Digital Underground - uXu - Underground eXperts United #uxu-477

### ### ### ### ### #### ### ### ### #### ### ### ##### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ##### ### ### ########## ### ### ########## ### ### ### ### Underground eXperts United Presents... ####### ## ## ####### # # ## ## ####### ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## #### ## ## #### # # ####### ## ## ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## ####### ####### # # ## ## ## [ I Am Alex ] [ By Rich Logsdon ] ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ I AM ALEX by Rich Logsdon [Editor's note: The following story is the 301st in the famous but now defunct "Alex the Werewolf" series, which culminated last March with its glorious 365th issue. In this unusual piece, a collector's item which my staff and I feared had been lost to the public, Alex tells it all. We now submit to you, dear reader, the story entitled "I Am Alex," confident that Alex, Nicky, and Lisa will live on in the hearts of their approximately 25,000,000 blood-thirsty readers for a few years more. Editor, Bones and Flesh Review.] I. Grim reader, I am Alex the Werewolf. Or Alex the Wolf-God. Take your pick. Indeed, a psychiatrist's nightmare, I may be two different people - a kind of red and black, opposites dancing madly in one small dark circle. My duality is a fact that author/creator L. has repeatedly failed to take into account. Always, in story after story, L. pictures me in the company of my friends Nicky and Lisa, both good-natured but more often then not incredibly dim-witted ghouls, whom I met years ago at the Southern Nevada Fourteenth Annual Blood Feast, held just north of Searchlight. The point is I am never seen alone by you, the reader. I am defined and understood only in relation to these two other characters. L's creation of - and (therefore) your perception of - Alex the Werewolf is inextricably linked to L's characterization of two ghouls who, between them, likely do not have a triple-digit I. Q. and whose consuming passions consist of eating the flesh of the dead, watching Seinfeld reruns, and fucking each other to death like a couple of sex-crazed minks. I mean, let's face it: Lisa is one of America's new porn queens. (We've all heard of Lisa Lust, right?), and her boyfriend Alex is so incredibly stupid that he can't pass a class at the local community college. So please allow me tell you about myself. This narrative is to be the unfiltered, unexpurgated version of Alex the Werewolf as told to you, the rabid reader, by Alex the Werewolf. II. Where do I begin? Probably with the fact that I am indeed a werewolf, a thing living under the blackest of curses, separated (eternally?) from The Great Whatever; I am a creature who, during the full moon, becomes a huge, savage, demonic predator capable of tearing out a man's throat or removing his head in one swipe of my razor-sharp teeth. When I change from human to werewolf, the transformation is, to a certain extent, self-willed. That is, there is within me a device that is triggered by rage on my part and that therefore I likely could control if I so desired. I could apply the brakes, as my therapist is wont to tell me, and put aside, once and for all, this "attention-getting mechanism" of gleefully ripping someone's throat out. ("Thank you, Dr. Freud," I always respond at this point in the therapy. "Smithers," he always corrects me. "Whatever," I respond, knowing he'll miss the joke. Somewhat like the trinity, I then insist to my therapist, "I am two persons, one god: Alex the Wolf-God." It's about that time that he asks me if I need more medication.) Anyway, when during a full moon, in the company of Lisa and Nicky, I become the ravaging, drooling blood-thirsty beast of cheap serialized fiction fame, it's as if another timid Alex is still locked deep inside, observing his "beast" self dismember and partially consume a human being. Speaking for this meek side of my twisted self, I do remember the timid Alex's euphorically watching the huge black and white werewolf Alex seize the world-famous wrestler known as Pile Driver by the neck and toss this over-sized WWF bozo around like he were a rag doll out behind Pablo's Bar and Grill in North Las Vegas one night to the rabid cheers of at least 500 spectators. I, Alex, locked inside myself (it's like being stuck in a glass tube), thrilled to the death-screams of the man, whose conflict with Alex goes back to the night at Cashman Field that Piledriver put the hustle on the unsuspecting but always flirtatious Lisa, who had just realized stardom in the adult film industry. There is, thus, Alex One, who must be distinguished from Alex Two. Alex One is the seemingly nerdy, slightly effeminate intellectual who received his master's degree in English from Detroit University and who does indeed read Nabakov, Pynchon, Borges, Calvino, Shakespeare, Bahktin - everything he can get his hands on that has something to do with the development of Western intellectual thought. Indeed, at times, Alex One convinces himself that he is the apotheosis of contemporary Western thought. Dressed in mismatched clothes, wearing wire rimmed glasses, sporting a brown beard and mustache, this somewhat pretentious individual is the Alex that Nicky and Lisa - God bless their ghoulish natures - have come to know and love. Alex Two is as much a part of the total package as the intellectual academic who discusses Heidegger with topless dancers working at a nude bar like Stinky Pete's. Alex Two is dark and bloody, the depraved beast lurking within me that has convinced Smithers or Smothers or whatever his name is that I may need an exorcism more than therapy. ("Call in the priest, Dr. Jung," I tell him. He generally bristles, glares at me, comments, "That's Smithers." "Whatever," I respond.) Alex Two, in fact, may be the real Alex, Alex One operating as a convenient shield. III. There is only one person in this darkly created and conceived universe who fully appreciates my dilemma. The person I go to in times of gut-wrenching distress over my grotesquely dual nature goes by the stage name of Bangkok Annie. Surely, you've heard of her. She's gorgeous, a sexy little Oriental ("Asian-American," Smithers corrects me when I come to this part. "Whatever," I respond with a yawn) with pierced nipples and a rose tattooed just over her pubic area. You may know her as the stripper who has worked such Vegas nude bars of L's fiction as Pussy Willows and The Ninth Circle. Annie claims to be an angel or spirit from above, sent to help me in times of crisis. When she first led me to believe this, I thought her insane. However, it is she that grants me priestly absolution when, in the middle of an unbearable hot and long day, I am wracked with guilt over having taken the life of (for instance) that poor undeserving homeless woman who just happened to be in huddled on the street corner of Fourth and Fremont when, in a killing frenzy, I ripped three rabid Satanists limb from limb. (In my rage, I thought she might have been one of them). IV. To make the relationship between me and Annie a bit clearer I'd like to tell you a story. It was a dark and stormy night, the heavy, the suffocating scent of vampires and werewolves sitting on Las Vegas like a dark Pynchonesque fog. Evacuations were proceeding around the country. Huntersslayers, if you will - having taken over LA, New York, Detroit, and New Jersey, the night creatures had fled like mad rats by the thousands to southern Nevada, a sure refuge for anyone of a shady, demonic nature. I had come down from Detroit. It was in Detroit that I got my master's in English literature years and years ago, long before I was bitten. Life in Vegas was good for most of us. We went to the finest restaurants, walked the finest casinos, got comped to the big prize fights, got girls whenever we wanted. With millions of tourists pouring in from all over the world, blood ran like water, and we never wanted for a pound of blood. Hell, we ran the place, which became, in fact, a kind of Hell on earth. The surrounding desert became one enormous burial ground. Word had it that the hunters were staying away from Vegas, having conceded that environment to vampires, werewolves, ghouls, bail bondsmen, attorneys and the life. This was long before Nicky and Lisa. A bad ass in those days, long after I had been savaged in a northern Michigan forest by a werewolf who still roams the alleys of large Midwestern cities, I kept the company of two dubious friends, also werewolves, Eddie and Louie Genovese.("There is no such thing as a werewolf," my shrink counsels me, wondering I know if he should increase my medication. "Whatever," I say with a snicker.) Eddie and Louie were from Toronto via Detroit, and Louie was a vicious little prick any time of the day. He didn't need a full moon to fly into a frenzy and brutally beat someone senseless. Working by day in a Laundromat in Northtown, Louie would fly off the handle at the drop of a hat. One afternoon, I even watched Louie kick some daywalker - one who is not a werewolf, vampire, or ghoul - twice his size to death. In fact, Louie enjoyed it. The whole thing occurred because this poor schmuck didn't want to pay his laundry bill, which amounted to something like $2.47. Eddie wasn't much better. Eddie worked part-time as an accounting professor at a local college at the time. Eddie loved the women. Eddie's thing was to take one of his sexy co-eds home with him, say, once a month, fuck her, strangle her to death, bite off her head, and then drink her blood. What a life, I remember thinking to myself at the time. Where he disposed of the bodies, I don't know. I suspect in the vacant lot that lay behind his house. It's not my business. I never cared. Anyway, this is what Eddie was like when there wasn't a full moon. Eddie and Louie were rotten as they come. Of course, I wasn't any prince. I worked an adult book store down on Charleston, where I had the opportunity to mix sex and savagery. I'd pick out a real good looking guy, watch him all day long pop quarters, half-dollars, and dollars into our smut films, get off watching him jack-off to some peek-a-boo slut film and just wait for the full moon night. Then I'd track my prey into the dark and unlit parking lot out back and savagely attack just when he was opening his car door, seizing him by the neck, crushing violently (blood squirting everywhere in a delicious, invigorating spray), dragging him off into the Las Vegas night for a feast of flesh. I think of the three of us - Eddie, Louie, and me - I had the highest kill rate, by far. Anyway, everything was totally cool in Vegas back in those days. The hunters were leaving Vegas alone; southern Nevada was ours for the taking. I was sure that I had found my Hellish little Paradise when one night, feasting on a corpse out behind the infamous and now defunct Tarantula's Lil's, I encountered a hunter, whom I recognized by his overpowering death-scent. Feeling I was suffocating, I nearly gagged. At first, I thought I had become delusional, possibly because of my victim's very rich blood. After all, there were supposed to be no hunters in Vegas. But this one stood about 6'5", and while I mangled, played with, and finally devoured the corpse of one of the city council members under the dimly lit street lamp out behind Lil's, this lone hunter stood in the darkness about ten feet away, smoking cigarettes, and watched and waited, watched and waited. His name was Stalk. When I had finished and looked up at him, I recognized my enemy immediately. I tried to will myself invisible, sure that I had reached the end of my rope. His black satin cloak, extending to his motorcycle boots, his short-cropped yellow hair, his big golden earrings, and his one enormous eye (the other having been lost in a fight with me, believe it or not) gave him away. I froze as only a werewolf can do when it realizes that Death and Sure Annihilation is standing before him, calling him to a moment of reckoning, pointing the way to the endless black Void that awaits us all. All the werewolves had heard of Stalk, the black hunter whose coming meant that more hunters and The Angel of Death were on their way. It would be the tenth plague of Exodus all over again. I remember looking up from my mealI had lost my appetite - into Stalk's granite eyes that night out behind Tarantula's Lil's, aware that this vengeful black man had a heart of black iron. Sick at heart, I slowly, mincingly approached him and circled and circled, snarled and moaned, hoping to get a reaction as he stood and smoked cigarette after cigarette, insanely confident, singularly unimpressed, certain he could take me out in a minute. When I got close enough, he even blew thick clouds of smoke on me. "Long time no see, Alex," he quipped, in his girlish high-pitched Mike Tyson voice, blowing smoke rings into the night. He knew that I could understand him. A dark knife, his voice cut right through me, fear filled me like ice, and temporarily I felt estranged from myself, breaking into a thousand fragments, like I was disintegrating and being sucked into the Abyss. "Last time in Detroit, man, I believe, summer of '71? You took my fuckin' right eyeball." At gun-point, he had chased me out of Detroit to my abject humiliation, but that's another story. To hide my terror, I growled, I howled, I snarled, but really felt like pissing on the spot; in a burst of frantic, panicked fury, I then sprang right at him. Swift as night, predictably even, he stepped aside as I lunged for his throat, and I landed, awkwardly, several feet beyond him, on all fours. But of course I didn't think I'd get Stalk. When I landed, my plan was to keep running from but this crazy black son-of-a-bitch, to get the hell out of there with my life; but apparently (I didn't see him do it) he pulled out a small pistol, silver bullet inside, and squeezed the trigger in my direction. It was like being hit with a million volts of electricity and run over from behind by a locomotive at the same time. Instantly, but only temporarily, the universe became pitch black as the moon overhead went out. He had shot me in the back, shattering my vertebrae. Hit in the process of fleeing, I bounced forward and (as he laughed) rolled over, end over end, sure that I had taken the silver bullet of death. The blinding pain from the shot, which hit my spine, was intense, numbing, and I felt that I was burning up, the fires of the Lake of Hell consuming me. Paralyzed, vomiting uncontrollably, I finally lay on my stomach, blood pouring from my wound and my mouth. (It's usually at this point that Smithers or Smothers or whoever he is asks to be temporarily excused. Looking pale and wan, he then steps through the sliding glass door at the back of his office, takes out his pack of cigarettes, and, both hands trembling, smokes furiously for the next fifteen minutes or so, never taking his eye off the smooth-as-a-plate-of-glass pool that sits in the middle of the office complex his office occupies. When he returns, calmed, I resume.) Laughing like a hyena, Stalk just knelt over me, his gun pointed at my head, waiting to pull the trigger and lodge a silver bullet in my brain. He held the gun steadily and waited and waited and waited as I, my heart banging in my brain, lay on the ground, a huge bloody ball of predatorial flesh, slowly bleeding to death, my original form returning to me. "Lights out, Alex," I remember thinking to myself. I don't know why he didn't pull the trigger. As I lay nude on my stomach, gasping for breath, the rocks from the ground grinding into my face and forehead, I recall wanting Stalk to shoot me. I couldn't speak; I couldn't beg for my own execution. Instead, Stalk spit on me and kicked dirt onto my face, commenting "You're outta chances, Alex," and slowly walked away. I could hear the echoes from his hard black boots as he walked from the lot behind Tarantula Lil's to the street, where he had probably parked his car. The silver from the bullet started to work its poisonous effect. It really only takes one to kill a werewolf. Sliding into unconsciousness and losing total feeling in my arms, legs, and chest, I realized for the first time in my life that I didn't want to die. Nothing was worse than this threatened negation of my entire being. If there was a Great Whatever, even Prime Mover (assuming Aquinas was right), I wanted help, even if it meant not hanging out with Louie and Eddy or working in an adult book store. I remember crying out, or at least thinking, "Great Whatever, Endless Thing that lives above the clouds, if it is possible, help me outa this shit. Send me an angel. A devil. A hurricane. Anything. And take me back to what I was before I became a werewolf. Of, God, oh, God, oh, God, I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die." I was silently sobbing with what little energy I had left, actually panicked and unbelieving that the end was drawing near. A total, immense darkness was descending around me like a huge blanket, when I suddenly felt a touch on my forehead and a blast of energy that reminded me of the nuclear bombs the test site used to set off in the desert north of Vegas. The blast was a tremendous, almost blinding flash of light, in which I saw in one second the creation of the heavens and the earth, the great flood, the parting of the Red Sea, the giving of the ten commandments, the fall of Jerusalem, the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and the end of time, which was now. I heard singing in the sun. Light surged through me, lifting me off the ground, it seemed, blinding me to all but the terrific explosion of ethereal blue light. When the light faded, I was on my feet and saw standing before me a small Oriental woman, her eyes blue as I had once imagined heaven would be, singing a celestial song in the full-moon night. A werewolf whose life had been miraculously spared, I watched the girl until she stopped singing. Her words cast a spell over me. She wore a strip-tease outfit, like many of the girls that worked Tarantula Lil's: a thin g-string, high-heeled shoes, and no top, exposing small tits whose nipples were pierced by golden rings. Instantly aroused, I realized I had not a stitch on. I looked around, saw the dismembered corpse behind me, felt frantically up and down my body, felt for a hole in my head. Surprisingly, I was unharmed. There were no bullet wounds. I was alive, free to prowl again, if I so desired. "Who are you?" I asked this gorgeous Oriental chick. (Smithers sighs here, shakes his head, seems ready to give up.) She said her name was Bangkok Annie for the present, a dancer at Tarantula's Lil's, and an angel to boot. "You're shitting me, girl. Help me?" I said. "What does that mean?" I angrily insisted. I though she might be an escapee from a mental institute. She approached me, unafraid, and glanced at my manhood. "What it means, big boy," she began, coyly, "is that I am the answer to the little prayer you just said to yourself as Stalk stood over your body, wondering if he should blow you to kingdom come." "My prayer," I muttered, embarrassed. Werewolves don't pray. ("There are no werewolves," my therapist always reiterates at this point.) "'I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die,'" she reminded me, in a mocking but curtsey sing-song tone. "'Forgive me. Make me what I was before I was a werewolf.'" She was flirting with me, I think. She smiled up at me, came closer, and I instantly saw how incredibly beautiful she was. Her hair was black as a raven, and her lips red as blood. Though petite, she had a perfect figure and killer legs. I suddenly wanted her. I moved toward her in the darkness, my face inches from her face. I caressed her silken raven hair. Unable to resist, actually overcome by her presence, I leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, then on the neck, then gently on her warm mouth. Putting both arms around my shoulders, she said, "Not now, Alex. Gotta get back inside the Tarantula. But when you call, I come crawling. And then we can play." She let go of me and began to walk away, looking wistfully over her shoulder at me."Wait a moment," I began. I didn't want this moment to be over, but I struggled to get the right words out. "How did you know my name?" She stopped ten feet from the building and turned, facing me. "Alex," she responded, "I am an angel, silly wolf. You see me in your dreams. You call, I come. You can always find me." With that, Bangkok Annie turned and walked away, opened the door of the club, and went in. Stunned, I stood where she had left me. I looked around the parking lot and saw the remains of the corpse that I had been consuming before Stalk made his appearance. Then I walked over to the body, stripped it of its bloody clothes and dressed myself. I had no choice. I knew from that point on that my life as a werewolf would have to be different. As I walked down the deserted side street towards my apartment in the downtown area of Las Vegas, I silently vowed that I would never again take a life simply for the taking of a life. I forsook evil. While still a vicious and bloody act, killing would have to be done to serve some other purpose, like protecting somebody or feeding myself. V. The next morning, around 11:00, I got a call from Louie, who wanted to meet me at a Denny's out in Henderson so we could set up a couple of cute UNLV co-eds for a kill that night. I hesitated, the image of Annie flashing like a warning light into my brain. I refused Louie's invitation, bringing confusion and anger upon him. Never, never in the fifteen years that I had known him and Eddie had I ever even considered passing up a kill. This was, after all, Las Vegas. "What the fuck is wrong with you, Alex? You gone fuckin' soft, man," Louie hissed over the phone, sensing I think that I wasn't the same. "You quitting on me, kid, is that what the fuck you're doin', quittin' on me and Eddie is what you're doin', right? Right? I can smell a fuckin' quitter, and you're a fuckin' quitter, kid." I gulped hugely, said nothing, just waited for Louie to finish. "Listen, you worthless piece of wolf shit," he said, "you're not better'n me and Eddie. No better. You don't put me off. Don't you even fuckin' put me off. I ever see you again, you worthless fuck, I'll put a bullet into you myself. Shit, I might come and find you, dead mutt." Louie hung up, and I sat on the edge of my bed, somehow relieved that I had a chance to begin anew, even if I was still cursed. I also knew that, from that moment on, life was going to be a whole lot tougher. And I was right. Three nights later, I ran into Louie and Eddie outside one of Las Vegas' multiplex theaters. I had spent the evening watching classic movies about nuns and priests, trying to come to grips with the fact that I had vowed to abstain from killing for killing's sake. When I saw them walk out of the huge bushes behind the parking lot out back, I saw the red hateful glare in their eyes and knew they had come to destroy me. They approached with baseball bats, steel hooks, wooden stakes, and sledge hammers, beating me senseless and bloody. The ground out behind the darkened theater turned crimson from my blood. They struck me with the bat, nearly caved my head in, tore at me again and again with the hook. Struggling to maintain consciousness, panting, dying, prostrate, my human form reappearing, I remember peering through the film of blood that filled my eyes as Louie knelt over me; he had a wooden stake in his hand, Eddie encouraging him to get it over with. "Come on, man," Eddie would say, "just drive the fuckin' stake through this loser's fuckin' heart. Then let's go get sumpin' to eat. I'm starved." For some reason, when he looked into my bleary eyes, Louie hesitated; in the dim light provided by one street lamp, I knew then and there that Louie had actually liked me at one time; and I also knew that Louie was pausing just long enough to get his breath, that Louie hated me now and was going to drive the stake home. It was just as Louie had the sharp tip of the huge wooden stake ready to plunge into my heart that deep inside me I thought of Annie. Where are you, my little angel? I remember silently asking myself. Where are you, sweet Asian bliss?" At that moment, the darkness that surrounded us was torn by illumination and light. It sounded like a bomb going off, and the sky seemed to literally explode in a blaze of blinding glory, so suddenly that it frightened me. I thought that the stars in the sky had exploded, that eternal darkness was here, that we had somehow, without warning, reached the end of created time. I can only compare the sensation to witnessing a nuclear explosion for the first time: you're awed but terrified. The air around me flooded with intense light for several minutes, and I remember Louie looking up from me, terrified, and opening his mouth to scream. I saw his arms fly off his torso in a bloody spray, his body incinerated, exploding into a million drops of blood and ashes, as he sat on top of me. Louie had lit up like a Christmas tree light, and then, poof, he was gone. For good. The air smelled heavily of burnt flesh. Dazed, but still perilously weak, I struggled to sit up and looked around. All that remained of Eddie was a bloody pile of gray ashes. Curiously, my wounds had healed almost completely. I felt no pain. But I had no strength, and I felt terribly, terribly cold, like I was freezing. Maybe I was dying, a structure that had reached its point of maximum entropy. The wind seemed to howl around me. My mind was going numb. Then, when I sensed my own immanent and frightening dissolution and turned around to look behind me, I saw Bangkok Annie, this time surrounded in a bluish, ethereal haze. She stood four feet from me. "Close call, Alex," she said, stepping forth and kneeling, putting her small arms around me. Then she did something that I'll never forget: she kissed me on the mouth with lips red as blood. As she did, it was like a pleasant warm current were running through me, from head to toe. My darkly and coldly paralyzing panic subsided into warm sunlight as I rested in Annie's embrace, allowing her warmth to fill me. I think it was for the rest of the night, until sunrise, that she held me in the darkness, singing to me, somehow restoring my strength and giving me the desire to carry on. Around sunrise, my strength having returned, I was allowed to enter this angel. VI. And there you have it, grim reader ("Or Dr. Freud," I comment, grinning at my ashen-faced therapist, who has heard this story at least ten times.), straight from the wolf's mouth. This, at least, is what I was before I met Nicky and Lisa. It was years later that I met them at the Fourteenth Annual Blood Feast in Southern Nevada. Both ghouls were drunk from a combination of whiskey, flesh, and blood. Indeed, as I watched them that night, I was duly impressed by how much these two lovable simpletons could consume. They insisted that I join them; amused by these two, how could I refuse? That night, I glutted myself. I am, after all, still a werewolf. I need blood and flesh. ("You shoulda been there, doc," I always remind my shrink at this point. "I am vegetarian," he cleverly responds. He knows I am almost done and so can afford a better mood.) Anyway, Nicky, Lisa and I hit it off right away and we have been together ever since. And certainly, giving L. some credit, I have to admit that my association with Nicky and Lisa has had an effect upon the development of Alex. Perhaps I no longer can be understood separate from the two ghouls. But I like to think, I must think, that beneath the veneer of this Alex lies a truly vicious, evil predator who would destroy the good and innocent simply because it is good and innocent. It's because of the hideous evil prowling the dark forests of my soul that I must cling to Annie. Yes, I am afraid of myself. Besides, I'd be history if it weren't for Annie. But what the hell: I may already be history. At least, she makes balancing Alex One and Alex Two a little easier. She knows and acknowledges my potential for evil. She realizes that one day, if my meanness ever returns, I shall turn on and kill my best friends. I might even turn on you. For now, Annie is my sustainer in a world that has gone completely bad, that soon will be entirely consumed by hunters tracking werewolves, vampires, and ghouls. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- uXu #477 Underground eXperts United 1997 uXu #477 Call KASTLEROCK -> 724-527-3749 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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