TheJunkiesFaust #16(FTDParish)

"Someone like me?" I asked.

She nods and moves my head off her lap with her strong hands. It's not til I feel the chill on my shaved head that I realize how hot her thighs were. She stood, pulling me up with her. She led the way back to the window and stood ast my side with her arm around my waist, her chin resting on my shoulder watching me watch the party.

Now almost all the party goers were laid out, in piles on chairs, sofas and floor. Wherever they'd happened to be when the junk had come around. There were still lone stragglers standing here and there, some in small groups, watching the surfers and laughing with each other. Some jittery looking, like they were as hungry as Dirt when Maya'd been gone too long when they were out.

I looked at Dirt again. He reminded me of John Travolta............no really, stay with me. I'd seen Travolta on Inside the Actors Studio. He'd told a story of how he'd researched his role in Pulp Fiction as a junky. He'd talked with a recovering junky who'd told him to fill a bathtub with warm water and drink tequila till you were slobbering drunk.......And that's as close as you can get to being on heroin...............Well, that's what Dirt looked like. Like he was floating in a warm heroin dream..........Like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction when he was driving in his convertable.

The bartenders were coming out from behind there bars and new people were coming in from doors I hadn't seen before. The new people were all dressed garishly in one form or another like the others, but these were different somehow. I was still foggy from the wine but they seemed to have an air about them. Almost aristocratic in a way.

The music suddenly changed. A more sanguine, almost psychadelic, symphonic kinda thing accompanied by straight, white bright strobe lights on high speed flash. The upright partyers moved amongst the surfers jumpingly in the flashing lights.

The music changed again, and I realized it was being piped in to our little observatory. The music throbbed. The back beat that of a beating heart, the forefront of the music filled with whines and whorls of uncomfortable, electronic sounds. The light changed to a deep pulsing red.

I watched a tall Nordic looking woman in fishnet stockings, high heels and nothing else followed by a tall American Indian man complete with long braided pony tail and wearing a designer suit saunter up to Dirt and Maya. I watched in suspension as the Indian picked up Maya like she was a small child and gently carried her cradled in his large arms toward one of the doors under me. The scene was played out all over the room below me while the music thobbed unrelentingly.

As the last of the men carried their high cargo out of the room, the party changed again. Each reclining junky left had a fetishly clad person standing with them. The lights came on, the music stopped and every aware pair of eyes turned slowly, expectantly to the window which Marie and I stood behind. My skin crawled and an involuntary shiver ran through my body. What the fuck was going on here? A very quiet motor whirred as the window slowly lowered into the wall, exposing us to the creepy gazes of the fetishist below.

A pair of iron hands gripped my shoulders from behind. I tried to turn to look at my assailant but was held firm. Marie stood and stared, interested, on my side. I craned my neck and saw a very tall and very beautiful man smiling into my eyes. I was scared. I averteed my gaze back to the party floor below when my "host" nodded in that direction. I saw Marie out of the corner of my eye smiling at the man gripping my shoulders, hurting me. I felt his right hand release it's grip and saw him place his latrge hand on Marie's short afro, carressing it. He turned his attention to the people below, who were obviously waiting on something....on him.

In a voice that boomed across the expanse of the cavernous room, the tall man said with some reverence, " My people, meet Thomas." I watched as all the standing partyers gravely nodded their acknowledgment to me. I feinted.

YourInputPlease

In recent discussions with Parish, we have happened upon a dilemna. Do we publish all of his completed works on this site? Do we effort getting him published? Obviously it can't be both. Why would a publishing house pay for content available free online? Where's their profit?

Parish has suggested that he contribute his work up to a certain point. If anyone who is reading his work wants to finish a story line they would have to pay for it. The problem I see with this is we leave people hanging with no payoff in sight. He's brought you to the party scene in The Junkies Faust. He has no publishing deal. Does he leave you hanging or does he spread his work across the web for free?

Your input please. If noone has an opinion then noone is reading this anyway so he saves his work and hopes to make a profit from it at some point. If anyone is interested in what happens next in the current or future story lines then we still have a dilemna. Do we give it away or tickle your fancy and hope to get a deal sometime. Do we tickle your fancy so much that you picket/stage sit ins/boycott publishers until they give him a deal? Your input please. And remember, no input is in itself.............input.

Gonnegut

Another death of an oven favorite. Hunter Thompson.....gone. RAW......gone. Now, Vonnegut.....gone. The bird has flown the coop....... http://www.vonnegut.com/

What's next? We gonna lose Tom Robbins? Wouldn't surprise me, even book lovers get the blues.

If you weren't fortunate enough to know Kurt's work or to have seen him speak, I suggest you go NOW and buy, borrow, steal ANYTHING/EVERYTHING with his byline. If you wanna hear him speak, he was on the John Stewart show within the last year, you could probably find that somewhere on comedycentral.com or something. Just do it.

Some said your work was simplistic....I say they were. Good bye Kurt.

TheJunkiesFaust #15(FTDParish)

The enigmatic beauty stood before a large window that provided a view of the party happening below. The tinted window let muted light staccato the room. I couldn't hear the music, but I could feel the thump of the bass in the soles of my feet and on the hairs on the back of my neck.

I crossed to her and she finally spoke. In an unnervingly delicate French accent, my hostess asked if I'd like a drink.

"Please." I tried to rumble sexily, but only succeeded in sounded conjested I thought. Without asking what I'd like, she swayed across the room to a stainless and glass bar and delicately picked up a wine glass that rang like an angel's bell when it clinked up against another glass as she raised it.

I turned to the scene playing out below me. I found Dirt and Maya still surfing their buzz in the big chair in which I'd left them. The pirate already off delivery his booty to the next happy recipient. "Avast ye scurvy dawg. Care to have your timbers shivered? Prepare to be boarded."

More and more partyers were falling out. Lounging and surfing. I noticed more pirates.........not people dressed as pirates necassarily, but all delivery their ill gotten gain....their ill boughtten booty. Some were pretty women in lingerie, some pretty girls leatherclad, one guy in a gimp mask, some dressed in late club kid, one nude man with a huge dangling cock being led around on a leash by a small Asian man wearing antique surgeon regalia. But all delivery seemingly free H to the masses.

"My name is Marie," she breathed huskily as she delivered my drink. A large goblet like wine glass only about a third full of a deep red wine. Pretending to know what I was doing, I stuck my nose into the glass, the opposite rim covering my eyes, and inhaled deeply the vapors of the dark red liquid. I smelled fruit, wood, clove and something I couldn't quite identify. Something rich and tangy....metallic. As I tilted my head back enjoying the "bouquet", the room tilted and swam. I had to step quick not to fall down. As I stood, feet splayed, and arms out, balancing, Marie said "Careful Thomas, that is a particulary strong and well aged vintage. One to be sipped...savored.....studied and enjoyed. Do you know wines?"

"No," I said. "I know what I like." And sipped the intoxicating liquid thinking that was the first time since my mom went nuts and killed herself, my dad and his floosie, that anyone had calld me Thomas.

It was warm, and thicker than I expected. It was beautiful in my mouth. Velvety, sending metallicy electrical jolts down the sides of my tongue. I let the wine slide down my throat and felt immediately flushed and heady. The lights behind my closed eyelids danced in ancient geometrical designs and four dimensional flowery starbursts.

She let a soft purry moan escape her full lips and glided toward me. Her hand found mine and gently guided my glass to my lips. Keeping it inclined, she insisted I disregard her earlier advice and I drained the glass. My vision narrowed, my pulse raced and roared in my ears and a fire like a gas explosion in slow motion spread through me.

When I woke I was lying on a thick fur rug from some animal I didn't recognize right yet, my head laying in Marie's lap as she massaged my temples, her timeless dark eyes holding mine through their fog.

"Why don't you do the free Heroin?" Marie wanted to know.

"I'd like it too much," I tell her. "Hell, I like that wine too much.......is there H in it?" I blurt, suddenly fearful they're trying to get me junked up.

"No. No heroin Thomas," she assures me in that delightful accent that washes over me bringing comfort and security in it's ebb.

"You know my name," I say as it occurs to me. I watch her sensuous lips form the words, "Maya has told us much about you mon cherie. You have been the subject of much debate in these circles these past few months.

"Why so?" I need to know.

"We've been looking for you...or rather someone like you, for some time now."

TheJunkiesFaust #14(FTDParish)

Slowly people started falling out and going back to the bars or their "surfing" friends on the couches.

I ordered another drink. Their best vodka on ice and put another $5 in the tip jar. The drinks were free, but I always tip good. What comes around, goes around.

I found Dirt and Maya sharing an overstuffed chair as an exotic, Persian looking fella dressed like a pirate sat on a footstool rigging up two blasts.......Step right up. No waiting.

While I watched, a small, very dark woman with seemingly black eyes, seductively floated up to me, staring up at me, using the back of her fingers to lightly caress my neck, shoulders and chest. She looked at me without any emotion showing on her beautiful, nubian face.

Her hips began to sway as she held my gaze prisoner with her fathomless eyes. As she raised her hand to my jawline to caress me again and I noticed, out of my peripheal vision, a small tatoo, similar to Maya's, on the inside of her wrist. I snatched her arm and twisted it to better show the tatoo. I raised an eyebrow inquiringly. She didn't fight me, didn't try to jerk away or hide it. She just held my gaze steadily and delved into my soul with those dark, dark eyes.

Before I knew she'd moved, she had disengaged her arm from mine and had me in an iron grip of hert own. I felt small and foolish....insignificant suddenly. She squeezed pretty hard once, but I just returned her steely gaze. She turned and strode purposefully toward a door in the wall I hadn't noticed before, hauling me with her. I followed willingly.

At the door, a very large Oriental man with tatoos covering his face, stepped aside and opened the door for my mysterious guide and myself without a word and without asking to see any wrists.

We went up a stairway parallel to the one we had come down earlier, stopping though at a landing and another door long before reaching ground level. She turned and looked at me, opened the door and entered, leaving me to follow of my own accord....or not.........I did.

The room was decorated with a mixture of luxurious antiques and state of the art electronics and gleaming, polished, stainless steel. The two decorative timelines seemingly divergent but curiously balanced and somewhat comforting.

TheJunkiesFaust#13(FTDParish)

Dirt had already sold his car(making it a real pain in the ass getting to and from work, but what did they care about that), so 4 busses later we hopped off and walked the last 5 blocks to the old industrial park where the party was. Maya led us to an old, 4 story factory, which I came to find out later, once held the offices and machinary of an appliance factory.

Now, as far as I could tell, the building was empty except for 3 very intimidatingly large and unhappy, leatherclad men standing outside a large steel door just inside the outter door we'd just come in. They looked us over as the heavy outside door closed behind us with a thuddy clang. Kinda felt uncomfortable standing there being accessed liked that. I knew what women meant by feeling like a piece of meat then. After an uncomfortable silence, one of the men grunted something in what sounded Russian, or something similar to my untrained ear. Maya stepped forward and pulled up her stocking-like, flared and tattered black sleeve and showed him the tatoo on the inside of her wrist. My curiosity is by now, somewhat piqued.

The dumbest looking thug, and that was saying something, opened the inner door as his surly comrade buzzed us in. Rasputin much? On the other side of the door, a small, metal grate landing led to a rusting and creaky stairway the fell around a corner and out of sight. A bare low wattage bulb hung from a old and fraying electrical cord above us.

As we filed past Rasputin, he turned and closed the door behind him, shutting us off from ground level. Maya led the way down the winding, groaning stair with Dirt following behind, excitement pouring outta him and I came last, looking around, trying to stop the hairs on the back of my neck from standing up.

We came to another steel door on another grate landing, I still couldn't see any part of the room or rooms we were decsending through. The bulbs barely lit the stairs, they didn't touch the surrounding......whatever it was that surrounded us. Maya punched a code into a keypad in the wall and the door clicked open and swung toward us.

As soon as the door opened, we were assailed with thundering house/dance music, blacklight and the staccato of strobe lights. As we followed Maya through the door, the cavernous room opened before us. I didn't see one wall other than the one the door we just came through was set in. Only steel I-beam support posts as far as I could see. The visual effect reminded me of pictures I'd seen of military cemeteries in DC.

Colored lights flashed and disco balls shot beams of reflected light in a thousand different directions. The deep bass thudded into me like a hundred 4th of July fireworks going off in 10 seconds. But this boom didn't stop and recede. It bombarded you incsessantly, faster and stronger, shrill in your ears then gently massaging the back of your neck. Carresssing you, enticing, luring. Then the bass reverberated in your chest, then all over again.

People jumped and writhed and "danced" to the electronic, staccato pulse. There were bars scattered across the expanse where people of all age, creed and fetish swarmed for drinks. Where there wasn't a bar, or people standing or dancing, there were large couches and over stuffed chairs where people lounged, fucked, sucked, fired or rode the soft warm waves of their horsy rides.

We made our way to the nearest bar where we stood waiting, watching. The scene was extrordinary. People in business suits and latex and leather or dirty clothes...or nothing. Tatoos, piercings, facial scarifications, drag queens and even someone dressed as a cop....YYYYYYY MMMMM CCCCCCCC AAAAAAA-A!!!! Hell, maybe he was a cop, who knows.

The music stopped and silence echoed until, in unison, the room erupted in howls, yells , screams........desire. I could hear in the primal roar, a lust, a greed, a hate......frenzy....................animal euphoria. Young and old. Fortune 500 or homeless, all screaming.

I was surprised to realize I myself was screaming as hard as I could. My throat hurt from it. My soul ached from the desire. Dirt was screaming. Hungerin his eyes. He wanted fixed. Maya's mouth stretched as she howled at the invisible ceiling, whipping her heaqd back and forth, eyes wide open in unleashed, primal rapture.

The lights flashed brilliantly and the music hammered, instantly hard and insistant. The whole place thrashed and jumped to the electronic, New World tribal beat. Drinks hanging limply in flailing hands, forgotten, spilling on the floor and on me. Noone, I included, could deny the urgency in the music. We spasmed and gyrated to the computer generated sounds, the music fast, crunchy and piercing, demanded our conscioussness as we all, as one, worshipped at Baccus' alter.

TheJunkiesFaust#12(FTDParish)

So, three weeks later I was working construction. Nothing fancy, just house remodeling and whatnot. I carried shingles or two by fours or stripped out old plumbing, seperating the copper out and throwing the rest away. I swept and shoveled and ripped out old plaster and pushed a broom alot. It was hard work, but it paid well. We'd found an apartment and bought some used furniture from a second hand store.............

Dirt and Maya were firing by now. Started off, Maya said we'd just snort it, wasn't addictive that way.....right. So now they were firing....main line injecting heroin. It never costed me anything and they didn't eat much. They'd run out and Maya would leave for awhile after I got home from work. While Dirt paced around scratching his arms and whining, wanting her to hurry back, I'd use that time to try and talk Dirt into laying off, getting well and finding a job, but he just wanted Maya........and the smack. She'd come back a coupla hours later with a bag.

The last time Maya said she'd been invited to an underground party and she'd talked them into letting Dirt and I come. I wasn't sold on the party. Here Maya was disappearing all over the western U.S. and coming back with seemingly free drugs. How the fuck was she doing that? And what kinda people were we gonna be partying with?

Of course Dirt was all about it. He was already junked and he was very much interested in how Maya was scoring all the free shit. You know, just in case anything ever happened to her, he'd have to know where to get it.

No matter how much I argued, Dirt was adamant. I could stay home by myself if I wanted....or I could go out with them......maybe try to find a girlie to bring home........I hadn't fucked Maya since that first time she brought the smack home. I'd never even gone out since I started work. I didn't have much extra money since I was payin all the bills and I didn't like leavin Dirt alone with Maya any more than I had to. I felt responsib;e for the dick head.

Lately I'd been suspicious of Maya......I know, I know, but while it was coke............well, I like coke. Sure it was weird, but the whole fuckin thing was weird. So now, here we were, Dirt and me....and Maya. Like I said, I felt responsible for Dirt, and I didn't know how to get us outta this. I agreed to go to the party. I wanted to keep an eye on everything. And if I had a chance, I'd lose that fuckin bitch.

Conspiracy Theory

Having a mobile existance (Don't have time to explain in detail, but here's a synopsis: The song says 'The Midwest Farmers Daugterh's really make you feel allright' You just have to remember that their father's have loaded guns) I've come across either a far flung conspiracy, or something that will be a far flung conspiracy if the government ever reads this. Gideons!!! Basically, every hotel I go into has a copy of the King James bible by the Gideons setting there. It may be on the desk, it may be in a drawer, but it's most likely there. Suppose the powers that be put a recording device in each of those books. Audio, video, whatever they can do now. If this is true, suppose you and your wife rent a hotel room. The room is registered under your name. You get in an argument. You are then registered in some government system as biligerent. OK, lets assume that the recording device is set for specific words. Let's just say you were mentioning cocaine and FARC. Then you might get automatically labeled as a cocaine smuggler. In the government's opinion it seems to me to be safer to lock anyone up that COULD be a problem, than to let people bring up objections to Status Quo (SP). If ayone is reading this, I hope they understand what COULD happen in this country. Your rights are already being taken away. You USED to have freedom of speech. I don't know if you do any more. I've never before been brave enough to say Down With BUSH. Impeach if necessary. I will give Bush the credit I see due. If we were to pull out of Iraq now, Iraq would most likely go to hell. Our only logical course( as I see it ) is to send enough troops over there to beat the insergents down. I don't like that, but I see no other workable choice. In my opinion, we never should have gone to Iraq, but now that idea is moot. We're there. Lets send enough troops to beat down the insergency, establish at least temporary stability, and let the Iraq government take over from there. We can say Fuq Iraq, pull out now, and let it degrade into even more of a civile war than it is now, or we can stay, kill a bunch of insergents, and hope the rest of the Iraq wants basic stabillity

Tuck U Fu