T-shirts underneath. I have to tear one of the T-shirts off, biting through the neck, and I bite through the neck of the other one but leave it on (thinking about the guy biting through necks while I do it), and put the corduroy shirt back on, keeping it open. Ready to go.
The guy has gone downstairs. I hear the kid scream and then muffle it, and I hear footsteps coming back up the stairs. There’s a pause, and then I see his feet at the bottom of the door in the light, and he unlocks the door and opens it.
“Whoever you think you are,” he says, “you’re about to find out what you really are.”
I give a little whimper, which makes him sure enough to grab me by one leg and start dragging me out into the hallway, where the kid is lying on his back. When we’re out in the light, he stops and stands over me, one leg on each side, and looks down at my crotch. I know what he’s thinking, because I’m looking up at his and thinking something not too different.
He squats on my thighs, and I rip my shirts open.
It’s like an invisible giant hand hit him in the face; he goes backwards with a scream, still bent at the knees, on top of my legs. I heave him off quick. He’s so fucked I have time to get to him, roll him over on his back and give him a nice full frontal while I sit on his stomach.
It is a truly def tattoo. This is not like bragging, because I didn’t do it, though I did name it: The Power and The Passion. A madwoman with a mean needle in Coney did it, one-handed with her hair standing on end, counting her rosary beads with the other hand, and when I saw it finished, with the name I had given it on a banner above it, I knew she was the best tattoo artist in the whole world and so I did not do her, I did not. It was some very ignorant asshole who musta come in after I did that split her open and nailed her to the wall with a stud gun, but I caught the beef on it, and the tattoo that saved her from me saved me from the quick shot and gave me to Steener’s people, courtesy of Villanueva who is, I should mention, also Catholic.
So it’s a tattoo that means a lot to me in many ways, you see, but mostly I love it because it is so perfect. It runs from just below where my shirt collars are to my navel, and full across my chest, and if you saw it, you would swear it had been done by someone who had been there to see what happened.
The cross is not just two boards, but a tree trunk and a crossbar, and the spikes are driven into the forearms where the two bones make a natural holder for that kind of thing—you couldn’t hang on a cross from spikes driven through your palms, they’d rip through. The crown of thorns has driven into the flesh to the bone, and the blood drips from the matted beard distinctly—the madwoman was careful and skilled so that the different shades of red didn’t muddy up. Nothing muddied up; you can see the face clear as you can see where the whips came down, as clear as the wound in his side, (which is not some pussy slit but the best watchamacallit, rendering of a stab wound I have seen outside of real life), as clear as you can see how the arms have pulled out of the sockets, and how the legs are broken.
You just can’t find no better picture of slow murder. I know; I seen photos of all kinds, I seen some righteous private art, and I seen the inside of plenty of churches, and ain’t nobody done justice to nothing anybody ever done to someone, including the Crucifixion. Especially the Crucifixion, I guess.
Because, you see, you cannot take a vamp out with a cross, that don’t mean dick to them, a fucking plus-sign, that’s all. It’s the Crucifixion that gets them, you gotta have a good crucifix, or some other representation of the Crucifixion, and it has to be blessed in some way, to inflict the agony of the real thing on them. Mine was blessed—that madwoman mumbling her rosary all the way