"The Peeper: Uncut"
by
Timothy Stillman
(This is an unauthorized print sequel to the 1972 movie "What the Peeper Saw" aka "Diabolica Malicia" starring Mark Lester and Britt Ekland, screenplay by Trevor Preston, and novelized by Jack Gratus, produced by Leander Filmes. This story is based on the screen play and novelization, reiterates parts of the original film to set the story in context; it also has much extrapolation of and fleshing out of a few scenes not followed through in the movie or the novelization, and some passages in detail that were only referred to in the film or the novelization. However most of the study of these two characters is based on my own interpretations, much of which varies from the original sources--the vast majority of this short story is original with me, and never took place in film or novel, and the writing of all of it is my own. It has not been copied or plagiarized in any way. In short, since I'm not Stephen King and have to live with my conscience, I've done my damnedest not to rip off anyone else's material in this attempt to imagine what a sequel to the movie might be like. And of course the story is for: Mark Lester.)
It was a villa, with wisteria vines, a sharply manicured emerald lawn, a large in ground swimming pool of warm sun heated blue in the back yard, a friendly sky of white that looked like a white out in winter with wisps of summery clouds in it, all of which belonged to this villa, to its marble fonts and its rock terrace, its perfectly blended rainbow colored flower beds, a garage in which was a BMW kept pristine and shined and magnetic to the eyes of blue that watched it now, from the drive way, where he had been idly tossing a basketball into a regulation hoop at the regulation height at the top of the front apex of the garage.
The boy was fourteen and his hair was golden made more so by the hot bright yellow sun, as he dribbled the ball as he lazed into his perfection of slim sexy body, naked chest with tiny rose nipples, clad only in brown chocolate shorts, with no shoes, so he could feel the world of summer round him more clearly on the soles of his feet, and through them to his entire body. He was not a pipe cleaner designed boy, nor was he bulky, nor was he frail, he looked healthy, like a girl sometimes with his long hair and his androgynous figure, as the sunlight shone on him and he shone on it as he padded with the ball to the hoop and tossed it in, bouncing it all the way, sinking it straight center through the hoop.
His name was Marcus. He was intensely intelligent, and he was fatherless and he was alone except for his stepmother, Elise, who was not so young anymore but still young enough, still with a heady figure and with eyes of emerald, and skin the color of pearl and coral, even though she sunbathed in the hot Spanish sun every afternoon after she had finished bossing the maids around. Elise who had been considered paranoid, who had been in a mental home, who had thought Marcus had set about seducing her, and leading her on, not because he found her attractive, though he did, but because within him resided a monster, and that monster liked to kill, and if there was sexuality in it, all the better. Of course no one believed her. Except Marcus.
And when she got out of the mental home, she and Marcus had formed a pact of sorts, and Dad was soon out of the way and his insurance soothed the grieving family, as his fat royalty checks kept coming in, for a dead writer, one who died mysteriously, perhaps was killed, though no one could ever prove it, suddenly becomes a most famous writer indeed. Now it was Marcus and Elise in the villa in Spain. And now the woman felt she knew her prey and she knew how to be preying on him, because he loved it so.
They had sex together often that first summer, and the sun beamed down in the morning, and in the night the moon lit their way, their bedroom, formerly her dead husband's and hers, formerly, her dead husband's and his previous wife's, also killed by Marcus, and Elise luxuriated in the soft large bed, with the sound of sweet summer ticking away outside like a forgiving soothing clock that understood human kind better than even Marcus and he understood it enormously well. Like a mongoose knows what a snake will do.
His lips were berry colored and his cheeks were soft and alabaster, she loved to take his clothes off as he had always loved for her to disrobe in front of him. They would lie together in bed at night and he would in the warmth of the evening, put his still childish hand to her pussy and feel the tangle of pubic hair, and she would touch his penis and rub her fingers through his golden pubic hair, as their legs met and intertwined, and his mouth nipped and then bit and then suckled at her breasts. Because he was a mannered boy, because he was British and formal in his way, she had once thought him a freak, but now she saw him as a boy of many interests, most of them sexual, some violence in him still, untapped for some time, waiting for the right thing to trigger it off. But now, tonight, with the smell of bougevanilla and the damp air and the soft lowing of a bird near by in one of the olive trees, she let him do with her what he wished.
His voice was still breaking, though he should have been through that phase by now, and it embarrassed him when it did, but she would put her mouth to his lips and before kissing him and putting her tongue inside his creamy wet dreamy swoony mouth, she would tell him it only made her love him all the more, as he pretended at being an adult who was pretending at being a child, only he did not know he was pretending either persona. Elise did and that was, she felt where she got the upper hand, and kept it hidden until it was time to use it.
She loved lying with him and his playing with her, and she loved when his fingers danced their spider crawl down her chest and to her navel, as in the dim bedside lamp, he inspected her and was so serious about it, as though he were a general inspecting his troops before they went marching off to war, for that was what Marcus seemed to see everything as, a war, a campaign, a territory to be conquered, victims to be vanquished, even Elise, especially Elise.
"What do you think of my cock, Elise?" he asked in that sophisticated way, his voice still a bit high, always seeming to make her almost laugh when he said words like cock and pussy in his little boy voice that heated her up inside and made her want to hold him so hard but was also funny. She was sighing and telling him what he wanted to hear, as she lay her cheek against his thin sturdy chest, for one always told Marcus what he wanted to hear.
"The first time you saw my cock," he continued, his left hand in her honey colored hair that was beginning to have a streak or two of gray in it, no matter how careful she was to color it and disguise it with her hair styles, unashamed he was at saying cock, not hesitating, not thinking it a big deal though of course he was pretending here as well, or was he?; impossible to know for he was such a fine actor, and caught her off guard often though she tried to act for him as well, and succeeded once or twice, for he was getting used to her, and thinking one day of marrying her, for he talked with her about that more and more and she pretended to want to as well, at the same time she truly found herself wanting to. The monster. The murderer. The enticement of him.
"The first time," he continued, "was when I was in the bath and my dad called from Italy and wanted to talk to me, and you brought me the phone, and sat on the side of the tub, while I was there with my ducks and tub toys, and I was bare, and you would not look at me, as I touched your leg and your thigh, and your breasts, and then I took one of your hands, I don't remember which one, and put it on my cock as I started to kneel up in the tub."
Of course she remembered, the embarrassment, her husband on the phone, this 12 year old boy naked behind her and her hand put to his hard penis, and remembered how ashamed and angry it made her, but at the same time, as she got off the phone as best she could considering the circumstances, how she wanted to turn round, and wring the little bastard's neck, but also how he brought something out in her, in her who had always considered herself world traveled and sensible and knowledgeable, how she was brought back to her childhood by this naked boy whose body she desperately wanted to see.
As he pushed her hand, the one with her wedding ring finger, yes, now she remembered, and did not doubt that was not an accident he chose that hand to put on himself, and she remembered she felt so wet in her pussy, she felt that old thrill of childhood tossing about and playing doctor and hiding out from adults and let me see yours and I'll let you see mine. And she kidded herself that Marcus later then, when she tried to find out just how much of a murderer he was, had corralled her into taking off her clothes in front of him for every question of hers he answered, hardly listening to his answers. It was she who had been desperate to do so. Thinking of any excuse to use.
She had seen him get so hard when she disrobed, he had been in short pajamas then, only the bottoms, his nipples rose red and hard, and she could see the not unimpressive bulk in his crotch that swelled, and she had wanted to take him there, and when she knew for a fact he knew a great deal about sexuality, and enjoyed drawing boys and boys having sex and boys and girls and himself and his mother and himself and her, well, it was all so deliciously decadent and ancient like the Spanish hills that lay out preventing the land from having a table board effect all round them.
So after Dad had left the premises, even though Marcus had loved him, even though they had been close, a bit too close for Elise's taste, back when she was a prude and did not know it, of course, she and Marcus reenacted all the start ups they had had but had not finished. She took off her clothes, and felt her body hot in the mid day heat, as she bathed Marcus in the tub and he touched her all over.
She took off her clothes for him and he examined her very old and wise and doctor like, "Where's the clit, Elise, I can't seem to find the clit, there was a girl I knew back when I was at school, and she had this large clit I liked to rub." So Elise, a woman who was ten years older than Marcus and infinitely more naive and far younger in most ways, lay on the bed and helped him find her clit and stimulate it. His doe like eyelashes, his soft as summer breath, his angelic face that could have been a girl's for all its prettiness, and his mind that was like the vault at Ft. Knox that housed so many squeamy wondrous frightening erotic things that she wanted to know at the same time she never wanted to know them, as he leaned now on his elbow, beside her, rubbing his penis on her creamy thigh, and they talked about the bath tub time when she had first seen his cock.
As she turned to him as he knelt in the tub, as she pulled her hand--however unwillingly away from him--as her eyes brushed over his penis, but stayed on it long enough to see it was pink and slim and sweet and hairless, the balls were nice small eggs, it was circumcised, and the head of it looked so delicious as he pushed his groin out to her and smiled that patented Marcus smile at her. Oh how she had wanted to take him that afternoon.
She had not wanted to turn and walk away. She had not wanted to be angry. She had wanted to be his first woman, if she would have been at all. She was afraid of him, even to this point, especially now, for they had been together for two years, more than two years, and the heat was oppressive and Marcus slept with his arm around an old childhood toy, a bunny rabbit with only one eye, and Elise slept with one eye open, herself, because she thought that the boy did as well, which made sleep an elusive thing, which enervated her and made her cross with him and with the help from time to time, and he would get this angry look in his eyes, so she would apologize whenever he did that, and she would feel herself back in his good graces for a time at least. Which pleased her and angered her both at once.
She tried to treat him as the greatest lover she had ever known, and to some extent he was, considering her somewhat lack in the area, till she met two boys, and then later on Marcus' father, Paul, but he would always ask her how his father made love to her, what turned her on the most about him, for Marcus could see them fucking from his hot eye at the peephole in the attic above them, while he masturbated to them, but he wanted to inside stuff, the stuff of emotions which he had a limited knowledge of, and which were all but blunted to the point of uselessness in himself.
He knew about sex as fun and mysterious and something you did when your dick got hard whether the girl or in this case the woman wanted to or not, so she would try to tell him why she loved his father, and what sex had meant to them, but she never got far with that before she started feeling limitlessly sad that it was over, so Marcus would always have a glass of whiskey, or two glasses, ready for her and he would tell her to drink it straight down like a good girl and let Dr. Marcus please her. And it was an act. She knew that. And he knew it. And she drank and lay back and let him have at her.
But when does an act become a reality? Does one change the other? And that miserable bitch psychologist Paul had sent her to, the lofty lady with the regal bearing who had talked to Marcus and found him a charming little boy who loved all the things little boys did, who was an angel who had no interest in harming anyone, he could charm canaries off the branches, that boy, and how she had led Elise to think she was on her side, and then the doctor, this criminal idiot who was so all wise and had been so fooled by the little monster, had asked her, "Why did you take your clothes off in front of a little boy?" and knew that Marcus had fooled this genius as well and that Elise's goose was quite formerly cooked.
Now though it seemed worth it, now as Marcus and she 69ed, as Marcus sucked her cunt and she gloried down on his hard penis that now had some golden pubis hair on it, when she took him in her eager mouth, she felt as though she could taste England in there, the heaths and the bitter cold and the winter sleet by Holmes' and Watson's sitting room window, and the steely knives of Jack the Ripper ready to get to work on an evening's debacle with this Pretty Polly or that, and she felt the loneliness of the little boy, Marcus, and she felt how he must be so frightened of everyone and everything, for he was so intelligent, and so aware of so much from such an early age. She listened and felt his tongue slurping in her vagina. His hands were squeezing her hips together and she rushed her mouth up and down him until it seemed all was blurring together, and she knew Marcus would keep her around until she no longer amused him, until he was tired of her sexuality, tired of her drunkenness, for she had to admit she was tipsy more often than not, and she did not need a child to feed her a drink, for she could do that quite nicely thank you all on her own. Marcus never drank, that she knew of. His mind had to be sharp, wait for the moment, wait for the right approach and then--attack. In whatever diabolical way he thought of.
She had confidence in his finding a way. Sometimes he loved for her to paddle him while he lay naked and long legged on her lap on the bed, with the flat of her palm, and making his cheeks burn, as she massaged his penis and he called her mommy and he told her all the sexy things Daddy did with Mommy and that sometimes Marcus did with Mommy and sometimes with Daddy, for after all, why do you think Daddy always touches me when we talk, why his eyes bore into me instead of into you when we are all three together? Oh Elise there are things here that would curl your hair if you only but knew, the ghosts still do these things in the night time, Marcus would say, growing dark and still and foreboding, no longer a martinet puppet dancing to the string pulls of his active frightening puerile brain that she had begun to think he had little control over, thus exempting him from everything like murdering his first dog and then murdering last month the dog's replacement, and she tried to accept it, forget it, the corpse in the pool, she tried to forget it because she was justifying Marcus.
Like Paul did. Like everyone did but Marcus' former headmaster who had finally expelled him, which was when this whole thing had started.
He lapped at her. He drank of her as though she was filled with life giving nectar. She slapped his naked butt and he pushed away from her and said he needed to suck a cock, and she pushed from him herself, for she had never thought he might want a boy, though why this should not occur to her--the drawings he had made at school of boys fucking each other, all of that--somehow it was till a shock. It seemed distasteful to her, and then she laughed at her holier than thou morality, while she was sucking this boy off, had let him fuck her, had felt the joy of him humping her, with his golden curls in his sweaty face, and his long hair had brushed her face as he pushed in and out of her, and all of him lying taller and taller on her, straining into her, but his making it with a boy? But, then, again, if she could watch.....
Because their villa was far away from other homes and the town that serviced them, because Marcus did not go to school, because Marcus was not one to talk to mere children, for his mind always got in the way, because there was only one chance of finding a boy who might be willing, because the summer was at its hottest, because the air conditioning in the villa was never very good and everyone was out of sorts, even if Marcus did sleep like the dead, or pretend to, and had sufficient energy to cope with the massive heat wave that was so oppressive sometimes their very skins burned hot from inside, as though summer had put a red hot coal to the bottom side of their flesh, and swimming in the pool which was also hot, and sunbathing in the yard would not yield any pleasure other than the need to burn to a crisp and hating it all the time--
--but Elise not finding herself able to stay out of the sun in the afternoon, which made no sense but there it was, to go to the enemy and meet him and let him strip your clothes off and your identity and your flesh and your integrity whatever remained of it, whatever there had been in the first place, Elise decided since money was no object, they would jet themselves to London and find themselves a rent boy.
So she suggested it, and Marcus as he continued to jack himself off into the flowery smelling night that seemed to work its way under the eyeballs and the fingernails and toenails and inside the hearts themselves, readily agreed, and came more than usual, said that would be a wizard idea.
Elise had not been with him when he first squirted and had always regretted that. So they decided to find a rent boy who might be on the edge of just squirting and she could be there for the initiation. And the boy could see what she and Marcus did. And she could see what the two boys did.
And in London, the heat was worse, the traffic was a scream of sound, the buildings were tall so vastly unimaginably tall she had been out of any city so long therefore they seemed that to her, and everybody was busy rushing and walking at a run, and undergrounding, and nattering on cells phones, and driving and sitting impatiently on the double deckers, and at night it was worse.
The neon signs made it seem even hotter. The bright nightmarish lights, the car and truck and bus lights, the heat even more oppressive somehow without the sun, the intense desire of the masses to have fun and the bull headed way of going about it, all aggressive, all angry seeming, always a fight breaking out somewhere, under this marquee, out the door of that pub, and if Marcus had not lead her to Picadilly Circus and literally held her hand as he went to a dark side street with a porno shop in it and all the other buildings decayed like it, but it was the only one not boarded up, she would have lost her way entirely and spent the rest of her life stumbling blindly.
As Marcus forced her with his imperative commands, for she must keep that number one in her mind, he was her boss, she was his slave, his warm damp child's hand holding her wary hot frightened adult woman hand and she clung to his boy hand in a death grip.
With practice he knew which part of the garishly lit porno shop to go, with its bright hot burning lights on porno mag and book covers, all round the walls, as were the video boxes, that spread white black pink brown flesh everywhere as though the walls themselves were made of it, as though in the predominantly pink light of the place they had somehow or other entered a vagina, and the music was loud and brassy with punk rock pounding at her ears that echoed back the assault, with all the men and women looking at the tape boxes, the men and women alone together, the worst kind of alone there is, and at the covers of the sealed magazines and books, every sort of sexual images there could be on them.
Marcus took her unerringly through the main room, to a darkness behind a curtain, the smell of the place was filled with sexual aromas that hit her in the stomach, hard, and made her want to belt out of the place, but Marcus pulled her along as though she was a drowning swimmer and he was her only life boy to the rescue, as she stumbled in darkness totally black, fearing a knife in her stomach and across her neck, fearing that Marcus had brought her for himself and maybe some of his friends to kill her so he could get onto the next higher more advanced level of his life, now that he had used her up.
And then there was a slightly lighter darkness and she could see Marcus again, holding a door open, and then they were both outside in an alley that had wooded fences on either end. And in this alley, out in the heat that felt better than the superannuated heat of the shop which had left her dripping wet, away from all those men and women who looked like loneliness in its deepest face, not glancing at anyone, but the things in their hands, the sex toys, the video boxes, the sad equipment one a lonely room, that might this time oh please pull me out of me, and away from the smell of desperation and deprivation, she held to Marcus as though she was going to lose him forever this night, forever right this second.
All of this made her feel less frightened of him. Was that how everyone felt?, later she wondered, what makes you less frightened is the thing you pretend falling in love with? and try to be happy with for the rest of your life. Then there were the sounds of mice.
But the mice were boys. Young boys. Street boys. Night boys.
The mice were in the midst of the moon and the little street lamp on the corner that made the darkness more visible and the things in it as well, and she felt Marcus letting go of her hand, she trying to call him back, feeling as though she was about to float off the planet, but there was such a burgeoning of fear in her throat she could not call for him, and she wished they were back on those clammy sweaty hot sheets at the villa.
Wished she was telling him what it was like to hold him and feel him and have him lie on his stomach, as she demonstrated as she spoke, how it felt to touch his shoulders, this beautiful child, and to trace her finger tips and her tongue down his spine, how it felt to get to the cleft in his butt, and to feel those soft girlish hips of his, and to reach between his legs and feel his warmth, his boy heat so different from girl heat, and to feel the bottom of his balls, and hear him sigh in spite of himself and to reach under him and feel his penis and pull it downward as he lifted himself up and to masturbate him that way, and how he would tell her what it was like to see her masturbate, as they knelt together on the bed, and not let him touch her or himself during the doing of it, just sit close so their breath commingles, and watch him long and lose some of that iciness, watch him lose control, his fingers his hands wanting to touch himself, her, coming forward to do so, but she with stern face making him withdraw, and he momentarily under her spell, did so.
The mice boys skittered. The mice boys dwelled in shadows and were the shadows of a velvet curtain and Elise moved backward till her back was against the stucco side of the building, and she felt weak in her knees, as she watched Marcus being toppled over by the naked tumescent mice boys. As she watched them gambol round him and strip him starkers, as she watched their little cheese nibbling mouths on him and his nipples and his cock and his butt and he rejoicing in them, rejoicing and being given and with his own hands and mouth giving pleasure, which he had never gotten from Elise, for with her he had always been so proper, even when he made her degrade herself to a point she did not even wish to think about, not ever again in her life.
She heard a curious golden rhythm, as she watched them undress Marcus completely and use him all the ways sexually that she had used him and he had used her, but with the woman it had been a chess match, a marching of toy soldiers in the heat of battle, something that he had enjoyed yes, but something that could be enjoyed only to a certain point.
The sweat dripped off her face and sogged her dress and blouse and she suddenly realized what that curious golden rhythm was she was hearing--the most natural, the most normal thing in the world to hear from a boy, the thing she had never heard, not even when he had been with Paul in her presence--she heard him now, in this back alley, as he pulled the hungry poles of some of the boys and allowed himself to be turned over on the dirty concrete and entered through his back door--she quite simply and quite profoundly heard him put the pieces of some of the puzzle finally together--she heard him laugh.
Uncategorically. Heedlessly. Without thinking it through first. His legs kneeling him and a boy going into the heart of the sun, and another boy kissing Marcus while another boy sucked Marcus' hard cock, the sight of which made her so wet, and he laughed with joy and sheer happiness that simply unnerved her, and how in hell had she never noticed he never laughed with her or perhaps even ever laughed with Paul. How much under his spell had she been. She was work. She was practice. He was sizing up the lay of the land before he went out into the world older and with much more experience, perhaps, had she not come along?
But Marcus, she unawares thought, two can play that game. She found herself smiling. Had she ever smiled or laughed with Marcus? Had he ever made her really happy? Sexy yes. Hot yes. But she found she too had been practicing.
Marcus threw the boy in him off of him, and tossed his head away from the pole of a little boy, and spat out the gob of cum, "come on, mate, you know how I hate the taste of that stuff." And then he laughed and they were all back at their boy mice games and Marcus was one of them, was a boy mouse himself. Who were the boy mice? Did they live here? Was there a stable of them? Were they orphans? Had they no one to look after them? Or was Elise as the psychiatrists at the mental home had told her, going insane, and she too stupid not to go ahead and admit it and play their game their way so she could get out of the hell place sooner than she did when she finally wised up and went along with the pompous louts?
And Marcus saying the word "mate"--this wasn't something she had heard from him either. This was street talk, no proper about it, he was using now. How odd to hear it from him. And he was no good with children, except when he bullied them and forced them, like the boy's former head master had told her, but there he was, one of the mouse boys, her Marcus, who was not her Marcus, who was not anyone's, not even his own, because here he was in this filthy alley and going at it with who knew who the hell these kids were and what kind of diseases they were giving him right at this minute.
As Elise watched and put her hand under her skirt to her crotch.
As the loud punk rock from the porn store against whose wall she rested, her knees though stronger and not as weak now, made booming thudding counterpoint sounds to the boys getting it on with each other, and then a hand reached out from the mass the knitted spider darting darkness of them and brought her down, crashing to her knees, making the left one bleed, and Marcus reached out of his tumult of boy pyramids and kissed her hard on the mouth, like he honest to god meant it and was not just continuing to test her out, and before long she was kissing him hard back, and someone of the boys or more than one, helped her take off her clothes, did not tear them off as they did Marcus," respected her somehow, and soon she wore only her panties and the boys were over her and Marcus and watching the boy and his stepmother fucking, the mouse hands and their eyes and their mouths witnessing and observing and never forgetting.
As the boys fucked each other for her enjoyment, as they sucked Marcus each in turn and then let her suck him when he was ready to explode and she greedily took all his cum into her mouth, as he looked down at her, so superior, so like a Greek godlet that he knew he would have her under his spell forever and a day as boys sucked each over on top of her and two little boys put their tiny dicks in her mouth at once and kissed and hugged each other while she was sucking them off.
And the night got darker and the mice claws clicked more and more on the cement and time etched each of them into her mind and when everyone of them and Marcus and she were drunk and dizzy and detached and seeming to float above themselves into a hot night sky that was gathering clouds to belt down rain on them, sleep came, and the morning nudged to the end of darkness before she and Marcus, all alone now, awoke. Both still naked, he looked over at her, she was a foot or so away from him, and his eyes were most unkind, and he looked at her angrily, that kind of anger pretty boys have that is so filled with discontent and foreboding and fury that, even though the face still seems gentle, there is a gut wrenching horror to it when it is directed to you that you can never shake no matter how long you live. She pushed her hair back from her head and began ashamedly to get dressed. She turned from Marcus as she dressed, and when she turned to him, she saw he had clothed himself as best he could in his torn garments.
"Do you see, Elise?" Marcus asked. "Do you see how old and dried up and used up you are? They were FUN. You are NOTHING. I just let you go on like a mechanical canary all the time, thinking you were teaching me things about sex, thinking I gave a shit about your prattle, your inability with words, no chance of you and I ever playing word games like Paul and I did, all for my amusement. But I killed him, and you helped, you might remember, because he had begun to bore me. He could never give me head like mum did. And that always bothered him. Did you know that, Elise? I was laughing at them too, all the time? I laugh at you when you're not around."
The words hit the woman like cannon balls blasted at her. She knew what he was going to say. She had just hoped he would keep up the act a little bit longer. She had hoped this would bring them closer together. She had entered his world, then, hadn't she?
She had not wanted to be with the mice boys, at first, for they smelled of the streets, and the dirt and the smoke and the loneliness and the desperation and the sheer numbing fatigue that was in their bones from an early age and would only weigh them down more and more the older they got. When they were older boys. And then men. And then getting to be older men. And no one would want them. No one would give them the time of day. No one would give a fig what they once looked like. They would not be able to get anyone in the kip except by forcing or by money. But Marcus, didn't Marcus now, right now, having been with this roll around in the alley by the porno shop, this place he was obviously more than a little familiar with, didn't Marcus smell now like they did?
She considered. The look of him. The youth of him. The young feel of him. That was simply all he had going for him. A monster at 20 or 25 or 30, it was jail for him then for sure. Looks later on, who would give a damn? A moment of time had kept him safe. It would keep him safe little longer. It wasn't his brain or anything else at all. She suddenly saw him as such a terrible nothing. An incidental.
And she had known enough gay people in Lisbon and Madrid, had heard their hurts and sadnesses, to know that in the gay world, most especially, if that was the way he was going, and it looked like it, you had better hope and pray that you never see 25 or that you look far younger than you are, you better take good care of yourself, your health, your stamina, your face, you better work out and keep checking your face every goddam morning in the mirror and pray the wrinkles take a long time getting there, and the hairline doesn't start receding--
--you had better learn the current songs, the current fads, wear the right clothes, don't get your times mixed up, don't refer to a book or movie or TV programme before their time and give it away, you'll be a fugitive the rest of your years, constantly running from yourself; you better make it while you're young, cause when you're not, when it all starts advancing on you, you'll chance to be as alone as I am, Marcus, Elise surprised herself in saying these things to him. Things that hurt Marcus, that made his eyes squint up, that made his hands ball into fists, that made him boiling mad, and all that anger was inside him waiting to explode. And not in a nice neat mathematically orderly fashion.
Not in well thought out revenge that is best served cold. Sometimes the geniuses don't think of the thing most obvious. Sometimes there is that blind spot you don't mention to the other person, especially if they are lording themselves over you, that you don't mention because they must know for themselves, and you don't want to hurt their feelings, even if they hurt yours all the time like it's their right or something, and now Marcus turned away from her, his hair mussed and ratty looking almost gray colored in the dim gray reddish morning light. She saw him old there. She saw him unwanted and unneeded and broken and too bent. The sadism never counted for anything. It was an obstacle. And in time, that would be all there was to him. Anyone could have inhabited his beautiful body. Anyone and it wouldn't have mattered if Marcus had never been born.
"Why don't you go fuck yourself, little mechanical canary?" He said, voice breaking, this time maybe on purpose, wanting a bit of sympathy?, his profile at her, not looking at her, embarrassed that he had not had this brought home to him before simply by knowing the facts of living and of aging?, "I wound you up for my amusement. Now I see you winding down. Go away."
"Well, Marcus, I will then, I will go away, if you will tell me where the mice boys are."
He looked at her then as though he had lost something. As though he couldn't believe she meant it. As though it was time to go back to Spain and keep on as before. But Marcus who had caused loss now experienced loss. And that something lost was himself. That something would never be anything but himself, who no longer existed, and a boy rooted in concrete, then torn from it, where does he go from here? Himself is no more. And that was all he lived for. Himself. The narcissistic bastard. All he needed and knew, the art of making himself beautiful and wanted and more than the sun just by his simply being alive. And that last pretend game was exploding in front of him.
Angrily, he pointed to a basement door to the right of her, which she knelt down to and opened. He started walking to one of the fences, preparing to climb over it. He said nothing.
"Marcus," she said, to which he did not respond, but started to scale the fence, as she realized her knee was burning from being pulled down on it last night, she said it somewhat like a robot, somewhat by rote, as though she had been saying it a long time but she knew she hadn't, she felt weary when she thought of Marcus, sorry that he wasted both their time, "The mice boys are lots younger than you. That's what they've got over you. That one tiny little thing. That and their avaricious appetites, while you were just a fake, a fraud, a convenience. You had nothing to do with you at all. Try to make trouble for me, Marcus, and I will come after you and I will kill you. Leave the money to me. Go away. Get the hell out of my life. Stay away from the villa. Go be a rent boy for the few years you have remaining. I've learned some tricks from you, and I've extrapolated some from you you would really not like to ever know about."
Marcus hesitated at the top of the fence a moment, then finished scaling it and was gone.
Elise heard mice claws on the concrete basement floor, heard the chittering of them, knew they were waiting for her, and knew she was waiting for them as well, but not for much longer. She pulled the basement door open all the way and went down into the darkness.