Black Leather Required Read online

  Black Leather Required

  By David J. Schow

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2012 / David J. Schow

  Cover design by: David Dodd

  Cover Image Provided By:

  David J. Schow

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  DAVID J. SCHOW's short stories have been regularly selected for over twenty-five volumes of "Year's Best" anthologies across three decades and have won the World Fantasy Award, the ultra-rare Dimension Award from Twilight Zone magazine, plus a 2002 International Horror Guild Award for his collection of Fangoria columns, Wild Hairs. His novels include The Kill Riff, The Shaft, Rock Breaks Scissors Cut, Bullets of Rain, Gun Work, Hunt Among the Killers of Men (part of Hard Case Crime's "Gabriel Hunt" series), Internecine, Upgunned and the forthcoming The Big Crush. His short stories are collected in Seeing Red, Lost Angels, Black Leather Required, Crypt Orchids, Eye, Zombie Jam, Havoc Swims Jaded, and a not-to-be-named new book. He is the author of the exhaustively detailed Outer Limits Companion and has written extensively for films (Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, The Crow) and television (Tales from the Crypt, Perversions of Science, The Hunger, Masters of Horror). When a legendary movie poster artist asked him to write text for his next book of images, the result was The Art of Drew Struzan (Titan, 2010). You can see him talking and moving around on documentaries and DVDs for everything from Creature from the Black Lagoon, Incubus and The Shawshank Redemption to Scream and Scream Again (a BBC4 special about the horror film boom of the Eighties available on YouTube), Never Sleep Again, Beast Wishes and The Psycho Legacy. He is also the editor of the three-volume Lost Bloch series for Subterranean Press and Elvisland by John Farris (Babbage, 2004). He has co-produced supplements for such DVDs as Reservoir Dogs, From Hell, I, Robot, The Dirty Dozen Special Edition and Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe. His bibliography and many other fascinating details are available online at his official site, Black Leather Required: http://www.davidjschow.com.

  Book List

  Novels/novellas

  Bullets of Rain

  Gun Work

  Hunt Among the Killers of Men

  Internecine

  Pamela's Get

  Rock Breaks Scissors Cut

  The Kill Riff

  The Shaft

  Short story collections

  Black Leather Required

  Crypt Orchids

  Eye

  Havoc Swims Jaded

  Lost Angels

  Seeing Red

  Zombie Jam

  Non-fiction

  The Outer Limits: The Official Companion

  Wild Hairs

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

  Visit our online store

  Subscribe to our Newsletter

  Visit our DIGITAL and AUDIO book blogs for updates and news

  Connect with us on Facebook

  All of the characters in this book (with the exception of–I admit it–Cal Worthington) are probably fictitious. Therefore, any resemblance borne by any of them, or any parts of them, to actual persons of whom you may know, living, dead or otherwise, was invented by you, not me, and you're just going to have to learn to cope.

  Contents

  Introduction

  The Shaft

  Sedalia

  A Week in the Unlife

  Scoop Makes a Swirly

  Kamikaze Butterflies

  Beggar's Banquet, with Summer Sausage

  Pitt Night at the Lewistone Boneyard

  Jerry's Kids Meet Wormboy

  Life Partner

  Last Call for the Sons of Shock

  Where the Heart Was

  Sand Sculpture

  Bad Guy Hats

  Perps

  INTRODUCTION

  I'll begin this introduction by acknowledging that at least ninety percent of you are already readers of David Schow; so you know, or think you know (David can surprise me, too) what you're in for.

  That leaves a small percentage of new readers who have been persuaded to take up this collection for one reason or another, and have reached this point, and perhaps need further persuasion to continue (Schow? I've heard he can be awfully, umm, gross).

  I won't lie to you. Some of these are tough stories, and David can dish it out, he can bring it to you, I mean the violence and gore, until you want to go down on your knees and mumble for mercy. He can be as hard on your stomach as the double-loops on the Ninja at Six Flags or Magic Mountain. (I read most of these stories in two sittings, while battling a case of the flu, stuffed to the gills with patent medicines, and reached a state of phantasmagorical unease that has long outlasted the illness). I don't recommend that you take this collection to a sickbed. But I'm willing to bet that, if you have an interest in adroit storytelling, you will finish your reading with both a sense of satisfaction and a feeling of discovery.

  Good Lord, how this man can write!

  Like a Gothic Absurdist, an urbanized Cormac McCarthy, but with a hip, mean sense of fun. Many of David's stories are death-centered, but never predictable. In these pages the afterlife (which is somewhere within screaming distance of Hollywood Boulevard) is a busy place. Death can be fixed–up to a point. There are as many Undead roaming around his livid landscapes as there are sentient humans, and most of them seem to be having a better time (that good gruesome gang in the funny and poignant Last Call for the Sons of Shock). The undead can be philosophical ("There is no place in the world I have not lived," says the Count in Last Call. ". . .I walk unharmed through fire-fight zones, through sectors of strife. You learn so much when you observe people at war. I've survived holocausts, conflagration, even a low-yield one-megaton test, once, just to see if I could do it. Sue me. I was high.") or loaded with attitude ("Good old Russ," pouts Simone, the dearly departed sexpot in Pitt Night at the Lewistone Boneyard. "The king of second-hand gratification.")

  The dead also may be surprisingly useful to the living, in spite of a serious lack of mobility (See Life Partner, a story that creeps up on you–like JJ, who doesn't want that much out of life, just a perfect love and no back-talk.)

  There is, in this fine collection, an example of Grand Guignol-cumvaudeville that I hope someday to see on the stage; a sort of Undead Our Town, with a resonance of tenderness and good cheer that is a measure of David's ever-expanding talent; and an outrageous, living color shoot-'em-up called Bad Guy Hats that left me in awe of the perpetrator–he punishes you, then he winks and punishes you some more. Friends, I do this work for a living, and I'm not easily impressed, but the can-you-top-this operatic exuberance David conjures with mere words is a cause for, not censorship, but celebration. His dialogue ricochets and zings; his eye for detail is phenomenal; his phrasing acute; his imagination supreme.

  Dear David: keep bringing it to us. And for God's sake, stay dangerous.

  –John Farris

  Black Leather Required

  in Dreams

  the dead speak:

  you have

  but to listen

  The Shaft

  I made it to the rail just in time to watch Chiquita destroy an aluminum umbrella table, face-first, five stories below the balcony on which I stood. She missed the pool by a good ten feet. Until I s
aw her brains splatter all over the sun deck I hadn't realized she'd had any. Then the shit really started flying, and as Rosie says, when the shit starts flying you gotta be careful you don't inhale none.

  That's how I wound up in this sleazoid dump right in the bowel of Chi-fucking-cago, the winner of the Cockroach Club's Tenement of the Year Award, pushing nose candy at high school dips and sweating out centuries waiting for a goddamn phone call from Rosie. That's how I wound up peering down a hole another five-story drop, easy–and thinking, Jesus, man, somebody could die down there.

  I remember Rosie's reaction even clearer than Chiquita's swan dive. A textbook of cool in a shitstorm, that dude. He humped across the hotel suite on that bum leg of his, his face milk-white, and hustled me into the nearest vacant bedroom while the other party animals were still puzzling out what had gone down, I mean, besides Chiquita. I'd dared her to jump–but hey, it wasn't my fault; it was just the Peruvian flake being mischievous. Rosie made a hurried, whispered phone call. Then he crushed a fist-load of damp Franklin notes into my hand and told me my ass was bound for Chicago. Why? Because Chiquita was spread all over the poolside terrace on my dare, and she was Emilio's latest squiff, and Emilio would be jacked off enough about this little interruption in his sex life to have my bones broken in alphabetical order if he found me acting casual around the suite when he arrived. You know, nonchalant, a cold Chivas in one hand and a warm tit in the other, sucking up the comp snow and the beam-screen movies? Not cool. He'd bounce me out the window and I'd join Chiquita the way peanut butter joins jelly when you squish the bread together. And if I didn't tear ass out of there pronto, Rosie would help Emilio chuck me over the side, because that's the way the pecking order works. I understood. No hard feelings, huh kid? Splat.

  Emilio's talent for making his rivals evaporate without even leaving ashes was legendary, and Rosie and I both knew he could probably perform the same trick on anybody who crossed him. I didn't want to find out how it was done. Luckily for me, Rosie had the whole scenario scoped out in seconds. He made his pitch superfast: "Listen, Cruz. I like you. You're a primo runner and I don't want to see you become history. I know this guy in Chi; you can go north and hole with him." Rosie was the only guy I'd ever heard call Chicago Chi. He was kind of old-fashioned, but he dealt straight with me and I looked up to him, I guess. "I'll grease Emilio out," he told me. "Couple of months, no heat, I'll bring you back in. Emilio'll cool out once he gets a new bitch. But now you've got to get the fuck out of here, before the shit starts flying."

  "Don't wanna inhale none," I said, and he returned a sad kind of grin. I knew he was pleased I'd picked up one of his pet expressions; it made him feel like my mentor. I try not to be a bad guy, you know what I mean?

  I caught a cab and left my apartment phone ringing. It might be one of Emilio's bad boys, sniffing already. A few hours later I was freezing my cojones off at O'Hare Airport. For the record, O'Hare really sucks the canary. Baggage claim is in the next area code from where you debark. I had no bags to claim, but no idea where to wander. I'd never been a fugitive before.

  I finally located Rosie's pal, Bauhaus, tucked inside a cherry-red Corvette that was sitting in the loading zone with the heater running. Man, that car must've had eighty coats of lacquer; it looked as though it had been dipped in blood-colored liquid glass. Bauhaus was large and fleshy-pale. He chuckled at my clothes. Big joke. "We need to procure you an overcoat, boy, if you're planning on staying in this distribution zone for a spell."

  I grunted because I didn't want this asshole in the Giorgio Armani suit to know my teeth were trying to chatter the beat to that Asexuals classic, "Mister Useless." Once my legs warmed up, I looked at him and said, "So why Chicago?" I'd been dying to ask somebody that. "And don't call me boy."

  "Sorry," he said, eyes front, no handshake. "Off on the wrong toe. Let's start over." He rummaged around inside his sheepskin coat. "Thai stick?"

  I took it from him and fired up. All I'd had since Chiquita's big dive had been a couple of those teeny bottles of Johnny Walker Red and a toot or two in the can, on the plane. I welcomed a draft of sweet smoke. Bauhaus refused my pass and dug out a silver breast pocket flask with a blued dent in the cap. "Got my own insulation'," he said, uncapping and swigging and chuckling again. Jolly dude, this Bauhaus.

  We zipped past a lit-up welcome sign featuring the mayor's signature in two-foot high script. After a few inbound miles, Bauhaus said, "I'll tell you why-Chicago, my man. I got another boy–man, excuse–a runner by the handle of Nugget Astaire. Nugget is currently in the slam for porking some fourteen-year-old high school squack from Oakdale. They take Ash Wednesday seriously down there, dude. It's a dry township. No liquor stores, no sense of humor, and a jailbait offense is the pits there. It doesn't matter that the chick was totally blasted out of her gourd on cokesmoke and Lite beer. She and Nugget did it four times on the coffee table and her parents walked in on the climax of Act Five. She wins a bellyful of bambino–strictly dark meat, you hear what I'm saying?–and Mommy and Daddy, being staunch local God freaks, don't know what in hell to do except maybe lock her up in a nunnery after she drops. So Nugget's a gone gofer, because even if I could slide him free, I couldn't run him in Oakdale again. . .and the Oakdale High footballers need their dope to go ten-for-ten again this season."

  I held in my toke and grimaced affirmatively. Rosie had a way with logistics, making something that was useless in one place real important in some other place. And that is how I came to be subsisting in this scuzz-dump, staring down this particular hole.

  The building super told me it was a ventilation shaft. I didn't see how the hell it could ventilate anything, unless maybe you wanted to catch a whiff of your nearest neighbor's potty waft. By standing in the bathtub, you can look out a two-by-one casement window, across the drop, at another sealed-up bathroom window about ten feet away. Staggered above and below are other bathroom windows on all three sides, black and cataracted the way windows next to the shower always get, foggy with mildew and rot and soap scum. The shaft is lined with rusty corrugated steel. Whenever anyone in the building bathes, you can hear a tinny dripping noise. From my fourth-floor vantage it was impossible to make out the bottom of the shaft, even with a flashlight, but it must've been lousy with mulch and bilge and toilet leakage. It was an iron-pumper's task to pry the damned window open even halfway, and when I did I sucked in a smell kind of like humid fertilizer. It was impossibly dark in there, and suffocatingly close; you couldn't see a bloody thing up or down. The mouth of the shaft, up on the roof, was tarped over because of the snowfall. "Ventilation," right.

  From his hairy nose wart to his webbed feet (his wino style Converse All-Stars looked like toe-goo city, if you hear what I'm saying), Freddy the super was a total pusbag. And I was beginning to have revised thoughts about my good Bauhaus, who had set me up in less than palatial splendor. A whole week of dead, damned nothing had wasted itself without a peep from Rosie. I was unveiled as the new runner to some of the Oakdale boys (a Yuppified zoo of blonde-on-blonde palomitas with firm handshakes, PR grins and eyes like TV sets tuned to static snow). After that, the only times I saw Bauhaus were to either drop off cash or collect new dope. After ten days, I was getting high off my own supply–a business no-no, and always a depressing state. But my ass was bored fartless.

  I first heard the building's ghost moaning one day after I'd powered up on powder and decided to start cleaning my bathroom like a maniac. Coke makes your senses more acute; it gives you an edge. You fine-tune instead of getting stuporous. I focused my ears and the sound became. . .well, the sort of deep-gut, belly-hugging groan an alley drinker makes after blowing a quart of Thunderbird out of an empty stomach. There was a riot of peripheral noise in Freddy's four-story fire hazard tonight–battling stereos, slamming doors, Hispanic delinquents charging up and down the stairs, the black-and-tan newlyweds next door slapping each other toward court. Some derelict old white motherfucker downstairs was bitching about how the Jews were
overrunning the country "like rabid rats, storming a ghetto!" Typical Saturday night action. Yet past all this interference I could still pick out that low, creepy moan. It really started to bug me. And I'm a tolerant guy.

  I dug my fingers into my temples, rubbing. Then the phone went off. Instant migraine. I was hoping for Rosie and got Bauhaus: "Say, boy, how's your hammer hangin'?"

  Some righteous coke freaks experience hallucinations with what doctors call a "clear sensorium." Whatever your mind invents for your eyes to see looks correct because it's not overtly weird, like when you do acid and see chartreuse-plaid, Jell-O-breathing neon dragons. One dude I know got it into his head that there were tiny spiders crawling all over his skin. Normal tiny spiders, lots of them. It was perfectly believable. When he found he couldn't brush them away, he tried to burn them off his arms and legs with a propane torch. Like I said, I knew this guy, past tense. But I also knew the moaning sound was real; my brain had not manufactured it. I know what planet I'm on, and I'm not a drooling drug addict. And the awareness of that subtle, almost subaural distraction began eating into the back of my skull like a runaway dentist's drill. On top of this, I had to suffer Bauhaus: "Well, my Chrysler's all fixed. Even got new keys. How 'bout that?" It was a moronic code–a new stash was in. I'm sure Bauhaus loved playing the Man from B.L.O.W.

  Again, that vague hint of moan, of something in nearly silent agony, like cries for help in the middle of the night no one ever answers. It cut past everything else and locked my head up in a woodworker's vise of pain. "Hang on a second," I said, dumping the phone onto the bed since the cord would not reach to the bathroom. In there was the only window that wasn't iced shut, the one looking out into the air shaft, and I smacked the frame with the heel of my hand until the crookedly-mounted, rotting casement squeaked reluctantly open. Then I shouted out into that tunnel of metal amplification loud enough to hoarsen my tonsils: "Shut the fuck up!"