The Soft Machine Read online

  K9 had an appointment at The Sheffield Arms Pub but the short wave faded out on the location—­Somewhere to the left? or was it to the right?—On? Off? North End Road?—He walked through empty market booths, shutters clattering—Wind tore the cover off faces he passed raw and peeled—Came to World’s End wind blowing through empty time pockets—No Sheffield Arms—Back to his room full of shadows—There he was sitting on the bed with the smile that wasn’t exactly a smile—At the washbasin a boy was using his toothbrush— “Who are these people?”

  The boy turned from the washbasin “You don’t remember me?—Well we met in a way that is”—The toothbrush in his hand was streaked with blood.

  Jimmy sat down on the bed his rectum tingling—The other picked up his scarf from a chair and ran it through his fingers looking at Jimmy with a cruel idiot smile—His hands closed on Jimmy’s elbows twisting him over on his stomach down on the bed—The boy found a pajama cord and tied Jimmy’s hands behind his back—Jimmy lay there gasping and sucked the key, tasting metal in his mouth—The other saddled Jimmy’s Body—He spit on his hands and rubbed the spit on his cock—He placed his hands on Jimmy’s ass cheeks and shoved them apart and dropped a gob of spit on the rectum—He slid the scarf under Jimmy’s hips and pulled his body up onto his cock—Jimmy gasped and moved with it—The boy slid the scarf up along Jimmy’s body to the neck—

  He must have blacked out though he hadn’t had much to drink at the pub—Two so-called double brandies and two Barley wines—He was lying on a lumpy studio bed in a strange room—Familiar too—In shoes and overcoat—Someone else’s overcoat—Such a coat he would never have owned himself—A tweedy loose-fitting powder-blue coat—K9 ran to tight-fitting black Chesterfields which he usually bought second hand in hock shops—He had very little money for clothes though he liked to dress in “banker drag” he called it—black suits—expensive ties and linen shirts—Here he was in such a coat as he would never voluntarily have owned or worn—Someone else’s room—Bed sitter—Cheap furniture suitcases open—K9 found two keys covered with dust on the mantel—Sat down convenient and sorted out his name—

  “You never learned to use your Jimmy—Slow with the right—there will be others behind him with the scarf—We met you know in a way that is in the smell of wine—You don’t remember me?”

  Taste of blood in his throat familiar too—and ­overcoat —someone else’s—streaked with coal dust—The bed sitter boy as it always does folded his clothes—Lay there gasping fresh in today—

  “Went into what might be called the comfortable and got myself a flat jewelry lying about wholesale side—Learned how to value them marketable commodities come level on average—well groceries—She started screaming for a respectable price—I was on the roof so I had to belt her—Find a time buyer before doing sessions—There’s no choice if they start job for instance—Have to let it go cheap and start further scream along the line—One or two reliable thieves—Work was steady at the gate to meet me—Early answer to use on anyone considering to interfere—Once in a while I had to put it about but usually what you might call a journeyman thief—It was done so modern and convenient—Sorted out punishment and reward lark—On, off? The bed down on his stomach is he? Ah there you are behind him with the scarf—Hands from 1910—There’s no choice if took off his clothes—Have to let it go cheap and start naked.”

  Twisted the scarf tighter and tighter around Jimmy’s neck—Jimmy gasped coughing and spitting, face swollen with blood—His spine tingled—Coarse black hair suddenly sprouted all over him. Canines tore through his gum with exquisite toothache pain—He kicked in bone wrenching spasms. Silver light popped in his eyes.

  He decided to take the coat with him—Might pass someone on the stairs and they would think he was the tenant since the boy resembled him in build and features being younger of course but then people are not observant come level on average—Careful—

  “Careful—Watch the exits—Wait a bit—No good at this rate—Watch the waves and long counts—No use moving out—Try one if you want to—All dies in convulsions screaming without a body—Know the answer?—Arsenic two years: operation completed—We are arsenic and bleeding gums—Who? Quién es?—World’s End loud and clear—So conjured up wide shoulders and black eyes glinting—Shadow cars through the dingy room—My page deals the bedroom sitter out of suitcase here on the bed where you know me with cruel idiot smile as Jimmy’s eyes pop out—Silk scarf moved up rubbing—Pubic hair sprouted all over him tearing the flesh like wire—Eyes squinted from a smell I always feel—Hot spit burned his rectum open—The warm muscle contracts—Kicked breathless coughing and spitting adolescent image blurred in film smoke—Through the gums the fist in his face—Taste of blood—His broken body spurted life in other flesh—Identical erections in the kerosene lamp—Electric hair sprouted in ass and genitals—Taste of blood in the throat—Hot semen spurted idiot mambo—One boy naked in Panama—Who?—Quién es?—Compost heap stench where you know me from—A smell I always feel when his eyes pop out—”

  “Know the answer? Arsenic two years: Goof ball bum in 1910 Panama. They’ll do it every time—Vampires is no good all possessed by overwhelming Minraud girl—”

  “Are you sure they are not for protection?”

  “Quite sure—Nothing here but to borrow your body for a special purpose:: (‘Excellent—Proceed to the ice.’)—In the blood arsenic and bleeding gums—They were addicted to this round of whatever visits of a special kind—An errand boy of such a taste took off his clothes—Indications enough naked now his cock healed scar ­tissue —Flesh juice vampires is no good—All ­sewage—Sweet rotten smell of ice—No use of them better than they are—The whole thing tell you no good no bueno outright or partially.”

  “Reasons for the change of food not wholly disinterested—The square fact is that judges like a chair—For many years he used Parker—Fed up with present food in the Homicide Act and others got the job—So think before time that abolition is coming anyway after that, all the Top Jobbies would like to strike a bargain in return for accepting the end of hanging—Generous? Nothing—I wasn’t all that far from being in position—”

  “Have to move fast—Nail that Broker before they get to him—Doing him a favor any case—”

  He found the Broker in a café off the Socco—Heavy with massive muscled flesh and cropped grey hair—K9 stood in the shadow and tugged his mind screen—The Broker stood up and walked down an alley—K9 stepped out of the shadows in his new overcoat—

  “Oh it’s you—Everything all right?—”

  K9 took off his hat respectfully and covered his gun with it—He had stuffed the hat with the Green Boy’s heavy silk scarf—A crude silencer but there was nobody in the alley—It wasn’t healthy to be within earshot when The Broker had business with anyone—He stood with the hat an inch from The Broker’s mid section—He looked into the cold grey eyes—

  “Everything is just fine,” he said—

  And pumped three Police Specials into the massive stomach hard as a Japanese wrestler—The Broker’s mouth flew open sucking for breath that did not come—K9 gave him three more and stepped aside—The Broker folded, slid along a wall and flopped face up his eyes glazing over—Lee dropped the burning hat and scarf on a pile of excrement and walked out of the alley powder smoke drifting from his cheap European suit—He walked toward flesh of Spain and Piccadilly—

  “Wind hand to the hilt—Fed up you understand until I die—Work we have to do and way got the job—End getting to know whose reports are now ended—‘One more change,’ he said, ‘touching ­circumstance’—Have you still—Come back to the Spanish bait it’s curtains under his blotter.”

  Who? Quién es?—Question is far away—In this hotel room you are writing whiffs of Spain—Boy stretches a leg—His cock flipped out in the kerosene lamp—Sputter of burning insect wings—Heard the sea—Tin shack over the mud flats—E
rogenous holes and pepper smells—

  In the sun at noon shirt open as his pants dropped— Lay on his stomach and produced a piece of soap—Rubbed the soap in—He gasped and moved with it—whiffs of his feet in the warm summer afternoon—

  Who? Quién es? It can only be the end of the world ahead loud and clear—

  Kiki steps forward on faded photo—Pants slipping down legs with a wriggle stood naked spitting on his hands—Shot a bucket grinning—Over the whispering tide flats youths in the act, pants down, bare feet in dog’s excrement—Street smells of the world siphoned back red and white T-shirt to brown Johnny—That stale dawn smell of naked sleep under the ceiling fan—Shoved him over on his stomach kicking with slow pleasure—

  “Hooded dead gibber in the turnstile—What used to be me is backward sound track—Fossil orgasm kneeling to inane cooperation.” Wind through the pissoir—“J’aime ces types vicieux qu’ici montrent la bite”—Green place by the water pipe—Dead leaves caught in pubic hairs—“Come and jack off—1929”—Woke in stale smell of vending machines—The boy with grey flannel pants stood there grinning a few inches in his hand—Shadow cars and wind through other flesh—Came to World’s End. Brief boy on screen revolving lips and pants and forgotten hands in countries of the world—

  On the sea wall met a boy in red and white T-shirt under a circling albatross—“Me Brown Meester?”—Warm rain on the iron roof—The boy peeled his stale underwear—Identical erection flipped out in kerosene lamp—The boy jumped on the bed, slapped his thighs: “I screw Johnny up ass? Así como perros”—Rectums merging to idiot Mambo—One boy naked in Panama dawn wind—

  In the hyacinths the Green Boys smile—Rotting music trailing vines and birdcalls through remote dreamy lands—The initiate awoke in that stale summer dawn smell, suitcases all open on a brass bed in Mexico—In the shower a Mexican about twenty, rectums naked, smell of carbolic soap and barrack toilets—

  Trails my summer dawn wind in other flesh strung together on scar impressions of young Panama night—Pictures exploded in the kerosene lamp—open shirt flapping in the pissoir—Cock flipped out and up—water from his face—Sex tingled in the boy’s slender tight ass—

  “You wanta screw me?”

  “Breathe in, Johnny—Here goes—”

  They was ripe for the plucking forgot way back yonder in the corn hole—Lost in little scraps of delight and burning scrolls—Through the open window trailing swamp smells and old newspapers—­Rectums naked in whiffs of raw meat—Genital smells of the two bodies merge in shared meals and belches of institution cooking—Spectral smell of empty condoms down along penny arcades and mirrors—­Forgotten shadow actor walks beside you—Mountain wind of Saturn in the morning sky—From the death trauma weary good-by then—Orgasm addicts stacked in the attic like muttering burlap—

  Odor rockets over oily lagoons—Silver flakes fall through a maze of dirty pictures—Windy city ­outskirts—Smell of empty condoms, excrement, black dust—Ragged pants to the ankle—

  Bone faces—Place of nettles along adobe walls open shirts flapping —Savanna and grass mud—The sun went—The mountain shadow touched ragged pants—Whisper of dark street in faded Panama photo—“Muy got good one, Meester” smiles through the pissoir—Orgasm siphoned back street smells and a Mexican boy—Woke in the filtered green light, thistle shadows cutting stale underwear—

  The three boys lay on the bank rubbing their stomachs against the warm sand—They stood up undressing to swim—Billy gasped as his pants dropped and his cock flipped out he hadn’t realized it was that far up from the rubbing—They swam lazily letting the warm water move between their legs and Lloyd walked back to his pants and brought a piece of soap and they passed it back and forth laughing and rubbing each other and Billy ejaculated his thin brown stomach arched out of the water as the spurts shot up in the sunlight like tiny rockets—He sagged down into the water panting and lay there against the muddy bottom—

  Under the old trestle trailing vines in the warm summer afternoon undressing to swim and rubbing their bellies—Lloyd rubbing his hand down further and further openly rubbing his crotch now and grinning as the other two watched and Billy looked at Jammy hesitantly and began to rub too and slowly Jammy did the same—They came into the water watching the white blobs drift away—The Mexican boy dropped his pants and his cock flipped out and he looked at Billy grinning—Billy turned and waded into the water and the Mexican followed him and turned him around feeling his crotch and shoved him down on his back in the shallow water, hitched his brown arms under Billy’s knees and shoved them back against his chest—The Mexican held his knees with one arm and with the other hand dipped a piece of soap in the water and began rubbing it up and down Billy’s ass—Billy shuddered and his body went limp letting it happen—The Mexican was rubbing soap on his own cock now with one hand—Shiny black pubic hairs reflected sharp as wire—Slowly shoved his cock in—Billy gasped and moved with it—Spurts fell against his chest in the sunlight and he lay there in the water breathing sewage smells of the canal—

  Billy squirmed up onto a muddy bank and took a handful of the warm mud and packed it around his cock and Lloyd poured a bucket of water on the mud and Billy’s cock flipped out jumping in the green filtered light under the old trestle—

  Stale underwear of penny arcades slipping down legs, rectums feeling the warm sun, laughing and washing each other soapy hands in his crotch, pearly spasms stirring the warm water—

  The Mexican dropped his pants with a wriggle and stood naked in the filtered green light, vines on his back—Rubbing his crotch now into Billy’s ass—Billy moved with it, rectum wriggling cock inside rubbing—

  Ali squirmed teeth bared grinning—His thin brown stomach hit the pallet—“You is coming, Johnny?”—Sunlight on the army blankets—Rectum wriggling slow fuck on knees “así como perros”—Orgasm crackled with electric afternoon—Bodies stuck together in magnetic eddies—Squirming cock in his intestines, rectum wriggling felt the hot sperm deep in his body—

  Shoved him over on his stomach kicking—The Mexican held his knees—Hand dipped a piece of soap—Shoved his cock in ­laughing—Bodies stuck together in the sunlight kicked whiffs of rectal mucus—Laughing teeth and pepper smells—“You is feeling the hot quick Mexican kid naked Mambo to your toes Johnny . . . dust in bare leg hairs tight brown nuts breech very hot . . . How long you want us to fuck very nice Meester? Flesh diseased dirty pictures we fucking tired of fuck very nice Mister.” Sad image of sickness at the attic window say something to you “adiós” worn out film washed back in prep school clothes to distant closing dormitory fragments off the page stained toilet pictures blurred rotting pieces of “Freckle Leg” dormitory dawn dripping water on his face diseased voice so painful telling you “Sparks” is over New York. “Have I done the job here?” With a telescope you can watch our worn out film dim jerky far away shut a bureau drawer faded sepia smile from an old calendar falling leaves sun cold on a thin boy with freckles folded away in an old file now standing last review.

  “Maze of dirty pictures and vending machine flesh whispers use of fraud on faded photo—IBM song yodels dime a dozen type ­overcoats —Not taking any adolescent on shit envelope in the bath ­cubicle—Come of your stale movies sings Danny Deever in drag—Times lost or strayed long empty cemetery with a moldy pawn ticket—Fading whisper down skid row to Market Street shows all kinds masturbation and self-abuse—Young boys need it special.” silver paper in the wind distant 1920 wind and dust. He was looking at some thing a long time ago where the second hand book shop used to be just opposite the old cemetery.

  “Who? Quién es?—Hable, señor—Talk loud and clear.”

  “We are all from the American women with a delicate lilt—I represent the lithe aloof young men of the breed charmingly—We are all empowered to make arrests and enough with just the right shade of show you.”

  “Bel
t Her—Find a time buyer before ports are now ended—These are rotten if they start job for instance—Blind bargain in return for accepting ‘one more chance’—Generous?—Nothing—That far to the bait and it’s curtains—Know what they meant if they start job for instance?”

  “Dead young flesh in stale underwear vending sex words to magnetic Law 334—Indicates simple tape is served sir, through iron ­repetition—Ass and genitals tingling in 1929 jack-off spelt out broken wings of Icarus—Control system ousted from half the body whispers skin instructions to memory of melting ice—Area of Spain—Channels ahead loud and clear—Line of the body fitted to other underwear and Kiki steps forward on faded photo—Sad image dusted by the Panama night.”

  “So think before they can do any locks over the Chinese that abolition is war of the past—The end of hanging generous? Just the same position—Changed place of years in the end is just the same—Going to do?—Perhaps alone would you? All good things come to about that was that—”