Penny Dreadful Read Free

and I was naked, it seemed. On what felt like a couch. I was tucked like a dead man under a thin blanket. The material was very soft and smelled of tobacco and rain and skin. I reached between my thighs and gave my testicles a reassuring squeeze and briefly, I was twelve and just waking up in my narrow bunk bed at home with blue-and-white-striped sheets and pale blue walls around me and a whale mobile dangling overhead and my little dick cupped safely in my left hand.
    I hoped I was in Eve’s apartment.
    The couch beneath me felt like velvet. Eve had a velvet couch, dark red velvet. I remembered that much. From before. But I didn’t exactly remember arriving here. I must have walked twenty-two blocks from the Greyhound station in a drowsy sort of morphine stupor, even though I had been off that shit for six weeks or so, ever since I separated from Jude in San Francisco. It had been a long walk from the station, and stinking hot. I had decided it must be springtime. April, or possibly May. And who was watching me. It didn’t feel like Eve. She must have undressed me, though. I tried to remember her hands. Her thin strong fingers.
    I opened my eyes and stared into an unsmiling, androgynous blue-eyed face hovering a few inches from my own. The face sniffed at me.
    Human, the face said. And apparently alive.
    I sat up and waited calmly for the world to spin around. But the world appeared to be temporarily stable. Maybe this was an exaggeration, but I felt much better than I deserved to. The face grunted, pulled away from me and lit an unfiltered white cigarette.
    Can I have one of these? I said.
    Il est possible que.
    I rubbed my mouth. The face was speaking French, apparently. Languages. I had studied German in high school and been pretty bad at it. I had spent some of the past year in South America and could spit out enough Spanish to ask for breakfast and not get shot. However. I hated the French and their slippery tongue. But I shrugged this away. I had no real reason to hate the French and could barely remember why I did. It had something to do with my grandfather and a prostitute during World War II and a mouthful of stolen gold teeth. Anyway. The unsmiling face before me was fierce and beautiful. It was probably male, I thought. If it were a woman’s face I would likely be afraid of it.
    Two slender fingers were extended, floating toward me. The fingernails were painted a bright yellow. Horrible, a horrible color. These were the fingers of a corpse, a vampire. A short white cigarette appeared before my eyes like a magician’s rabbit. I took it between my lips and allowed the yellow fingers to light it for me. The smoke was bitter and harsh and I coughed painfully into my fist. As usual, I looked for black phlegm or chunks of lung in my hand and was relieved to find nothing.
    What the hell is this? I said.
    It is a Gitanes, the face said. The finest of French cigarettes.
    I’m sure. But it tastes like shit.
    The face was unamused. Then return it to me.
    Thanks, I said. The tobacco is just a little stale, maybe.
    Imagine, said another voice. The human is rude.
    Right. I was fucking surrounded, then. I sighed and glanced around. My clothes were tucked beneath my feet. They were folded. I couldn’t remember the last time my clothes were folded and somehow this made me feel incredibly lonely. I tried to compose my face but couldn’t remember exactly what it was supposed to look like. I only wanted to take a shower. I wanted to be unmolested, unfucked with. But there was a shadow crouched in the window behind me. A boy, or a very small man, in raw brown leather clothes. His hair was long and white and he wore a string of bones around his throat. The room was otherwise empty. Okay, so there were only two of them.
    Hello.
    The man-boy smiled at me, a ring of sharp teeth in shadow.
    I pushed the blanket aside and reached for my clothes. I felt hot, as if my blood was thickening. I pulled on pants and sat there, scratching my