She was straddling me, shaking me.

           "Buddy! Wake up. You're making the most awful noises."

           She was naked. No tattoos, no piercing like in the dream. Just the nipple ring I kissed when she lowered her num-nums to my mouth. Bigger than bite-size, and firm. I could tell that what was waking up lower under the blankets wasn't a snake.

           "What time is it?"

           "Just after midnight. You've been out all day."

           "When did you get up?"

           "Hours ago. I cleaned up a little. Had something to eat. Talked to Markus."

           "Where's he?"

           "Getting into some mischief, I think. He won't be back for a few days. The place is all ours."

           "Is that all you did? Just talk?" I couldn't believe that. Markus hadn't taken advantage again. I would have.

           "Well..." She smiled and looked like she was deciding something.

           "You can tell me. Markus is my friend."

           "I'm a bad girl, Buddy. You know that."

           "Bad girls are the best."

           If I was jealous at all, her telling me made it all right. Dirty stories were a turn-on.

           "He wanted to fuck me, but I'm still sore. You know how he is. He won't stop until you give him something. He was playing with my ass, sticking his finger in, while I was making coffee in the kitchen."

           "Did it feel good?"

           "Oh yes. It always feels good when my ass is played with."

           "Did he stick it in?"

           "No, I didn't want him to. I just wanted my coffee. Coffee is my addiction."

           I was getting impatient. "Well, what did you do?"

           "He was all dressed, ready to go out. But he unzipped his fly and showed me that big thing he stuck in me last night. 'Just suck it a little,' is what he said. I didn't have to do anything. He walked over to where I was sitting at the kitchen table and stuck it in my face, skinned back and ready. So I gave him a coffee suck."

           "What's that?" Maybe a little jealousy flared up here.

           "I kept some warm coffee in my mouth so when I sucked him it was warm. He came right away."

           "Did you swallow?"

           "No. From now on, that's just for you. I made him come in my coffee cup. Then he drank it."

           "You're a slut. You are some fucking whore slut."

           She licked her lips and winked at me. Those hooks were in deep. She was my kind of girl in the whole universe, which I guess is what they call love.

           I threw off the blankets and showed her my erection.

           "How about a coffee suck for the big boy?"

           She shook her head. "No, I have other plans for us. Come on, get up. Let's take a bath together."

* * *

           The big tub was full of bubbles. She had put candles around Markus's bathroom for light, and they made it feel like a cave. There's something about the privacy of a bathroom that makes it sexier, sometimes, than a bedroom. I got in the tub and buried myself in bubbles, while Robin played with make-up at the bathroom sink. When she was ready she came to me. She'd put lipstick on her mouth and nipples, and edged the red with a thin black line to make her puffy lips stand out even more than they did normally.

           "Now you," she said, holding up a lipstick. "Remember that big 'X' you drew on Star's window?"

           I held still while she put lipstick on my mouth. The stickiness was like sex, and when we kissed in the bubbles we rubbed the stickiness all over our faces. In the warm water we flowed around each other, touching every part underwater so that I couldn't tell where I left off and she began. Or we'd copy each other -when I played with her boobies she'd play with mine. I got enormously hard, like a tower, and it stuck out of the bubbles so that we both laughed. She'd touch it, or put her tongue in the tip for a minute, but the idea we both got into was just to play in the water. When she had to pee, I told her to do it in the water, and put my hand down there to feel the piss jet erupt against my wrinkled fingers.

           After a while we stopped, and just leaned back, kind of folded together, and she said some words like a ceremony over us:

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth:
For thy love is better than wine.
My beloved is unto me as a bundle of myrrh,
That lieth between my breasts."

           "What's that?" I asked her. "It sounds like poetry."

           "It's from the only section of the Bible I like. Since this is about as close as we're going to get to a wedding, I wanted to say it to you. There's one more line."

           "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is strong as death." I said the words over to myself so I wouldn't forget them. Set me as a seal upon thine heart... This was serious juju she was doing. She was marrying us so I could never escape, and it was all right with me.

           "Buddy, don't ever say love to me, that's all I ask. "

           "I won’t.”

           "And don't be surprised at anything I do."

           "I won't."

           She moved, and I didn't see what she was doing. When I looked, I saw that the bubbles around her were turning red. She had a fearsome look in her eye and she was holding up a razor blade. She'd cut herself, and now she was going to cut me.

           "What are you doing?"

           "'Trust me, Buddy. Hold still for me."

           What choice did I have? She leaned over me and cut my neck and kissed where she cut. I could feel her sucking, her soft mouth and pointed tongue drinking my blood, licking me.

           I never expected being cut and bleeding would turn me on, but it did. The tower was up above the bubbles again, and the bubbles were turning red. It occurred for just a flash hat maybe I was going crazy, letting all this shit happen, but what did that mean? I was crazy already.

           Robin moved away from me in the tub and climbed the tower, a bloody lipsticked grin splitting her face. She stood and lowered herself slowly on it, the wet heat of the water sloshing into the tight wet heat of her cunt. She had a fierce look on her face when she'd swallowed me whole, and then that look changed into surprise. She was moving up and down on my root, and the water in the tub was slopping over the sides, and then a tidal wave slapped me in the face and she fell back. The tub was shaking and I saw the water jump out of the toilet and back in. I reached out and grabbed Robin but she was slippery and I couldn't hold onto her. Dust and plaster dumped down on us. The medicine chest opened and bottles and jars came banging out. I was bounced up and down in the water and banged my elbow.

           When the shaking stopped, most of the water in the tub was on the floor. Red covered everything, like in my dream.

           "Earthquake, Buddy. Just like he predicted."

           "Who predicted?"

           "My father. I think he's arrived in San Francisco."

XXXI

           Buddy Tate

           Robin ran to the window with a towel around her. I was king of the jitters: everything was jumping up and down inside me, my guts and my heart were bouncing like superballs, my eyeballs were jiggling. I staggered and limped to a television set and punched it till I got all the news. That bitch Mother Nature had taken a club to San Francisco. There were pictures of fires, collapsed buildings, and people like me acting jittery and crying.

           Then Flood's face was zoomed in on. He was on the news, with a Chinese-American reporter in the background telling us that Flood's Crusade for San Francisco had begun with a bang. He was speaking in a big stadium, standing in front of a huge cross that sparkled with blue and red lights.

           "Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom and there shall be famines and pestilences, and earthquakes..."

           Robin came back from the window. "I can't see much. It's smoky out there. I think there's a crack in the building across the street." Then she saw who was on television.

           I was glued to Flood. He was foaming at the mouth and people were cheering. She sat on the couch with me, knees to her chin.

           "Our nation is divided into many pieces and we see them falling apart before our eyes, The Kingdom of God is fighting against the Kingdom of Evil..." I zapped the son-of-a-bitch off.

           "We're the Kingdom of Evil, Buddy. He's talking about us."

           "I figured that. Looks like the Kingdom of God has a whole lot of people in its army."

           "My father's flock are sheep. They're in the big city now. There are wolves running in the streets."

           "He's got Mr. Hopper and his nasty friend. And a lot more like them. They know how to put a brand on you."

           "I'm not worried about them. They'll do what he says, and I think I can get him to come to us."

           She was shivering, so I put my arms around her.

           “How?”

           "He wants my forgiveness, and for that, he's willing to accept my punishment." She smiled, showing blood on her teeth.

           "Bang bang?"

           "I have a better idea. It's what will make him want to come to see me- anywhere I say."

           "What is it?"

           "Let it be a surprise. You'll be there."

           I wanted to know more, but she closed up and just sat huddled in the comer of the couch, thinking about something. Things were a mess in the kitchen. Pots and pans and cans and boxes all over the floor and the counters. I found something to eat and went to dean up. It was ragged work shaving. I put a band-aid on my neck to cover up Robin's cut and got dressed.

           I was feeling panicky, like K Farouk's pistol was the only thing in my life I had to hang onto. There was a whole list of things I didn't want to do banging around in my head and making me crazy, and only one thing I wanted to do: run.

           I made a mistake there one night. I had been fairly successful for weeks in my new territory, grabbing ankles and rolling on the grass with everyone from high school kids to college professors, when I got giddy and a cop got to kick me in the face. He was in plainclothes, a young, muscular, blond Nazi. When I whistled from behind some bushes, he jerked around as if he had been kicked. He got me in record time, running like a halfback right at my hiding place. I marked it down to eagerness.

           "Slow down. It'll still be there."

           "Oh, I'm going to get you."

           "You've got me now. Here I am." My fly was undone, and it was in my hand. I shook it at him playfully, hoping he'd want to suck it, instead of anything more strenuous.

           "What are you doing! What are you doing!"

           For some reason he was all excited. Lisping like crazy.

           "What's your problem, man?"

           "I'm going to arrest you for soliciting and indecent exposure." He had his gun out and was shaking it at me, the same way I had been shaking my cock at him. It wasn't a fair comeback. I zipped up and held up my hands so he wouldn't shoot me. In situations like this, I only know what I learned in the movies.

           I was still on the ground, though, and that made him uncomfortable. "Get up, you dirty faggot!" He lisped when he said "faggot," but I couldn't dwell on that. He kicked me in the ribs so hard I thought my heart would burst. I scrambled up, holding my exploding side, one hand out to ward off more attacks. The gun was cocked.

           "I feel like just shooting you through the head!" He was still jerking and swaying with that heavy Smith and Wesson in his hand.

           "Why don't you just shoot me through the cock, and get your kicks that way? I mean, I don't want to go to any police station."

           That stopped him, but only for a second; he was so excited (or scared) I thought he'd have an epileptic fit.

           We stared at each other, him shaking, me holding my side.

           That was what did it. He got a chance to think. Thinking, if you can induce it, will louse up the most authoritarian mask you have to deal with.

           "I feel like tearing it off with my bare hands.... "

           "And eating it?" I sneaked in. The gun went down like a flag being taken down. I felt like singing "O say can you see," but my sense of humor always gets me in trouble.

           When the gun went down, I seized the golden moment and launched a monologue the saints would remember, if they could hear, and if they were there. I preached:

           "You miserable motherless son of a hound that lifted its leg on your grandmother's flowers, can't you understand that my cock is more powerful than your gun, and that if you had my cock, you'd be superman?"

           "I don't know what you're talking about. I feel tired anyway." He held his head in his hands.

           "I'm talking about you, holding the hard metal of that gun in your hand instead of your cock. You're a sad motherfucker. All you can do is kill me with that gun-make me a piece of dead hamburger; but with your cock, you can touch the universe. Make your miserable thing mean something. Your miserable life." I looked up at him. He was studying the ground, as if the grass would answer him the way it talked to me. The gun dropped. He wasn't shaking any more-he was crying. Sad little tears running down his clean face.

           I moved in on him, before he had a chance to think. My right hand went to his ass, and my left hand went to his cock. I started a movement that would have made a turtle come.

           This time his hips moved, instead of his arms.

           "Stop! You've got to stop!" Now he was stuttering. I increased the pressure, drawing his prick out of his trousers, trying to pull him off. But he backed away.

           "What's the matter now?"

           “I could get fired. I could go to jail myself."

           "So? What's jail? A chance to get together with yourself, that's all." I said it as if I believed it, but I didn't want to go to jail. I kept up the action, exciting him until he came in my hand. When that happened, it blew his mind. He sank to the ground and began groveling in the dirt.

           "Take the gun and shoot me. I'm not worth saving, " he whimpered.

           Instead I got him on his feet, and threw the gun in the bushes, in case he changed his mind. I felt sorry for the big bastard. I was leading him out of the bushes when a prowl car pulled up and flashed a light on us. They had me. All the way downtown he kept squealing like a stuck pig...

First three images by Mark Martin; final image by Emil Schildt.