Sex and Murder Magazine

By Adam DeWalt

His parrot watches from a cage in the far corner. With the opening of the refrigerator door, the bird shuffles on its perch and squawks, “I’m disgusting.”

“No,” says the Cyclops, his voice quiet, subdued. “You are beautiful.” He wets his cereal with cold milk.

The bird crouches, buries its head between its shoulders and bobs from side to side. Then it pauses. The bright yellow feathers of its crest rise away from its white scalp and flay upwards, spreading apart like the thin and vibrant pedals of a flower. It squawks again, a high-pitched scream, and then says, “I’m lonely and I’m disgusting.”

The monster winces. He turns and casts an awkward smile at his pet, a sad, bitter grin filled with rotten teeth. There is a moment of silent understanding between the two, and the parrot, eyeing him carefully, says nothing more. The monster nods and lifts his bowl of raisin bran and walks over to the cage in the corner. He opens its door. The parrot steps up with black feet and climbs aboard his outstretched finger. Touch. The pressure of tiny, rough calluses against soft skin. And with his bird and his breakfast the monster walks into the living room, past the crates of painting supplies, of frayed brushes and tubes of color, past the dirty dishes on the coffee table and over to a leather chair sitting against a wall.

A pale, white light, artificial and cold, fills this room just like it fills the rest. All windows are boarded with cardboard and duct tape; no sunshine, or prying eyes, can invade this sanctuary. Even the interior has been sanitized. Not a single reflective surface remains, not a mirror or chrome edge to an appliance, not a dark television screen, not a frying pan that isn’t non-stick, nothing where he can catch even an accidental glimpse of himself. He’s a monster, not to be seen. Others have taught him that much. For many years, ever since he was a little boy, he suffered whenever he stepped into the outside world. Children pointed and made vile faces; women covered their mouths with trembling fingers; men shuttered visibly and turned away, barely brave enough to follow him from the corners of their vision. Never again. Wrapped in the comfort of his home, supplied by stock options and food ordered over the Internet, he can now be left to live and die alone, as nature obviously intended. Well, not totally alone.

He runs a delicate hand down the back of his parrot’s neck, then gently digs an index finger into the feathers there, sifting through their oily softness. He says, “I love you. You’re my best friend, little fella.”

The parrot ruffles its feathers in comfort. It repeats in a garbled, almost robotic voice, “You’re my best friend, little fella.”

The Cyclops smiles and turns away. With all the delicacy of a bulldozer he begins to shovel down his breakfast, giving grunts of surprise and satisfaction with each bite. The raisins burst soft and sweet and jellied amid the crunch of bran flake—such contrasting textures have always given him hope for life. He slurps the remaining milk between his teeth, then sets down the bowl and sticks the nub of a half-smoked cigar in his mouth. The bird paces on the arm of the chair, its steps awkward, its feet pointing inward. The flame of the lighter pulses alive. It flickers high then disappears, flickers high then disappears as he again and again pulls the fire into the already blackened end of the cigar. He smiles, releases a plume of smoke towards the ceiling and sets down the Zippo on the corner table at his side.

An itch tickles the skin high on his left leg. He reaches down to scratch. His fingertips fumble across something raised and smooth, something that shouldn’t be there. He squints at the wall with annoyed confusion, his head cocked to the side like a dog. Probably just a swollen bruise, he tells himself, probably just some random welt from carelessly kicking a sharp corner in the house. He nods. Sits up and looks down. Lying there halfway up his left thigh, above his knee and below the lower edge of his boxers, is a round, almost glassy boil, pale and hairless.

The monster freezes. An uneasy panic rushes through him, instant and sickly. Goosebumps shiver over his shoulders, his neck, his bare arms and legs; a bubble of milk rises in his stomach and catches at the base of his throat. He reaches down and drags a fingernail against the boil’s surface, tearing and pulling away what seems to be a thin, watery film. He recoils backwards. Hands trembling against his chest, body ridged. Below him, as he watches, the lid of the boil retracts on its own and bunches against his thigh, revealing an eyeball, a single human eyeball complete with pupil and lashes and set in the flesh of his leg. Staring back at him. Darting around just slightly, moving over his face, his terrible features.

He screams. Reacts. He stabs the smoldering end of the cigar into this eye in his leg, he grinds the glowing red hot cherry into his body until pain ripples through his brain and all he can think to do is breathe. The eyeball pops and hisses beneath the cigar and a clear discharge drips down his calf and to the floor. He drops the cigar and screams again. At his side, the parrot flaps its clipped wings and tries to fly, tries to escape this sudden violence, but only manages to crash nearby on the carpet. Wobbling away and hiding beneath the coffee table, the bird squawks again and again, “They’re watching me, they’re watching me.”

“They are god damn it!” cries the Cyclops, his hands wrapped around the oozing wound. He picks up the cereal bowl from the tabletop and flings it crashing through the doorway and into the kitchen. “Believe me now, huh bird? Believe me now?” He points an accusing finger at the cowering animal. “And you called me crazy. All those years you called me crazy. But now you see, don’t you bird?”

With the side of its head facing the monster, the parrot eyes him carefully. It lets out a long and soft whistle, one that falls slowly in pitch, almost like the mechanical sigh of a robot. The bird trembles as it waits.

Groaning, the monster rocks back and forth in his chair and tries to squeeze the pain from his leg with his hands, tries to squeeze some numbness into the muscle. There’s no clarity, no answers, only pain and fear and what is. His vision begins to refocus. He looks up. Above him, hanging on the wall, there’s an oil painting of two black ants meeting beside the imposing rock of a breadcrumb, their antennae flicking together. The strokes are thick and jagged, beautiful in their simple crudeness. The monster grunts a laugh. Spittle drips from his lips.

The parrot whistles again and says, “They’re watching me.”

The monster glances down at his terrified friend hiding beneath the coffee table. Between the two, something else returns the stare. Another one, another watching, blinking eyeball ringed with lashes, another dark pupil moving over the monster’s face, staring up this time from the inside of his right forearm, from the flesh just below the crook of his elbow.

He spasms. Crashes sideways from his chair and to the floor. The eyeball in his arm squints. The monster covers it with his free hand so it can’t watch him, so it can’t even see him. Clenching his forearm, he climbs to his feet and staggers into the kitchen. The eyeball squirms and twitches against his flattened palm, tickling his skin. He shivers with disgust as he scans over the room, from the table to the fridge to the sink. On the counter sits a set of steak knives. He grimaces and shakes his head no. Beside them is a corkscrew shaped bottle opener. Vomit rushes up and tickles his throat. He forces it back down and turns to the stove. Relief flashes through him, sudden and pure and lifting some of the awkward weight that lies against his heart and lungs. He rushes to the stove and twists a knob on its face, causing a brief hiss of gas from a burner followed by a ‘whoosh’ of flame, a crown-shaped rim of fire surging up from beneath the cast iron grill.

He fumbles through his utensil drawer, his left hand still clenched tight to his opposite arm, each flicker of the eye’s lashes against his palm causing a fresh shimmer of revulsion, a fresh skip in his breath. Finding a tarnished ice cream spoon, he stumbles back over to the stove and lays its round, cupped head against the cast iron grill and into the flame.

Seconds pass. The eye shivers against the knotted muscles in his arm, deep beneath his skin. Wheezing, his breath wet with saliva, he cries, “Why, why, why?” as the fire curls around the spoon and blackens its sides, cries “Why?” as he trembles against the square shape of the stove, as the acrid smell of burnt metal streams up to him, as his heart pounds in his chest. It’s time. He wraps his left hand in a nearby dishtowel and grabs hold of the spoon’s handle. He lifts it. Presses it slowly into that jittery, terrified eyeball in his right forearm, slowly, slowly, as a searing wet sound fills his ears and a sudden stink of burnt meat fills his nose. There’s a moist pop. He gags and doubles over in pain. The spoon clatters against the tile floor. Waves of nausea flood through him, distorting and confusing his senses, his thoughts, tilting his vision and blurring the walls around him.

He breathes. Broken and sick, stumbling into the bathroom. He twists the cold-water knob in the shower full blast. Shivering, he climbs like an old man into the tub, his back and shoulders hunched. The water surges over his body, crisp and sharp and ice cold, numbing his skin and for a moment stealing his breath. He stands there shaking. Bent at the waste, those bleeding wounds in his arm and thigh pulsing with his heartbeat. Finally his breath begins to slow, finally his thoughts line up one behind the other, pulling apart from that jumbled muck of sensation. There were eyes in his body, human eyes, watching him. He isn’t safe anywhere, not even in his own home, not even in his own skin. Not for the rest of his endless, pathetic life. He nods. Long clogged with hair, the bathtub’s drain now begins to back up, and a layer of ice water collects and forms at his feet. Still trembling, he looks down. In that pool at the bottom of the tub is a reflection, his reflection, and in its center something looks back at him, another one, another eye, this one buried in the center of his face, just above the bridge of his nose. He cries out and covers his face with his hands. Darkness. Pure and simple and empty. Then, slowly, he peeks through his fingers and down at that horrid reflection in the water. And again an eye stares back at him. He screams and nearly slips on the greasy porcelain. He crawls from the tub with one hand clasped over his face, crawls onto the floor mat, shivering in darkness, terrified to look around, terrified to catch even a glimpse of light. Then a realization, shuddering through his body.

“Thank you!” he screams, his hands in fists now. “I can do it myself. I can do it myself.”

He looks up. Floor, light, and the kitchen beyond. A house cluttered with angles and lines and forced, artificial walls. He stands and hobbles through the doorway and over to the stove, where the burner sits ringed with bright yellow flame. The monster, shaking with excitement, reaches down to the floor and grabs the ice cream spoon, reaches down and lifts the spoon and once again places its round head into the fire.


He wakes to a clicking sound. The tapping of little finger nails against the tile floor. The bird is somewhere nearby and marching towards him. The monster lifts his head. Darkness surrounds him, gritty and filled with inky strains of thin, woven cloud. His head thumps with pain, a swelling pressure that floods outward with his pulse and squeezes his brain against his skull again and again. The bird approaches. Its raspy little breath and the clicking of its claws grow louder in the monster’s ears. There’s a pause, where the two are near one another; breathing together in the stillness. The bird gently kneads its smooth beak into the downy hair at the back of the monster’s neck, into the hair and against the skin. Touch. The monster smiles drooling, a bent, wet smile, crippled with pain and happiness. He reaches out awkwardly for the bird. His fingers stub against a wall. The parrot skitters away. The smile drains from the monster’s face and his breath quickens. Suddenly claustrophobic, he gropes out again, fingers jamming against another wall, against a table, against a stove. He panics. Crawls frantically through the house, dragging his body over the carpet and through the living room; the house forcing him forward, its walls and stale air squeezing him towards the front door. He reaches up and fumbles with a knob. Twists it and pulls open a door. Fresh air and sounds burst around him; the smell of sea salt, the hum of a nearby car. He crawls onto his wooden porch and into the warmth of sunlight. His heartbeat sears into his bleeding face. And he lies there, wet and curled on the hot, splintered wood.

Somewhere nearby a man speaks with a woman, their voices tangled into a single murmur. The monster listens, temples throbbing, whole body pulsing with the pain that forces his chin to his chest and that presses him further into the crackled surface beneath him. He listens and smiles like a beaten, delirious drunk. Senses creep past the ebbing tide of pain. Textures and sounds and many, many sights. Feels like the first time he’s ever seen his neighborhood, really seen it, the first time he’s ever seen the sun, with its dry and pleasant heat, or the first time he’s ever seen the trees that line the sidewalk, with the steady, fluid rustle of their leaves in the wind, or the first time he’s ever seen the small birds stacked along the power lines, with the hum of their flittering chirps mixed with the crackle of the wires beneath them. The Cyclops knows nothing and everything at once, a confused, mangled heap of life.

There’s flapping behind the monster. Wings grasping at the air. Then his parrot crashes beside him against the porch. The bird squawks loudly and clacks its tongue in its mouth. It shuffles around on the wood, and the Cyclops reaches over to these sounds and lays his hand out. Whistling little coos of amazement, his parrot climbs aboard his outstretched index finger, aboard his hand as it remains fanned out against the splintered surface of the porch, the bird tightening its claws and balancing on the shifting softness of the monster’s skin, finding comfort on a familiar perch in an alien world. And the sun warms them together. It dries the blood and fluid that oozes from the monster’s broken face, leaving hardened rivulets around his nose and lips that run down to the point of his chin, down from that burnt, empty socket.

Then, nearby, there’s a sudden gasping sound. The conversation between man and woman—that murmur of voice—now fades into a whisper and then seems to disappear altogether. And the monster smiles, big and ugly and free, soaked in sensation. Because even though he can’t fully understand it, not yet, he knows, in the quickness of his breath, in the tingling of his skin, in the blurring of his nerves into the textures around him, that he is invisible at last. And that, at the same time, this is only the beginning.