Dermaphoria

Praise

From the reviews of Dermaphoria:

‘An experimental adventure … What makes this worth reading is Craig Clevenger’s extraordinary prose: the pleasure of text is everything’

Guardian

‘It’s dizzying stuff, and the seedy LA underworld is potent in its heat and squalor; no wonder Chuck Palahniuk is singing his praises’

Metro

‘What makes the book so unique, so compulsively readable, is Clevenger’s ability to make complex images seem so unforced’

Independent on Sunday

‘Playful, intellectual, carefully formed and stunningly executed’

Sunday Business Post

‘Part noir detective thriller, part crystal meth fuelled freak-out through bug-infested motel rooms, Nevada diners and low-rent strip joints’

Dazed and Confused

Dedication

To JILL NANI

Epigraph

We, amnesiacs all, condemned to live in an eternally

fleeting present, have created the most elaborate of human

constructions, memory, to buffer ourselves against the

intolerable knowledge of the irreversible passage of time

and irretrievability of its moments and events.

—GEOFFREY SONNABEND

Obliscence: Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter

From the first day I saw her I knew that she was the one

As she stared in my eyes and smiled

For her lips were the colour of the roses

That grew down the river, all bloody and wild

—NICK CAVE

“Where the Wild Roses Grow,” Murder Ballads

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Praise

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Keep Reading

P.S. Ideas, interviews & features …

About the Author

About the Book

Read on

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

one

I PANICKED AND SWALLOWED A HANDFUL OF FIREFLIES AND BLACK WIDOWS the inferno had not. Shiny glass teardrops shattered between my teeth while the fireflies popped like Christmas bulbs until I coughed up blood and blue sparks, starting another fire three inches behind my eyes and burning a hole through the floor of my memory. A lifetime of days, years, minutes and months, gone, but for a lone scrap, scorched and snagged on a frayed nerve ending and snapping in the breeze:

Desiree.

Hard as I try, a given recollection’s pictures, sounds and smells, synchronized and ordered first to last, are everything but, swarming back through the cold hole in my brain where they hit the waning light and crackle into smoke. Others wait until dark to show themselves. I can hold a picture’s fragments together for a lucid half second before a light shines through my eyes and they scatter, slipping between my brain’s blackened cracks. One memory after the next turns yellow at the edges and crumbles to flakes at my touch.

I smell rotted pulp, old newspapers crawling with silverfish, the dank, dissolving bindings of books I don’t remember reading. The stench gives me chills that turn to sandpaper on my neck and shoulders. My back burns if I lean the wrong way and I feel bandages but I can’t touch them. My wrists and feet are cuffed to a chair in a room built to the stark schematics of my own head. Peeling walls the color of fingernails, cement floor, an overhead light with an orbiting moth. I’m alone with three machines. Two are on pause behind me, a third speaks into a telephone near the door.

“I miss you, Snowflake…I love you too…bunches…bunches and bunches…yes, Mommy too,” his baritone whisper like the rumble of a distant train.

The machines are good. Whoever made them has all of my respect. Stunning detail in their faces, each loaded with a databank of behaviors for random interval display, all manner of mannerisms from coughs to sniffs, synthetic-cartilage knuckle cracks, biting lips and picking nails. The odor of static, the electric smell from a bank of new television sets gives them away.

“When I get home…okay, I will. Love you…bye bye, Snowflake.” Faint dial tone, the ping ping of the doomed but determined moth against the lightbulb, then the machine sits in front of me.

“My daughter’s been sick and I’ve been on overtime.” He speaks to me as though I’m a sleeping child and he’s about to kiss my forehead. He slides a cigarette from a pack with gold foil and some French name I can’t pronounce.

“Haven’t seen her for three days.” The snap of his chrome lighter chimes like a coin hitting the pavement. “You smoke?”

He’s engineered for sincerity and affection. The two behind me hide their eyes behind dark glasses, but his are exposed and big, liquid brown, radiating trust along with his voice. He wears an oiled-back, matinee-idol haircut and a tailored suit the deep blue of beetle wings and from across the table my eyes can feel the fabric, soft as a baby bird’s throat. He’s wired to smell like breath mints, cigarettes and expensive aftershave.

A tentacle of smoke gathers into a cloud overhead. It dissolves in the air between us and the smell stings my nose.

“No.” Conscious of my manners with him, I correct myself. “No. Thanks.”

“I wasn’t offering. Word is you can’t remember to chew before you swallow. I’m just seeing for myself. How ’bout it? You remember smoking? Maybe falling asleep after a few drags?”

Shaking my head hurts, pulls at my skin.

“You did it on purpose. Covering your tracks?”

His circuits pause midbreath. The smoke above freezes into a ball of cobwebs. The moth is eavesdropping and I can hear the blood moving through my ears.

“You have any idea why you’re talking to me?”

“Pieces of an idea.” My blood beats louder and I think I’m going to be sick, “Who are you?”

“My name is Detective Nicholas Anslinger.”

The slack in my chains is barely enough for me to reach his outstretched hand, sheathed in a synthetic polymer, mimicking my own skin.

“You can call me Detective,” he continues. “Tell me these pieces.”

I remember fire, but not starting one.

“I can’t remember,” he says. “I’ve heard this before.” His brown eyes don’t blink. They stay locked onto me. The damp draft unfurls a ribbon of cigarette smoke and coils it around my face.

“Let’s start with the spiders. How many have you made and how many are still out there?”

Which is stranger, that Anslinger thinks I’m God or that he can chain God to a wheelchair beneath a spotlight?

“Try this,” he says, leaning forward, “we found the galaxy.”

He’s right, I am God. It’s all coming back to me. Darkness and light, floods, seven days and angels feuding amongst themselves for my favor. I lost my temper and the firestorm killed my precious dinosaurs. Work it out, learn to compromise, I told them. After the platypus, I disbanded the committee and stayed solo. This created resentment, a permanent rift in the organization.

Anslinger reads from a notebook, “1964 Ford, two-door, hardtop, candy apple red Galaxie 500, registered to one Eric Ashworth. Fully restored, if you don’t count the blown back windshield and scorched paint.” He snaps the notebook shut. “Nice ride.”

I’m not God. I’m Eric Ashworth. It’s all coming back to me.

No, it’s not.

My head goes dark so the bugs will come crawling out. I squint through the blackness. I remember the sound of God cracking open the sky and shaking the earth. A ball of fire rising from a flaming house. Nails melting like slivers of silver wax. Beams and shingles collapsing into a pile of burning dust and the earth spitting them into the air. The angry fire boulder rolls down from the sky toward me. I run, choking back the spiders and fireflies fighting their way up my throat. More bugs will drop from the air at any second. Armored insects with polished, carbon fiber heads, giant eyes that shine like black mercury and can see in the dark.

A phone booth surrounded by nothing, and beyond the nothing, darkness. An invisible swarm burrows into my back, chewing through my skin as I call for help from the phone in the middle of nowhere. A light hits me from behind. I turn, face to face with a six-foot storm trooper mantis covered in armor plating, locked onto me with black goggle eyes. I crush it with the heavy plastic receiver before it eats my head and learns everything I know.

As little sense as this makes to Anslinger, it makes less to me.

“Your car was the only vehicle parked outside that house, of which there is nothing left. You assaulted the state trooper who found you at an abandoned gas station talking into a dead telephone. You were about an hour on foot from the burn site. The middle of the night, you could have died of exposure.”

“I killed a bug.” The bandages burn, my mind’s eye sees a stretch of oily black blisters and the healthy skin peeling back like the paint on these walls.

Pieces come together. Okay, I’ve got it. They crumble apart. I move my thumb, then try to remember moving my thumb. Got it again. Play each preceding second one by one. Whole minutes, chunks of hours follow suit, binding to the fresh fragile moment before until the sequence holds.

My feet and wrists strapped to a bed frame surrounded by bags, tubes and beeping boxes. A machine dressed in white lets me suck on ice chips and says I’m going to be okay. They cut skin from my legs and sewed it onto my back, he says. Another machine in white asks me questions and shows me photographs so I can make up stories for them. I draw pictures, work puzzles and piss into cups. The machine gives me a notebook. Writing things down will help my memory. The first machine slides a syringe into one of the tubes. I follow the surge of liquid down to the crook of my elbow but nothing’s there but a wad of cotton held with tape, my hands cuffed below a metal table and Anslinger sitting across from me.

My brain tries to kick-fire itself into working again. Nanostorm lightning burns the memory nest to a cinder, the drones thrown to their backs, legs kicking the air.

“This is the part where we sweat you, tag team good cop, bad cop,” Anslinger says. “Those are the rules, right? Not my style. You’re not in good shape. You rest for a while and we’ll talk again.”

Anslinger grinds out his cigarette.

“I’ve been looking for you, or someone like you, for some time. Beginning to think you were an urban legend. Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s good to finally meet you.”

two

BLEACHED WHITE SURROUNDS ME, VOID OF SHADOWS. THE WALLS COULD BE three feet from my fingers or thirty. My first instinct says I’m in Hell. My second instinct says the Devil doesn’t like me and my third says he can afford a better suit. He’s talking rapid-fire, like he’s been ranting at me while I’ve been in a coma.

“You will talk to no one about your case without me. Period. Not the cops, not Anslinger, nobody. If any doctors ask you anything not pertaining to your treatment, you keep your mouth shut. Same for any orderlies or nurses. Especially for them. You don’t talk to anyone while you’re in here, and when you’re out, you do likewise. Anyone with whom you speak can be subpoenaed, or worse, they could be a snitch or even undercover. Am I clear? Am I getting through to you?”

He speaks without stopping for breath or my answer.

“You say you can’t remember anything so, if and when you start, the prosecution will accuse you of selective recall and slowly gut you in front of the jury. Did you know they tried to get you to waive your right to counsel?”

“No.” I’m trying to hold his words together but they’re piling up too quickly, old seconds crushed beneath the weight of the new.

“Yes, they did. But you couldn’t sign your own name, let alone remember it. Things could have been worse. So remember, you talk to nobody about your case. Tell me you’ll remember.”

“I will.”

“Say it.”

“I’ll remember.”

“Remember what?”

“I won’t talk to anyone about my case without you.”

My case. I have a case. I’ve run a red light or I’ve been caught with a severed head in a paper bag. I’m scared to ask.

“We pleaded no contest. The judge set your bail at $50,000 for assaulting that state trooper and I’ve got a bondsman taking care of it. He owes me a favor, otherwise you’d be stuck here because you’ve got no credit or collateral. You’ll be released by this afternoon.”

“So, I’ve already been in court.”

“You spent your arraignment in a wheelchair, drooling with your eyes open.”

“And you and I have met.”

“Yes.” He clenches his jaw like he’s about to hit me.

“You and I met, and I told you to keep your mouth shut, and then you promptly forgot. Heard you had a visit with Detective Anslinger.”

“Anslinger, yeah. I thought the cops were robots.” More sound of rushing blood. “He’s a good guy,” I add. “I like him.”

“Stop liking him. And stop interrupting me. Okay, the bad news. The DA is going to try to convince a grand jury that you were the one making the stuff you OD’d on. Some combination of methamphetamine and LSD. The hospital says it nearly killed you and your long-term health is a crapshoot. Your heart stopped and they clocked you dead for eight seconds. You know what a firefly is?”

“It’s a bug that glows in the dark. They shock you when you bite them open.”

“Wrong. I mean the acid that’s been turning up all over Los Angeles and creeping up the coast and inland for the last year. They think it’s yours.”

His last sentence hangs in the air between us. I’m supposed to grab for it, but I can’t. He rolls his eyes and continues.

“They’ve connected you to the lab that blew, and Anslinger’s crew has walked the grid on the burn site at least a hundred times. The DA’s going to have a mountain of evidence for the grand jury, the register for which will be copied to me but not for another four or five days, so I won’t know until then exactly what they’ve got on you. In any case, I can almost guarantee they’ll hand down an indictment, which means you’re back in jail until your trial. Now, what can you tell me?”

“Nothing. I swear, my mind’s a blank.”

“Who’s Desiree?”

Your name numbs me like an animal dart and drops my thoughts in their tracks.

“I don’t know.”

“You keep saying that. You’re not helping. ‘Desiree. Goddamn you, Desiree.’” He reads from a photocopy, his voice monotone. “Ring any bells?”

My pulse races and I feel squirming beneath my bandages like a swarm of larvae is hatching under my grafts. There isn’t a damned thing I can do except wait for them to scar.

“You’ve got a week, then, maybe,” he says, repacking his files. “Your best move is to make an offer of cooperation. I need to hand them as much information as you can give me, who you were working for, your distributors, your suppliers, everything. Otherwise, get used to your surroundings for the next couple of decades. If I can’t make them an offer before your trial, nothing you remember once the trial starts will help.” As he stands up he says, “Snap out of it,” then drops a business card into my lap. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Hang on,” I say, then I’m blank. The thought flutters out, circles the overhead light in a long silence before it flies back into my head.

“Where will I go when I’m out?”

He’s quiet. I stare down at my forearm. The bandages on my back are damp from the seepage through the mesh beneath them. For a moment, I forget I’m not alone in my cell.

“I look like a travel agent to you?” He leans into my face. “You see a name tag on me? There a poster of the Caribbean on the wall?” He’s barking too quickly for me to say anything and it hurts to shake my head so I stare at my forearm again.

“You’ve got a good chunk of cash with your property envelope. I’m sure you’ll get by, just don’t be too frugal. Enjoy your five days of freedom.”

He raps on my cell door and the noise makes me twitch. A buzzer sounds and the door swings open.

“Check my card,” he says, stepping out. “The name is ‘Morell.’ That’s me, since you didn’t ask. In the future, make sure you know who you’re talking to. Call me when you settle in somewhere.”

The guard slams my cell door shut and my heart skips. Morell’s footsteps recede into the din of buzzing doors that sound like the electric flies in my head swarming to the surging lights of my memory. They’re tireless, but if I let them exhaust themselves, they might collapse into a pattern, forming some code in their scattered husks. I stare at my hands for an hour, hoping for a read on my age. If the steel mirror above the toilet is accurate, I’m a human blur. My mug shot is the foggy outline of a nondescript face.

A nightstick thunderclap against my cell door jolts me out of my knuckle and mirror speculation. A paper plate wrapped in cellophane slides through a waist-level opening. Four fish sticks, a biscuit, a plastic fruit cup and a carton of juice, shrink-wrapped at room temperature. The odor slaps me like the ass end of a summer garbage truck when I tear the plastic away. I flush the fish sticks and breathe into the crook of my elbow until my dry heaves stop. The biscuit and warm juice calm my stomach.

I stare at the white walls and try to remember something beyond the preceding seconds spent staring at the infinite white cement in front of me and the cement staring back. I log those seconds into my diary and hope for more.

three

THE SCHNAUZER BET IT ALL ON A BLUFF BUT THE BULLDOG ISN’T FALLING FOR it. The terrier and the Doberman have folded and all four act like they don’t notice me, sitting stock still so I won’t notice them. They come down from the walls, along with the black velvet clowns. I run my fingers over the unfaded patches of wallpaper, feeling for holes and tapping for hollow spots, checking the picture frames, lightbulbs, lamp stand, air vents, bed frame and night table for wires. I square off with the big-eyed, frowning circus hobos, scanning for microphones and microlenses. I plug the lamp in eight times, testing for juice socket by socket. Two come up dead. I unscrew the faceplates with a dime but find nothing.

My new cell is room 621 at the Hotel Firebird, a place too much like jail for me to believe I’m out. The hotel warden wears a T-shirt declaring his Vietnam-veteran status and conducts his business through a till inside a chain-link enclosure. Behind him, a massive ring of keys hangs from a nail above a stained baseball bat with “911” carved along its side. Above a small television, a sign reads: “No Visitors After 10 pm, No Loitering in Front, No Change for Vending Machines, Cash Only, No Exceptions.”

The residents are a mixture of men and women, recovering and relapsing addicts, and those squarely between either distinction. Some of the doors never open, others never close, the dealers and prostitutes working 24-7 for a piece of business or a piece of a mark, some runaway fresh from the bus station. The hallway lights have burned out; I navigate by the blue glow humming from beneath the doors.

My room has a sink in the corner, a bed, a night table and a small desk with a black-and-white television, a Bible, a deck of cards, a bar of soap, and the stench of every other resident who ignored the soap. Unlike jail, it has a window with a view of the street below. I open the window to let the fresh air in and the human stink out. Looking down to the sidewalk three stories beneath me, I hear an impulse whisper, “jump.” I stand still, let my arms go slack to hear the whisper again, then pull myself inside.

I sit on my bed with a game of solitaire spread in front of me. I know the rules but don’t remember learning them. The columns of faces and numbers make my head hurt and my bandages itch with static. My notebook awaits the next lucid replay of forgotten seconds, which have felt seconds away for the last hour. A slam of thunder sends the seven of clubs flying. My heart pounds heat to my bandages and blood flares into my new skin. With no forewarning footfalls, a polite knock is a pounding fist is a door crashing to the floor amid airborne hinges and frame splinters, storm troopers storming in from the dark, black armored bugmen aiming laser-guided stingers at my chest, awaiting the queen’s orders over the wires lodged in their ears.

This time, it’s only a knock. I’m face to face with a pair of Firebird residents who could just as easily need to borrow my soap as kill me.

“Do you have a tapeworm?” His words are soft, the beats measured like the pendulum swing of a pocket watch.

“No. Why would I?”

“Something you ate,” he says. His eyes meet the air to the left of mine as though he’s reading from cards over my shoulder. “Or the Man has you by the short hair of your balls. Or you’re on his payroll.”

He dips his chin toward his companion, a lanky stalk of a man over six feet with a tangle of greasy hair hanging below his shoulders. His face is the color of a nicotine stain and he has the blank, bloodless eyes of an old photograph, eyes held too still for too long and frozen onto a silver plate the instant after the flash pan sucked the soul from behind them.

“He can smell tapeworms. He thinks you might be a carrier. Happens sometimes with a new resident.”

His companion remains silent. He wears a knee-length black raincoat, oblivious to the evening heat. He could be stretched across a set of crossbeams in a cornfield as easily as he could be flesh and blood.

“Your friend is wrong.”

I start to close the door when he says, “My name’s Jack.” He extends his hand through the opening and his beefy grip swallows mine whole. His palm is slippery with the accumulated grime of a life spent neither working nor washing. When he lets go, his companion has stepped into my room and Jack follows.

His silent friend hisses through clenched teeth and slices a finger across his throat, Quiet. He turns my television on to a dead channel and a canopy of white static deafens any long-range listening. The hissing flickerstorm on-screen envelops me. My heart swells as though I’m listening to an orchestra.

“It’s like music,” says Jack. “The static is hundreds of millions of years old. It’s been flying through space since before time. Remnants of the big bang are strains from the symphony at the beginning of the universe.” He smiles and says, “I like to read,” then untucks his shirt. “I’m going to show you I’m clean. No tapeworm. No one is listening.”