Brave New Worlds

never is. There was just an avalanche inside my head.
    I could shut it out for a while. I could forget that every day I saw piles of corpses bulldozed and mangled, and that I had to chase the birds away from them, and that I peeled off their clothes and looked with inevitable curiosity at the little pouch of genitals in their brightly colored underwear. And the leaking and the sudden hemorrhaging and the supple warmth of the dead, with their marble eyes full of seeming questions. How many had we killed? Was anybody keeping count? Did anyone know their names? Even their names had been taken from them, along with their wallets and watches.
    Harry had found his policeman father among them, and had never stopped smiling afterwards, saying "Hi!" like a cartoon chipmunk without a tail.
    I listened to the roaring in my head as long as I could and then I went back down to the Boys. "Is there any booze left, Charlie?" I asked, and he passed me up a full plastic bottle, and I drank myself into a stupor.
    It got dark and cold, and I woke up alone, and I pulled myself up, and walked back into the waiting room, and it was poison inside. It was as poison as the stuff going sour in our stomachs and brains and breath. We sat in twitchy silence, listening to the wind and our own farts. Nobody could be bothered to cook. Royce was not there, and my stomach twisted around itself like a bag full of snakes. Where was he? What would happen when he got back?
    "You look sick," said Lou in disgust. "Go outside if you have to throw up. "
    "I'm fine, Lou," I said, but I could feel a thin slime of sweat on my forehead.
    "You make me sick just looking at you," he said.
    "Funny. I was just thinking the same about you. " Our eyes locked, and there was no disguising it. We hated each other.
    It was then that Royce came back in, rubbing his head with a towel. "Well, there are now hot showers," he announced. "Well, tepid showers. You guys can go clean up. "
    The Boys looked up to him, smiling. The grins were bleary, but they were glad to see him.
    "Phew-wee!" he said, and waved his hand in front of his face. "that's some stuff you come up with, Charlie, what do you make it out of, burnt tires?"
    Charlie beamed. "Orange peel and grass," he said proudly. I thought it was going to be all right.
    Then Lou stood up out of his bed, and flopped naked toward Royce. "You missed all the fun," he said.
    "Yeah, I know, I can smell it. "
    "Now who's being a prig?" said Lou. "Come on, man, I got something nice to show you. " He grabbed hold of Royce's forearm, and pulled him toward his own bed. Tom was in it, lying face down, like a ruin, and Lou pulled back the blanket. "Go on, man. "
    Tom was bleeding. Royce's face and voice went very hard, and he pulled the blanket back up. "He's got an anal fissure, Lou. He needs to be left alone. It could get badly infected. "
    Lou barked, like a dog, a kind of laugh. "He's going to die anyway!"
    Royce moved away from his bed. With Tom in it, he had no place to sit down. Lou followed him. " Come on, Royce. Come on. No more pussy footing. " He tried to put his hand down the front of Royce's shirt. Royce shrugged it away, with sudden annoyance. "Not tonight. "
    "Not ever?" asked Lou, amused.
    "Come on, Royce, give it up man," said Harry. He grabbed Royce playfully, about the waist. "You can't hold out on us forever. " He started fumbling with the belt buckle. "Hell, I haven't eaten all day. "
    "Oh yes you have," said Lou, and chuckled.
    "Harry, please let go," said Royce, wearily.
    The belt was undone, and Lou started pulling out his shirt. "Let go," warned Royce. "I said let go," and he moved very suddenly. His elbow hit Harry in the mouth, and he yelped.
    "Hey, you fucker!"
    "You turkey," said Lou.
    And all the poison rose up like a wave. Oh, this was going to be fun, pulling off all of Royce's clothes. Gary, and Charlie, they all came, smiling. There was a sound of cloth tearing and suddenly Royce was fighting, fighting very hard, and suddenly the Boys were fighting too, grimly. They pulled him down, and he tried to hit them, and they held his arms, and they launched themselves on him like it was a game of tackle football. I thought, there is a word for this. The word is rape.
    "Alice!" I shouted up to the camera. "Alice, stop them! Alice? Burn one of them, stop it!"
    Then something slammed into the back of my head, and I fell, the floor scraping the skin of my wrists and slapping me across the cheeks. Then I was pulled over,