Read Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls for Free Online Page B

Wherever
it was, he wished he were there too.

  Chapter
3
                 The
road was long and hilly, the black van was hurtling along like a roller
coaster, and the day was fine. Twig drove with an elbow cocked out the window.
Molochai hung out the other side, gnawing on his sticky fingers, letting the
wind blow in his face. Zillah lolled on a mattress in the back, luxuriating in
the clear autumn warmth.
                 The
mattress was filthy, parts of its fabric caked with stiff stains that faded
from dark’ maroon to nearly black. They would have to unload it at a dump and
find a cleaner one soon.
                 Molochai swivelled his head as they passed the school. “Hey!
Kiddies!”
                 Twig
swatted him. “Small game. How boring.”
                 “There’d
be plenty to do at a high school. All those candy boys, all those sugar girls
…”
                 Molochai
pictured himself gliding through shadowy afternoon halls when almost everyone
had gone home, his nose and mouth full of the dry smell of paper, the soft
scent of years’ dust grimed into the corners, the underlying thrill of odor
left behind by healthy young flesh shot through with sizzling hormones, greased
with quickening blood. Maybe one of them would have stayed behind, kept after
school: a bad girl, sulking in an empty classroom, her eyes downcast. She would
never see the shape coming down the hallway, pausing at the door. Molochai
thought of ripping soft bellyskin , white and firm
just above the tangle of pubic hair. That was his favorite spot to bite girls.
                 “A
temple of boredom,” Zillah offered from the back. He was braiding his hair. He
kept a streak of it dyed purple, gold, and green, and he was weaving the three
colored strands together, toying with the braid, then delicately pulling it
apart with his fingers. “Boredom is a sin.
                 Boredom
is unholy.”
                 Molochai
snorted. “What do you know about it? When have you ever been bored?”
                 ‘I’m
a hundred,” said Zillah, studying his long fingernails critically. He produced
a bottle of black nail polish and began painting his nails, neatly, carefully.
                 “You
two are only seventy-five, but I am one hundred years old this very year. I
have been bored. I’m bored now.
                 “I’m
a hundred.” Twig reached under the driver’s seat and found a bottle. “And this
wine was born last Tuesday! Let’s drink to it.”
                 ‘I’m
a hundred,” Molochai mumbled around the neck of the bottle. The wine was
sticky, sweet as rotten grapes. He licked his lips and took another swig.
                 They
kept driving, kept drinking, never looked at a map. They did not need maps; the
possibility of alternate routes, charted yellow and red and green roads,
cryptic legends, held no fascination for them. By some warm alcoholic magnetism
in their blood they were drawn on to the next city and the next. Twig always
knew what roads to take, what highways he could roar along the fastest, what
country blacktops were haunted by state troopers and God-fearing folk.
                 They
had just come from New York City where they were able to sate their appetites every night on blood rich with strange drugs, where a hophead
chick they met had let them sleep the days away in her East Village apartment
until they grew careless and left a shredded mess in her bathtub. Kinky stuff
was fine, she said, but she wasn’t into death. And there were gore stains on
her only set of towels. She had still been trying to decide how to get rid of
the body when they sneaked out.
                 Molochai,
Twig, and Zillah were good at sneaking out. They had plenty of practice at it:
Zillah had taught Molochai and Twig how to act nonchalant, how to wipe the
blood off their