She smiled slightly as she put a Doors record on the turntable and switched on the power. "In high school. I ran track and I was on the swim team. You know anything about the Doors?"
"The band? Yeah. They had a few hits, right?"
"The lead singer's name was Jim Morrison," Mary went on, ignoring Gordie's stupidity. "He was God."
"He's dead now, right?" Gordie asked. "Damn, you've got a nice ass!"
Mary set the needle down. The first staccato drumbeats of "Five to One" began, and the raspy bass bled in. Then Jim Morrison's voice, full of grit and danger, snarled from the speakers:
Five to one, baby / One in five / No one here gets out alive / You get yours, baby / I'll get mine…
The voice made memories flood through her. She had seen the Doors in concert many times, and had even seen Jim Morrison up close once, as he was going into a club on Hollywood Boulevard. She'd reached out through the crowd and touched his shoulder, felt the heat of his power course up her arm and shoulder like an electric shock, blowing her mind into the realm of golden radiance. He had glanced back at her, and for a brief second their eyes had met and locked; she had felt his soul, like a caged and beautiful butterfly. It screamed to her, wanting her to set him free, and then somebody else grabbed Jim Morrison and he was taken along in the surge of bodies.
"That's got a good beat," Gordie said.
Mary Terror cranked up the music a notch, and then she took the LSD to Gordie and gave him one of the yellow Smiley Faces, "Allllright!" Gordie said as he crushed his cigarette out in an ashtray beside the bed. Mary began to lick the circle, and Gordie did the same. In a few seconds the Smiley Faces were smeared and their black eyes were gone. Then Mary got onto the bed and sat in a lotus position, her ankles crossed beneath her and her wrists on her knees, her eyes closed as she listened to God and waited for the acid to work. The skin of her belly fluttered; Gordie was tracing her scars with his index finger.
"So you never said how you got all these. Were you in an accident?"
"That's right."
"What kinda accident?"
Little boy, she thought, you don't know how close you are to the edge.
"Must've been a bad one," Gordie persisted.
"Car wreck," she lied. "I got cut up by glass and metal." That much was true.
"Whoa! Heavy-duty hurt! Is that why you don't have any kids?"
Her eyes opened. Gordie's mouth was on his forehead, and his eyes were bloodred. Her eyelids drifted shut again. "What do you mean?"
"I wondered, 'cause of the baby pictures. I thought… you know… you must have a thing about kids. You can have kids, can't you? I mean… the accident didn't fuck you up, did it?"
Again, Mary's eyes opened. Gordie was growing a second head on his left shoulder. It was a warty mass just beginning to sprout a nose and chin. "You ask too many questions," she told him, and she heard her voice echo as if within a fathomless pit.
"Man!" Gordie said suddenly, his crimson eyes wide. "My hand's gettin' longer! Jesus, look at it!" He laughed, a rattle of drums that merged with the Doors' music. "My hand's fillin' up the fuckin' room!" He wriggled his fingers. "Look! I'm touchin' the wall!"
Mary watched the head taking shape on Gordie's shoulder. Its features were still indistinguishable, but the mass of flesh began to throw out cords of skin that looped around Gordie's other face, which had started to shrink and shrivel. As the Gordie-face dwindled, the new face tore itself loose and slithered across Gordie's shoulder, fastening itself onto the skull with a wet, sucking noise.
"My arms are growin'!" Gordie said. "Man, they're ten feet long!"
The air was filled with music notes spinning from the speakers like bits of gold and silver tinsel. The new face on Gordie's skull was becoming more defined, and a mane of wavy brown hair burst from the scalp and trailed down the shoulders. Sharp cheekbones pressed from the flesh, and a bastard's mouth with cruel, pouting lips. Dark eyes emerged under glowering brows.
Mary caught her breath. It was the face of God, and he said, "You get yours, baby. I'll get mine."
Jim Morrison's face was on Gordie's body. She didn't know where Gordie was, and she didn't care. She drew herself toward him, her lips straining for the pouting mouth that had spoken the truth of the ages. "Wow," she heard him whisper, and then their mouths sealed together.
She felt him slide into her, body and soul. The walls of the room were wet and red, and they pulsed to the music's drumbeat. She opened her mouth as he drove deeper into her, and a long silver ribbon trailed out that spun up and up. The air was vibrating, and she felt the notes of music prick her flesh like sharp little spikes. His hands were on her, melting into her skin like hot irons. She traced the bars of his ribs with her fingers, and his tongue came out of his face like a battering ram and tore up through the roof of her mouth to lick her brain.
His power split her, tearing her atoms asunder. He was burrowing into her as if he wanted to curl up inside her scarred belly. She saw his face again, amid a blaze of yellows and reds like a universe aflame. It was changing, melting, re-forming. Long sandy-blond hair replaced the wavy brown, and fierce blue eyes rimmed with green pushed God's eyes out of their sockets. The nose lengthened, the chin became sharper, like a spear's tip. A blond beard erupted from the cheeks and merged into a mustache. The mouth spoke in a gasp of need: "I want you. I want you. I want you."
It was him. After all this time. Lord Jack, here with her where he belonged.
She felt her heart pound and writhe, about to tear itself loose from its red roots. Lord Jack's beautiful face was above her, his eyes glowing like the sun on a tropical sea, and when she kissed him she heard the saliva hiss in their mouths like oil on a hot grill. He was filling her up, making her belly bulge. She clung to him as God sang for them. Then she was above him, grasping his stony flesh. The veins moved like worms below pale earth, and her mouth found velvet. She seized him deep, heard him groan like distant thunder, and she held him there as he twisted and drove beneath her. Then she drew back as Lord Jack convulsed and beads of moisture shivered on the flat plates of his stomach, and she watched him explode into the silver-streaked air.
He released babies: tiny, perfectly formed babies, curled-up and pink. Hundreds of them, floating like delicate pods from a wondrous flower. She grabbed at them, but they dissolved in her grip and trickled down her fingers. It was important that she catch them. Vitally important. If she did not hold at least one of them, Lord Jack wouldn't love her anymore. The babies glistened on her fingers and melted down her palms, and as she frantically tried to save at least one, she saw Lord Jack's hard flesh shrivel and withdraw. The sight terrified her. "I'll save one!" she said. Her voice crashed in her ears. "I swear, I'll save one! Okay? Okay?"
Lord Jack didn't answer. He lay on his back, on a field of tortured white, and she could see his skinny chest rising and falling like a weak bellows.
She looked at her hands. There was blood on them: dark red and thick.
She felt a sudden stabbing pain. She looked at her belly, and saw the scars ripping open and something reddish-black and hideous oozing through.
The blood was streaming from her in torrents, washing over the barren field. She heard her voice scream: "NO!" Lord Jack tried to sit up, and she caught a glimpse of his face: not Lord Jack anymore, but the pallid face of a stranger. "NO! NO!" Mary screamed. The stranger made a gasping, groaning noise and fell back again. She looked around, the red walls quivering and the music flaying her ears. She saw an open door and beyond it a toilet. The bathroom! she thought as her mind lurched toward reality. Bad trip! Bad trip!