born with the gift of a golden voice

Sonny and Cher are dead. Frank Sinatra's dead. Diana Ross is dead. Tom Jones is dead. Bruce Springsteen's dead, undoubtedly somewhere in Jersey. Those guys with the tigers are dead, and maybe the tigers are too. Larry Underwood is up in the penthouse suite, waiting for the fire to reach him -- another stupid senseless casualty of this shitty situation, maybe it was an electrical misfire or maybe it was sabotage or somebody trying to warm their hands over a kitchen burner and sparking off lingering gas fumes. Maybe it was a bolt of lightning.

Black smoke rising, and the door barricaded nice and firm. If Larry had been asleep it would have overtaken him painlessly, but he wasn't asleep, he hadn't slept in three days. He was bugging out. Bugging out, with no more food, and no more water -- he'd filled up the marble bathtub to its pearling edge as soon as things started sounding bad outside, the kind of thing you're supposed to do for earthquakes or thunderstorms or power outages or something, but the water had gone sour and run down the pipes within the day. What came out the tap after that was grimy black, and it tasted like death.

No food and no water, but plenty of liquor and plenty of blow -- and when the locked door began to grow warm under his touch Larry's first thought had been, shit, how am I gonna get all of that coke out of here? Gasping through the smoke, feeling his throat burn -- and thinking I'm never gonna sing like this, what the fuck just like his burned fingertips from forcing the steel doorknobs were going to make it a bitch to play guitar --

"Are you in there, Larry Underwood? You better speak up."

--and the flames were gone like they'd never been there, and the Dark Man was there instead

He hadn't extinguished the fire, he'd only tamed it, made it his plaything -- made it abate like a junkyard dog brought to heel.

Larry cannot speak, can only crackle and spit with a dry throat. Larry, crouched low in the postures of a man about to die -- and the Dark Man, tall and straight-backed with an easy span of limb.

"That was some close call, Underwood."

He could have wept, he could have fallen to the soot-streaked carpet and kissed those battered boots. And that had been the start of the new regime for Larry Underwood.

*

Clean yourself up, make yourself presentable. It's just like preparing for a night's performance -- the timeline's been handed down to him, the performance is just different, that's all.

Fresh clothes, fresh soaps still in their paper wrappings. Green glass bottles of Perrier, naturally sparkling from the center of the earth and all that shit. The man Lloyd Henreid is Flagg's intermediary -- bringing him all good things with the Dark Man's compliments.

Larry lets the hot water scourge the fear out of him -- scrubbing the stink of fear-sweat from under his arms and around his throat and between his legs. He must be in bad shape if they're sending Lloyd Henreid to give him the old spit and polish. These people swarmed into Vegas like ants pouring into a roadkill carcass, but they've got the hot water running, so they can't be all bad. They sound like ordinary people, decent people, with the requisite rough edges.

Larry looks at himself in the mirror, looks at his thin cheeks and chapped lips, though his hair looks paradoxically more lavish than ever. If he could have gotten it to look like this before everybody on the face of the planet bit the dust, he could have been an even bigger star -- stratospheric, meteoric. His face is stinging from the razor, but the loss of his stubble only makes the shadows under his eyes more prominent. He'd laid out his best jeans, a silk shirt, a cord bracelet with a black stone. Henreid wears a black stone, but not like this. He won't be wearing them for long, anyway.

*

No more coke. The only thing he'll be getting messed up on now is what the dark man brings him. These people are Flagg's people, and their resources are Flagg's resources, from the canned hams and ketchup to the aspirin and antacids and blow. Flagg does very bad things to people who get high without permission.

Lucky, lucky, lucky. Lucky to be living out the last legs of his tour in Vegas, where nobody sleeps; lucky the hand of death went not you, Underwood, and sent him off to take his union five in some anteroom while the rest of the species choked and died. What does Flagg give him? Stacks of paper money, rubber-banded, sheathed in paper.

"I'll pay you ten thousand dollars a night to sleep with you. How's that sound?" Flagg flicks a couple hundred-dollar bills at him off the top.

Bills from some casino counting-house, once pawed over by old women in plastic visors and men with adding machines, now requisitioned by Flagg. He could be throwing down Monopoly money, or old newspaper, or big thick wads of German marks, for all it means in the hideous new world of now.

"That sounds like a lot of money," Larry says stupidly.

"Twenty thousand. Think of twenty thousand dollars. For that much money, you'd have cleaned a Greyhound station toilet with your tongue "

Once. Once, he'd have taken that money. How long did it take, until none of it meant anything? A month? Two months? How long has he been here?

Flagg pours him a glass and holds it to his lips. Larry can't help but stare at him, any more than he can help drinking -- Flagg's hand is a gentle pressure on the crook of his neck, and his throat has never felt more dry, his lips, his tongue. Dry as the desert.

How long has he dreamed of being here? Not being here, but the dream of being here -- spread-eagle on a luxury mattress with a view of the most expensive skyline west of the Mississippi spread out in front of him like a panorama and some eager young thing hard at work between his legs. The best sheets, the best booze on ice, the best of everything. Larry Underwood, the indisputable main attraction, the boss of this whole operation. Hadn't that been what he'd always wanted? Larry's not the boss; he's the thing for sale, and he's selling cheap.

The Dark Man is the man they're all here to see. His lieutenants look at him like he's the original Jesus; they all want his favor but they're scared shitless of his attention. Larry has nothing but his attention, the warm liquid loving gaze of his black and fathomless eyes.

The Dark Man moves over him, cruel mouth grinning. He tears open the button fly of his jeans, where Larry is already hard enough to regret the selection of a button fly in the first place, and thrusts in a dark hand to squeeze. Larry cries out, twisting away, and Flagg grips him in a kiss.

That merciless mouth is like a cold sheath -- he sucks Larry's fingers obscenely, when Larry tries to put out a hand and push him back, and an involuntary sound escapes him. Flagg's mouth is cold, cold like metal, and his tongue leaves a cold spot on the roof of Larry's mouth like a pool of water.

Those long bones sliding over him -- like a backstage tangle of limbs, only he's the little lost groupie, awed by Flagg. He's got to endure this. It's not the worst thing Flagg could make him do -- he could let his cronies do it instead, and they would, without question. One long gangbang stretching from here to kingdom come.

"Are you holding out on me, Underwood?"

"I wouldn't do that." Larry's voice is thick and broken.

"We don't have to be enemies. We'd be better off as friends." There's something awful in his eyes, an awful clear conviction -- you could almost believe him. There are lights chasing in his eyes, mesmerizing glints of gold.

He wants nothing more than to tell this guy to fuck off, and the moment he does that the shit's really going to hit the fan -- something really, really, really bad is going to happen

Flagg's belt buckle has the signs of the Zodiac on it. He could be a record promoter, or a dirty hitchhiker, or another sunbaked West Coast refugee. Larry runs his fingertips over them, trying to find his own sign.

"Looking for something?"

They're not Zodiac signs, after all, they're something else, something with little crossbars and hooks and lines. Larry shuts his eyes

"Whatever you want me to do, I'm not going to do it. It can't be any worse, I mean, than it was already gonna be."

Flagg makes him shimmy down his blue jeans and tug apart his knees. Flagg makes him spit into his hand. He's soft with him at first -- careful-handed, pressing and parting, steadying him with a hand on the corner of his hip. Larry doesn't want to touch him -- but he can't help touching himself, distracted and removed with confused fingertips piecing apart the buttons on his silk shirt. He can find the shallow divot of his own sternum, the soft line down his belly. He is trying to breathe, and trying really hard not to give a fuck about what comes next. A hand on his dick, maybe, except this guy doesn't seem too interested in assuring he has a good time per se. A memorable time, certainly.

What were those symbols, anyway?

Flagg pierces him and penetrates him with the dispassionate finesse of a surgeon, silent as the grave but easy as anything. He can make him like it, bending him back -- Larry sucks in a breath and bites his lip and tries not to do anything to betray himself. Fingers piercing, working into him while the traitorous press of his thumb digs in between his asshole and his balls -- oh God, don't let this guy get the bright idea to handle his balls because he's already so hard he's breathing funny, confused with himself and furious. It would be one bitter thing to be taken by force, some messed-up kind of Deliverance thing, but this is so bad. The denim of Flagg's jeans rasps against Larry's thighs, the clank of his belt keeps time.

"Make a little noise for me, Larry," Flagg says, but disgust and confusion have made him nearly mute and instead of making a wiseassed remark Larry whimpers like a kid.

Flagg clasps a hand behind his neck, in the tangles of his hair, and strokes an affectionate path with his thumb. This isn't even how he ever thought of fucking, or being fucked -- something detached and removed, best done from behind with whips and chains and spit and leather. The head of Flagg's cock catches inside him with each pull and thrust, some kind of impossible motion with the flexible iron tension of Flagg's body braced against him, a whipcord strength that sends his brain spiraling off to some other place. Not cracking up exactly -- the time to crack up would have been long before this, but instead, in this moment he is hopelessly and disgustingly present, painfully sane. His dick is leaking, crushed against his belly, and Flagg's fingernails dig in like razor blades against the back of his neck. They gouge like claws, like talons.

Something is moving inside him, something impossible is happening. Flagg presses between his legs as inexorable as a steam engine, driven in deep and piercing -- Larry cries out at last because it seems like the thing to do, and Flagg nuzzles his neck, breath turned hot and acid. He screams, hoarse jolted cries, and nobody hears him.

Larry Underwood feels like girls must feel -- broken apart, blown apart like a bomb, with Flagg pouring into him like a hothouse snake and twisting and writhing inside him. He comes and comes again, white-hot and blind -- erection kicking against Flagg's hard belly, balls hitched up. He comes until it hurts and keeps coming, with Flagg's cock inside him doing impossible things to pulverize his tenderest places.

His eyes are shut tight and the smell of smoke is in his mouth, his nose, his throat. Flagg keeps up his pace long after it seems impossible, and his climax is like hot lead pouring out, like the swing of a guillotine blade. All at once, and then ka-chunk, done. Afterward, Larry is unstrung, boneless and clawed -- unstrung but sane, rattled but aware. Reality itself is unbearably heightened but undeniably clear -- all at once he is soberer than he's ever been. He's been scorched clean.

The reaction to this is palpable surprise. Flagg touches his face, turning his head this way and that on his neck, peers close to examine his pupils with eyes that are not eyes. He's touched -- downright tickled. His pleasure at finding Larry responsive, when Larry swats out to grab his hand away, is downright boyish.

Even the devil himself gets blue after sex. The Dark Man buries his face against Larry's neck, breathing long indolent breaths.

"I've got a little job for you, if you want it."

"And if I don't want it there's ten other guys lined up for it, right?" Larry's voice is cracked with laughter, one big breathless tremor. Flagg's voice is a shroud of black velvet, falling heavy over him where he lies.

"This is something very special, Larry. Only you can help me by doing it. You're going to play my song, Larry."

He's heard it in his dreams, the old woman and the guitar, but only broken and murky like a radio turned just a few notches away from the right dial. Flagg's cold fingers are swiping at the cold spill of semen on his belly, stroking the dry pillar of Larry's throat.