Free William S. Burroughs by The Place of Dead Roads Page A

from a neighboring farm,
Jerry Ellisor, had been bitten by a brown recluse. A few days after
being bitten, Jerry came to visit Kim, and Kim asked him up to his
room.
    "Where did it
bite you?"
    The boy giggles.
"Well, uh, it's in a kinda funny place."
    "Show me,"
said Kim firmly. He knew this boy was very tractable and would do
whatever anyone told him to do if he used the right tone.
    The boy blushes and
drops his pants. He is wearing no shorts. He sits down on the bed and
points to a spot on his inner thigh near the crotch, a sort of crater
of red-purple flesh, black toward the center. Kim sits down beside
him and touches the bite gently. The boy licks his lips and slips Kim
a startled glance. Kim can see the blood rush to the boy's crotch.
    "Did it hurt?"
    "Not until
later. I was sick all over."
    "Well, it's a
good thing he didn't bite you here." He touches the crown
of the boy's cock, which is already slightly tumescent...
    "Or here."
He turns the boy's cock over and touches the spot just below the
crown in front. "Or here." He touches the boy's tight nuts.
The boy is getting a hard-on. He leans back on his elbows, his cock
arching up and pulsing.
    "Hey, let's see
you naked too."
    "All right."
    Kim strips and
stands naked in front of the boy and looks at him appraisingly
through narrowed eyes. His cock is getting stiff. He sits down beside
the boy, who feels his cock and says, "Be careful a Brownie
don't bite you here." Kim rolls him back on the bed tickling him
and the boy rolls around laughing uncontrollably.
    He lights the
candles in the two back rooms, picks up the canvases in the studio,
and lights the candles there and downstairs, shuts the doors and
puts signs on with skull and cross-bones.

    danger
do not enter, fumigation in progress

    He puts the 44 back in his bag, takes out the 38, picks up his "alligator" and walks down to the outhouse,
stopping to put six small condensed-milk cans on top of a stone wall
opposite the door of the outhouse, feeling the slow movements of his
intestines, rather like a great brown river he thinks, like I had the
Amazon inside me — liquid gurglings and
seeps and slops. The outhouse is under an apple tree. His father said
it would make the best apples and Kim used to plant morning glories
to climb over it. He opens the door. Inside are two seats side by
side with covers. He lifts the covers, running his hands lovingly
over the smooth yellow oak — he'd
sandpapered it and waxed it himself. He looks down into the pit and
there is just a faint rotten smell of lime. He puts the "alligator"
in front of the other seat, takes off his shirt and hangs it on a
peg. He drops his pants and sits down on the seat with the gun in his
hand. He poses for a picture entitled The Long Journey. Kim
waves.
    Now he waits until
he doesn't have to push at all, his ass lets go and he starts
shooting and with every shot a can flies off the wall and powder
smoke drifts back across his face with a faint smell of fresh
excrement. The sensation is intense. He leans back and stretches and
reloads the 38. He knows that people
often lose control of their bowels when they die so to shoot right
from his opening asshole is powerful magic. He pulls up his pants and
picks up his "alligator" and lights a sulfur candle,
staying just long enough for a whiff of brimstone before he closes
the door. So many smells are nice if you don't get too much, like
skunks and cyanide and raw meat and carrion.
    He walks down to the
barn, where he finds the millstone of the dream sunk in the dirt
again. He pries it up with a rusty crowbar and leans it against the
wall. An exposed scorpion sidles about, tail raised. Kim draws his 38 and the scorpion disappears in a smoky flash, writhing
fragments around a black hole. With a rope and pulley he lifts the
millstone and lowers it onto the two sawhorses to form a table where
he lays the guns out at the cardinal points of the compass. With
drawing paper from the studio he draws four man-sized