David Britton's Lord Horror (Excerpt)

Excerpt from David Britton's novel Lord Horror, published in 1989 by Savoy Books of Manchester, England.

The Frogmen

David Britton, Lord Horror, Savoy Books, 1989

HORROR FELT increasingly unwell. A dull pain ached all over him. He hoped that the coming confrontation would put him in a better health for his final tracking-down of the elusive Führer.

He turned left. The traffic thickened. The high wailing of the police sirens never seemed to stop. As he continued towards the square, following the directions Izzy had given him, the pedestrians were becoming less of an equal mix. He entered 'Geek' Walk — Broadway to Radium Avenue into Times Square — and the ratio of popeyes and blockheads increased. It was something of a chicken-run for the tourist to make it to the theatres without being accosted by some basket-case either demanding or begging money. Horror entered the Square, and walked toward the proliferation of strip clubs and sleaze parlours.

He held his breath. His skullcap leaked heavily down his neck. Shaking his head to dispel the droplets, he tried to focus past the flashing lights that usually led up to a migraine. He allowed a tight clamp of pain to ease across his brow, and with difficulty kept his eyes in register. Even so, he felt as though he was looking out through splintered glass. When these cumulative effects suddenly left him, he felt light-headed and slightly nauseous. Horror often had these lesser phantoms, which left him feeling euphoric.

Moving along the oven pavements of Times — the one place on earth that was brighter at midnight than midday — he joined the grizzly procession that had been vomited out of the inner city.

Around him were decrepit buildings, their garish neon facades covering years of bureaucratic neglect. They were the Mecca for pimps, hookers, vagabonds and mendicants, victims and offenders. He paused in front of Dr Pepper's Burger Diner. Rows of pork ribs were slowly barbecuing on an iron spit. About the diner, brightly-garbed nigras stood in groups eating spiced ribs and grinding the used bones underfoot. From the eat-house grid, vapours of boiled cabbage and peas blew into the night. Crystals of doughnut sugar melted on his lips.

Horror tried to slip into a dark place, but the rotating dome lights of the police cars sought out his shape, pushing his wizened mandarin image high onto the advertising billboards above the square. There his shadow flickered between the spray-can calligraphy, straddling the cant and sloganeering. Slowly, from behind the epigrammatic graffiti of the words, 'I am the schizoid octopus man', the black outline of his vagina hat with its poppy-stalk clitorises standing erect began to rise and fall in a fitful rhythm.

He steadied his pace, almost falling on a naked steel hook. A small pig hung upside-down on the hook next to it, blood oozing from its tiny pink snout and splashing onto his shoes.

Of all the sub-ethnic pervo groups on the Douche, Frogmen were the most eerie, the most feared. They usually went in trios, recognisable even among the exotic and quixotic denizens of the Square. Horror's interest in them had been sparked when he had read that Frogmen, or 'mung merchants' as the New York Times had picturesquely termed them, were recruited solely from among the Polish Jews of Manhattan.

Frogmen wore masks of black latex that completely covered their heads, with protruding Perspex air-pipes feeding into their mouths. They favoured ankle-length rubber smocks, lashed by cum and mung. Bulging enema bags, twined at their waists, swung heavily about their solid wellington boots as they walked. Their marks were usually suburban couples or lone tourists, which they lifted bodily from the streets, carrying them into the catacombs that riddled the area.

In the classic Frogman attack one Frogman would hold a stiletto blade to the mark's throat, then gathering Frogmen would lie and supplicate themselves over bins, or mounds of trash. The marks would be made to jerk-off over Frogmen who were rolling ecstatically in the drek. The whip-out complete, the Frogmen strapped their victims down and began inserting their Perspex enema pipes up them. A strong suction, similar to that of a Hoover, would pull at their anuses. In the agony of evacuation a thin stream of excreta would mulch from their bowels. They would allow fifteen minutes for each attack. With their enema bags full, the Frogmen would then leave.

To Horror, Frogmen were something of an enigma. These days he usually associated uniforms with people who had an identity problem — policemen, soldiers, prison wardens. It was an uncommon trait to find among Jews, who tended to see their identity in monetary, biblical or racial terms. On the other hand, Jews were such proven liars nothing they did or said could be relied upon. He had always known the truth about the Holocaust, that the reported deaths had been grossly exaggerated. He personally believed that less than a million Jews had died at the intervention of the Reich.

He moved to the shelter of a nearby alley, which he judged had sufficient light and shade for his purpose. He stood quietly against its wall, so as not to appear too eager, and watched around the corner into the square. Slouching down inside the anonymity of his coat he let one group of Frogmen pass, but it was not long before another trio appeared. They walked purposefully amongst the crowd in Horror's direction.

The Frogman on the far right of the group was a huge figure, well over seven feet. He tottered on high heels that made him seem monstrously camp. His laboured breathing, slow and steady through the air-tube of his heavy rubber gas mask, or discipline helmet, carried over the heads of the crowd. A ponderous latex suit swathed his body. Beneath his suit very loose thin rubber bloomers hung. His balls were tightly strapped around the base of his scrotum. That sexual tension, Horror knew, would make him a more exacting bi-excreterminator.

The head of the Frogman on the far left was enclosed in a tight-fitting helmet of thick moulded rubber. A pressurised gas pipe attached to it, fitted slackly inside his mouth. The air apparatus pushed him towards the ground, and he walked with a peculiar splay-footed gait. Booted fishing waders came up to his waist, and strapped over his rubber-enclaved chest. A long black rubber macintosh (or cape, Horror could not tell) trailed the sidewalk. From the manner of his walk Horror was sure that he wore a velvet-lined kitten collar that passed tightly about the base of his scrotum. From the metal canister on his back, gas could be forced into his mouth until his cheeks bulged against the rubber helmet. Once swelled, he looked like a cobra bullfrog stuffed with poison. An acid mouthful of his gas-spit could corrode human skin.

The third Frogman, who lagged slightly behind the group, was of a smaller stature, possibly five-two, and from the manner of his walk he seemed much older. Chains and tapes connected his enema pipes tightly around his hips. A dozen or so pipes ran up to his gas-cans. An L-shaped weasel-skinned handle was attached to the top of the pressure pump. The tops of the pumps were held open, ready for a rapid retrieval of anal matter.

All three of them carried Number Tens, casually visible and tied to their waist belts. Number Tens were greased rods, two inches in diameter and five inches long, made of smooth plastic or rubber, with a wide base to prevent them entering too high up the anus. Several narrow chains or straps were connected to the bases, and secured tightly up the fronts and backs by waist belts. This ensured that the rods could not be removed except by special welding equipment — and then only under strict medical supervision. Enema pipes, attached by long rubber tubes to the canisters on their backs, were greased and ready to insert.

Horror registered the weapons that the Frogmen displayed. The sight of them was like seeing old friends. The Filipino fighting knife — the balisong — protruded from the waders. The urban skinner, a push dagger held like a corkscrew for a twist death, was fixed to the waistbands. Horror's teeth gleamed in the neon as he watched the bobbing chiselled armour-piercing black head of the tanto sneak from the sleeve of a Frogman's macintosh. The fixed single-edged stainless steel blade was designed to slash and drive. Held correctly, with the blade running along the forearm, it was almost impossible to block. Horror made up his mind. This would be over before it began.

He left the protection of the wall, and strode out onto the teeming sidewalk. He stood with his legs braced, his full hands carefully buried in the pockets of his coat. His legs felt as though they had been fettered to the floor. He waited.

They approached him in a rush, and stopped arrogantly before him.

"Jewboys?" asked Horror, smiling.

Only by the infrequent blinking of the eyes could Horror tell that a living man dwelt behind the rubber mask that confronted him. The Frogman removed his air-pipe and cracked his mouth. "No, no, my friend, Hispanic, Pachuco." He waved his arms in a friendly gesture.

"Oh well, have it your way," said Horror, now oblivious to the people passing around them. "Spic, Guinea, Polak, Mex-Pachuco...it's all Jew-related. What do I fucking care what you pass yourselves off as?"

"Why you are not friendly?" The Frogman's voice came out in a metallic snort. "You have plenty stuff."

"Maybe," said Horror calmly. "Maybe not."

The second Frogman pulled his mask free of his face. "An English brown hatter — sweet tarmangani! We are lucky, I think we are going to enjoy ourselves tonight!"

"Chief cook and bottle-washer!" Horror laughed. More lubricant from his hat swirled about.

"Hey, hey, Twatolla!" The giant Frogman reached out to touch Horror's face. "Sic perntii domis cori-cari. You run with us in the alley. Kisda Kafish?"

Horror's lips broke into a beguiling smile. "Why not? We could all benefit from a little exercise."

Despite the Frogman's fearsome apparel and size, close to, Horror thought that he just looked poor and under-nourished. He had seen the same impoverished arrogant look many times in England. Usually, it denoted a bad diet and feelings of ineptitude, or an inability to cope with the world. The political climate in England over the last forty years had reduced the populace to accepting deprivation as their reward for winning the war. Perhaps he should have been less surprised to find a similar attitude in these turd-burglars. They obviously sought to hide their feelings of racial inferiority — and their perverse sexual appetites — behind a mask of bondage. An unaccustomed feeling of pity touched Lord Horror.

He glared at them, regretting now that this shortage of time had forced him into a confrontation. These androgynous, chlorotic fag-fantasies were rapidly shaping up to be a waste of his time. He was in no doubt what section of America most needed his attention — the American Civil Liberties Union Bleeding Heart Liberal New York Jewish Intellectual.

The situation had only deteriorated since he had broadcasted to America in the early 1940's. Until now, he had never been sure of the reception he had been given. It was apparent America had not heeded his warning. His propaganda speeches had followed on the heels of his old wireless colleague, Ezra Pound. Between 1941 and 1943 they had recorded for Radio Rome twice a week. The programmes were broadcast by Italy's English Language service, on a short-wave frequency, and later transmitted to England and America. Like himself, Pound had been into eugenics as opposed to race suicide. In the early days of the war Pound too had been an unstinting propagandist for Hitler. "Every sane act you commit," he said, "is committed in homage to Hitler. England's gaols have never before been so full of political prisoners guilty of nothing save their beliefs and convictions. "

Times had not changed.

Horror feared that it was now too late to turn the tide. The Jew had come to power. Power, he knew, was to the Jew as great a stimulant as money. He was a man standing alone before them. The odds were racked-up.

A smouldering anger had long ago been added to his feelings of impotency. His isolation was further aggravated by the influence Jews now held over international affairs. He blamed them totally for his present exile. The English authorities, in a rare act of conscience, had refused to renew his broadcasting licence and had ordered his deportation. In reality they had used him as a scapegoat, a sop to the European Parliament which had placed England under immense pressure to account for its war crimes in the Irish concentration camps of Longkesh and Armagh. Throughout Europe, the Irish suffering, their inhuman treatment and death at the hands of the English had been compared to the suffering at Dachau and Auschwitz. Horror's presence had become both a reminder of Germany's alleged war crimes and an embarrassment to the British Government.

He had found his name printed next to George Raft's on the Deportation Order — Raft was barred from England and listed as an 'undesirable alien', even though the actor had been dead for some years, which made Horror feel that Raft and he were regarded as two drops of water from the same polluted tap.

In his last broadcast from England, Horror had spoken out against the latent hostility the Jew held for the gentile. This hatred was part of the Jew's basic religion. He had pointed out that Germany had done the Jews the greatest favour in their long history. Since the war Jews had been rushing from country to country pleading and gaining entrance on compassionate grounds for the so-called Jew crimes committed against them by Germany. The many had capitalised to an unprecedented degree on the distress of the few. Horror had not been fooled by them for a moment, but he had to watch with mounting disgust as the ubiquitous kike got his foot through the door of countries denied to Judaism for centuries.

Jews now had their stranglehold on the world's economy. You couldn't shit without asking a Jew's permission. In America, a younger and sturdier race, the Jew needed severely curtailing. Horror felt that if he could find an effective remedy, here was a continent to succour. Perhaps in America his message would be better understood. The racial discrimination that the Jew — and so-called enlightened Americans — detested in Germany, had possessed the Jew for thousands of years, and the Jew would always consolidate his position, in trade or profession, by relentlessly squeezing out the gentile.

The colonisation of America by the Jew had resulted in the Jew acquiring more power than at any time in its history. It had turned Israel into the country's 52nd state. If Russia backed the Arab nations in earnest to counteract this poisonous threat of Jewish-American Imperialism on their doorstep, the Jew would once again be responsible for a world war.

In the square, a Ford Zodiac repeatedly backfired. There was a startled response from the crowds, who had mistaken the volley of retorts for gunshots. Horror feigned interest. He was reminded of how bodies in the Auschwitz ovens had cracked open when the heat was on, before the Sondercommandos went round with buckets gathering up the remains. The camp doctors would later 'potentise' ashes of the testicles, spleens and portions of the burnt skins of virile Jews in an attempt to find a test control serum as a final solution (the 'Homeopathic Solution' as Himmler had once jokingly told him). Health for the many from the death of the few. Horror brought his hands out of his pockets, holding a pack of Lucky Sevens.

"You moving, Nosferatu?" The Frogman laughed.

Horror watched the small Frogman enter the gloom of the alley, closely followed by the giant Frogman who looked back over his shoulder at them. Just before he dipped into the black, Horror saw him withdraw a thin steel tubular cosh from the arm of his rubber suit. He knew that when the cosh was shaken, a ball-bearing on a long chain snapped-out — one hit could knock a hole straight through his skull.

"Go ahead," said Horror, drawing a cigarette to the corner of his mouth and lighting it. At least he had forced the Frogmen to enter the alley separately. Now they would have to take him on a one-to-one.

"Listen!" The Frogman in front of Horror stepped closer to him. "What's your fucking game?" He stripped the mask completely back from his head, leaving the latex goggles on the top of his scalp. Horror could smell excreta on the man's breath. The Frogman's features were pure Mexican, tanned and drink-swollen, showing no trace of Polish or Jewish blood. In the brief instant that he stared straight at Horror, the Frogman's face took on a look of anger tempered by fear, as if he knew he was being set-up. He slackened his mouth. "You move now, or I'll release you right here."

Eclipsed Horror took one step forward, dropped the cigarette and placed a friendly arm around the Frogman's shoulders. "No problem, I'm your patsy, right? But not in public, old love. There's plenty of time and space in here to become acquainted. We'll all nip in together, cosy what? More intimate." He winked, and with his arm still around the Frogman, he pushed past the pedestrians and guided him into the alley's shadows. Too late to stop now, he thought. Perhaps he'd made a mistake. Maybe the other two were Jews. He let out a fatalistic sigh, and carefully sank his free hand back into the pocket of his coat, closing it over the handle of one of his slitters. Suddenly he felt old and ill. He had been here a thousand times, in a hundred different countries, involved in the same wearisome eliminations, and still the Jew spread his web of corruption. This aspect of his life had become an unsolvable burden, and he was ready to opt out of the responsibilities of continuing. But what was left? What else could he contribute? There was no cure for his virus — of that he was quite sure. It was pivotal and necessary to his life. He had been its privileged emissary. In that, he could justifiably take pride. It had elevated him above his fellow men, whose inertia had compounded his task. While they had been shirking the problem, refusing to see moral wrong in the Jew, he had stepped forward and clearly said 'NO!' That they had failed to see his actions as a solution, only condemned them. He lived constantly under his obsessional malaise, killing Jews as frequently as most people took aspirin; and for not dissimilar reasons.

Horror's face was clay. He allowed the Frogman to step into the shadow of the alley, then he brought out his slitters, moved directly behind him and cut forward with two vast strokes.

The first blade struck the side of the Frogman's neck, and cut just below the mastoid process of the frog skull. The razor sliced through the vertebral artery. He pushed his slitter up the side of the neck, severing the rings of bone attached to the cervical vertebrae. A split second later his other slitter entered at the back of the frog-head, at the point where the trapezius muscle attached itself to the occipital bone. Horror felt the dome of the Frogman's skull disappearing into the tense neck muscles. Both incisions totally wiped the brain. He stepped deftly into the alley after the Frogman, catching his falling corpse. Holding it from behind in a bugger's embrace, he walked forward with it.

Lights blistered before his eyes. Spume shot from his skullcap and crawled into the air. A head pain that would not quit almost made him black out. Cream spit from the vaginas clung to his eyes, and in an effort to remove it he rubbed his face against a coat fold on his shoulder.

In the still gloom, the small Frogman immediately came at him in a rush, waving his stiletto blade. Horror was forced to drop the frogman he was holding and dispatch his attacker with a kick on the side of his head. The blow crushed the Frogman's temporal bone, sending him collapsing against the wall, and folding him in a wet coleslaw on the floor. Two of the man's enema bags burst as he fell, covering his bouncing head with spreading excreta.

Malign Horror looked expectantly for the third Frogman, but in the darkness of the alley he could see nothing. He bent his body low, and listened. Except for the boisterous sounds coming from the square he could hear only the hissing of shite caught on the outside radiators. He kicked the figure of the tall Frogman that lay on the floor. Blood from the man's open neck splashed down his rubber suit. He fell on top of him. Using the Frogman's chest as a knee support he slowly lifted up the dead face. He peered into the lifeless eyes, which had slipped beyond his reach, and prized open the Frogman's jaw. "Come on, come on!" He wheedled a grim smile across his lips. "Let's get it down your neck." He rammed his slitter into the man's mouth, twisting it in a grinding circle. Blood and teeth bubbled and flew from the yawning hole. As he cut, all of the Frogman's face broke in a whirlpool of latex, tissue and bone. Then he put the blade to the man's hairline. When he cut a full circle, he tugged, and the scalp came free — as easy as pulling a pillow out of its slip. He dropped the naked scalp into his coat pocket. On his head the vagina lips trembled and spluttered, and from the cap poured a torrent of water that almost blinded him.

The leeching moon freed itself from behind the night clouds as Horror arose and danced further into the alley. He hooted and moaned softly and almost fell over a full trashcan. The hot pipes that led out of the wall from a diner kitchen pushed steam in waves across the alley floor. The steam billowed, cloaking his loins in a white sweat. He stripped off his coat and threw it over the trashcan. Humid winds from the square sneaked between the holes of his string vest. His old bones stalked up and down the length of the narrow ginnel. His head shook crazily back and forth. He hopped distractedly around, picking up the scattered enema bags and forming them into a spiral mound similar to a molehill.

The crack of the third frogman's cosh being opened somewhere in the shadows alerted him, and he spun round. From an alcove in the wall that he had overlooked, the massive rubber-suited figure of the giant Frogman slowly emerged, holding his cosh ready at his side.

They closed in on one another, but before the Frogman could act, Maximum Horror swept his razor in low, easily slicing the blade through the manufactured rubber into the Frogman's testicles. Horror drew back his head while he kept pushing his blade in. Blood spurted past him, and the ripped ball-sacs folded over his fist, soft as dewed orchids, cold as ice mint-juleps. The giant doubled up, his high heels slipping from under him and Horror bent forward. He whispered intimately into the Frogman's ear. "Just as fresh as new bread, what?"

Forming his lips into one terrible, silent scream, the Frogman looked directly into Lord Horror's face. Then Horror opened his own mouth and sucked the head in.

He snorted and gripped the sweating forehead with his horse teeth. He pushed the teeth hard into the bone. Wrapping his bottom teeth under the man's chin, he allowed his tongue one languid wipe of the enclosed face, before clamping his teeth together and crushing the skull. The musculature of the man's head fell, and slopped, light as a sherry trifle. Horror snapped his mouth open-and-shut in broad crushing strokes. In his cheeks, blood and bone meshed in a stew, and he chewed solidly on the head. Intermittently, he shook it, as a dog shakes a bone. As he ate, the giant Frogman's body jerked in a solo masturbatory dance against his body. Horror spoke through a swell of blood, "Trying to fuck me, Sonny Jim? I thought you had your 'union card' in fornication; that you were a finished swordsman. Don't forget, now you're a eunuch, you-can't-get-it-up!" He punctuated his speech with vicious upward staccato thrusts of his razor inside the Frogman's stomach.

He kept the head inside his mouth for some time, chewing heavily. Then he let it sink down his throat, and shook out the blood from his mouth. "Now," he said. "I'd say that was tastier than arseholes!"

The lifeless man farted, and Horror smelt a dead stool evacuating itself from the man's bowels. He held the huge body at arm's length by two bones that protruded rigidly from the gashed neck. Spinning the body around, he tore the enema paraphernalia from its back and crushed the air canister and tubes with a single bare fist. He let the frogman fall. Gathering up the latex bags, he added them to the mound on the floor.

Now, thought Horror, for the peine forte et dure.

He walked back to where the small dead Frogman lay, and stripped the rubber suit from its body. He knelt, and held the death-face in his hands. Death seemed to radiate out to him, bathing his head in its glow. He peered into its hooked features. "Definitely!" he enunciated slowly. Reassuring himself that the man had been of one hundred percent Jew blood, he laid the naked body out on its back in a straight line, then lay down horizontally on his stomach, with his lips touching the top of the dead man's scalp.

He swept his arms backwards and forwards in a fish-crawl to clear away the trash from the ground around him. His body surged. Pale-white within the rays of the ocean's tumescence, he imagined he was a deep-water shark, his oceanic insectile mandibles clicking and worrying the steamy air. He pressed his chin against the warm ground. He edged upwards until his nose came to rest against the crown of the man's head. The smell of oil and asbestos and excreta rising from the man's scalp brought his headache close to its climax.

He let his body relax. He loosened his mouth, and began feeding the slippery head into his jaws. He resisted the impulse to clamp his large socking horse teeth around it. His mouth was now wet with excreta, and slid easily over the knob of the Frogman's cranium, and he began to prepare the cavity of his own chest. He shook loose its physiognomy in readiness.

Keeping the Jew head in his mouth, he inhaled deeply. The brown carapace began to heave and slide down into his extended maw. When he reached the four-by-two's neck, he nibbled delicately at the wrinkled skin. Salivating rapidly, he continued the swallowing motions and reached the naked shoulders. He had to stretch his mouth to its limit. He felt its corners ripping with the exertion. Spit and blood seeped from the run of his skin and dribbled onto the ground. His heartbeat doubled. Summoning his remaining willpower, he forced his mouth to enclose the dead shoulders, and his teeth chattered with a chill that was more of the spirit than the body.

He pumped and inched forward again, gradually sinking the Jew into him. He felt his chest cavity rending under the immense strain of the load. The dull pain of the man's bulk lying tight against the inside bones of his thin body boiled upwards to his head; electrocuting the nerve roots of his vagina cap.

He eased on down, and came to a halt at the man's hips. There he stopped. An ague shook through him. He felt his body bump of its own accord from left right across the floor of the alley. In a moment he continued eating, and closed on the hips. A white salad sauce poured in a pale rainbow torrent from his nostrils over the Jew's privates.

Inside Horror, the Jew's head breached the lining into his seventh intercostal space, and his stomach showered hydrochloric juices over it.

As he reached the Jew's knees he heaved himself onto his feet. He propped himself unsteadily against the wall, wreathed in steam, with the two bent legs of the Jew brazenly dangling from his mouth. He raised his hands to the pain in his head, clasped it, stared up at the big moon. When the white orb tossed down light, the loose legs swung and crossed one over the other as though the old Jew inside had seated himself casually in a roomy armchair.

The preening lord dropped his arms and gripped the stick-legs by the ankles. He lifted them high above his head, and swallowed. They disappeared down his throat. When they had vanished from sight a sigh involuntarily escaped him. The Frogman lay folded in a great foetus inside, comfortably rained-on by bubbling acids. Pain knifed through Horror's head. He collapsed.

He lay full-length on the ground. The Jew was choked inside him. He brought up more sauce from his nostrils. It was tinged with acid. He felt as though he had just inhaled a canister of amyl nitrite on top of a gut-full of goofballs.

On the narrow strip of sidewalk where the Square crossed the top of the alley, Horror could see the passing feet of the pedestrians. From this angle they were discorporate legs, shuffling rapidly past him in an Egyptian sand dance; a thousand Wilson, Keppel and Betty's. Beyond the legs, the sodium lights fell on the asphalt, making it appear as a dark timorous lake. The cruising traffic had disappeared, replaced by writhing clusters of black amorphophalli. Horror was nauseated by the sight of the hot, firm stems twisting and turning through the passing crowds.

After the struggle, a feeling of wellbeing overcame him. The snivelling unrepentant Jew had been reduced to a dietary menu for the gentile.

He closed his sphincter muscle. He would keep the biological roughage inside him for at least a week. His body was its house, a Zion castle, a Jew moat, a meat container. His body could simultaneously be home and grave; his old wattled skin made a fitting outer wall for a Jew crypt.

It came to him that his body could literally accommodate thousands of Jews. He had struck on the perfect Final Solution — he could eat and digest the Jews of the world!

After his years of wandering this method of decimation was the one he had been searching for. The thought of the pleasure that his achievement would give Himmler, Bormann and Hitler, delighted him. Contentedly, he lifted up his face, letting the steam coat its surface in a wet lather. He could be a one-man Hilton, reserved especially for Jews — or the largest Jew bank in Europe. In moments of depression he could think about the Jew lying inside him. By constantly introducing a new body shape into his system, he could baffle the ravages of his own body. He could use the Jew as a virus receptacle, a chamberpot for his diseases. Thanks to the assimilative powers of the Jew, perhaps he could rejuvenate himself endlessly and free himself from death.

He let out a long, wheezling laugh. Perhaps this was what they meant by having 'inner resources'! He dragged his body almost into the full glare of Times Square. There he lay, bloated, like some gaffed bonito on a sunlit beach.

Wearily, he picked himself up from the floor, and spread out his coat next to the mound of enema bags. He lifted the heavy bags and deposited them one by one onto his coat, then wrapped them up in a swagman's sack and slung them over his back.

He walked uncaringly into the sodium neon. Half of the vaginas on his skullcap had died. The vulvas lay cracked and open. The evening's exertions had burst their clitorises. The ones that remained functional twittered in delirium, giving off a diluted silver spume.

Times Square appeared as a red hell-rimmed crater, crawling with beetles. Lights and gasses spiralled in a frozen effluvium from the open dens and speeding Cawthornithopters. Dizziness gripped him. The ground beneath heaved, as though he were on the deck of a swaying ship. The upside-down position and weight of the Jew inside him was unsettling his balance. A build-up of toxins in his stomach made him belch. A fierce pain crawled across his head. Still clutching the fox-fur coat he fell into the back of a yellow cab.

Hours passed.

A sickly light, errant and pellucid, thrilled above him. In a drama close to somnia turbula, ganglias of cables and wires, nerve fibres and raunchy buzzing lights radiated down at him from a ceiling, meshed together in a flue. His body felt tropical, infusing him with a chimerical dread.

He woke fitfully, his limbs heavy and somnambulant. He was back in his room. During the long night the hotel's central heating had switched itself on. The heat was terrific. His head throbbed, full of virulent stuffs and old memories. He thought he could hear the sound of boiling broth close by. Sulphurous fumes filled the room, and a bittersweet almond taste prevailed in his mouth.

He peered from a single drained eye. His room at the Chelsea looked as though the mad hand of a god had transposed it into an everglade sarcophagus. He lay on his side, his head awkwardly positioned on a once-white pillow. Stuck next to him was a single hank of hair that pushed an umber stain into the cotton. He tried to lift his left hand to remove the hair. The hand moved slowly, as though pulling through treacle, then stopped. He raised his head slightly and peered over his naked white shoulders down the length of the bed. Despite an intense light, he could not see clearly. From his chest downwards he appeared to be encased inside a blackish nitrate crust similar to a moth's chrysalis. Beneath this dark surface he could feel a moist second layer that pressed warmly against his skin, snugly cocooning him.

Futilely, Horror tried to rise up from his bed of excrement. The chrysalis skin broke, and the smell almost made him faint. From his neck he retched a yellow waxen glue. Defeated, he lapsed back in his warm prison.

During the night, monstrously huge poppies, torture-coloured roses and pain-white petunias had grown around him. At his feet, nettles had sprouted from the dark skein. Weeds muffled the metallic clicking of shite flies. Dung beetles scurried everywhere over the crust's surface.

Neon tubes wrapped in bald flex pushed through the shite and added their burning light to the room. Myriad phalanxes of wasps had taken possession of the upper cornices. They swarmed about the ceiling like dense waves of black hair. For a moment, he thought he was mad, lying with fallen soldiers in the fields of Flanders, Ypres or the Somme.

The bed giggled and sighed. It heaved with an almost sentient life. It let off a series of swaggering farts that echoed ominously round the room in search of an exit.

The lights shook, and a swell of steam rose from the bed. Back it came to him. He remembered packing the enema bags tightly about his body before falling asleep. In the hothouse of the night, they had burst.

The contents of the bags had settled over him. The temperature had stimulated the growth of the plants. He felt a lugubrious stirring beneath his chest, and a wet rose slid away from the shifting mess.

A wavering shape, like a giant painted wigwam, began to materialise between two oscillating neon lights. The room beat white, almost blinding him. With a start, he recognised the shape of the demon goddess Ammut, Devourer of the Dead. The goddess lumbered forward. The phosphorous fat of her elephantine hips shifted and wriggled with a furious restlessness. She waddled in the neon around the foot of his bed, before coming to a halt before him. Her forepart was that of a crocodile. Her hindquarters those of a hippopotamus. Her middle that of a lion. The long crocodile jaw leered down at him, and even above the stink of the room he could smell her tomb breath.

Horror flinched back into his pillow, his now spherical face as small as a child's. An iridescent chrome-backed shite beetle crawled over his head. He began to whimper, and in a small sad voice he whispered, "Oh Mother Jew, Oh Mother Jew, Israel, I am my father's son." He glanced up at the demon, who had stuck a jade finger into his bed and was looking bemusedly at him. In a rising voice, Horror continued, "Being, broad of stride, who comes forth from Heliopolis, I have done no Evil. There is no iniquity in my belly, there is no wickedness in me."

Ammut withdrew her finger, and stretched toward him. She tapped her wet finger on his hooked nose. "You naughty boy!" her long jaw snapped. "What have you been doing? What a mess you've got yourself into!" She withdrew suddenly. Raising her massive buttocks to him she slapped them down on the bottom of the bed. A wave ran through the shite, lifting it to the level of his chin. Her back was facing him. Turning her crocodile's head, she regarded him somberly over her shoulder. "Well there's nothing I can do," she said. "It's too late for all that now. You should have thought of the consequences years ago when you started all your foolishness. You have no option but to dry your eyes, make up, and take your medicine."

Horror struggled with the bed, a babble falling from his lips. "The Lord is in his Holy Temple, the Lord's throne is in heaven, His eyes are upon Mankind, He takes their measure at a glance. "

"You can stop that right this very minute!" Ammut arose. She lumbered up the bed towards him, and struck him a glancing blow on the head. "Didn't you hear me, it's too bloody late!"

"I'll wise-up," said Horror in a high voice. "Honest to God!"

"You say that every time I see you, but the minute my back's turned you're at it again." Ammut spread her legs. "Well, not any more. What's inside you will see to that!" The blue-green skin around her jaw tightened. "And you've only yourself to blame!"

"Osiris, Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani!" Horror's voice was rising to a pitch close to hysteria. More fissures opened in the scabrous swathe. Before he could turn away, the head of a bovine-eyed foetus pushed through into the light of the room, and he screamed. He felt a fresh movement by his hips, and knew that another unholy birth was occurring. The shite-bed seemed to be acting as an incubation unit, an alternative womb. Dimly, he watched the foetus near his chest slip away onto the floor. From the bed sounded a coprophagic intra-uterine fugue.

"Shut-up! Shut-up!" Ammut stamped her great foot angrily. On her head the metal curlers that gripped the short hairs of her scalp jangled together and her long tail wrapped about her swelling hips. "You wretched little heathen, you'll get your arse tanned good and proper. When I think of how we've spoiled you. We spared the rod and look what became of you!" She looked down at him in exasperation. Horror lay silent, blood seeping from his broken nose. His mouth opened and closed.

"Oh, its our fault, is it?" The crocodile eyes fastened on him in annoyance. Incensed by his silence, Ammut lashed out and cuffed Horror's head again. "Well, you can just lie there and take what's coming to you!" She hit him a third time. Horror kept his eyes tightly closed.

After Ammut had ceased striking him, he could still hear the demon shouting and stamping about the room, tugging at wires and killing shite-flies. "Look what a sight you've made of your room — and the smell!" Ammut sighed. "And it could look so pretty... Of course, there's no point in telling you now. If you had only listened to me..."

The voice seemed to go on forever, and Horror felt sick. Gasses were boiling in his gut.

Later, he opened his eyes just once. Ammut had left, and the room was almost quiet. The weakness he had been feeling for months now seemed complete. The shite had settled back in a comforting blanket around his body. It was ironic that he should end like this, impotent, childlike.

From the road outside, the shout of running children rose up to his window. He realised they were a memory. They were school children returning home.

He was six — perhaps seven — and he was lying in his bedroom in his parents' house, warm and snug, reading a comic. A daily newspaper serial. The strip described the adventure of two elves who lived on the edge of Leafy Wood. Meng and Ecker often reminded him of them — although Meng was more of a changeling than an elf. Possibly the comic strip was the reason for his fondness for the Twins over the years. The elves had found a stone statue abandoned by a magician in a glade in the wood. A limerick was carved in the stone: "This is the statue of Whisper-a-Wish. Wish in a whisper, and you'll get your wish!" The two elves had left their tree houses early, to visit Woozel the Wood Wizard, and when they came across this 'Whisper-a-Wish' they immediately wished for a pirate galleon to be delivered to them. When the ship suddenly materialised, caught in the buckling branches of a cluster of oak trees above their heads, they had to wish it away before it collapsed on top of them.

Why he should remember that, he could not imagine — except that that afternoon was the last time he had felt truly contented, and safe.

The house in Streatham was a sprawling Victorian semi, surrounded by a large garden. His mother and father had returned from China and had been busily seed-planting all summer. The garden teemed with marigold, redbud, japonica and crape-myrtle. Their scents helped obliterate the strong smell of brewery hops that wafted through his open window from the distillery at the bottom of the road.

He had awoken early with a bilious headache, and instead of sending him to school his mother had confined him to bed. But by lunch his headache had cleared, and he had been allowed to play in the garden. He took with him his box of tin soldiers. Using the tall grass as camouflage he arranged them into three opposing armies. Sprawled on the grass on his stomach he moved the little tin men gleefully through the shrubbery. One group of soldiers were to launch a surprise attack on the other two, and he buried them in the ground beneath the loose top-soil in the centre of the garden. But when he needed to call on them he realised he had forgotten where they were buried. He searched fruitlessly until his headache returned and his mother caught him throwing-up in the back garden grid, and marched him hurriedly back to bed.

Years later his parents died. He moved elsewhere, but periodically he returned to the garden to search for the missing soldiers. To the new owners he was regarded as a nuisance. They threatened him with the police. Undeterred, he switched his searches from day to night. On his last nocturnal visit to the house he angrily dug-over the entire garden, leaving uprooted rose bushes scattered down the length of the stone pathway. Why he should remember this he wasn't sure either. The memory had stayed buried inside him like a sick tumour.

In death's hour we find a final strength. A confirmation of our malaise: our redeeming chaos.

With an effort, Horror raised his head. Stuffs dropped from his face. Abstractly, he tried to see the fading room.

"Is that all there is?" He spoke softly, his voice a melismatic whisper. His head shook. His bowels opened. A thin bile eased from his mouth. He swallowed. He felt a crawling thing move with swift purpose through his body. "Fuck this!" Horror ground his teeth. He heard the gold fillings crack. "And fuck that!" It came from him in a rush — the dead Jew's hand, pushing itself up out of his throat. In a dread coma he watched as before his eyes the fingers of the dead hand loosened. Something fell from the hand onto the shite and was sucked beneath the surface before he could properly make out its shape. The hand tightened again into a fist and pumped back into his mouth with such violence that he was rocked back into his bed. He felt it touch down into his chest. Then pain. A burning torch had been lit inside him. The hand came out again, and dropped a wadge of flesh onto the bed, and sank back rapidly inside him. "The fucker!" Horror's lips peeled back to reveal red blood on bone.

The fucking Jew is emptying me of life.

He broke into a slurred speech.

"It wasn't much like paradise..."

...The entombed bastard holds mass...

"...amidst the dirt and all..."

...he passes forth the last sacrament.

" ...There sat the sweetest angel..."

...Jewfucker; live to kill.

"I need you more than ever now."

True, all true.

"I need you more than ever now."

We end our lives in a chaos bubble: it's only fitting that we start it so.

"...Fistfuck them all, sad fuckers..."

All fled - all done, lift me on the pyre.

"...what goes around, comes around..."

The feast is over and the lamps expire.

"...Know what I mean...?" Horror forced a broad wink. "Coughdrop?" He lapsed into a dumb silence, passion spent, the only movement within. He waited expectantly. After a spell that seemed to stretch forever, he arched his pale head. He felt a boiling nausea. His lips tricked open and a voice inside thrilled: "Wobble to death!"

The very last thing Lord Horror remembered was the full Jew's hand regurgitated in a swirling pool of white acid that poured from his dead mouth.

Order

The Kindle and iBooks edition of Horror Panegyric has been expanded with a new afterword by Supervert and additional excerpts from Savoy Books' most recent Lord Horror novels, La Squab: Black Rose of Auschwitz and Invictus Horror.

David Britton's Lord Horror (Excerpt)

The Frogmen

Order

Horror Panegyric: Table of Contents

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