The Holy Terror by Wayne Allen Sallee Read Free Book Online Page A

race. Only the street was deserted. The gangbangers and psychos never strayed this far east, and the clubbers still had a few hours to spritz their hair and primp in the mirror before fashionably showing up at the bars just as they were getting crowded. Even Washington Square Park was empty. Known as Bughouse Square to the natives, because of demonstrators in the park during the fifties, the tree-lined paths crossed each other just a block north of the apartment that was still in Uncle Vince’s name. Later, young and old men both would feel each other up on the green park benches. It was here that John Wayne Gacy met many of his victims in the late seventies, driving back to his house on Summerdale to give them the ultimate sex thrill.
    So it was that no one saw him vomit on the sidewalk in front of Melone’s Baptist Ministry, within sight of his place. Long and hard projectile vomit, black and bloody. Shooting it out across Dearborn Street like his body was a lawn sprinkler.
    What went wrong? Didn’t He say that it would be fine?
    His body was rejecting the black street hustler. All there was to it.
    But. . . why?
    Haid fell to his knees, then to the ground—sudden as a kid with drop seizures—the dirt at the curb collected with the grey already in his hair. When he stood, carefully, his hair was a dust mop.
    He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket. Bringing his arm in a curve to his face, Haid’s Book of Psalms tumbled from the inside pocket. It dropped into the puke. Bluish splotches peppered the edges of his sight.
    He doubled over with the dry heaves once more before finally collapsing inside his front door, the kitchen tile cool to his face.
    As it was in the days when he hanged with Cassady and Barre over at Massie’s, he felt thoroughly shit-faced. The obsessive-compulsiveness kicking in, Haid held his breath, head cocked to the only other room in the apartment. He didn’t want to wake Father. Then he remembered that Father lived within him now, He rested on the cool kitchen floor.
    The relief was shortcoming; no sooner had he relaxed then his bowels loosened. He hurried to the small bathroom, hideously pasteled and cheerful, pounding the light switch on as he again fell, this time towards the bowl. Portrait of the man: pants around his ankles, his ten-yard stare just above the yellow-brown crap stains that bulls-eyed his BVDs.
    His defecation was long and constant.
    It was his cross to bear.

    * * *

    Haid had fallen asleep on the shitter, head tilting to the left the way a commuter’s on the El did. He dreamed that Father had an explanation for him.
    The night of September 27th. The nurses and the doctor attempted to shock his heart back to life, but he was dead. Haid knows this with all his heart. But he cannot cry.
    On the television screen, right there in the post-trauma wing at Henrotin, the TV that Vince Janssen was watching when he coded out, was the premiere of a cop show, set in 1963 Chicago. The prowl cars were Mercurys, the skyline in the credits was washed in cloudless blue.
    In the dream, as in real life, Haid has listened to a theme song by Del Shannon: Watching all the planes go by, some live and others die, well I wonder...
    Others die. Others die. Others die.
    He realized what had to be done. Thy will be done, the man in the holy fire had whispered in his ear. Had demonstrated the healing power that lay dormant in Haid. Until the day of September 27th, 1988. The Year of Our Lord.
    Son must heal Father.
    Jesus wept.
    He could save his god.
    The dream shifts.
    If he was doing what Father wanted, why had he gotten sick after leaving Couch Street? Why?
    The dream flutters back...
    Haid rushed to the window overlooking Oak Street and stared up at a sky that murdered the stars long ago. And in that polluted sky he sees the blackness of the monte dealer’s face, filled with false twinkle.
    He heard the shump shump of the machine, EKG, EMG, whatever its initials, his Uncle Vincent had coded