pantless, all but argyle-socked Lek, who stumbles in his near middle age to the pretzel bowl, to the fruit platter? He fumbles, itches across the room to the vegetable spread. Are his fingers crusty, joints weakened? Smothered and sweet sauced? He soaks a scrap of toast crust in a glob of bacon cream, crunches, trying to taste his way back to Alina, to his muse who has taken to mingling her fare elsewhere around the house, with some new body elsewhere around the house.

She left him hours ago.

Rewind to: a dip in the bottom of a healthy muff and Lek shot quick, obliterated. The shudder of a jackhammering index, a probing middle, a curious thumb skirting the rim of a fundament.

Now, wipe juice from nose.

It reeks of blood.

There are too many differences here, not to mention the static storms he suffers, threatening to crack open his skull.

Focus.

Alina is nowhere to be seen in this mess of moaning holes. But Lek thinks, Yes, I do believe I recognize you, I know you from our mutual acquaintances, I think Ive seen your faces: Wades goo-smothered shaft, his face screaming, Slurp mine honey. Or, Sandy sliding legs open, oiling some buff goons chicken bone, and popping it out on purpose, going to work on it with hairy tongue flicks.

Lek fingers a stale pretzel.

There, by the stereo, a reverse expulsion, a peony stuffed, plunged. He bites, saltier. There is a hum in the room, a reverberating whistle.

Plunge.

Into the throes ofthe bacon cream, the skinned shrimp, salad dressings, red plastic cups.

And then shethe anomalyhappens.

Out of the steam of a side door, a young brunette in black-rimmed spectacles, painted-on jeans, and cardigan green approaches. She grabs Leks handhes taken to wiping cream-streaks on his thighguides him toward her.

Behind her, someone says, Full sleaze ahead, and rushing from out of frame to focal point, a curly-haired Absalom propels himself over the leather sofa and plops awkward in the lap of a stuffed limb sandwich, the living room somehow wider now, looming open now.

The brunette tugs him off to get his attention. He says, I really cantAlina, my lover isI dont know about thisooogaaalllooogaaa.

Youre with me now, she says. Im your only hope.

Shes all over the bathroom, son, some hunk slurs from across the room. Dont let that diamond in the dark slip you up. This man bumbles across the room, perhaps, to speak more frankly with Lek and the brunette, but he cannot be sure, for the brunette, with Lek in tow, tugs him away.

This is not the end of the line, she says over her shoulder, more to the odd man than to Lek. A painless resolution remains.

Lek pulls a corner of his own mustache into his mouth, trying to keep himself in check. Surely, he says, this is a confusion of who you think I am.

But, the brunette says, its not just lust, Gardenio. She giggles, bending her middle finger inward to tickle Leks palm. Youll learn to ignore those impulses if you only listen. And they continue off through the brambles of skin and house, of teeth, veins, thighs, feet.

The gurgling of the house has grown louder. More bodies Lek has not seen in his life. If I dart away, he thinks, just to make it to the coat rack, or what if Alina is already back at the car? But the brunette squeezes his hand too tightly. Alina, he thinks, my light in the shadow of this dumb show. Why, my dear, how have we arrived here?

His mind skips, jumps to Alina at the office picnic in the city park, her black skirt mustard-smudged like a smeared yolk on black canvas. That was buns and buns ago. Some wiener antic he cant properly rememberand even if he could? The question startles him. And there he is again dropping the stapler on her sandals. And how minutes later (perhaps hours, he cant focus) he clinked coffee mugs with Alina at the microwave in the break room. She had told him the toaster stunk as if scorched, pointed out an old flier on the bulletin board. He only heard her accent, smelled the buttons on her blouse.

He says, Can you tell where we... ? But this brunette does not speak, just pulls and leads. Pass door upon grumbling door: sweat and musk and armpit stink.

A shape creeps closer. His boss, Briggs, the bald oaf, waves his arms as if he has a deal to seal with the air itself. But two blonde twins, giggling, shoot out of the dark, pirouette before the boss, halt him obscenely with their tied tongues. One of them cups his pickle, slaps his buttocks to a jiggling tango.

The hallway pulses dark green from little circular lights in the ceiling. Leks whisked away under them. And under him the carpet feels warm growing warmer.