Apex Book Company

Blakenjel bilong mi is black like unlit coal. His open wings are like smokers’ lungs. His skin is taut and fine like expensive vellum that was blackened in flames. There are many blakenjels, but only one bilong mi. I follow him in the darkness.

“Smell this!”

“Sniff my hair!”

“Taste my breath; it’s fresh; it’s fresh!”

“Remember ice-cream? Oranges? Soap? Authentically guaranteed, the smell like you remember!”

But there is not much call for that.

“Sniff my armpits! Real human sweat!”

“Toes! Toes! Inhale the smell!”

And further down the road of Stenchtown, away from the fake smells of oranges and soap, where the great unwashed line the road and put the merchandise on display. At the far end, one white boy almost naked but for a thong. Angelic-looking, almost hairless, fine blond hairs that lie like newborn wheat along the pale contours of his body.

The sniffer comes close to the boy. He wears a dark coat, too hot for this city, this place. His eyes are hooded. The boy smiles. “Smell my crotch?” he offers. The sniffer looks and doesn’t speak. The boy shifts in place and tries again. “Armpits? Hair?” the usual routine. The sniffer doesn’t speak, and the boy’s smile suddenly grows wider. “Sniff my ass?” he whispers, and there is something unspeakably lewd about the way he stands. “Stick your nose deep inside my asshole, let the nostrils touch the brown ring?”

The sniffer twitches in place, and the boy smiles like a predator. “I just had a shit half-an-hour ago,” he confides. “Not wiped, either. Soon as I saw you I could tell you were a connoisseur.”

The sniffer comes closer. His voice is like rusted blades being scraped. “How much?” he says.

“Thirty.”

“Ten…”

“Twenty-five and you can stick your tongue in there, too.”

“Fifteen–” The sniffer doesn’t quite finish the sentiment. His body twitches and his face, which was sheathed in the darkness of the street, becomes visible. The boy steps back, but there is only the wall behind him. He says, softly, “Shit,” and for once it isn’t sales-talk.

It’s fear.

The sniffer smiles. His face is a horrid, writhing mass of unquiet flesh. His eyes are large and round and inhuman, clear and strangely innocent in that ravaged face. He has no nose, but two slits for nostrils gape out of the moving, worm-like scars. “Smell… good…” the sniffer says. His mouth is a jagged line filled with small sharp teeth like a predator-fish. “I… I don’t do f…fear,” the boy says. “Go somewhere else!” But of course he knows it is too late, that he made a bad mistake, and you are not allowed mistakes in this place, this time. The boy whispers, “Open Sore.”

The sniffer raises his arm. His hand extends and grabs the boy’s throat with ease. His nails are claws, long and black and foul. The boy chokes. The smell of shit fills the air, free, and the sniffer’s mouth opens in what may be a smile. A red worm-like tongue protrudes and searches the air.

“P…please,” the boy says, but quietly. “Don’t.”

The other hand reaches for the boy’s crotch. Pulls aside the narrow thong. The boy quivers but remains silent. Perhaps he thinks that this is how it ends–with fear alone, and not with death. But of course that is only delusion. The swamp-thing will kill him when it is done. And so the boy does the only thing he can think of, and in his fear he prays, and so he says, almost inaudibly:

“Blakenjel. Blakenjel bilong mi.”

In the darkness something moves and halts. Fine leathery wings beat once and are still. The blakenjel listens. It is hard to tell what he does next. I cannot see in the darkness, only guess. There are no distances in the darkness.

The sniffer’s face comes close to the boy’s. The naked nostrils open and close like air-vents. The red-worm tongue quests along the boy’s skin. The sniffer shudders. So– although for a very different reason–does the boy.

Suddenly the sniffer’s head is jerked back. His eyes stare at the boy, a few inches away, eyes clear and blue, the way the sky once was. Slowly, there is a strange, soft, sucking sound.

The sniffer’s left eye disappears inside its socket. There is a wet-red tunnel through his skull. The eye is like a false opening at its end. The eye moves away like a locomotive through his brain. The sniffer tries to scream, perhaps, but the only sound coming from his mouth is the sound of loose nails falling. His hand lets go of the boy’s crotch. The boy feels wetness running down his legs. The sniffer’s other eye disappears with a quiet plop. An eyeless thing stares at the boy, no longer seeing. Then the sniffer falls to his knees.

Behind him there is only darkness. The boy shakes but manages to bow his head. There is a price to pay, there always is, but every time it’s different.

In the darkness I can suddenly smell him, my blakenjel. He has acquired smell. His smell is not pleasant, although it can be intoxicating. It is the smell of fear. My blakenjel flies through the darkness, and I follow his scent.