Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls Read Online Free PDF

in stone. Dust. His
old stuffed animals. A clay skeleton his friend Laine had brought him from the
Day of the Dead festival in Mexico, its eyes red sequins, its ribs dusted With
glitter. All the objects here, all the pencil drawings on the walls and
pictures cut out of obscure music magazines and secret lists in notebooks, wove
a web of power around him.
                 He
pulled his quilt around his legs and touched his ribs and hipbones, liking how
thin he was. Then the bedroom door opened, and painfully bright light spilled
in from the hallway. He jerked his hand away and pulled up his quilt.
                 “Jason?
Are you asleep? It’s only nine. Too much sleep is bad for you.”
                 It
might block my channels, he thought.
                 His
parents stepped into the room and he felt the web of power collapse and drift
down, broken strands brushing his face. Mother, fresh from her crystal healing
class at the Arts Center, looked exalted. Her eyes sparkled; there was too much
blush on her cheeks. Father, behind her, only looked glad to be home. “Did you
do your homework?”
                 Mother
asked. “I don’t want you going to sleep this early if you haven’t done your
homework. You know what your father and I thought of a smart boy like you
getting those grades last quarter. A C in algebra!”
                 Nothing
looked at the pile of schoolbooks near his closet. One of the covers was a vomitous shade of turquoise. One was bright orange. The
black T-shirt he’d thrown over them blotted them out. He thought that if he
stacked them all up, he might be able to build an altar.
                 “Jason,
I want to talk to you.” Mother came all the way into the room and squatted next
to the mattress. Her sweater was woven of soft iridescent wool, pink and blue.
In fascination Nothing watched a smudge of ash from the carpet transfer itself
before his eyes onto the knee of her cream-colored cotton pants. He raised his
head and checked the quilt; it was covering him decently. He thought he saw the
two small ridges of his hipbones poking up under it.
                 “My
support circle meditated with our rose crystals tonight,” Mother said. “I
thought of you. I don’t want to keep you from fulfilling yourself. I certainly
don’t want to decrease your potential.” She paused to glance at Father
glowering in the background, then let the great revelation fly. “You can get
your ear pierced after all, if you still want to. Your father or I will go with
you.”
                 Nothing
turned his head to hide the two tiny holes in his left earlobe, made with a
thumbtack and several swigs of vodka one day at school. The Jewelry Box at the
mall would not pierce the ears of anyone under eighteen without a parent’s
permission, especially not the ears of a boy in black who looked younger than
his fifteen years, who forged signatures on endless homemade permission slips.
And no wonder Father was pissed off. This was the final indignity: a son who
wanted to wear earrings.
                 “Wait
a minute. Wait one minute. Just what the hell is this?” Father crossed the room
in two strides and pulled the bottle of Johnnie Walker from under the desk. The
last gossamer strands of the web whispered past Nothing’s face and dissolved in
the air. He smelled the ghost of incense. “Young man, I think I would like an explan — ”
                 “Just
a minute, Rodger.” Mother radiated benevolence, spiritual wholeness. “Jason is
not a bad child. If he’s drinking, we should spend more quality time—”
                 “Quality
time, my ass.” Nothing decided he liked Father better than Mother these days,
not that he liked either of them much. “Jason is not a child at all. He is
fifteen and runs with a gang of punkers who give him a liquor habit and God
knows what else. He dyes his hair