The Narrative of Wilhelm Wanderlust: Part ONE

I raise the knife slow and solemn, place the point over my left tit. It's a Southern Baptist sacrificial knife with a curved blade and a whalebone handle, sharp and cold as a snake-fang on ice. Last week Benny Santeria used it to slit open his stomach in a neo-Fauvist death orgy on a floodlit helipad atop one of the Sacher-Masoch Towers a half mile south of Churchtown, a million miles south of sanity.

His acolytes garotted him with his own guts, tenderized him with a bout of rawhide stroppado, set him ablaze with a blue sapphire torch and slung him out into the night with a customized trebuchet. It’s how he wanted to go, his final tribute to the Meister, got to come up with something better when it’s my turn. Benny’s last words were: now and forever praise be, my life with Thrill Kill Cult.

Trotjohn laughed so hard he pissed himself, which made me laugh so he pissed on me, his boot-heel digging into my ribs, and I figured he’d drop a turd on my cheek like he sometimes does and say: here’s some soap to go with that golden shower, or maybe jizz in my hair and say: that’s all the shampoo you need, lather up, bitch, but all he did was whizz in my ear, he was in high spirits that night watching Benny Santeria do his thing.

That Sacher-Masoch blowout was a tribute to the Meister like I said and Benny, his guts smoking between his knees, bloody mess, looked at me and bawled: Willy gets my knife! Willy gets my fucking knife!

I’m Willy, Wilhelm to you, and this is Benny’s knife, but I don't plan to eviscerate myself tonight, not a chance. I have people to do, things to kill. I mean me and Trotjohn and the Wald and Monk, we few, we happy few in obeisance to our Meister Buford Aloysius Howell, Lord Baron of Pain.

So here, now, it's the knife-point over my left tit, the flat of the blade mirroring my left nostril, dark lumen leading up to my forebrain, a spot of light showing at the far end. Light in a pulsing orb, my Third Eye coming awake, bright with murder. The knife point flickers in a short arc, blood wells in a red smile and I smile back, good to see you too, strange weather we’ve been having, nice night for us hellions.

I have five other cuts arranged symmetric, bleeding gashes poulticed with rose petals and ginger mulch. This one here makes six, the Meister’s number, his sacred Numeron oozing ichor as I scoop up ginger paste with the crook of my finger, smear it on a rose petal and press the petal to my wound. Six cuts symmetric and I set down the knife, reach with my right hand and brush the pink, clitoral knob of the Voltburn Unit.

There's a mute crackle, a blue flash and the juice rips through me whitehot as clenched and shuddering I adjust my headset and press PLAY. Brrroooom: grindcore slashervox, Lem from Angstfuhrer screaming in on a distortion tidal wave going: snake-eyes, death-dream second sight; blood rain, storm fire, dark arctic light...

And something blazes up from the root of my brainstem, fanged mouth in a soundless howl and I’m laughing.

***

I inhale deep, raise my lids. Quiet now, just the sound of my breath and I’m still on the couch crosslegged, my boner in steady throb, my pores wisping fulgent smoke. Above, a pair of bioplast buttocks fixed to the ceiling beam down a spotlight through a rectal orb and I’m in that spotlight gashed naked, my hair matted sweatcold, my pecker straining up from the rictus of my lap.

The Voltburn Unit sits on a low tripod just ahead. It’s a recent model: a pink, glandular flatworm with a blue dendritic spine encased in a clear hyperconductive gel. I’m wired to the Unit via nipple clamps and a metal sheath capping my peckerhead.

Once every few minutes I touch the Unit’s clitoral knob and the glandworm crackles blue-white, juice ripping through me like lucent shrapnel, smell my toasted areolae, a charred ring around my glancap.

I’m priming myself for another hit, reaching for the Voltburn knob when the dildo lights up with a high-pitched buzz. It’s the phone I’ve had since last year, a mammoth bioplast dildo set in a scrotal base, buzzing now with its head glowing red, veins on the shaft squirming purple. I lean over, grab the dildo and press ON.

Yeah?

He doesn’t talk at first. He hums instead, a toneless croon that raises my hackles. He hits a low note, soars in glissando, pauses abrupt.

Bitch, he goes, you there, bitch-dawg? His voice. Trotjohn.

Been here forever, I go, slut.

He chuckles soft, breathy. You ready asshole?

Ready as a boner, baby. Blue steel. Throb throb.

He snorts. You gon' have to hold on to that hard-on awhile, sweetheart. We start at seven.

I frown. Seven?

Damn right. Seven on the clit. Seven on the napalm nipple.

I feel my teeth grit. That's a whole fucking HOUR from now.

He whistles. Dang. Bitch can count.

The Meister didn't say WHEN, I snarl, He NEVER does.

No. I'M sayin. We ride at seven. Seven dark. You know us and the Dark, we've had it goin so long, hot and heavy...

I cut him off, drop the dildo. There’s a vein throbbing on my brow, an image forming. A lizard in slow bleed, dragging mangled guts over shattered glass under a neon sun.

HATE! I yell, HHHAAATE!!!

The room in echo, my vision quaking.

I wait motionless, seconds passing in slow drip. Then I bend, grab the REM Corticon with both hands and hoist it off the floor.

The REM Corticon is a bioferric casque studded with green synth crystals. It resembles an old-time war helmet and induces visions via synaptic fibrillation, high risk of permanent psychosis en route to brain death, all part of the thrill.

I raise the Corticon with both hands, push it down over my head. The synth crystals light up, I can see them in the mirror across, green pupils in a panoptic orb.

The Corticon tightens, bolts pressing in hard around the rim, and my eyes water some, tears of pain, but I won’t need eyes for what I’m about to see and the pain’s just extra flavor, an old friend.

A moment passes grimacing, teeth clenched. Then the Corticon comes on with a shudder, humming toneless, and some larval plasm in my hindbrain twitches awake, my vision fragmenting in brilliant mosaic.

There’s a rush of black wind, a sound of hollow laughter and I’m swept out over an abyss, out and down and down...

Walking barefoot on white tiles slippery with blood, through a forest of chains hung from a halogen sky, torn flesh impaled on rusted meathooks. Someone’s moving ahead slow and unsteady, a girl. A kid girl in a blue dress, a stained ribbon at the small of her back.

I call out in wordless echo but she doesn’t pause, doesn’t look back. I break into a run, a slow dream lope, and the chains swirl clinking, part sudden.

I’m on a tiled expanse shading off into darkness. The girl stands ahead in partial profile holding a headless doll. Her bare feet have left red streaks on the tiled whiteness of the floor and a black trickle runs down the inside of her leg, her straw hair parted around a tumor.

The tumor pulses and squirms but I’m not looking. My gaze cuts past the girl, following her line of sight. A giant cylindrical vat looms ahead, a glass silo full of phosphorescent gel.

The gel holds a pair of spermatozoids in suspension. Outsize spermatozoids joined coital, albino tadpoles with human heads, coiled tails writhing.

The zoids have pegs driven through their skulls, a fibrous cord rising from each peg. The cords ascend in double helix to an enormous eyeball floating high above, its blue iris staring up into a nighted void.

I want to follow the eyeball, see what it’s seeing but I don’t get the chance. The girl is turning, her lidless eyes white, her smile sewn shut with catgut. Nailheads wink on her brow, her leper’s hand rising in accusation.

I drop to my knees with a mute cry, pleading in a language I don’t understand. But it’s too late. Bloody wasps erupt from a hole in her head, a dark swarm winking red as her smile curves in towards me, bright pincers aimed at my throat and I’m screaming...