Psychostasis Read online

  Psychostasis

  The Dark Triad Series

  Ezra Blake

  Antonio Eros

  Contents

  Warning: 18+

  Prologue

  Part I

  Part II

  Part III

  Acknowledgments

  To my friends and mentors, Mars and Emily.

  To Antonio, who doesn’t know I’m writing this—

  you are more gifted than you could ever know.

  Warning: 18+

  This novel contains brutally graphic, often eroticized violence. It in no way represents healthy views of relationships, psychotherapy, mental illness, morally acceptable behavior, responsible drug use, or BDSM. If you are a minor, do NOT read this book.

  Trigger warnings: emotional abuse, physical abuse, blood, corpses/necrophilia, death, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, drug use, guns, brief transphobia, brief incest, violence against a trans person (for reasons unrelated to gender,) forced captivity, religious themes, graphic sex, graphic depictions of surgical procedures, kidnapping, rape, suicide, torture

  Read at your own risk.

  Prologue

  It’s blood. It’s wine. It’s dripping from his mouth and down his chest and it stains him with every breath; with every step, needles of cold rain wash him clean again. Black foliage whips his naked thighs as he hurtles downhill, following twisted paths whose only defining feature is an absence of plant life. His heart pounds. His lungs scream. His leg threatens to buckle with every step.

  Ivan is behind him. He must be. How far is the nearest town? The haze of panic obscures his memory. He can hide, but he might not even survive the storm.

  His foot hits mud and he skids to a stop on the bank. When he shimmied out the bathroom window, what was his fucking plan? Swim?

  He twists wildly, scanning for movement or shelter. There it is: a dry space beneath a rocky outcropping. He lunges for it, straight into a mouthful of gritty sludge. Pain throbs through his knee. He scrambles to his feet, filthy and dripping wet, and immediately keels over.

  He's missing his leg, more so than he was five minutes ago. The prosthetic stands upright in the bank. Mocking him.

  Before he's even wrapped his head around how monumentally fucked he is, rapid footfalls echo from above. No time. He half-crawls, half-drags himself under the feeble shelter of the inlet and curls into a trembling ball. Fear makes his hearing hypersensitive—not that it will do much good to hear the reaper's approach.

  Ivan steps away from the lake and into the garden. Chris doesn't move. He doesn't even think too loudly. He waits as long as he can, until his bones turn to brittle ice and he can’t stand it anymore, and then he peers from the shadows. Nothing but mud and rain. His chest and arms burn as he drags his haggard body from the cave. Nearly blind, he fumbles around in the mud until his hand lands on something solid and leg-shaped. He looks up.

  Ivan lifts him off his feet and slams him into the rock face, crushing the air from his lungs.

  “Is this what you want?”

  It's all Chris can do to focus his double vision. Ivan's hair is plastered to his forehead; his eyes are black, lip curled in a feral sneer.

  Smack.

  His head bounces off the rock and the black night whirls around him like a sick carnival ride.

  “Is this what you want?”

  Ivan’s voice is low and flat, nearly inaudible over the howling wind. It tugs Chris backward into a familiar, womblike space where he is utterly powerless. No past or future, no moral imperative, no guilt—just pain and the absence of pain, fear and the absence of fear. Just Christopher and Ivan.

  “Tell me,” he says.

  Chris whines and claws at the hand on his throat. In the animal kingdom, this is the part where he'd play dead, but Ivan is a very different type of predator. Standard methods won't work here.

  “P-please,” he rasps. “Please.”

  Ivan levels his empty gaze. He tightens his grip, arteries and trachea, not holding back. Pain: crushing, searing, sweet. He doesn’t feel it. There is pain in the cold night air, in the treetops, hovering over the vibrant, pulsing city, but it doesn’t belong to him. Christopher’s mind is rolling, gentle euphoria.

  Please, he mouths.

  Ivan draws so close that his warm breath beads condensation on Christopher’s lips. He’s floating out of himself, drifting higher and higher above the most beautiful city on Earth. He’s scattering like fish from a disturbed riverbed. Every second he is less Christopher Dour and more Everything Else, diffuse and spacious—most of all he is Ivan, nearing the crest.

  Please.

  Chris is his, will always be his, and nobody can take that away from them. They’re not thinking; they’re touching—but abstractly, in sensation more than words, they are thinking that while a man can have many lovers, he can only ever have one killer.

  Then Ivan drops him. They suck in a deep, painful breath.

  “No,” he says. “Come inside.”

  Part I

  Reason and the Pallor of Death

  “The need to go astray, to be destroyed,

  is an extremely private, distant, passionate, turbulent truth.”

  ~ Georges Bataille

  Chapter 1

  Elliot Alvarez has a cock is in his throat, but this is standard, and as in most endeavors, it only took him one round of practice to become a world-class cocksucker. That’s not how he defines himself, but it’s a skill like any other: to be used judiciously.

  He maps the anatomy with his tongue. Here is the blood-engorged corpus cavernosum; there is the scar of the severed prepuce, the urethral opening, the sensitive corona. Lucas thrusts too hard, and Elliot’s nose slams into the pubic symphysis and attached suspensory ligament. “On the bed,” he grunts, withdrawing.

  They go down. Lucas grabs the bottom edge of Elliot’s elastic binder and starts rolling it up his chest. His saggy brown tits spill out. This wasn’t the agreement, but then again, Elliot is only a visitor here. If a pipe bursts in your hotel room, it isn’t really your problem.

  And he isn’t here. He’s in the anatomy lab, unlocked and unoccupied on weekend nights. His Freshman cadaver didn’t move when he split her open, and neither will he.

  So he leaves the party with his cunt leaking semen and his binder balled up in one hand, his baggie of twenty pills in the other. He doesn’t bother counting now, but when he pulls his next all-nighter, he’ll count seventeen and dream of castrating Lucas without anesthesia.

  The next train doesn’t go all the way to his house, but he hops the turnstile and rides a few stops anyway, then flags down a bus. The transit map overlays his vision like a projector transparency. He stumbles past the glimmering tattoo parlors and late-night barbershops on Girard; past scaffolding, college kids, liquor permits pasted on windows. His mom still thinks Brewerytown is dangerous because she hasn’t been outside since 1995, but every year, white families move into the neighboring row houses. The streets get cleaner, the glares get dirtier, and a shop opens selling kombucha or artisan paninis. Their condo gets uglier as they repaint the surrounding facades.

  One day, he’ll buy his mother a house like the one he visited tonight, with a floating glass staircase and a leather couch, and they won’t let anyone in.

  He jams the key in the lock and jiggles it until it clicks. She’s sound asleep. He squeezes out a few tears while he changes into pajamas—this is the sort of thing people cry about—but it’s disingenuous and makes him feel ugly, so he allows them to dry.

  It’s late. He has class in the morning. He should sleep. He lies in bed and peels his cuticles down his fingers, trying to ignore the twisted collecting in his stomach. In the long run, fifteen minutes of rest w
ould be better than fifteen minutes of sad masturbation. He’ll sleep. He’s closing his eyes.

  Ten minutes later, he basks in the glow of his hand-me-down desktop computer. The broken webcam light casts intermittent green bursts across his keyboard. He ignores the security warning on the Tor browser homepage—this piece of shit takes half an hour to disable JavaScript, and he’s been on the darknet since middle school. Nothing has ever happened. So he pulls up an old favorite, shoves his hand down his pants, and comes before the video’s half-way mark. Now he’s doubly sticky, but at least he isn’t thinking about Lucas.

  Soon, guys like Lucas won’t spare him a second glance. He’ll graduate, get health insurance, and get his tits lopped off. He’ll look in the mirror every morning and smile, and when his mom kisses his forehead and calls him sweet boy, it won’t feel like a lie.

  And if he’s in the business of daydreaming, he might as well search up illegal surgeons again. Last he checked, there was one guy listed in Mexico, but they only have two grand in their emergency fund. It might cover the mastectomy if he’s lucky, but forget about the plane ticket.

  A string of queries: unlicensed surgeon, surgeon for hire, cheap mastectomy. There’s Dr. Juarez again. Back alley surgery. Illegal surgery. Nothing.

  He gropes his tits through his thin pajama top, tests their elasticity with stubby fingernails. This isn’t the first time he’s thought about amputating them himself, but it’s the first time he’s been drunk enough to consider it plausible. Sterilize a paring knife, snip the tissue, scoop it out with a grapefruit spoon. He would do it now if he had decent painkillers—powder blue oxycodone 30s, violet pinhead morphine sulphate.

  He could buy decent painkillers.

  It’s been a while since he got his testosterone off the darknet. All his favorite markets have been seized by the feds. He finds a random .onion directory and scrolls past the newest listings for Silk Road clones and hitman scams, not expecting to find anything useful—and there it is: V Cosmetics.

  There are no reviews or pictures. There’s nothing but a line of contact information.

  To set up an express appointment, email us using a secure address at: [email protected]. No credentials, no menu of procedures, no number.

  But what’s the harm in asking?

  Chapter 2

  “I thought you’d be older.”

  “Thought you were fake. Is Ash even your real name?”

  He hugs his bare arms against the cold and glares at the man, who’s driving a brand new Nissan but looks as homeless as Ash feels: stringy, shoulder-length brown hair, eyes too deep in his skull. The sort of guy Ash has only seen from afar, smoking behind gas stations. The notorious “wrong crowd” they crucified at Holy Trinity.

  He slides into the leather passenger seat and squeezes his knees together, eyes fixed on the pine-scented air freshener hanging from the mirror. It bobs back and forth as the car accelerates.

  “My real name’s Jake.”

  When he looks over, Jake is smiling at him. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…

  “What do you do, then?”

  There’s a thread loose on his jeans. The denim looks blue on his legs, but the individual strands are white with little pink fuzz balls along their length.

  “Or like, are you in school? You live with your family?”

  What does he do? Nothing, really. He panhandles off the highway and convinces shopkeepers to let him use their bathrooms. “Nah,” he says. “I got four sisters but I ain’t met one of them.”

  Jake draws some circles in the air with his spindly hand. It means he’s supposed to keep talking, but every false start tastes like wet cardboard. He shuffles through the colorless details of his life, scowls, and deflects. “So, you got a huntin’ camp, right? Is that where we’re going?”

  “We’re going home,” Jake says, perking up. “My father and his friends are using it until Tuesday and they don’t know I have the key but you can stay with me until then. I would have waited to book your bus but I didn’t want someone else getting to you before I did.”

  “Oh,” Ash says.

  Judging by Jake’s gritted teeth and bouncing leg, the following moment of silence is physically painful.

  “Tell me more. Anything. Show me your world.” The words burst from his lips like explosive rounds. “What’s your life like? Have you ever been in love? What are you afraid of, what are you passionate about?”

  Ash shrinks into his seat.

  “It’s okay to talk, dude. I’m not judging. I’m like the least judgmental person you’ll ever meet. So you’re not in school, where do you live? I mean, Florida, but where?”

  “I was in boarding school ‘til last year,” he says. “Then I lived with a friend.”

  It’s the simplest version of a convoluted and ultimately meaningless narrative which, thankfully, will die with him. Since he left Holy Trinity Youth Rejuvenation Center, he’s been sleeping in a shelter and browsing hookup forums at the public library, hoping to get victimized.

  “Seriously, dude, what’s going on with you? Anyone who makes a post like that has to be pretty—I mean, not fucked up but like…deep?”

  “I dunno,” he says. “I guess I just wanna be good again.”

  Jake bites his thin pink lip.

  The Lord is with thee…

  He tears his eyes away and looks instead at passing cars and the ugly, miserable people inside them. Ash doesn’t know much about the city except that it’s too fast and it doesn’t want him, but that’s fine. He’s not staying.

  They pull into Jake’s driveway. Though his rambling emails were full of unlikely claims about his talents and connections, the money must be real because it’s the only house on the block with a driveway. Jake says, “So this is me. Throw your bag anywhere. Sleep anywhere, eat the food, whatever.” He tries the keys, but the door is already unlocked, so he shoves it open. “Scott!” He hollers. “Wake the fuck up!”

  Scott has sleepy eyes and a beard like a prophet. He peels his face off the red leather couch and glances up from his phone. “I’m awake, dude. It’s like…four in the afternoon.”

  They step around a toppled potted plant and into a sitting room. It might have been pretty, once, but not the kind of pretty they have back home—no sprawling wrap-around porch or thickets of Queen Anne’s lace. It used to look clean and expensive, is what he means, but now it’s not. Laundry and take-out boxes litter the oak floor, a suspicious stain dampens the wall above the fireplace, and the coffee table is covered in pipes and papers and—

  He balls his fists in his pockets and does not cross himself. It doesn’t count if anyone sees him do it.

  “Thought you might be dead after last night,” Jake calls, stepping into the kitchen. “Pack me a bong, would you?”

  Scott blinks hazily, pulls the blanket off his legs, and swings them off the couch to make space. Ash sits with all the fluid grace of a plastic lawn gnome. He’s never been in the same room as marijuana before, but he’s heard it called “skunk” on TV, and that’s what it smells like. His skin crawls off his bones and sloughs onto the floor. The Lord is with thee…

  When Jake comes back, his tattooed shoulders are bare and his skin looks warm and rough. He’s holding a replica of a human penis. It’s swirled green and orange, bulging with veins as thick as shoelaces. As if they weren’t already doomed.

  “Haven’t used this one yet,” he says with a dopey grin. Jake has a lot of teeth. “I can’t remember if it’s mine or someone left it here, but the bowl is in the balls, see?”

  Scott glances at the bong and grunts a little half-chuckle before his phone sucks him in again. He texts with one hand and grinds weed with the other, which must have taken a lot of practice. Jake paces. He’s peppered with tattoos of eyeballs and octopi and some woman with a lot of arms, and he reminds Ash of one of those New Orleans dancers he’s seen on TV, parading around in garish colors and platform shoes like the Tower of Babel. They weren’t supposed to
watch TV during Mardi Gras.

  “Oh!” He stops dead in a mire of dirty laundry. “I didn’t introduce you guys. Ash, Scott’s my best friend.”

  Scott grunts.

  “And me and Ash met online, but he’s chill.”

  “Cool,” Scott says, without looking up from his phone.

  “I’m throwing a huge party for him at camp on Tuesday.” Pacing again. “We’ll have the place to ourselves and of course I’m bringing the booze, drugs, whatever. Was thinking maybe I could get strobe lights? I was reading about pyrotechnics and I don’t think it’d be too hard to—” He stills. “Wait, where is everybody?”

  “They left, I guess.”

  “Oh. Well, us three can still hang out. I think I have some beers in the fridge.”

  “Doubt it,” Scott says. “Besides, you know I don’t drink.”

  Jake scrunches his nose like a rabbit. Not a pet rabbit. One of the dagger-toothed beasts that skulked around the stables and terrorized the horses. “I thought that was just a probation thing.”

  “It’s a thing-thing, now.”

  “So I’ll have an eighth waiting for you at camp, then. Tuesday at six. For now we can—”

  “I’ll see if someone can cover my shift.” Scott sighs, stuffs the testicles full of ground marijuana, and drags himself off the couch. “Gotta go, though. Text you later.”

  “Stay and chill, dude! I can order pizza and smoke you up.”

  “You throw a hell of a party, Caruso.” He slaps a hand on Jake shoulder, side-steps his hug, and tugs on a truly hideous poncho. “It was nice meeting you,” he says to Ash, and then slips out the door.