2628 lines
140 KiB
Plaintext
2628 lines
140 KiB
Plaintext
Living in such a state taTestaTesTaTe etats a hcus ni gniviL
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of mind in which time sTATEsTAtEsTaTeStA emit hcihw ni dnim of
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does not pass, space STateSTaTeSTaTeStAtE ecaps ,ssap ton seod
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does not exist, and sTATeSt oFOfOfo dna ,tsixe ton seod
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idea is not there. STatEst ofoFOFo .ereht ton si aedi
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Stuck in a place staTEsT OfOFofo ecalp a ni kcutS
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where movements TATeSTa foFofoF stnemevom erehw
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are impossible fOFoFOf elbissopmi era
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in all forms, UfOFofO ,smrof lla ni
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physical and nbEifof dna lacisyhp
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or mental - uNBeInO - latnem ro
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your mind is UNbeinG si dnim rouy
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focusing on a unBEING a no gnisucof
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lone thing, or NBeINgu ro ,gniht enol
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a lone nothing. bEinGUn .gnihton enol a
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You are numb and EiNguNB dna bmun era ouY
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unaware to events stneve ot erawanu
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taking place - not iSSUE ton - ecalp gnikat
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knowing how or what 6/30/98 tahw ro who gniwonk
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to think. You are in FORTY-SEVEN ni era uoY .kniht ot
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a state of unbeing.... ....gniebnu fo etats a
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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CONTENTS OF THiS iSSUE
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=----------------------=
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EDiTORiAL Kilgore Trout
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LETTERS TO THE EDiTOR
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STAFF LiSTiNGS
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[=- ARTiCLES -=]
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RABBiT HOLES EXPLORED Sweater Girl
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FiRST DiARY ENTRY iN A MONTH,
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or A SUBMiSSiON, or MOViNG I Wish My Name Were Nathan
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HEAD MANA Clockwork
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JOURNAL: RUSSiAN MONKS
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AND A WEEPiNG iCON Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two Universes
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FOR ALL OF YOU Clockwork
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PAGES FROM A DiARY Crux Ansata
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[=- POETASTRiE -=]
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THE SACRiFiCE Robert James Berry
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RESTiNG PLACE Robert James Berry
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STATUE Robert James Berry
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[=- FiCTiON -=]
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BLOODY Z Rich Logsdon
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AGENT OF MARROW (Part II, L' Estremita) Clockwork
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ALEX THE WOLF-GOD Rich Logsdon
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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EDiTORiAL
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by Kilgore Trout
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Welcome to summer. I'm not even going to talk about the weather just
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because everybody else is. Styx recently pointed out that people should
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really begin most of their conversations with the phrase, "Let's just cut to
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the chase. How's the weather?" That boy knows something.
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Summer is a particularly dreaded time for me. Usually it involves an
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abundance of writer's blockage in the wee nooks and crannies of my brain.
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Sometimes I blame it on the heat, but it's probably just my dad checking to
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see if the dog happened to wander into my room.
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Ooops. I'm starting to get confused. Not the heat, for sure, cuz it's
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4:08 in the morning. Clock would say that it was solar flares. Kinda the
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same source, different output. Like a catheter.
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Can you tell I've been typing insurance claims for eight hours a day?
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Okay, so maybe catheter is a bad choice of words. I mean, if my father
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came into my room looking for a catheter, that would be just plain weird. I
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wonder if they make catheters for dogs. I also wonder if anyone loves their
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pet enough to actually spend the money on that kind of thing. Putting them to
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sleep is a lot cheaper.
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Hello, materialist upbringing! You are still in full bloom! Come ride
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the waves and have a hot dog made of gold.
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And so, we come full circle back to the problem of my blockage. Maybe I
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need a catheter for my brain. I heard tonight on the radio that someone is
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suing a hospital because they claim that their 76-year-old grandmother died
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choking on a piece of meat in a hospital ER room because the doctor on call
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wouldn't come in because he was watching one of the Bull's playoff games.
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I don't trust doctors. I should know; I do their paperwork. A lot of
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them can't do simple addition. You'd think they could afford a calculator.
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Maybe they need a catheter for their brains as well. In fact, maybe we all
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need catheters for our brains. It could be a new fashion statement.
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"Hey, nice catheter. I haven't seen one in midnight blue before."
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I'm already disturbed at the low quality level of this editorial, so I'll
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continue.
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After all, being a hip trendy e-zine, we are always self-aware of
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everything that we write, even when we're in that particular piece of writing.
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It's, like, postmodernism, or something. I guess I could deconstruct
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something in a bit, but that would be boring. At four in the morning, anyway.
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So, what else is there to say? Grab a catheter, tell your dog you love
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her, tell your dad to stay away from your medical supplies, and sit back and
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enjoy the zine.
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Party at IWMNWN's house on Saturday. I'd tell you where it is, but I'm
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not even sure yet. I'm not sure if it exists. I think it might be a trap.
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I'll let you know.
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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LETTERS TO THE EDiTOR
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From: "tim hawk"
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To: kilgore@eden.com
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Subject: what the fuck is a fnord?
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Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 11:31:43 PDT
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Hi. Just a quick question I've been wondering for a long time and my
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friend Rewired won't tell me:
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What the fuck is a fnord?
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Bye now
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Lemming
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[my fnord advice: fnord go fnord look fnord at fnord the fnord newspapers.
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fnord when fnord you fnord see fnord them fnord there, fnord you'll fnord
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know fnord what fnord the fnord fuck fnord they fnord are. fnord fnord.]
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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STAFF LiSTiNG
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EDiTOR
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Kilgore Trout
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CONTRiBUTORS
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Clockwork
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Crux Ansata
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Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two Universes
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I Wish My Name Were Nathan
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Rich Logsdon
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Robert James Berry
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Sweater Girl
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GUESSED STARS
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tim hawk
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SoB OFFiCiAL GROUPiES
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crackmonkey
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Oxyde de Carbone
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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[=- ARTiCLES -=]
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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RABBiT HOLES EXPLORED
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by Sweater Girl
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I lie there, neatly placed in a plot, among the rows of lives passed and
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problems lifted, gently allowing myself to be distracted by the panoramic
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production of ivory and azure in the sky. The show constantly morphs into
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endlessly new images, and my attention is stolen. My imagination flies above
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the green field, littered with gravestones, to carve edges into a new plane of
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fluffy white fields, carefully intermingling with soaring birds. There I can
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be free, without responsibility or care; I long to be blinded by the sun and
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coast across layers of wispy whiteness. Abruptly, I become aware of the
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presence of others and tumble back down to the earth and grass. It presses
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squarely against my back, holding me up from falling down into the hell that
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teases and seduces me. I look about, interruptions forgotten, and am
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spellbound by the stillness that hangs in the air. Amongst the sensations of
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grief that linger in the atmosphere like a sickness, a single tree, amid the
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rows, cries out to be climbed. It beckons to entertain a child, whose
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laughter would ring out and give relief to the heavy demeanor that captures me
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and burdens my thoughts, my life... I lie there, neatly placed in a plot,
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among the rows of lives passed. I roll over on the soft ground and am
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confronted by a mother's name, etched in marble. I finger the raised letters,
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carelessly pondering what mark she left behind. Were her children influenced
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and enriched by her? Was her husband loved and cherished? Was she a
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passionate woman, both impaired and bettered by her feelings? Was she
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satisfied and loved? Is my mother satisfied and loved? It forces me to
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envision my own mother's name, my father's name, my brother's name, and even
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my own name in turn, printed in its place, staring back at me. I quickly push
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that thought away, momentarily content to be mindless and happy. Fortunately
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for my painfilled soul, at that moment, my classmates and I abandon our own
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worlds and slowly behind towards the school. My unaware boyfriend meets my
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eye, inquiring silently, but I shake my head and try to repress the questions
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that plague me.
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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"Tonight is the time. Step carefully. Hold on to me."
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--Eve Merriam, _The New Moon_
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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FiRST DiARY ENTRY iN A MONTH, or
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A SUBMiSSiON, or
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MOViNG
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by I Wish My Name Were Nathan
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Well, I'm moving out of my house for the first time. The day has come.
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I've packed two days this week. The first day, last Tuesday, was pretty
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mechanical -- just stuffing things from my dresser and bookshelves into boxes.
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The second day, today, was more cleansing, because I have decided not to take
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it all with me. It's silly to add more possessions as time goes on and move
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them all every time.
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I think Clockwork is surprised that I have a lot of things. I'm not
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sure, of course, what he thought I had before versus what he thought after I
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replied that I had "more than that." Very ambiguous, but when I survey the
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field of boxes in my room it seems like a lot. Although at least three of
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them are full of books I've already planned to give away to the library or
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sell to the bookstores.
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I have quashed my ambitious and weird idea to keep all my textbooks. It
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just seems like more attachment and snatching-up. I didn't form love affairs
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with these books when I used them, and most of them don't seem interesting
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enough even to review now. Collecting... bah! I've kept some fine
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mathematical books, because they don't age. The third-rate books on sociology
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and psychology, I can't keep, because while they may be accurate to a degree,
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are just not deep enough for me. I want to read puzzle books, not
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expositions.
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I seem to be packed, I reflect at times, but a lot of my stuff is still
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out, like my computer, lamp, sound system, bathroom supplies, etc. Obviously.
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Those are the only things I actually use these days. I can get into a funk
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crying about the beautiful nostalgic days of yore when I had time and interest
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enough to use all the different things I've now got packed, or I can box it up
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and maybe have the nerve to toss it out later.
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This subject still interests me. I've got a strong inclination to dump
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all this stuff, but an even stronger inclination not to. I'm still attached,
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hell yeah. I don't like to think I define myself by my possessions. It seems
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more honest and accurate to admit that I still see value in owning the things
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I have. Books, for example -- I could probably find all these books in
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libraries or bookstores elsewhere, and thereby forgo owning them outright.
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But the instant access isn't there, nor is the guarantee of finding the same
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book, the same paragraph, the same memory. Wilson's books, for example, are
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less available than other examples of pop culture. Plus I'm still learning
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from them.
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Other possessions, like photographs and personal letters and old
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notebooks, are a tougher situation. These cannot be replaced. But do I need
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them at all? No. Here is where I struggle with the mandates of the culture.
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It doesn't want me to throw away my memories, because I should have them as
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"proof" or some such thing of my "existence". All these weird and wacky
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letters from Cr---, for example. I don't think he would be pleased to know I
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threw out his letters, even if it weren't out of spite for him personally.
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The attachment to the ideas of the future and nostalgia also prevent me from
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tossing these things. Some day, won't I look back and regret this rash move?
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All these questions concern my spiritual path, you see. I've read and
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been told quite persuasively that attachments to the "illusion" are drawbacks
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in some sense. But acting on such advice now kind of defines my future. What
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if I decide to become an oversexed wealthy hedonist in the coming years? Such
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a change in lifestyle would be less likely given the scenario of a "me" with
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few possessions; one would think the effects of having made these decisions
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now would in fact act against the probability of that change in the future.
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Or, more clearly: right now I harbor various desires, one of which is to
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leave off this spiritual "thing" and let myself go. (I admit also that this
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desire is repulsive too.) If I want this desire to persist, I cannot throw
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away all my stuff. (But, it's a darn good way to quash that desire, by
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actually doing so.)
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Am I too young to be having all these ideas? Can I successfully execute
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any of them without causing more problems? Do these doubts stem from true
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concern or base ego defense?
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I wonder sometimes if I'm taking it all too seriously. I wonder
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sometimes if I'm denouncing myself out of ignorance or fear. I wonder
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sometimes if all this wondering indicates that I'm doing "well" or doing
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"poorly". I can go too far too and become completely apathetic or overwhelmed
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by the choices, or be pushed out of necessity to do something brash in order
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to demonstrate that I can indeed act.
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For the first time, I think I can feel the impotence that comes with not
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knowing the future. But I cannot cherish this impotence, because it derives
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from a complete lack of faith in my ability to decide it.
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Am I just mixing the levels here? What do all these things mean to me
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anyway?
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If I keep all the little things and all the medium things and all the big
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things, I'll be guaranteed that in the future I'll have them when I need them.
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I'll be guaranteed the labor of worrying about them, interpreting them,
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porting them about, dodging them. I will keep some of the heavy links in my
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chains merely out of attachment. Why? Not out of fear that someone else will
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have them. Not out of desire that they take them on themselves. Not because
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it's impossible or forbidden to do so.
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Part of me is afraid of what I'd be like if I could walk taller and
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freer. Part of me conjures up scenes of inconsolable regret, which when
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combined with emotionless detachment, sees me slipping into a convenient
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noose. These parts of me drag me down. I prefer to believe that no matter
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what I am doing physically, I'm always heading towards something. Something
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is drawing me on, guiding me. And as I get closer, the links in the chains
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will tend to sink me, not save me. "There will be a wailing and gnashing of
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teeth, for many are called, but few are chosen" -- who wails? who gnashes
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teeth? who are called? who are chosen? They're not at all the same whos.
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Every thing I can see, I can only interpret in terms of the past. I see
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myself using it in the future only in terms of that past use.
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On my computer desk, which I thought I used most often, there is a spider
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web connecting two items nearby that I haven't touched in weeks.
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I get more sick from dust than from the thought of leaving these things
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behind.
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I cannot remember what is in the closed boxes.
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Depression, anguish, worry... an easy trap to get *into*.... I think
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there's a way to be lighthearted about all this and still get the job done.
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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"Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps."
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--Emo Phillips
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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HEAD MANA
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by Clockwork
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Tooled, I tell ya. Tooled. Let the beatings come, freak-o.
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Oh, how I fancy this ideal of torturing my self -- masochist
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extraordinaire to melon collie drawls and Cohen balls. Get your head out of
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the radio. Is it healthy to go through the past, reliving moment to moment in
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its full regalia of colors smells hogstains and simple creaking stabness? No,
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I tell you! Regret me not, this lead to what? In time, healing begins.
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"Heal me now!" the short American slapped on his belly. "You are healed!"
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Jealous women-haters. Maybe making up for his lack of affection and
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undertaker heart machine, in third person, as a matter of fact. Maybe to say,
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yeah, I'm the manhole cover, and you're the man. Cold, brick snakes. Wrangle
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'em up, poncho, hard-head, fickle cell anemia is the news.
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Warm-up exercises. Throw your state into a primordial miss-match mush.
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Come on. Bring it on. Rant rant rant was the sycophant phant phant. Devoid
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of angel claws and broken fathers, wrapped in robes of mister-mister to grow
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his garden with piss and tails and heft sperm whales. Ink be fast, ink be
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quick, ink outrace my skull this thick. Tread on, tread on. What is this?
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Fiction or non or none or fiction? Whip up the wholes, spring sent ballerina
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twirler, rock-a-bye hush and be gone.
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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"I only drink to make other people seem more interesting."
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--George Jean Nathan
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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JOURNAL: RUSSiAN MONKS AND A WEEPiNG iCON
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by Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two Universes
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A NOTE ON THE TEXT
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On Monday, the first day of June, 1998, Howler in the Shadows, Crux
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Ansata, and I visited a small monastery just outside of Blanco in communion
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with the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, a group of exiles and emigrants which
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broke away from the mother body of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia due
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to the latter's collaborations with the Communist Russian government and which
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has never reconciled with the Orthodox Church in Russia. This monastery is
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attached to an even smaller convent and lies a few miles outside Blanco, the
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county seat of Blanco County, Texas.
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An icon at this monastery is said to have wept tears of myrrh
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intermittently since 1985, and it is this which we visited the monastery to
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see. While we did not see the icon in tears it was a very interesting trip,
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and the following is my journal entry reporting our visit. It is, of course,
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merely a common pilgrim's entry, and had I been visiting to investigate the
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authenticity of the icon's weeping it would have been more critical, and had I
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been investigating the importance of the icon to the monastery and the
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Orthodox Church as a whole it would have been vastly more comprehensive. I
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present it merely as it is.
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Unfortunately, a number of details were left out, from the antics of the
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cows blocking our car on the way to the monastery to the processional fans in
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the church which the monk told us are icons of the cherubim and seraphim. I
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also forgot to mention that the practice of leaving votive body parts at
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shrines dates back beyond the Middle Ages to the pagan Romans and Etruscans.
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This is discussed in Prof. Ralph Merrifield's book, cited below. As far as
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the question of diabolic intervention goes, I've since learned that it is
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common practice in the Orthodox Churches to exorcise icons exhibiting
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|
miraculous signs to dispel any demonic influences.
|
|
|
|
This journal entry often makes clear my own ignorance of the Orthodox
|
|
Churches, as well as my bias in favour of my own Roman Catholic Church. The
|
|
reader should take this into account.
|
|
|
|
The phenomenon of weeping icons is not new; nor is it restricted to New
|
|
Sarov. Miracle XCII of Sir E. A. Wallis Budge's _One Hundred and Ten Miracles
|
|
of Our Lady Mary: Translated From Ethiopic Manuscripts_ (London: Humphrey
|
|
Milford, Publisher to the Oxford University Press, 1933) relates a fifteenth
|
|
century Ethiopic Orthodox story of "an image of the VIRGIN MARY [which] wept
|
|
for the sins of the world," and other reports of weeping icons and other
|
|
images are scattered about in all areas of the Christian world in both Roman
|
|
Catholic and the separated Churches. In the United States there have been a
|
|
number of icons which have been said to have wept, perhaps the most famous
|
|
being that of the Orthodox Saint Irene at New York's St. Irene Chrysovalantou
|
|
Greek Orthodox Church in Astoria, Queens, which was involved in a
|
|
well-publicised theft around Christmas, 1993, covered extensively in the _New
|
|
York Times_. More can be learned about the weeping icon we visited, that of
|
|
St. Irene, and other weeping icons, at my website at
|
|
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/9587/relics.html.
|
|
|
|
Christ of the Hills Monastery offers free tears of the weeping icon,
|
|
absorbed in cotton, to any in need on a one-per-family basis. They are also
|
|
distributed on the same basis to all pilgrims to the monastery who take the
|
|
monastery tour. While Orthodox Christians should check with their proper
|
|
authorities, Roman Catholics should consider these relics connected with an
|
|
unapproved (although not necessarily condemned) Apparition and as such I do
|
|
not believe they should venerate them, although I know of no specific
|
|
injunction against using them to anoint people, especially the sick. As I am
|
|
not a competent authority on this, those with questions should contact their
|
|
local pastors. The tears and the pamphlet _Shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary_
|
|
can be obtained by request from the following address:
|
|
|
|
Christ of the Hills Monastery
|
|
New Sarov
|
|
Blanco, TX. 78606-1049
|
|
U.S.A.
|
|
|
|
The monastery can also be reached at voice phone (210) 833-5363 or fax
|
|
(210) 833-5813. The tears are free, although the monastery does accept
|
|
donations and, of course, it would be polite to pay for postage.
|
|
|
|
A few minor changes have been made to the following diary entry. The
|
|
only changes to content, however, were restricted to the corrections I made on
|
|
3 June to the description of the relative locations of buildings at the site.
|
|
Minor spelling and grammatical corrections have been made, but I have kept the
|
|
"quaint" -- although inconsistent -- ungrammatical capitalisation scheme with
|
|
which I wrote. Also, two sketches have of necessity been omitted. One was a
|
|
very rough sketch of the layout of icon stands in the Shrine of the Mother of
|
|
God, while the other was of a pilgrim's cross I purchased at the icon store.
|
|
This cross was in the form of a Russian Cross, which has three bars. The
|
|
middle bar is set like the crossbar of a Latin Cross, that usually seen in
|
|
Western Churches, both Catholic and Protestant, and is the bar to which
|
|
Christ's hands were nailed. Another bar above this represents the title which
|
|
Pilate nailed above Our Lord reading in Latin "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the
|
|
Jews" (John 19:19-22). The third bar, lower on the cross and representing
|
|
that to which Our Lord's feet were nailed, is slanted with the right side
|
|
pointing up and the left side pointing down, representing the good and bad
|
|
thieves crucified on the right and left sides of Our Lord (Luke 23:39-43). In
|
|
addition to these omissions, as this is a private journal entry, I have freely
|
|
left out anything I felt like, including personal and irrelevant observations
|
|
and information, marking these areas with ellipses. I have also replaced SoB
|
|
writers' real names with their handles. With these exceptions, however, the
|
|
following unrefined and often awkward text is how this entry appeared in my
|
|
messily printed journal, minus the scratch-outs and arrows.
|
|
|
|
--SoB--
|
|
|
|
1 June 1998 -- Monday -- 11:51 p.m. -- Leander
|
|
|
|
Today, after no small amount of wandering through Austin while trying to
|
|
figure out which of the Highway 290's to take to get to Blanco, Howler in the
|
|
Shadows, ansat, and I visited Christ of the Hills Monastery in New Sarov, just
|
|
outside of Blanco, for the express purpose of seeing the Weeping Icon. Sights
|
|
along the way, expectation, and the gift of good company made the trip seem
|
|
quite short.
|
|
|
|
New Sarov is perched atop one of those oddly-shaped uneven hills so
|
|
characteristic of the Hill Country which hide their true natures until,
|
|
turning a bend or rounding the top, one is stunned by the beautiful vista
|
|
opened up below and across the gulfs between the next in a series of hilltops
|
|
and the one upon which one stands and yet was barely aware of climbing. It is
|
|
almost like opening the curtains of a high window, and it is ironic that we
|
|
had come here to see what the Orthodox call a window into Heaven.
|
|
|
|
Passing a small roadside shrine with a roofed icon of Christ on the way
|
|
down the country road leading to the monastery, as well as a similar roofed
|
|
icon at the entrance to the monastery grounds, we pulled up to the small
|
|
cluster of buildings making up the area of the monastery open to casual
|
|
visitors at about 3:30-3:45 p.m. The visible buildings consisted of a
|
|
building to the right of unknown function but which I assume to have been a
|
|
warehouse of some sort due to the presence of a UPS truck in front of its open
|
|
door; a small, open covered shrine to Mary located to our left containing a
|
|
large icon and behind which were visible the large black-on-white crosses
|
|
which I knew from my previous visit to be the monastery's cemetery; the icon
|
|
store/gift shop to the right and just beyond it a boat-shaped building of
|
|
unknown function; and to the left beyond the small open shrine the Shrine of
|
|
the Blessed Virgin Mary housing the weeping icon, with an adjacent building of
|
|
unknown purpose from which came the sounds of the washing of dishes. On the
|
|
left a little past the cemetery and the small open shrine and between them and
|
|
the Shrine of the Weeping Icon stood the monastery's church, and on a slope
|
|
down a path further down the main path stood the episcopal residence. I
|
|
believe at least one more building of unknown purpose stood further down the
|
|
main path, but of this I am not certain.
|
|
|
|
As we got out of our car we were met by an elderly man who I assume is a
|
|
volunteer at the monastery who asked us if we had come to see the weeping
|
|
icon. I answered yes.... [Soon afterwards he went to summon a monk.]
|
|
|
|
While waiting we looked about outside the shrine. In wall murals on the
|
|
outside wall nearest us were representations of Christ, St. George, and a
|
|
saint whom none of us recognised and whose icon bore a plaque dedicating it to
|
|
the memory of a parishioner in the place of the titles on the icon of St.
|
|
George. Next to the shrine stood the large silverish metal dome which
|
|
represents all that yet exists of the planned Basilica of the Blessed Virgin
|
|
Mary. More would probably exist of this basilica had the building fund
|
|
coffers not been emptied to pay for water during the drought of a year or so
|
|
ago during which the monastery well and cisterns all went dry and there was no
|
|
rain for over three years.
|
|
|
|
Where the monks and nuns were is something of a mystery, although the
|
|
grounds are large and the hills don't permit a view of the entire area, but
|
|
presently a young monk arrived who asked us where we were from and if we had
|
|
visited the monastery before. He introduced himself, and Patrick remembers
|
|
his name as Zeke, although I missed it entirely. He then took us within the
|
|
shrine.
|
|
|
|
Passing through the outside doors one enters first an anteroom with icons
|
|
on either side of a door leading into the shrine proper. Several icons of
|
|
Christ, Mary, and other saints are in this first room, and I believe two, but
|
|
perhaps three or more specific icons were saluted by the monk with a series of
|
|
Signs of the Cross and kisses to the icons' bases before the second door was
|
|
opened and we passed into the main room of the shrine. This room, too, was
|
|
paneled with icons, and some of these were saluted in the same way as those
|
|
in the antechamber. In the central area of the shrine immediately after
|
|
entering one comes across a solid podium holding an icon of Christ, and in the
|
|
same place to the front of the shrine stood the podium holding the weeping
|
|
icon. As I recall this, in turn, was flanked by other icons of Christ and
|
|
Mary, some distance from the weeping icon.
|
|
|
|
The weeping icon stood about chest-high and was contained within a frame
|
|
not unlike some of the icons on the walls. Within the frame with the icon
|
|
were a number of rosaries and religious medals and what might have been a
|
|
couple of chotkis, the knotted prayer-ropes used in the Orthodox Church while
|
|
saying the "Jesus Prayer." (I say perhaps because it seems the Russians like
|
|
to make both rosaries and chotkis with those knotted ropes, making it somewhat
|
|
difficult to sort them out when in a bundle.) Above the icon was a wooden
|
|
cross with images of body parts and the like in tin or a like material nailed
|
|
to it, and either tied or otherwise attached about the podium or stand were a
|
|
number of plaques in a silverish metal, some depicting body parts (such as
|
|
eyes, hearts, and limbs), some entire human forms, and some words in Greek or
|
|
Cyrillic. (I did not look closely enough to tell.) I asked the monk about
|
|
these and he said each represents a miracle, presumably associated with the
|
|
icon. This makes them exactly analogous to the votive images of body parts of
|
|
humans and animals popularly hung in thanks for or in anticipation of miracles
|
|
at saint's shrines in the Middle Ages, as discussed in Prof. Ralph
|
|
Merrifield's _The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic_ (New York: New Amsterdam,
|
|
1987), pgs. 88-93, a practice still living in some areas under the Roman
|
|
Church as well. Indeed, the cross above the icon could easily be mistaken for
|
|
a Mexican miracle cross, with the exception of the fact that, as I recall, the
|
|
monastery's cross was a Greek one while the Mexican crosses tend to be Latin
|
|
in design.
|
|
|
|
After opening the glass front of the frame and offering a silent prayer,
|
|
the monk explained to us the history of the icon, much as it is presented in
|
|
the pamphlet _Shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary_ which they give to visitors,
|
|
with the added fact that the icon weeps almost *every day*, although it can go
|
|
for up to two weeks without weeping. This was much more often than I had
|
|
expected, and I wonder how this compares to other weeping icons. He also said
|
|
that it had last wept around 2:00 that same day, which is, ironically enough,
|
|
the time we had originally hoped to arrive at the monastery. Interestingly,
|
|
he also said that when the weeping first occurred one of the monks' first
|
|
concerns was to make sure it was Divine and not diabolic intervention, which
|
|
is the first time I have heard of an Orthodox religious suggesting that Satan
|
|
might make icons weep.
|
|
|
|
One of the most striking things about the icon was how thoroughly
|
|
*new-looking* it was. Although I knew it was written in 1983, I had expected
|
|
it to be antiquated in execution. Instead it was thoroughly modern and looked
|
|
much like the icon of Christ I bought at Alba House in New York which was
|
|
written at Holy Protection Orthodox Monastery in Geneva, Nebraska. (The New
|
|
Sarov icon was written in California.)
|
|
|
|
Of course, like most visitors, pilgrim and curiosity-seeker alike, my
|
|
mind drifted to thoughts as to whether or not the icon truly wept through
|
|
Divine intervention. Of course, the frame and solid podium would have made
|
|
trickery easier, but these are not *signs of* trickery, for many of the other
|
|
icons, both in the Shrine and in the Church, are housed the same way. While
|
|
trickery is the only option besides supernatural intervention, as no other
|
|
options that I am aware of besides psychic forces (which I don't believe to be
|
|
the cause) have been put forward, trickery would also suggest that more than
|
|
one monk would be involved in the trickery, and cabals are rare in such
|
|
things. It is unfortunate that the Eastern Churches seem to lack the
|
|
ecclesiastical review committees necessary in the Roman Church, but in the
|
|
absence of such I can make no personal judgments in favour of one argument or
|
|
the other. Either way, standing in that shrine that day I felt closer to God,
|
|
and it is this that is truly important.
|
|
|
|
In the shrine the monk gave us each a card with hymns to the icon
|
|
identical to those in the _Shrine_ pamphlet and another card bearing on one
|
|
side the following:
|
|
|
|
The Call of the Mother of God:
|
|
1.) Daily Repentance, Weekly Confession
|
|
2.) Fasting, (Wednesday and Friday)
|
|
3.) Ceaseless Prayer (see _Way of A Pilgrim_)
|
|
4.) Love God, Love Neighbor. Live the Gospel of Jesus Christ
|
|
5.) Refrain From All Judgment
|
|
|
|
And on the other the "Jesus Prayer," popular in the Eastern Churches and said
|
|
on the chotki prayer knots, as follows:
|
|
|
|
LORD JESUS CHRIST
|
|
SON OF GOD
|
|
HAVE MERCY ON ME A SINNER
|
|
|
|
The monk spoke very highly of both this prayer and _Way of a Pilgrim_, which
|
|
strengthens my desire to read the book all the more.
|
|
|
|
The monk offered to anoint us all with the icon's tears, an offer which
|
|
I readily took him up on. Taking a piece of cotton soaked in the myrrh tears
|
|
from the pile of cotton at the base of the icon there to catch them, the monk
|
|
anointed my forehead and the backs and the palms of each of my hands, blessing
|
|
me by name in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I don't know his
|
|
exact words, but those printed in one of the leaflets later given to us ("Tear
|
|
of the Mother of God Instructions") read:
|
|
|
|
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
|
|
Spirit, through the intercessions of the Mother of God, be
|
|
healed.
|
|
|
|
This blessing is meant for the ill, but the blessings, I'm sure, are similar.
|
|
He then anointed Patrick in the same manner. When he got to Howler in the
|
|
Shadows, Howler informed him he was not a Christian, but the monk told him
|
|
that the blessing was open to all, regardless of faith, who want it, and
|
|
Howler then accepted it. The monk took the tear-soaked cotton behind the
|
|
partition behind the icon and came back without it, although I don't know what
|
|
was done with it. Then, following a period of silent prayer, he closed the
|
|
icon's frame, and we all left the Shrine.
|
|
|
|
Upon leaving the Shrine, upon the monk's suggestion, we went on to the
|
|
main church. Here, too, we passed through an antechamber where the monk
|
|
saluted some of the icons before entering the main body of the church. We all
|
|
removed our shoes before entering here, but merely to save the floor; not for
|
|
a theological reason. Here stood icon stands (much like that holding the
|
|
weeping icon) holding an icon of Mary on our left and one holding an icon of
|
|
Jesus on our right. The monk told us this is how the Congregation stands in
|
|
the church -- men on the right, women on the left. Chairs and pews were
|
|
entirely lacking. A pamphlet I picked up -- Anne K. Turley's _The Orthodox
|
|
Church: Heaven on Earth_ -- explains that this represents humility, frees
|
|
the worshippers to move to face particular icons, and allows for prostration
|
|
during Mass. Between the congregation and the sanctuary stood the
|
|
iconostasis, or "image stand," pierced, as the monk said with the icons, the
|
|
windows to Heaven. A door which he opened to show us the altar is opened at
|
|
high points of Mass. The Monk said the whole sanctuary is commonly referred
|
|
to as the altar, meaning "raised space." On the altar proper... stands the
|
|
tabernacle, just as in most Roman churches, as well as a book containing the
|
|
four Gospels, covered by an altar cloth only a priest can remove. After
|
|
closing the door once more we left the little church.
|
|
|
|
Before we left the monastery, the monk gave us each an envelope
|
|
containing a plastic bag with a cotton ball soaked in the tears of the
|
|
icon.... The envelope also contained:
|
|
|
|
-- "Tear of the Mother of God Instructions" (anointing
|
|
instructions)
|
|
|
|
-- A short excerpt from the _Shrine [of the Blessed Virgin
|
|
Mary]_ pamphlet on the "History of the Icon" with an ad for
|
|
mounted print reproductions of photos of the icon in tears
|
|
|
|
-- A copy of the _Shrine_ pamphlet
|
|
|
|
-- A Mass intentions card
|
|
|
|
-- "St. Seraphim's Collection" icon catalogue
|
|
|
|
-- an ad for their biography of St. Seraphim and other books
|
|
from their press
|
|
|
|
-- an envelope addressed to their monastery
|
|
|
|
I also bought one of the prints of the weeping icon advertised... as well as a
|
|
Russian Pilgrim's Cross (which I wear now)....
|
|
|
|
...But I really don't think a miracle is the path to God. Those who go
|
|
looking for miracles before coming to God can too easily either doubt even
|
|
those miracles that are presented to them or merely live life from one miracle
|
|
to the next, missing the true meaning of God's message. I believe *that* is
|
|
the true gift of Faith -- the ability and the will to serve God in life's
|
|
day-by-day toils, rather than only applauding Him when He puts on a good show.
|
|
"Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed" (John 20:29).
|
|
|
|
[Signed:] Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two Universes
|
|
2 June 1998 -- 5:37 a.m.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education."
|
|
--Bertrand Russell
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
FOR ALL OF YOU
|
|
by Clockwork
|
|
|
|
I want to sit on the edge of the Galapagos at the hilt of a black sheeted
|
|
piano, crooning tales of crying towns and heaving air, wooing the turtles and
|
|
birds and lonely wandering scientists. I want to sit barefooted and dressed
|
|
in simple clothes, pushing my wholeness through my hands and into black and
|
|
white keys and shaking strings, and wrap the island in strands of hope and
|
|
seabent lights that keep the eye. I want to send lit warmth to those who sit
|
|
and stare out windows and dream of flying to somewhere far away from where
|
|
they are. I want to understand your dreams and ticking thoughts, why you
|
|
fear, why you smile at tree perched bluebirds, what makes you laugh, what you
|
|
see in the clouds. I want to hear all the words you wish to speak, and fall
|
|
in love with everyone. I want to dance in the rain with giggling children
|
|
under pale streetlights and stare into the windows of everyone who can fall
|
|
asleep at night and wake to Christmas dreams. I want all your childhood
|
|
fantasies to come true, and grant all your children's wishes, ponies and
|
|
dragons and fairies from the woods. I want to wander the earth and bring
|
|
calmness to the chests of everyone, one by one, hand by hand, with words and
|
|
looks and grins. I want to hold the hands of those who cry in the dark, and
|
|
carry them to misty dew drop fields of daffodils and sunflowers to spin and
|
|
spin in circles with arms outstretched. I want to plant waterfalls and
|
|
bridges to neverneverland in your backyard, and replace the highways with
|
|
yellow brick roads. I want to relieve you of the pains in your head and lift
|
|
you up from your knees. I want you to grin and smile and bathe in moonlit
|
|
sounds of cellos and violins and dolphins. I want to show you the path of
|
|
immortality and truth, and push your gondola to the stars.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Of what help is anyone who can only be approached with the right words?"
|
|
--Elizabeth Bibesco
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
PAGES FROM A DiARY
|
|
by Crux Ansata
|
|
|
|
Foreword
|
|
|
|
If such a thing as a text exists, I have never experienced
|
|
it and can say nothing about it. I have only experienced
|
|
the relationships between myself and the text; an
|
|
independent "text," free of my interpretation, remains as
|
|
theoretical to me as "dark matter," "infinity," and "the
|
|
speed of light." I have heard people speak of them as if
|
|
they were real, but I must confess having no direct
|
|
experience of any of them.
|
|
|
|
As such, every time I have approached a text, I have been
|
|
unable to see it without my eyes, my autobiographical
|
|
baggage, my interpretive skills and apparatus. I do not
|
|
blame myself for this; I consider it an aspect of the
|
|
human condition. But it means I cannot say anything
|
|
"about" the text, much less "about" the author.
|
|
|
|
I say this as preface, because I have occasionally heard
|
|
comments by people who "know" me, or my beliefs, or
|
|
whatever, from reading my writing. Sometimes I hear very
|
|
fascinating things about what I "am," "think," or
|
|
"believe." I have spent no little time wondering whether
|
|
I have indeed missed these things, since they were news to
|
|
me. Possibly true, but I had never realized it.
|
|
|
|
It may be possible to tell something "about" me from my
|
|
writing. It is more likely to be possible to say
|
|
something "about" the relationship between reader and
|
|
read. But I wanted to take a moment and say something
|
|
"about" myself, as clearly as I am able, especially in the
|
|
context of the theological comments in these diary
|
|
entries.
|
|
|
|
I hope if anything has come across from my writing, it is
|
|
that I am not entirely ignorant, unreflective, or
|
|
unintelligent. I no longer can say blind faith is "bad,"
|
|
or even less good than reasoned faith. I simply don't
|
|
know. All I can say is I don't seem capable of blind
|
|
faith. I question everything, but one can question
|
|
without considering the questioned untrue. Faith does not
|
|
paralyze the intellect.
|
|
|
|
Let this be my confession: If anything is, God is; if
|
|
anything is true, Catholicism is true. Nothing in this or
|
|
any other of my entries should be read as my claiming
|
|
either that God does not exist, or that Catholicism is
|
|
untrue. I have yet to find anything I feel compelled to
|
|
believe that Catholicism forbids, nor have I found
|
|
anything in which Catholicism requires belief that I
|
|
cannot accede to.
|
|
|
|
That said, on with the entry.
|
|
|
|
0343 062298
|
|
|
|
Our language lacks any real vocabulary to deal with the sense of touch. I
|
|
had been thinking about that, about what term specifically one would use to
|
|
describe the different experience of different kinds of orgasm. I had thought
|
|
first to talk about different "flavors" of orgasm. I'm not sure why, but I
|
|
suppose it is because "flavor" is used for both tastes and scents, and is
|
|
rather vague. But I decided on consideration it sounds better to speak of the
|
|
different "textures" of orgasm.
|
|
|
|
I had been thinking about how there are many different textures of
|
|
orgasm, and about how I suspect that this number of textures is paltry
|
|
compared to the number of textures of pain. It may be my lack of experience,
|
|
I suppose, but I am rather inclined to feel otherwise.
|
|
|
|
This had come to my mind as I was reflecting on how even though I feel
|
|
physical pain when I don't eat, and physical pain when I do eat -- even the
|
|
small meals I eat with the family cause me a large amount of pain to digest --
|
|
these experiences of pain are different.
|
|
|
|
I suppose these differences can only exist in the mind, since the pain
|
|
receptors must be pretty standard. With sex, there is a chemical porridge and
|
|
the oxygen deprivation, so the range of experiences makes more sense. Perhaps
|
|
there are different endorphins in the pain.
|
|
|
|
Anyway, I'm sure this is so boring as to be proving my point on different
|
|
textures of pain, so I suppose I'll drop the topic.
|
|
|
|
I heard from Morrigan today. She's in Montana, but said the mail in
|
|
Wyoming will get there eventually. She has email, but not IRC. Anyway.
|
|
|
|
I am tired, but I don't want to sleep. I hate this feeling, when I'm
|
|
afraid or disgusted or something at the thought of sleep, but too exhausted to
|
|
stay awake too much longer. Anyway, I guess I'll sign off.
|
|
|
|
I slept for about four hours last night, got up, and was hallucinating as
|
|
my mind continued digesting the information I've been reading. I had to sleep
|
|
more, because I couldn't even see where I was walking. I hate weakness, but I
|
|
especially hate weakness in myself. My inability to study without a break
|
|
until I finish the topic is one of the weaknesses I hate. I get tired and
|
|
distracted, and I hate that weakness, and it forces me -- or I use it as an
|
|
excuse -- to do something less intellectually strenuous.
|
|
|
|
But now, I am off to sleep.
|
|
|
|
0351 062298
|
|
|
|
1509 062298
|
|
|
|
I have been thinking about writing a play that cannot be presented. Have
|
|
I written about that? I think I have. If not, well, I have been.
|
|
|
|
Today, I got to thinking about the idea of writing a play that *would*
|
|
not be done; one that was as self-evidently abhorrent to the average person as
|
|
I find acting in general. The idea I struck on was to write a play where the
|
|
central feature involved a young girl being beaten, begging for her life, and
|
|
finally being killed on stage. The sheer horror of having her trained to act
|
|
so that she would live through the pleading for life and pleading for the end
|
|
to the torture, while the "actress" -- separate from the "character" -- knows
|
|
it is futile would have her simultaneously living two horrors, and having to
|
|
have lived through it in every rehearsal. Although I know fully well this
|
|
would be a very attractive -- by which I mean would attract an audience -- and
|
|
no doubt sexually stimulating play for the majority of the viewers, the fact
|
|
that most people would like to think they find this abhorrent would prevent
|
|
this being performed. To be as cynical as possible, the ringleader character
|
|
would harangue the audience, telling them they are merely shocked because of
|
|
the "expense" of training a new actress for each performance.
|
|
|
|
Since, as my reader well knows, my mind does not work, this got me to
|
|
thinking. I had thought it might be something to write about, since this
|
|
scene would make the play, and could not be performed, and therefore I could
|
|
write this play without fear it would ever be performed, barring some amusing
|
|
Road Warriors future. (Or, I suppose, the logical outcome of U.S. television
|
|
in about five years.) Then it occurred to me that some ornery high school --
|
|
trying to push the proverbial envelope -- would probably put it on some day,
|
|
or could possibly. They would probably pretend to kill the girl, which would,
|
|
from the ontological perspective, ruin the fun.
|
|
|
|
Then, it occurred to me that, in all frankness, what does it matter? Most
|
|
people who went to see the show would assume it was a faked death, anyway.
|
|
Without disemboweling her and passing the gutted corpse from hand to hand
|
|
through the audience, what proof do they have? And even then, some would
|
|
suspect a sleight of hand. In their subjective world, nothing would have
|
|
happened. A scene with the corpse run through on a stake and left by the back
|
|
of the auditorium for the audience members to caress on the way out, gruesome
|
|
and amusing as it may be, could be cut.
|
|
|
|
So, I am back to the beginning, trying to think of a play that can be
|
|
written and cannot be performed; the detour of what would not was a myth.
|
|
|
|
Somewhere along the line, I guess I got bumped in the head by a low
|
|
flying jet, and got to thinking about what is beauty. The more I study Marx
|
|
and Marxist thought, the more extreme and less idealistic I get. I have come
|
|
to really question the reality of beauty at all, in an objective sense.
|
|
|
|
I think I got to this because I was struck by a very odd passage in one
|
|
of the books on Sartre's politics I have been reading. It commented he came
|
|
to agree with Marx in that the morality of a society is dictated by that
|
|
society. As always when I am told someone was convinced by the obvious, I was
|
|
a bit struck. Sartre hadn't really struck me as a moron before, so I had to
|
|
assume that not everyone sees this as obvious, even if I thought Kant and his
|
|
Categorical Imperative had been laughed off the stage of history at least a
|
|
century or so ago, and even that seems awful recent.
|
|
|
|
It seems to me that something has to be invested with value, because it
|
|
makes no sense to pretend something has value in and of itself. Something has
|
|
value *to*. I know there seems to be a contradiction in my thought here,
|
|
since I say that humans have inherent value, one and all. I believe this for
|
|
two reasons. For one, no matter what, I can't seem to stop loving people,
|
|
indiscriminately. It drives me crazy, but I can't stop caring about people,
|
|
even secluded in my own house and speaking to no one for days. So, one may
|
|
say they matter *to* me. But when I say it, I say it more emphatically, and
|
|
that is because I presume a God, and my God is the Catholic God, Who says that
|
|
all humans have value to Him, indiscriminately. So, clearly, there is no
|
|
contradiction here. People matter to me, and people matter to God, and both
|
|
as observers.
|
|
|
|
For myself, I matter to me, by personal apparent experience, and to God,
|
|
by dogma. No contradiction. God may be one, since He appears to have value
|
|
without having had it invested in Him by another, but that is because He
|
|
invests all value into the world, and hence everything else is that which God
|
|
matters *to*, whether they deny Him or not. Still no contradiction, but a
|
|
couple of paragraphs of digression.
|
|
|
|
To me, it seems morality has two forms. There is a code of right and
|
|
wrong. Thou shalt not burn down thy neighbor's orphanage. Thou shalt not
|
|
rape thy baby sister's friends. They sound like facts, but they are game
|
|
rules. Just like that insane scoring system in tennis or which fork one uses
|
|
with salad and which with meat. They are very rational -- if one picks a
|
|
reasonably developed moral system -- and fun, from an intellectual standpoint.
|
|
Obviously, though, people try to put more value on morality. It is obvious
|
|
the tennis scoring system is part of the game rules of tennis, and no one
|
|
trembles at the state of the world when I can't remember how to score. (So to
|
|
speak.) And so one has to wonder why people care so much about the moral
|
|
structure.
|
|
|
|
I am not saying I think the moral structure should be eliminated. Far
|
|
from it. As I observed above, I choose to be a Catholic, and part of the
|
|
Catholic game involves believing a moral code. This moral code is a
|
|
combination of that set by God and that set by the Church. I don't lose sight
|
|
of the fact they are game rules, but I also choose to play that game. It
|
|
makes life take on a semblance of meaning.
|
|
|
|
I suppose some people are so wrapped up in the "meaning of life," in some
|
|
kind of delusional point to life, that they cannot accept that they choose it
|
|
themselves. I am not saying, for example, that Catholicism is wrong, or
|
|
meaningless. Of course, I believe it is the most right game in town, which is
|
|
why I choose to play it instead of, say, the Branch Davidian game, which I
|
|
consider interesting, but less pleasurable.
|
|
|
|
And so, when my moral code is challenged, I don't have to fall back on a
|
|
"that's the way it supposed to be" or accept some kind of unraveling of the
|
|
universe. I know the way the game works, and so can find out why the Church
|
|
teaches what the Church teaches. I can accept that people either disagree or
|
|
simply don't get it. No big deal.
|
|
|
|
So when I read that Sartre had come to believe that the moral code was
|
|
part of the superstructure placed on a society by the ruling class, I was
|
|
scandalized. It seems to me so transparently obvious that the beliefs of the
|
|
ruling class are the ruling ideas, and it seldom occurs to me that intelligent
|
|
people won't realize how much freedom -- which is to say guilt -- is inherent
|
|
in the worlds they have built.
|
|
|
|
But that's just me, and I say this as a means to setting up my comment
|
|
about beauty.
|
|
|
|
Beauty is another of those things that "just are." People have
|
|
difficulties saying why they think something is beautiful, and tend to lapse
|
|
into idealism. I know I tended to believe in some ideal of beauty until a few
|
|
years back. But there is a problem there. I believe in only one ideal, and
|
|
that is God. The Platonic system accounted for multiple ideals. The
|
|
Kabbalistic and Sufi ways did, too, through the emanations. Valentinian
|
|
Gnosticism accounted for emanations, but off the top of my head I can't
|
|
remember if any of their cosmologies accounted for beauty. I know that the me
|
|
as Valentinian Gnostic tended to account beauty as an aspect of Sophia, in
|
|
turn a form of Christ and a person of God. I tend to believe that still, but
|
|
in a different sense.
|
|
|
|
God is perfect, by definition. I am not convinced the body of Christ in
|
|
fleshly terms is included in that. (As opposed, of course, to the body of
|
|
Christ in non-fleshly terms.) Therefore, in my opinion, all ideals must be
|
|
accounted for through God. I don't believe God has a body -- physical, flesh
|
|
and blood body. Therefore, I don't believe God has physical beauty.
|
|
|
|
This is separate from what I term "attractiveness." Of course, God is
|
|
the ultimate attractor, and He is or has the ideal of attractiveness. But
|
|
when I speak of beauty, I mean of the kind of the beauty of the body of a girl
|
|
or a woman, not the "beauty" of a cosmological model or a mathematical formula
|
|
or a novel.
|
|
|
|
Argh. Forgot where I was for a minute. I'll try to wrap up.
|
|
|
|
Beauty in practical -- so to speak materialist -- terms is separate from
|
|
attractiveness, though people like to think they are good and so confuse the
|
|
two. Physical beauty is observed in the relationship between observer and
|
|
observed, of course. I suppose there is a foundation to much of it. Good
|
|
genes frequently show up in the physical appearance. Balance and form do. To
|
|
an extent, some of it is no doubt shaped by the ruling class, like the
|
|
minority liberation theorists claim. But I no longer think there is such a
|
|
thing as beauty. I think I still believe in beauty *to* me. I know that
|
|
there are people I find more beautiful than others. I like to think that this
|
|
is not just a chemical, hormonal marsh being pumped into my brain when I see
|
|
certain people under certain circumstances. As this belief does not make me
|
|
happy, I choose not to believe it, though it is possible.
|
|
|
|
Beyond that, though, I still have some thinking to do, but now I better
|
|
run along and do some more reading.
|
|
|
|
Incidentally, I got my first paper back in Drama today. Bombed it. B-
|
|
on content and C on style. It was not grammatical, and she didn't agree with
|
|
some of my positions. Oh well. If this wasn't my last semester I might
|
|
consider rewriting it, but I don't know yet I can be bothered.
|
|
|
|
More later.
|
|
|
|
1550 062298
|
|
|
|
0103 062498
|
|
|
|
I woke up. I looked over at the clock, which read 8:45. I had gone to
|
|
sleep in the middle evening, exhausted, and had expected to wake up in the
|
|
middle of the night, but I remember thinking, "Great. I go to bed early, and
|
|
I still only get up just in time to get ready for school." Then, I thought,
|
|
"And, I'm still tired." Eventually, I began to wonder why the sunlight didn't
|
|
seem right. (If I was going to be living at home much longer, I'd have to do
|
|
something about that. I've always wished I had a room where it was actually
|
|
dark, but there is always light pouring through the blinds.) So, I looked at
|
|
my watch, which read 20:45, and realized I must have only gotten about two
|
|
hours of sleep. But I've been up ever since.
|
|
|
|
Today, I finished reading _Krapp's Last Tape_ and _The Devil and the Good
|
|
Lord,_ by Beckett and Sartre, respectively. The first was irritating, the
|
|
second much more moving.
|
|
|
|
On to more serious matters.
|
|
|
|
First, it occurs to me I was unclear in yesterday's entry. I said that
|
|
God's "value" is relative to all else that exists. This does not mean that
|
|
God depends on everything else, but only that value does. He is beyond value,
|
|
but when other elements of reality are brought into play, His ontologically
|
|
independent, infinite value is registered in relation to them.
|
|
|
|
Second, some thoughts on suffering. Between grief and nothing, I'll take
|
|
grief. I choose to live in a subjective world of suffering, not only because
|
|
I tend to think that the objective world reflects this, but also because that
|
|
is the way I want to live. It is my opinion that suffering is what makes us
|
|
human.
|
|
|
|
I don't know what happiness is. I might have experienced it, or have
|
|
seen it; I don't know. I do know that most of what I have seen pass for
|
|
happiness is a self-centered, bestial pleasure. Happiness, in my experience,
|
|
is what people call it when they want to be animal and are whining about your
|
|
lack of approval. I refuse to be an animal to the best of my ability. I
|
|
choose to choose, because I am a man, and this involves suffering.
|
|
|
|
Because I want to exist, I want to suffer. Because the thing that exists
|
|
is suffering alone.
|
|
|
|
But this occurs to me as a bit of a problem. On the one hand, it
|
|
prevents me from killing myself. As I tried to explain to Rally, when and if
|
|
I die, I stop suffering. That may not be true; but if I am in hell,
|
|
presumably I no longer choose to suffer, but am compelled to suffer. On the
|
|
other hand, my willful desire to suffer would, presumably, only be answerable
|
|
if I were to be damned. Presumably, heaven does not involve suffering, and so
|
|
is beyond my comprehension. If I were changed in a way I cannot fathom,
|
|
perhaps I would desire that heaven, but as things are now, I can't imagine
|
|
wanting anything that would not include an element of pain.
|
|
|
|
Perhaps this is because the only things I can think of that ever appeared
|
|
to be worthwhile for me -- love, for example, or writing -- were
|
|
excruciatingly painful when I had them, and painful in their absence. Perhaps
|
|
I have that fetishistic linkage of pleasure and pain. Or perhaps not. I know
|
|
I have a headache, but I'm not sure that counts. That's just the heat, which
|
|
is a suffering I don't enjoy.
|
|
|
|
I'm babbling. I'll stop.
|
|
|
|
When I got on the bus, on the way home, I was told my card was no longer
|
|
valid, and I had to pay. So I had to go digging through my bag to get some
|
|
money before the bus could go. A couple of stops later, a young man got on
|
|
the bus, and though he had a transfer, he needed fifty cents as well, which he
|
|
didn't have. The bus driver stopped the bus and told him to get off, but
|
|
another rider paid for him. At another stop, a young woman got on the bus.
|
|
She either had a transfer or some card; in any case, she was also fifty cents
|
|
short. The bus driver let her ride anyway.
|
|
|
|
Now, this got me thinking. I often think about those who don't have the
|
|
money to enjoy the basic services and luxuries I take for granted. I feel
|
|
miserable to see the workers building the houses in the field near my house,
|
|
since I know, and I rather suspect they know, most of those workers will never
|
|
be able to afford a house like this. They spend their lives building what
|
|
they will always be forbidden to possess by the social structure. Usually, I
|
|
sit toward the back of the bus, and so don't have to deal with it, but because
|
|
of having to find my money, I ended up sitting in the front of the bus,
|
|
reading _The Devil and the Good Lord_ and listening to conversations. Which
|
|
is a long way of saying: I was thinking about why one guy was told to leave
|
|
the bus, and someone else was allowed to stay.
|
|
|
|
I thought it might be because she was female. That seems a bit unfair,
|
|
to accuse someone of sexism like that, especially with so little to go on. I
|
|
thought also it might be because she was attractive. Her face was not
|
|
incredible, but she had a rather nice body. This might seem even less fair
|
|
than the sexism charge, but I think it would be much less conscious. Or it
|
|
could be because they were friends; they did speak briefly. Making exceptions
|
|
for one's friends is still wrong, but people tend to be accepting of it.
|
|
Perhaps he just forgot that he had been enforcing the rules today.
|
|
|
|
But I also thought about the guy who had almost been kicked off the bus,
|
|
and how he must have felt, sitting across the aisle from the girl, knowing
|
|
that in the eyes of the bus driver, she was more valuable than he, by at least
|
|
fifty cents.
|
|
|
|
I don't know. I still have a headache, and suppose I need more than a
|
|
couple of hours sleep, so I guess I'll sign off again.
|
|
|
|
0123 062498
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
[=- POETASTRiE -=]
|
|
|
|
"The poets? They stink. They write badly. They're idiots you see, because
|
|
the strong people don't write poetry.... They become hitmen for the Mafia.
|
|
The good people do the serious jobs."
|
|
--Charles Bukowski
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
THE SACRiFiCE
|
|
by Robert James Berry
|
|
|
|
|
|
At grim midsummer earth opens a carious mouth
|
|
The stonecircles are cold for sacrifice
|
|
|
|
Then we gather in one guttural tongue
|
|
Kneel silent as the sun rises over the motherland
|
|
|
|
Shadow sticks its dried blood to the long barrows
|
|
Splashes the shattered stones
|
|
|
|
|
|
After the rain
|
|
We will plant the gourd shaved and washed in the warm peat
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tug the bled shadow to the fen
|
|
and stand as one
|
|
Watching the rough husk
|
|
slide under the brown water
|
|
|
|
Priests calling the harvest.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"I am beyond your experience."
|
|
--Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
RESTiNG PLACE
|
|
by Robert James Berry
|
|
|
|
The sun slants on
|
|
a broken pot leaning out over the water
|
|
The wet rails glint and the graves
|
|
Rill with dirt
|
|
|
|
ancestors crowded homes
|
|
|
|
Touch these stones
|
|
Feel over the braile of the dead
|
|
The ghost of warmth in the ground
|
|
|
|
Watch the moon making home
|
|
A dog digging
|
|
|
|
|
|
He mourns
|
|
|
|
|
|
I will rest here, before the
|
|
Thick earth builds on my boots,
|
|
In my mouth
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Pull me out of the aircrash,
|
|
Pull me out of the lake,
|
|
I'm your superhero."
|
|
--Radiohead, "Lucky"
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
STATUE
|
|
by Robert James Berry
|
|
|
|
I am carving a statue
|
|
|
|
Age seated in her backyard
|
|
tearing feathers off a live fowl
|
|
|
|
I concentrate
|
|
Climb into her hands
|
|
Watch the red wart on her face rising
|
|
The rock ridge of her nose
|
|
Sharpen for the kill
|
|
|
|
Blood
|
|
|
|
but behind her eyes run
|
|
other tides coasts
|
|
This chisel sights follows
|
|
|
|
Here the tails of whales are lashing the waters
|
|
|
|
They shall be my statue.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
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[=- FiCTiON -=]
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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BLOODY Z
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by Rich Logsdon
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Years after his disappearance, I found the following manuscript sewn to
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the mattress that Dr. Zoroaster Knightt reputedly slept upon while serving out
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his life sentence at a Southwestern correctional facility. Dr. Knight was
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serving three concurrent life sentences for the brutal murder of his
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colleague, Dr. Rupert Apollo, at a college in Southern Nevada years ago.
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Since he fled the correctional institute, pictures of Dr. Knightt have
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been seen on numerous night-time TV specials, all dedicated to studying the
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criminally insane. Countless sightings of Dr. Knightt, always dressed in a
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black cape and in the company of a gorgeous tall dark-haired women, have been
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reported most recently from a variety of places: Seattle, Las Vegas, New
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Orleans, Minneapolis, Boston, Philadelphia, Paris, and Frankfurt. More than
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once, Dr. Knightt has been sighted simultaneously in two different cities.
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The search for Dr. Knightt continues.
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(Otis William Hogg II, Prison Psychologist)
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* * * * *
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I.
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Professor Rupert Apollo's murder -- the dismemberment of his corpse, the
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artful positioning of his decapitated head atop the office filing cabinet --
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has not been satisfactorily explained by the authorities. As usual, local
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police have scampered about like blind rats looking for a piece of missing
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cheese. An arrest has been made, but no proof offered as evidence.
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Rumored to be a destroyer of his colleagues' reputations, the effeminate
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Apollo was ushered into the next dark life at around two or three o'clock
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Friday morning, October 31st, 198--. On the following Monday morning, just
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before eight o'clock, I found the poor man in bits and pieces. I had come
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into the office early to look over the notes on my lecture, "Aesthetics of
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Murder in the First."
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The head -- flesh a delightful light gray-blue flush, eyes blissfully
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rolled up in their sockets gazing heavenward -- had been separated from his
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body, obviously by a very sharp instrument, and placed in a filthy bird cage
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atop the filing cabinet in the main office. Apollo had been one acquainted
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with the contents of the secret files contained by the cabinet.
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A bluish rotting ball -- a microcosm of our ruined planet? -- the head
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was hairless: the man's beard, eyebrows, and mustache had been singed, a
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reminder of Hell's hungry flames. Further -- I had to laugh at the effect --
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the executioner had given the head a "buzz" haircut in the shape of a "Z."
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Splatterings of blood dotted the faded green carpet in front of the
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secretary's desk, and swipes of blood artfully smeared the antiseptic gray of
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our office walls. On each of the four walls, a bloody "Z" ran from the upper
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left corner to the lower right. Equally disarming to the uninitiated was the
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thin path of blood (interconnected arrows, pointing the direction), now
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darkening and crusted into the rug, extending from the base of the filing
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cabinet and down the hallway to Apollo's own office. The line was a message
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from the night.
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In Apollo's office, the decapitated and nude corpse lay sprawled across
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the desk, which had been pulled to the middle of the room. A giant and bloody
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cavity in the chest area pointed to the removal of the victim's heart. Limbs,
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also missing, were later found in the offices of four male colleagues, each
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one of whom could now permanently claim a piece of Apollo (their hearts
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desire?). In this small office, blood was universal -- on the walls, on the
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books, on the papers scattered on the ground, on the ceiling -- the splendid
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culmination of a splendid execution.
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Most curious were the pictures on the walls. Through the years, Apollo
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had collected photos of himself posing with male opera stars, probably all
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gay, who had come through Las Vegas or Los Angeles. Each photo was smeared by
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bloody "Z." Only one photo remained untouched: it showed three teenagers
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sitting on the top of the back seat of a T-bird convertible, baring their
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asses to the camera. The person in the middle was Rupert. I sat on the
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passenger side.
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II.
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You see, before we taught at the same college in Southern Nevada, Rupert
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Apollo and I had grown up boyhood companions in Boise, Idaho.
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A precocious youth with an IQ well above one-hundred sixty five, I should
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have spent my youth in the state reform school in Blackfoot, a town in
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Southern Idaho named after a tribe of crazed Indians. Had it not been for my
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father, a frail bespectacled man whom I despise to this day, I would have
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spent my adolescence in a Blackfoot cage. Regrettably, I had weak, mewling
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parents, academic sorts nurtured on Spock and Skinner, parents who refused to
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use the words "authority" and "respect" around the household, who refused to
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lift a hand against me (even though, when I was twelve years of age, I did
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strike my mother on the cheek), who refused to impose restrictions, believing
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that my own genetically-programmed goodness would prevail. Their idealistic
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parenting only fueled the fire for my own behavior, which frequently bordered
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on the demonic.
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In contrast, Apollo -- six months older than me almost to the day, born
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April 31st -- seemed a model youngster. He seemed to have the sunny
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disposition that I lacked. He seemed to win the hearts of one and all. The
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word "seemed" is the key here, for Apollo had no heart. It had been removed
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at an early age. His father, a fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal preacher who
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(rumor had it) had married his sister, had beaten the souls out of his twelve
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children.
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Apollo and I attended grade school, junior high, and high school
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together. At one point, we became enamored of each other. Seemingly
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inseparable, we began college as roommates at the University of North Dakota
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and, following a horrendous snow storm and a bitter dispute in which I beat
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Rupert bloody and senseless, I left and hitch-hiked halfway across the country
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to join a beer-drinking fraternity in Spokane. There I became a man.
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All during my childhood, Rupert was my companion. We both lived on the
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outskirts of the town and had a curious relationship: while we both enjoyed
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pranks that outraged our neighbors, Rupert never got caught. Never. That
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honor always went to me.
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One afternoon, for instance, as we sat in some bushes on the foot hill
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overlooking his house, furiously smoking a pack of Old Golds that I had stolen
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from his father's study, Rupert suggested lighting the hillside on fire.
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"Burn that fucker," he commanded, "just for kicks." I loved fires, the
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crackling blaze of twigs consumed by flame, and I eagerly pursued his
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suggestion, quickly putting my clothes back on and flipping my cigarette into
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a patch of dry grass and sage brush that lay separate from the other brush by
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about twenty feet of dirt. Nothing bad would happen, I jokingly assured
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myself.
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In fact, nothing could contain that fire -- Rupert described it as a
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"little taste of Hell" -- and we danced and screamed with joy as it magically
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swept the foothills, chanting Zoroastrian orisons to the dead buried in the
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ground occupied by Boise's new ranch-style houses. Within five hours, thirty
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thousand acres were gloriously ablaze. The fire made national news. After
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all, it was the month of August. It took the local fire department and the
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National Guard one week to contain the burning beast, but not before it had
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destroyed thirty homes.
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Several evenings after I had set the blaze, officer Otis B. Hogg I -- an
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enormous bald man with black hair sprouting from his nose and ears -- made the
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first of many visits to my house, accusing me of setting the blaze that had
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put Boise on the map and claiming that neighbors wanted me sent away, but
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Father put forth such an eloquent defense on my behalf that I didn't have to
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worry about being shipped off to Blackfoot just then. "This bright young man,"
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my father boasted, "is the future of America. Now, we don't want to lock up
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the future of America, do we, my friend?" Seated at our front table, slurping
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coffee, the ever repulsive Hogg snorted, stupidly shrugged his shoulders,
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farted, bid us a good day, and waddled through the front door. The next
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morning, as we were pigging out at our favorite fast-food joint, I related the
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incident to Rupert, who scratched his head and commented he had had no such
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visit from the police.
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Approximately a year later Apollo initiated me into theft, a wonderful
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pastime, one I indulge to this day, and once I mastered the skill I challenged
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myself to see how many hundreds -- and, later, thousands -- of dollars worth
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of items I could collect in a given period. First, I learned how to steal
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magazines of naked women from our neighborhood store, and soon with regularity
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I was walking calmly and boldly out of the store, a copy of _Caper_ or _Flesh_
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safely stuffed flat down into my pants and under my T-shirt. Magazines led to
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cigarettes, specifically Camels and Salems, and -- in later years --
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cigarettes gave way to Olympia and Rainier beer. Life with Rupert Apollo was
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great. One hot August afternoon, seeking to do some kind of evil, we came upon
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a driverless beer truck parked behind Good's neighborhood store; its back was
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open, revealing fifty to one hundred cases of beer. "Oh, sweet Jesus," Rupert
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whispered, "our prayers just been answered. Get up there, boy, and gimme that
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beer." Before you could say "Fuck Otis B. Hogg," I had leapt into the back of
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the truck and began handing down case after case to Rupert. We made off with
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sixteen cases of Rainier beer that afternoon. Three days later, my parents
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received another visit from odious Otis. Again, my father -- a respected
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professor and state legislator -- raised an eloquent plea in my defense, which
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included a promise to have the store's liquor license revoked and officer Hogg
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suspended for life from the police force. Charges were dropped immediately,
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and Daddy flipped the bill for the sixteen cases. When I told Rupert about
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the incident, he scratched his head and responded that Hogg had not been by
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his house.
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A third incident -- and there were far more than three -- convinced me
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that my so-called friend had been thrusting a gigantic knife into my back.
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During fifth period one spring day of our junior year in high school, Apollo
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brightly suggested that we cut class. "Let's get the fuck outta this dump,"
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he would say, and I would do what he said. Fifth period, after all, was only
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a study hall and we wouldn't be missed for that or for the sixth period
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American Government class that concluded our day. When I eagerly embraced the
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notion and then asked how exactly we were going to pull off this caper, Apollo
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reminded me that the car of one of our friends -- a beautiful red and white
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'62 T-bird convertible belonging to Smoky James Earl -- could always be
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hot-wired. Since I knew vastly more about the workings of the automobile than
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my companion, since I could practically build a car from scratch just given
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the right parts, I agreed to go under the dash, splice the wire, and start the
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engine. It was a "piece of cake," as they say, and we drove out to Barber
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Dam, just outside of Boise, where we drank Rainier beer and conversed with two
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girls from our high school class. I had just stuck my burgeoning manhood into
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the mouth of the gorgeous squealing red-head named Rhonda, when officer
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Hogg's patrol car pulled up next to us.
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"You boys getting any nookie? Mind if I join ya?" oinked the execrable
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Hogg, blowing us all a kiss.
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"Go fuck that bitch-dog wife of yours, Otis," I responded, laughing,
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looking to Apollo for approval. When Hogg drove off, we knew we had been
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caught with our pants down.
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That evening, as I was sitting home watching "The Fugitive", my parents
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again received a visit from Officer Otis B. Hogg I and the Boise chief of
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police Wendell Bright. This time, my father's eloquence would not have saved
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Jack the Ripper. I had to spend six months in Blackfoot. Those were the
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worst months of my life. Before I left for the cage, as I came to call it,
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Otis B. Hogg I cornered me behind the high school one night and beat me
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bloody. "This is for my bitch-dog wife, you evil little shit," he exclaimed,
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every time he hit me. I left for Blackfoot, battered and bruised, and there I
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was badly beaten up again and again, and abused many times.
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Upon my return to Boise, I cornered Rupert Apollo in the high school
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cafeteria and, enraged, asked him why the cops hadn't come after him. I
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carried a knife and wanted to slice off one of his ears. For the first time,
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I saw fear in Rupert's eyes and knew he was afraid of me. He scratched his
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head nervously, trembled, and said he didn't know.
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III.
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By the time of his death, therefore, I had known Apollo for a long time.
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When I came to the college nearly twenty years ago, Dr. Rupert Apollo was very
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accommodating, claiming he had "put in the good word" with the administration
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to insure that I got the opening in the Graphic Design department.
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Apparently, he considered himself a god. Over the years, I began to doubt
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Apollo's professed loyalty, particularly when my social standing in the entire
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community suffered while my friend continued to sit in the cat bird's seat.
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Certainly, I had heard my colleagues discuss my friend's duplicity; surely, it
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was he who circulated rumors that guaranteed my existence as a pariah.
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I have learned, from reliable student sources, for instance, that my
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colleagues thought that I had spent time in county jail for beating a biker
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unconscious with a pool cue at the Furnace Tavern one night (I never, never
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fight with a pool cue); that I was involved in the drug trade, having spent
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years driving bag after bag of plant soil from Las Vegas to Los Angeles for a
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someone named Guido (Who the hell is Guido?); that I was partial owner of a
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chain of smut stores called Z Delight in New Jersey and Delaware. I was
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denied all advancement at the college. Socially, academically in Southern
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Nevada, I disappeared into a dark hole. A single male, I became acquainted
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with the back streets of Las Vegas.
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Thus, my stay in Las Vegas became a slow, steady descent into the abyss.
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But it was in the abyss of nude bars where I found my true passion, my true
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calling, my flame. It was there that, true to my name, I came back to life.
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At Eternal Infernal Pleasures, I was accepted as an old friend; girls sat on
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my face for a minimal fee, fondled me freely while I tried to watch the
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dancers on stage, allowed me to suck their tits or finger their pussies. Of
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course, these freedoms may have had to do with the fact that half the dancers
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had been my students, all of whom received high grades in exchange for favors.
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This dark place -- my heaven on earth -- became my world. And it was
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there that I met the woman who was to rule my life, the raven-haired Angela de
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LaMort, a nipple-ringed, pussy-pierced witch who demanded from me the same
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passionate sexual commitment that she gave to me. As a sign of her passion,
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she gave me a cock-ring; as a sign of my fidelity, I wore it to all the
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parties and showed it off proudly (Angela used to brag about my size). In
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short, I became this dark woman's sex-slave, and alone or together at some
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gathering I allowed her to lead me around by a chain, which she had attached
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to the ring.
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On a lark, we began making movies together, and there I found my calling.
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I have provided a short list: "Dark Vixen I," "Dark Vixen II," "Dark Vixen
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III," "Dark Vixen V," "Baywatch Bitch," "Girls Who Love Cock IV, IX, X, XI,
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XII, XIII, XX, XXII," "Long Thrust," "Cunterbury Tails," "Johnny Cockrub,"
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"Titanic Cockman," "Yellow Rainman," "Ruby Lips," "Love Really Hurts," "Big
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Hurt's Big Boy," "Butt Sex," "Cuntlicker I-IXII," and a few others you may not
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have heard of. The names are not particularly subtle, but at least I got my
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name in the lime light. My film name? Why, Otis B. Hogg, of course.
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IV.
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Of course, I killed Apollo. I butchered that bastard product of an
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incestuous union, last of his blood line. Had I not done so, he would have
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ruined me. Instincts told me something was wrong when he began treating me
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with unusual friendliness around the campus. He even went so far as to invite
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me to a Christmas party. A couple colleagues who still talked to me told me
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to watch out. Word was out, my job would soon be on the line, and I had to
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act.
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So, one All-Hallows Eve, following the advice of Angela (who rode beside
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me in the car, furiously puffing away on cigarette after cigarette and holding
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my chain), I followed Rupert from the Food King parking lot near his house in
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southwest Las Vegas to the campus in Northtown.
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"Gotta fuck this guy up, bitch," said my witch, giving me a tug. "Gotta
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fuck this guy up good." Angela had had a vision about Rupert Apollo, she
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claimed. In her vision, she had seen him decapitate me.
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* * * * *
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"What you got in mind?" I had asked her the night before, my arms and
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legs strapped to an enormous water wheel which Angela kept in her basement
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dungeon.
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"What you got, big boy? A weapon, I mean," she said, threatening to spin
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the wheel and giving me a pleasurably painful yank. I was completely nude;
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she was dressed in skin-tight black leathers, which deliciously exposed tits
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and pussy.
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"Oooh!!!" I said. "A shovel."
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"Shovel? You some kinda fuckin' moron? No one uses a shovel."
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"Whip?"
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"Where you gonna get a whip, stud? I mean, a real flesh tearin',
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butt-crackin' bull whip? 'Sides, whips don't kill." She gave me a hard tug.
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I yelped.
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With my dick throbbing, I thought a bit on that one while she gave the
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wheel a twirl, yanking hard.
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When the wheel stopped, dizzy, I tried again. "Baseball bat?" She spun
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and yanked.
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"YOUCH!!" I remember screaming. "HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!!" I exclaimed just
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before my head was submerged in the pond at the bottom of the wheel.
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"Youch!" she screamed back, laughing. "Praise the Lord!!" These were
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great times.
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"Hedge clippers?" I offered humorously when I came to a stop. God, I
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enjoyed playing these games with Angela. That earned me three more spins.
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The wheel came to a stop. "Big ole fuckin' ax?"
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She paused, said "Gettin' real close, honey," and spun again, Angela's S
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and M version of _The Wheel of Fortune._ This went on until four o'clock in
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the morning. Finally, exasperated, even a little pissed off at me, she went
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into another room and came back with a huge stainless steel knife. She placed
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the knife on the floor in front of me, undid my arms and legs, and left the
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room with dark elegant swiftness. I swear, as I stood there, nude, that blade
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sang to me. I knelt, picked it up by the handle, and felt it become a mere
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extension of my massively muscled right arm. It was settled.
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V.
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"Gotta fuck this guy up real good," Angela had said, and I planned to
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obey.
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Thus, on this dark night of the full moon, All-Hallows Eve, Apollo parked
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his van in the deserted parking lot of the North Las Vegas campus and, of
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course, did not see me slowly driving the road that runs parallel to the lot.
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At my angel's suggestion, I had turned off my lights one block before reaching
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the campus. My car crept like a great black snake, and the closer we got to
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the campus, the more energized I felt, power coming from an unknown source.
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It was past midnight when I parked the car and entered the building,
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leaving Angela behind smoking furiously in the car. She and I both knew what
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must occur. "Slice nice, bitch," were her last words as I got out of the car.
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"Let that fuckin' blade sing."
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That fuckin' blade was certainly about to sing. Whistling "When the
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Saints Come Marchin' In," I calmly strode up to the side door of the college
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and, using my key, noiselessly entered the building, assured that Rupert
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Apollo had gone ahead to his office. My black cape hissing about me, I
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silently ran up the stairs, taking two to three steps at a time. Once at the
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top, noticing the light in the office complex was on, I glided down the
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hallway, an invisible lizard, and peered through the window separating the
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office from the darkened hallway.
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I saw Apollo enveloped in light and hunched over the cabinet, a huge
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queer rat looking for stale bread. Apparently having gone to a Halloween
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party earlier in the evening, he was dressed entirely in orange, with
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billowing sleeves and billowing pants; as far as I was concerned, he looked
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like a huge pumpkin just waiting to be cut open.
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I remained on all fours and crept through the door leading into the
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office complex and up to within two feet of my colleague, who was frantically
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leafing through what I feared would be my own bulging file. For five minutes,
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I remained on all fours, my red eyes glaring hatefully up at him. Had I been
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a beast, I would have bitten into his leg, tearing flesh and crushing bone.
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Finally, a phantom from a nightmare, I stood and cleared my throat with a
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growl. He nearly jumped out of his skin, and I had to laugh.
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"Oh, pardon me, my dear Z," said the pumpkin, shaking, facing me and
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frantically looking down into my eyes. A little boy whose hand had just been
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caught in the cookie jar, he was just over six feet, and I was barely 5'11.
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But I terrified him. "How good to see you, Z!" he exclaimed, probably
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realizing he had painted his way into the corner of death. "I didn't notice
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you." He smiled, batted his fag eyelashes at me, and I considered slicing his
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eyes out.
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"You do now," I responded, inching closer so there were no more than
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three inches separating us. "What you doin' here, punkin'?"
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"I was looking for an important piece of mail, if you must know, Zorro,"
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he added, visibly trembling, sweating, trying to humor me. But I didn't feel
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humored; instead, I felt the anger rising from some deep dark recess in my
|
|
soul, molten lava pushing to the surface of a volcano. I hated being called
|
|
Zorro.
|
|
|
|
"That's not the mail, punkin'," I growled, gritting and grinding my
|
|
teeth, ready to spring for my adversary's throat. I sniffed, the smell of
|
|
blood imminent. I wanted to howl.
|
|
|
|
"Well, I guess that's right, huh, isn't it, huh, huh, huh???" he
|
|
stuttered, so frightened that he retched and nearly vomited. "I guess,
|
|
hehehe, I guess, hehehe, oh, dear, I guess, uh, uh, uh, that I made a mistake,
|
|
didn't I? But, then again, Z, we all do make mistakes, don't we? Heh, heh,
|
|
heh."
|
|
|
|
Sensing insult, hating his forced rhymes, I sprang. "That happens to be
|
|
my fucking folder, you cunt!!!" I screamed, reaching out and grabbing the
|
|
folder out of his fat and fleshy hands. I read the label on the file and saw
|
|
that I was right: the file label did read my name.
|
|
|
|
"What," I demanded, seizing the man my the neck and hurling him against
|
|
the wall on the other side of the room, dangling him a couple inches off the
|
|
ground for good measure, "what the hell do you think you are doing?" Over the
|
|
years, for some reason, I had developed a nearly uncontrollable temper, the
|
|
source of which puzzles me. Further, I had enormous strength -- most
|
|
assuredly, I draw this from my angel.
|
|
|
|
For close to five minutes, with both my arms, I held Apollo pinned
|
|
against the wall. His fatty legs flailed wildly, reminding me of some huge
|
|
overweight insect, until I kneed him hard in the groin. As he struggled in
|
|
sick pain, trying to grasp his genitals, the dangling fag emitted the squeaks
|
|
of a church mouse, and his face turned blue. I should have bitten off his
|
|
nose at that instant and sucked out his brains. His eyes bulged from their
|
|
sockets; his tongue lolled out. He gasped, "Uh, uh, uuuhh. Uh, uh,
|
|
unnnhh!!!"
|
|
|
|
When I let Rupert down so that he could gasp, gag, cough, and get enough
|
|
air to converse with me, I smelled a fetid stench that told me the man had
|
|
urinated and defecated in his orange balloon pants.
|
|
|
|
Trembling, my foe stared at me, wide-eyed, a terrified little animal, for
|
|
several minutes, one hand holding his balls, the other rubbing his now bright
|
|
red neck. Undoubtedly, he knew I could crack his vertebrae, pulverize his
|
|
skull, crush him to sawdust in an instant. Nevertheless, for once in his
|
|
cowardly life, he stood boldly upright, pulled himself to within one foot from
|
|
my face, and spat on me. Spittle and snot dribbled off my chin.
|
|
|
|
"Good snot-shot, punkin'," was all I said. I had to admire his spirit.
|
|
|
|
"You vicious prick," he said, the trembling temporarily gone. "Wait
|
|
until people hear about this one. I am tired of being pushed around by dicks
|
|
like you."
|
|
|
|
I looked at my former friend and smiled like a fiend. This was the
|
|
moment I had waited for, a point of culmination. It was like touching the
|
|
sun. "No one is going to hear about this one, my queer orange lad," I rasped
|
|
in the gravely voice that emerges when my own primal, animal rage takes over.
|
|
His mood changed instantly; he saw me for the dark thing that I am.
|
|
|
|
At that, I struck Apollo on the jaw with all my power. Crack. Down he
|
|
went, like a bag of rocks. I bent down, grabbed the hair on his head, pulled
|
|
him off the ground so I could pummel him again with my fist. Crack, crack,
|
|
crack. "You fuckin' bitch-dog," I whispered every time I brought my fist
|
|
crushing against his softening skull. It was better than TV violence. As he
|
|
fell onto the carpet and into a state of semi-consciousness, I continued to
|
|
beat and kick him savagely, and in seconds he was unconscious, probably dead,
|
|
his blood spattered widely and randomly about the office.
|
|
|
|
"Come on, guts," I whispered. I dragged my colleague by the feet down
|
|
the hall and into his office. Oddly, he seemed lighter now than he had
|
|
been a moment before. Propping the body against the wall, I opened my
|
|
fly, took out my manhood, and urinated on it. Then, after returning
|
|
my great beast (Angela's pet term) to its keep, I yanked his desk out to
|
|
the center of the room and, with one sweep of my arm, brushed the
|
|
papers, books, and writing utensils that littered the desk top to the
|
|
ground. Next, I undressed the body, picked it up, and lay it flat on
|
|
his back atop the desk, which I planned to use as a butcher's
|
|
slab/altar. Finally, I removed the twelve-inch stainless steel knife
|
|
from a sheath that I had strapped to the inside of my left leg -- the knife
|
|
was ready to sing. Quickly, in a mystic instant, brain afire, I sang
|
|
these lines, which had come to Angela in her vision (I have since
|
|
entitled the piece, "To Pumpkin: A Love Poem"):
|
|
|
|
Good night, sweet lump, it's time for you to go.
|
|
A shriveled, bloody bat, your soul a sickly rat,
|
|
You crawl a crippled thing into the eternal hole,
|
|
Where, 'til planets turn to dust, and angels moan in rage,
|
|
You smolder all alone (God-locked) in a tiny filthy cage.
|
|
|
|
Feeling reborn, redeemed from the abyss into which I had been cast, I
|
|
howled, I danced, and then -- raising the singing blade -- I savagely,
|
|
gleefully went to work.
|
|
|
|
* * * * *
|
|
|
|
The manuscript stops here. Of course, the location of Dr. Knightt and
|
|
his mistress remains a mystery. One photographer who attempted to
|
|
photograph the man seated in a French restaurant with his lovely
|
|
Angela could produce pictures that showed only the lady. Inexplicably,
|
|
Knightt had disappeared from the photo. (I guess you can't always see
|
|
the darkness.) Thus, to this day, nine years after his escape from
|
|
imprisonment, there exists no proof of the man's whereabouts.
|
|
|
|
(O.W.Hogg II)
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"If you think fishermen are the biggest liars in the world, ask a jogger
|
|
how far he runs each day."
|
|
--Alex Thien
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
AGENT OF MARROW (Part II, L' Estremita)
|
|
by Clockwork
|
|
|
|
I dreamt of a tall-treed forest with snow-covered dirt floors, and a
|
|
four-lane highway cutting through the center. From a panoramic intro-like
|
|
view of thousands of feet, I watched myself exit the highway and glide towards
|
|
a shackled gas station at the corner. The view shot to ground level as I got
|
|
out of my car and walked into the building, which had transformed into an old
|
|
home of mine -- one I lived in until I was nine. No physical characteristics
|
|
told me this, only preconceived thoughts of where I might be. Murky intuition
|
|
rather than reason. I stepped through the front door, in search of something,
|
|
and found the hallway to be collapsed, riddled with trash and charred, mutated
|
|
toys dumped from unseen toy chests. Crawling over fallen beams, through
|
|
broken rattles and pink bunnies coated with caramel, each room had more of the
|
|
same, with the occasional overturned bed and pool of water -- piles of things
|
|
left behind by my family, I assume. Around and around I crawled, covering all
|
|
the rooms in a circle, with every lap becoming more crowded and difficult to
|
|
navigate. My ankle somehow became lodged between a playpen and chunk of
|
|
uprooted floor, but I quickly freed myself and continued around my home.
|
|
|
|
* * * * *
|
|
|
|
Over my afternoon breakfast of Grape Nuts and apple juice, I flipped
|
|
through dozens of channels on by beloved television, a thing only done over
|
|
food to keep my brain somewhat stimulated by moving pictures and sound as I
|
|
performed the necessary consumption of food. Landing on one of six news
|
|
channels, the televised personality told me of amazingly high-scoring
|
|
basketball games of the NBA: 89-76, 84-81, 76-71. Why this was considered
|
|
such a feat I did not know, as a few years ago I recalled most games easily in
|
|
the 80s and 90s, and hitting 100 points not an uncommon event. Flip some more
|
|
until landing on news channel two of six, and listen to devoted commentary on
|
|
how offensive basketball has become, with fast-running games and
|
|
three-pointers pushing much of the league, the results of which are these high
|
|
scoring games.
|
|
|
|
Nothing new, nothing new, my memory must be failing, which will soon be
|
|
followed by my sight and hearing, and general health, and within a few months
|
|
I will collapse on a tiled Pine Sol floor in a supermarket in someone else's
|
|
neighborhood, and turn to mushy mush. I am already eating Grape Nuts, after
|
|
all, in search of fiber and a reverberating crunch, even after it has soaked
|
|
in milk for minutes. Grape Nuts don't have prizes, and I have grown old.
|
|
Growing old? I will only get older.
|
|
|
|
No need to think about such things. I turned the television off and
|
|
tossed the remote onto the couch, getting up to take the empty bowl and
|
|
milk-splattered spoon to their respective places in the sink. I should wash
|
|
some dishes. I'll just pretend the dishes are the source for my super-powers,
|
|
and clean dishes will only sap my strength. Besides, I need to get down to
|
|
the coffeehouse and avoid my thoughts.
|
|
|
|
Walking away from the couch I had slept on, I headed down the hall,
|
|
towards my bedroom, and directly into the door. Which was locked. I have not
|
|
been back here in two days, and when I was, I do not remember locking the
|
|
door, and furthermore, why would I lock myself out of the bedroom? That would
|
|
be silly. Oh, joy, must be my memory. I could have been back there last
|
|
night, or twenty minutes ago, and I haven't the power to recall it. Well,
|
|
that's fine, let's just deal with it and move on. I would, dear sir, except
|
|
for the unmistakable flashing lights emanating from beneath the door.
|
|
|
|
What?
|
|
|
|
Strobing, bright flashes of white light, seeping out beneath the door,
|
|
looking like it should be accompanied with fog, smoke, and men in latex
|
|
costumes. No sound, no heat, just pulsating lights. Naturally, this would
|
|
bother me. Aliens. They are here -- a UFO has landed in my bedroom in the
|
|
daylight afternoon hours, coming here to perhaps take me back to their
|
|
aluminum mercury eyedrop ship hovering in the atmosphere above, to drug me and
|
|
rip apart my organs from the inside, or initiate me as their contact to the
|
|
human race. Break out _The Urantia Book_, yodel at Bill Cooper, and tell
|
|
Richard Hoagland I have a Christmas present for him. Dozens of grey,
|
|
black-eyed, psychokinetic creatures scurrying about my room, doing my laundry
|
|
and looking for the satellite dish.
|
|
|
|
I knocked on the door, and an innocent voice answered, "Come in."
|
|
|
|
I tried the door again, and found it unlocked. As I turned the doorknob
|
|
and watched the door creepily swing ajar, my head was filled with images of
|
|
black-masked axe-murderers, drooling serial rapists, bouncy three-fingered
|
|
aliens, tempered knives slicing through the air, bats contacting my skull from
|
|
dark corners I never glanced at, all followed with the desire to step back and
|
|
see if I was to soon meet my bludgeoning.
|
|
|
|
The room, however, contained no such things. Above, where the ceiling
|
|
fan once was, hung a large disco ball, projecting squares of brightness on
|
|
everything around it, including the Little Prince woman wearing a baby blue
|
|
and mauve western shirt, half unbuttoned, fringe dangling from her arms, as
|
|
she held a matching mauve cowboy hat, seemingly eight sizes to large, above
|
|
her tilted head. She straddled the naked back of the gentleman she left the
|
|
coffee shop with the evening before, and he continued to writhe and flip on
|
|
the bed, playing his role of bucking bronco, seemingly unbothered by his
|
|
nudity. He looked to be enjoying it, actually.
|
|
|
|
"Ah, speechless once again, I see," she spoke in between breaths and
|
|
bumps, riding her human plaything.
|
|
|
|
"Well, this is somewhat unexpected -- you riding some naked guy in the
|
|
middle of my bed. That's just plain wacky. I don't really have any
|
|
preprogrammed response to that."
|
|
|
|
"Of course not. Do you like the disco ball?"
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, sure. I've always wanted one."
|
|
|
|
She looked down at the man below her. "Have you ever seen _Emmanuelle_?"
|
|
|
|
"Uhh, no, sorry."
|
|
|
|
"OK. Nevermind."
|
|
|
|
"Wait, what the hell -- why, why, what the hell?"
|
|
|
|
"Oh, calm down. This is your fault, you know."
|
|
|
|
"My fault? Right. I think you have developed a problem with not
|
|
accepting responsibility for your own actions."
|
|
|
|
"No, if you would have watched me like I told you to, this wouldn't have
|
|
happened. Well, maybe it would have, but you would not be all freaked out
|
|
about it. Now, I have to start in the beginning again, leaving in and leaving
|
|
out more than I should, only to watch you come to a cul de sac of confusion
|
|
once again, and on and on we go, round a wet well, looking for water."
|
|
|
|
"Yes, well, I do see what you mean. I admit I turned away for a moment,
|
|
and you journeyed into oblivion while I did so. How did you do that by the
|
|
way?"
|
|
|
|
"That will come along with everything else."
|
|
|
|
"Everything else... should I even ask about that?"
|
|
|
|
"No, you will see such things, of course. Experience is the only true
|
|
method of learning."
|
|
|
|
"Right, well. What must I do now?"
|
|
|
|
"Oh, nothing much, just be on your way."
|
|
|
|
"Yes ma'am."
|
|
|
|
And with that I turned and walked out of my bedroom, shutting the door
|
|
behind me due to some embedded respect for people's privacy, grabbed my
|
|
backpack, and left my home to the sounds of whinnies, grunting, and the
|
|
occasional giddee-up.
|
|
|
|
* * * * *
|
|
|
|
In several months, neither the Little Prince, nor the blue-eyed girl had
|
|
come to any conclusions about each other, other than the fact they both were
|
|
stubborn. Nothing from the other seemed to indicate any sort of stop to the
|
|
blundering mess of question after demand after question, not even so little as
|
|
a change in question or demand -- always the same, again and again.
|
|
|
|
Lucky to both, a lone traveler happened about their location while
|
|
backpacking down from the crystalline mountains in the distance, and stopped
|
|
to take in the culture.
|
|
|
|
"Touch me."
|
|
|
|
"Why do you want me to touch you?"
|
|
|
|
"Just touch me."
|
|
|
|
"Why do you want me to touch you?"
|
|
|
|
"Touch me, please."
|
|
|
|
The traveler reached into his pack, digging deep amongst his dried beef
|
|
and fruit, around his extra socks and cans of beans, beneath his maps and
|
|
compass, and pulled out an over-sized rectangular object wrapped in plain
|
|
brown paper. He slid it to the ground in front of him, crossed his legs with a
|
|
sigh of comfort, and began to carefully unwrap the paper.
|
|
|
|
* * * * *
|
|
|
|
I took my normal path downtown, stopping only once to spend the last of
|
|
my available cash on cigarettes, hoping I have built up enough karma to
|
|
receive the gift of free coffee once I reached my destination. I could not
|
|
help but wonder about the events a few moments ago, about who this person
|
|
might be, and why she apparently had the power to teleport and end up in
|
|
another's bedroom. Perhaps that is how she disappeared from the coffeehouse,
|
|
teleported into another realm, folded space and popped through her own little
|
|
travel edition of a wormhole. These thoughts did not surprise me, however. It
|
|
all seemed to fit into my own reality tunnel one way or another, and I
|
|
eliminated the possibility of monstrous hallucinations with confidence, though
|
|
if I relayed the story to my mother, she would think I was mad.
|
|
|
|
Perhaps I am. Or would be viewed as such by the average Young Republican
|
|
-- those who haven't the capacity to understand the depths of such situations,
|
|
the scope and relevance of such that you could only convince them of it by
|
|
putting them through it. My thoughts drifted to allegories of angels reaching
|
|
down to mortal man, wondering if the angels were nothing more than enlightened
|
|
men themselves, on their eternal path to bring others to their own level
|
|
through love and wisdom and understanding. Fallen angels misusing the
|
|
awareness and apparent unnatural powers given unto them through whatever paths
|
|
they took in the past, becoming lost in their own plane of worsening
|
|
existence, perhaps not knowing what once was right, what brought them to their
|
|
position in the beginning, what made their spirit glow, maybe lost in their
|
|
own fear. I wondered why the mythos of winged human-like creatures were found
|
|
in cultures throughout the world, why there were so many records of such
|
|
beings from the heavens, why there were drawings of humans with circles
|
|
above their heads on cave walls, scrolls, and slabs of stone throughout
|
|
history, and why these scrawls were interpreted as enlightened beings.
|
|
|
|
Rain began to fall, though I saw only a few scattered clouds above me,
|
|
and those few were all a fluffy lively white. I made my way through tides of
|
|
people, all with somewhere to go, occupied with whatever self-mantra chants
|
|
pushed them through the streets. A frail, bald child with seemingly mangled
|
|
teeth sat on a plank of wood -- "You like to go 'vroom, vroom,' don't you,
|
|
boy?" he yelled as I slid by with little a glance. Weirding modules popped
|
|
into my head, dreaming of the possibilities of reality manipulation by sound,
|
|
only to be shot down by the realization it was an addition to the film, not
|
|
originally included in the book. More childhood dreams shot down by origins
|
|
known to the few. A glowing oriental female with flowing raven hair drifted
|
|
by me, staring me down as she seemed to morph from angel to vampire and back
|
|
again. Sometimes it is physically difficult to stare back at such people,
|
|
letting them read into your pupils. On several such occasions, my head has
|
|
jer the side in an involuntary reaction, and sometimes my eyes actually shake
|
|
in my head, which is an odd, uncomfortable sensation. Closely following the
|
|
Asian woman came a stream of bare-footed college students, all dressed in dark
|
|
silken garb, proceeding in single-filed silence with miniscule black crosses
|
|
smeared on their foreheads. It is not Ash Wednesday, it is Tuesday, two
|
|
months after.
|
|
|
|
I reached the intersection before the coffeehouse, and waited as the
|
|
anti-walk sign stopped blinking, secretly telling me to stop being a
|
|
pedestrian, and start being a corner loiterer. Expecting traffic to whisk
|
|
within six inches of my body as I teetered on the curb, I looked to the left
|
|
to eye the prospective drivers. There were no vehicles, though, only a short
|
|
procession of marching band members swinging through the streets, offering an
|
|
upbeat rendition of a Tom Jones song, heading west through the green lights,
|
|
and turning into a nearby alleyway. Not many people stopped in wonderment
|
|
about this -- few even gave their attention for a moment, and all just
|
|
continued down the sidewalks, crossing the streets, parking their bikes and
|
|
waving umbrellas with rose-patterns. A well-toned pony-tailed guy, dressed in
|
|
a stylish black, flopped into my shoulder as he paced by, carrying eight
|
|
copies of _Steppenwolf_, and not stopping to apologize. Onward I pushed,
|
|
knowing there was lit tance to the end of this mess, where I can seek
|
|
salvation in a dim corner and relax to the sounds of coffee beans dancing.
|
|
Again the religious folk stood in their reserved doorways, eating their hymns
|
|
and verse, but this time they were not all clean-cut and well-groomed. The
|
|
group of raggedy, dirt-clad angst kids stood amongst them, swaying with their
|
|
smiling cherub faces, holding hands of the kids in toddler ties. Paradigms,
|
|
oh paradigms, how I milk thee honey swift. A humming girl sat against the
|
|
wall of Eckerd's, lost in her headphones and books, as a man with a picture of
|
|
a blissful, smiling Jesus on his shirt waltzes around parking meters, and
|
|
another man sprints by with his hands clenched to his face.
|
|
|
|
I ducked through the glass doors of the coffeehouse, which changed its
|
|
name to Insomnia sometime within the past twelve hours, and took deep breaths
|
|
with raised eyebrows as I walked to the counter. The staff had apparently
|
|
changed along with the name, for I stared at savvy, hip employees looking as
|
|
though they were imported from Thundercloud Subs, except for the fact they
|
|
were all dressed in clown outfits, with glowing red bouncy hair to match their
|
|
spongy noses, multi-colored one-piece jumpsuits, white and red and yellow
|
|
smeared in patterns on their face, and bouncy nine foot plastic shoes stolen
|
|
from the back closets of McDonald's.
|
|
|
|
My approach was reserved and careful, hoping to play along with the gig,
|
|
and I said, "Hi," accompanied with a shy grin.
|
|
|
|
"Hello! Hello, hello! What kind of dreams can we make come true?"
|
|
|
|
To this I just kept my grin and stared, wondering how I avoided paying
|
|
for admission. "Well, uhmm, can I just get some water?"
|
|
|
|
"Surely, surely you can, can!" came the response, along with an arch of
|
|
water from a well-placed flower on the breast of the server, showering me
|
|
aptly in the face. And I stood and dripped. The clown simply continued with
|
|
its burly red happy face and looked at me some more.
|
|
|
|
"Can I possibly get that in a glass, with some ice?" I asked with
|
|
calmness.
|
|
|
|
"Oh, no, no, no. Can't have that. Nothing like that here. No, no, no.
|
|
Please move on, next, next! Hello Mr. Customer, step right up!"
|
|
|
|
There was no Mr. Customer behind me, only dust and empty tables. I moved
|
|
up the stairs with a sigh, hoping I would run into some sane people I have
|
|
known from the days before to bring me back from wherever I may be. Of
|
|
course, I saw none. There were only half a dozen people scattered about the
|
|
upper level, one white-haired girl in a pink sequin body suit, swinging on a
|
|
tire hanging from above the stage, keeping beat to the Bach in the background.
|
|
It must be difficult to do, keeping rhythm with a tire swing.
|
|
|
|
To my surprise, this was the only odd thing up here. The other five
|
|
people were scattered nicely about the area, doing nothing strange -- reading
|
|
soft-covered books, sipping half-chilled coffees, glancing at me glancing at
|
|
them. This is good. This is relieving. On I went towards the back corner
|
|
placed between the views outside and views within, chuckling at the little
|
|
safe place I have found. The westernized Little Prince woman was not one of
|
|
the few present, so I must be patient and see what develops, see if she floats
|
|
in through the window on a diamond-studded magic carpet with scarves flowing
|
|
around her body and doves whispering her name. Her name. How I wish I knew
|
|
her name. I doubt she would tell me if I asked -- she would probably respond
|
|
with something like "A name? A name? You want a name? So you can brag to
|
|
all your friends you met this stunning, unmatchable woman, who dripped drops
|
|
of love from her eyes and danced to the wind's song, whatever it may be?"
|
|
|
|
Two seats in front of me, a thirty-something man sat amongst papers, head
|
|
ducked in a book entitled _Physics for the New Millenium_, blindly sipping the
|
|
short-stacked coffee, holding a blue ball-point Bic in the other hand. And as
|
|
I deciphered his facial expressions, up he rose, chair, book, pen, and all,
|
|
lifted by some invisible rope; carouselian organ music emanated from around
|
|
him, and he hovered to the ceiling and beyond, lost in the shadowy rafters.
|
|
His notes and such still laid scattered on the glass table, and he did not
|
|
spill a drop of his coffee. A few seconds of puzzlement went by, and down he
|
|
came again, accompanied by the same music children ride porcelain horses to,
|
|
and on and on, with little a wince.
|
|
|
|
Another, across the room, began zooming around in his now mobile,
|
|
motorized coffeehouse chair with wheels, leaving trails of dew-laden white
|
|
rose petals behind him while he flipped a pen along the knuckles of his right
|
|
hand, around and about chairs and tables, grinning up at the slanted lights
|
|
now spotlighting him in his act.
|
|
|
|
To keep myself from such distractions, I pulled my notebook and pen from
|
|
my backpack, and began a weak attempt at jotting down fanciful nothings. It
|
|
worked at first, and I hardly noticed any of what was going around me for two
|
|
minutes or so, until I found the motorized rose shedding gentleman next to me,
|
|
still grinning into the lights, the roses now making a glittery fairy rose
|
|
mound behind him.
|
|
|
|
* * * * *
|
|
|
|
The traveler removed the last of the brown paper, being sure to serenely
|
|
fold and tuck the paper back into his pack, and left a leather-clad notebook
|
|
and dense black pen in front of him.
|
|
|
|
"Why do you want me to touch you?"
|
|
|
|
"Touch me."
|
|
|
|
"Why do you want me to touch you?"
|
|
|
|
"Touch me, touch me."
|
|
|
|
Dusty, worn hands touched the lips of both the Little Prince and the
|
|
vixen child, and each stopped their vocal inquiries into the other and turned
|
|
their eyes to meet the traveler's. He removed his hands and looked to the
|
|
ground for a few moments, eyeing the articles before him. And with single
|
|
movements, he handed the pen to the Little Prince, the notebook to the girl,
|
|
gathered his pack, and walked on to silent grins.
|
|
|
|
* * * * *
|
|
|
|
My plan was for the man to speak first, seeing as he is the one with the
|
|
transforming chair and a spotlight glaring off him. But he just stared and
|
|
dazed, glazed over in his own multiverse, oblivious of my attention towards
|
|
him. As I was about to speak, and query what he might be doing, he turned his
|
|
head and giggled at nothing, and up the stairs floated some monstrous pastel
|
|
thing, flipping and flapping in an invisible breeze, following the winding
|
|
path of damp rose petals leading up to where I sat.
|
|
|
|
The mechanized man turned his impossible vehicle and buzzed back to his
|
|
table without a second glance back, and the Little Prince woman took his
|
|
place, wrapped in silken pastel scarves and cloth, floating on a matching,
|
|
wavy carpet perched upon by white doves.
|
|
|
|
"Right. Of course. So, now I am going to ask you what your name is."
|
|
|
|
She smirked and replied, "A, a, name, name? Want a name you? Friends so
|
|
to all your you brag can met stunning, this woman unmatchable you met, eyes
|
|
from dripped love who drop of her and wind's whatever be may danced to the it
|
|
song?"
|
|
|
|
"I thought so. Well. OK."
|
|
|
|
"Did you like that?"
|
|
|
|
"Yes, that was amusing."
|
|
|
|
"I thought you would."
|
|
|
|
"So, what's with -- "
|
|
|
|
"Oh, come on. Trust yourself."
|
|
|
|
She swooped down and grabbed my notebook and pen -- the doves never
|
|
moved, and her eyes never left mine. I nodded, and smiled as she whisked back
|
|
the way she came, and decided the next time I saw her, I would call her by her
|
|
name.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Need... chicken... soup..."
|
|
--The Tick
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
ALEX THE WOLF-GOD
|
|
A Very Dark Satire
|
|
by Rich Logsdon
|
|
|
|
I.
|
|
|
|
It was a full-moon night. Two hours before, the sun had dropped behind
|
|
the huge purple mountains to the west, bleeding the sky with purples, blues,
|
|
reds, pinks, and oranges. Because I have to sleep during the day, I hadn't
|
|
seen this spectacle... In fact, I hadn't seen a Las Vegas sunset in a long
|
|
time.
|
|
|
|
You see, I'm a ghoul. Yes, I dig up graves, feed on corpses, etc., etc.,
|
|
but never in my life would I be caught dead walking around like one of the
|
|
ghouls/zombies in "Night of the Living Dead." I have more class than that.
|
|
And while ghouls aren't restricted to the night, as some creatures are, I find
|
|
that the Las Vegas sun sucks what little life I have in these bones right out
|
|
of me. Besides, most of the residents that I know are ghouls who, quite
|
|
naturally (given the environment), prefer the night life here; those who
|
|
aren't tend to be either vampires or werewolves.
|
|
|
|
Anyway, it was the end of July, 95 degrees in the evening, but we three
|
|
didn't mind. Alex and I had lived in Las Vegas most of our lives and loved
|
|
the hellish night heat of the summer. Roasting in the heat and getting drunk,
|
|
wishing for something to eat, Alex, Lisa and I were sitting at Barney's, an
|
|
outdoor restaurant on the 34th floor of the Babylon Hotel, working on our
|
|
fourth pitcher of Wolf's Head beer, a reddish sweet brew.
|
|
|
|
Typical for some ghouls these hot summer evenings, I was wearing no
|
|
shirt. Lisa, of course, was somewhat fully dressed. As for Alex -- well,
|
|
Alex has an excessively hairy body (You'll understand in a bit) and is a bit
|
|
repelling without a shirt. Thus, Alex wore a T-shirt with a wolf's head on
|
|
the front.
|
|
|
|
Four nights ago, poor Alex had lost his job as a bouncer at a local nude
|
|
bar, Pussy Willow's. Things had gone fine for Alex for three years when,
|
|
suddenly, one night a month ago, he'd gone ballistic and nearly ripped a
|
|
customer's throat out in the parking lot. Lisa and I were there at the time,
|
|
cheering him on with about 100 other fans and saw Alex make a bloody mess of
|
|
this guy, some local pip-squeak attorney.
|
|
|
|
After four weeks, Alex had been called into the office. "Can't keep ya,
|
|
Alex," Big Louie, the manager, had nervously told him two nights ago, puffing
|
|
on a huge Satanic cigar. "Everyone, girls included, me included, are scared
|
|
shitless of ya, kid. Here's five hundred buck. See ya." After that, Alex
|
|
immediately went into a severe psychotic depression, claiming that for the
|
|
last three nights he could hear choirs of angels singing to him when he slept.
|
|
This was serious shit. Lisa and I had to do something, so we invited him to go
|
|
with us to Barney's.
|
|
|
|
So, there we three sat at the world famous Barney's Bar and Grill,
|
|
drinking and watching the glorious darkness of night fill the valley, my
|
|
stomach growling for food. Alex was in a black funk, probably day-dreaming of
|
|
murdering the owner, his parents, or both. Good ghouls to the end, my girl
|
|
Lisa and I were trying to bring him out of it. For the past hour, we had told
|
|
filthy jokes, talked about our high school days when we were all more or less
|
|
normal, and leafed through some magazines with pictures of Lisa. I knew that
|
|
Alex loved seeing Lisa in the buff. (I was real proud of Lisa. At
|
|
twenty-seven years of age, she was about to break into the top ranks of the
|
|
adult film industry. Dark Angel had already approached her about making a
|
|
movie with local star Bunny Hooters.)
|
|
|
|
Barney's is the perfect place to spend a hot July evening when one of
|
|
your friends has just gotten the boot. Everyone in this dark city goes to
|
|
Barney's: former state legislatures, bail bondsmen, strippers and
|
|
prostitutes, even an occasional homeless person, who'll curl up on one of the
|
|
purple couches inside to get some sleep. And there's more to Barney's. The
|
|
waitresses are young and gorgeous, generally untouched by the evil of this
|
|
present age, and are required by management to wear skimpy, revealing and
|
|
tight-fitting purple tops and pink pants that beautifully accent hips and
|
|
cheeks. Some of these girls look good enough to eat.
|
|
|
|
Another thing about this place. On the roof of the Babylon, overlooking
|
|
the restaurant, runs the oldest roller coaster in Nevada. In keeping with the
|
|
Barney theme, the cars and tracks are purple; underneath and parallel to the
|
|
tracks is a line of blazing red neon tubing that, from the distance, makes it
|
|
look like the tracks are on fire. Occasionally, the manager runs the cars
|
|
backwards on the tracks to scare the hell out of new customers -- just for
|
|
kicks. Looming over the tracks is a huge, forty foot statue of Barney the
|
|
friendly dinosaur, holding a flashing green sign announcing "Last Ride to
|
|
Hell." Tonight, I wanted to ride that roller coaster with Lisa, who loves this
|
|
place as much as I do. In fact, the first time Lisa saw the Babylon, the
|
|
restaurant, and the roller coaster, she said, "Cool." This place is the
|
|
nearest thing to heaven, as far as I am concerned.
|
|
|
|
At night, from Barney's, Las Vegas spreads out like Dante's Lake of Fire,
|
|
stretching for miles into black desert void. Jesus, it's beautiful. Easily
|
|
matching the glorious sunsets, the strip below a blazing, glowing mass of neon
|
|
stretching all the way south to the Excalibre. The only other match are the
|
|
topless stage extravaganzas that have been running on the Strip for twenty
|
|
years.
|
|
|
|
|
|
II.
|
|
|
|
Now to the story.
|
|
|
|
At the table next to us sat a family of four -- mom, dad, two kids --
|
|
that had just moved here from Southern Utah. I think these were normal
|
|
Western Americans.
|
|
|
|
I had overheard some of their conversation. The father looked like Bluto
|
|
from the Popeye cartoons, except Bluto didn't have red hair like this guy did.
|
|
This guy -- I'll call him Bluto for now -- was a tall burley muscular
|
|
hillbilly of a man with a red handle-bar mustache and a brand-new Barney's
|
|
T-shirt, who claimed to have been here before and really wanted to impress his
|
|
wife and kids with his knowledge of the town. "Yup," he said in his Bluto
|
|
voice as he slurped his purple milkshake, "I seen lots o' this city, ain't
|
|
much I ain't seen or done here. This city's my bud."
|
|
|
|
Yup. This city's my bud. What the hell did that mean? I wondered.
|
|
Obviously, Bluto didn't know shit about Vegas, and normally I would have said
|
|
something like, "Oh, yeah, does that include watching the dancers at Lucky
|
|
Star Adult Books?" But, because he was with his kids, one of whom was a
|
|
beautiful young raven-haired girl that couldn't have been over sixteen and
|
|
that I wanted for myself, I held my peace and leafed through the latest
|
|
edition of _Lips,_ which featured a beautiful five-page spread of Lisa.
|
|
|
|
"Hey, Alex," I rasped, looking up, "you seen these pics? Lisa is
|
|
gorgeous here, pussy and all." I held up the magazine's fold-out, which
|
|
showed my girl spreading her beautiful pussy for the camera.
|
|
|
|
Alex, however, was studying the February issue of _Rear View,_ which
|
|
contained another spread of Lisa. "Gimme a sec, bro," he muttered, smacking
|
|
his lips, reddish eyes bulging hungrily at a picture of undoubtedly the most
|
|
beautiful piece of tail in the great American Southwest. Alex was definitely
|
|
coming out of it. "Jesus, Lisa," he said, looking up at my girl, "this is one
|
|
good shot, girl. Nice tattoo, too." He turned the magazine around so that I
|
|
could see a picture of Lisa spreading her bare ass to the camera. She wore
|
|
the pussy rings I had given her two Christmases ago and had a lizard tattooed
|
|
on her right butt cheek. "You gonna sign this shot for me, Lisa?"
|
|
|
|
"Alex, honey, after the shitty month you had, I'll sign your huge and
|
|
hairy dick for you." Lisa was an awfully nice ghoul when she wanted to be.
|
|
|
|
Alex noticeably brightened at this, stood up and made like he was going
|
|
to unzip the fly of his slacks. I laughed. Of course, Alex was joking.
|
|
Besides Lisa had personally autographed his dick at a private New Year's party
|
|
at Pussy Willow's just this last year.
|
|
|
|
But Bluto didn't see the humor in Lisa and Alex's conversation. As Alex
|
|
stood, Bluto pushed his iron chair back with an ugly scrape and, arms dangling
|
|
at his side, trying to look like a pro-wrestler, just gave Alex and me a mean
|
|
hateful stare.
|
|
|
|
"Ah beg yer pardon?" Bluto roared at Alex. Everyone in the place stopped
|
|
what they were doing and watched. "There's people here, you jerk!! Kids,
|
|
too. You don't do none of that."
|
|
|
|
"My good Bluto," I commented, turning around in my chair so I could look
|
|
at this bully. "This is none of your fucking business."
|
|
|
|
"Listen, you gray-skinned pecker head," he growled, glancing my way,
|
|
"it's my business when my ole lady and my younguns is involved. Which they
|
|
is. You go to jail for that filth where I come from. And don't call me....
|
|
Wha' you call me?"
|
|
|
|
"Bluto," I gently replied, smiling at Lisa. "As in Popeye the sailor
|
|
man." I had worked a long time to be patient with such crass stupidity.
|
|
|
|
Alex looked at Bluto, who had started to walk over to our table, a
|
|
belligerent scowl on his meaty face. Unable to resist, Alex grinned
|
|
sheepishly, scraped his feet on the concrete floor, looked up and asked, "Uh,
|
|
shucks, none o' what, meat pie?"
|
|
|
|
"That stuff you was gonna do. Open your fly like some kinda
|
|
preverted[sic] animal. Show yer prick, you prick. I got a wife an' kids,
|
|
jerk-off.... Hey, what you call me jus' now? I oughta bust you in the chops,
|
|
Bosco," he said, looking back at his children for approval. Bluto wanted to
|
|
show his wife and kids and everyone else in the restaurant that he was tough.
|
|
He stood two feet from Alex.
|
|
|
|
"Look, go finish your purple Barney's Super Deluxe Milkshake, be with the
|
|
old fam, and leave us be, dumb ass," Alex instructed this behemoth, trying to
|
|
remain calm but accidentally emitting a low snarl. I guess Alex was still
|
|
border-line as far as his moods were concerned.
|
|
|
|
Alex doesn't look like much, which may be why Bluto tried so hard to
|
|
bully him. At 5'11", Alex has an average build and probably weighs
|
|
165 pounds. He wears wire-rimmed glasses and has long blonde hair,
|
|
which gives people who don't know him the impression that he is either
|
|
a college English professor, a homosexual, or both. Alex looks like
|
|
he could just start quoting Shakespeare and Dostoevsky any moment,
|
|
though I doubt he has read either author since his undergraduate days
|
|
at Columbia. ("If it's not in the Satanic Bible, Nicky," Alex had told
|
|
me on many an occasion, "I just don't want to read it.")
|
|
|
|
But I knew -- in fact, most everyone in the restaurant knew -- that Alex
|
|
was vicious as a rabid dog in a fight. I had seen Alex in fights, and they
|
|
were always pleasantly terrifying, better than anything in a movie or computer
|
|
game. The fights were incredibly, deliciously bloody. And Alex never lost.
|
|
Never. In fact, Alex generally ended up putting his opponent either in the
|
|
hospital or -- on at least one or two occasions, for which he pleaded
|
|
self-defense -- in the ground.
|
|
|
|
Anyway, a great and unsuspecting fool, Bluto stood his ground, like he
|
|
had a right to it, so Lisa stepped in. "Uh, honey," she said in a drunken
|
|
whiny slur, stumbling to her feet, pulling her blue T-shirt down in order to
|
|
accentuate her tits, and looking square into Bluto's face. "Uh, honey, butt
|
|
cheese, whatever they call ya, why don't you just take it somewhere else? We
|
|
don't want no trouble."
|
|
|
|
Pointing a finger first at Alex, then at me, then at Lisa, the man
|
|
bellowed for all to hear, "You three fucks make me wanna puke with your talk
|
|
about porn and those fuckin' skin magazines --and your gray fuckin' skin. I
|
|
been listenin'. (Uuuhhh.... Wha' you call me, sister?). You sittin' around
|
|
like three dead people or somethin'. I'm surprised you boys ain't whackin'
|
|
off in front of everyone, hawhawhaw, what with your whore with ya here." With
|
|
that he reached forward, took the magazine out of my hand, and held it up.
|
|
|
|
"This is the kind of shit these pricks read!" he proclaimed, holding the
|
|
magazine over his head. Then he ripped it in two.
|
|
|
|
"Ooooooohh," said some of the customers in mock-amazement. Others
|
|
hissed. They didn't give a shit. Nor were they impressed.
|
|
|
|
"Give it a rest, Jack!" said Liz, an old prostitute who sat nightly at
|
|
the far end of the restaurant nursing margaritas and wishing for better
|
|
days....
|
|
|
|
This set Bluto off again. "I'll give it a fuckin' rest when these scum
|
|
git outta here, you old bitch!" I could see that Bluto's wife and kids were
|
|
getting restless. And I was getting upset. Liz had been my first real piece
|
|
of ass when I was sixteen and normal, and I didn't like hearing her insulted.
|
|
|
|
"Buddy, Buddy, Buddy," his wife pleaded nervously, still seated, "let's
|
|
not do this. Let's not make another scene. Please. Relax. No big deal."
|
|
Obviously, this wasn't the first time Buddy had behaved like a prick to show
|
|
off to his kids. "Buddy," she added for emphasis, "these three aren't normal,
|
|
honey. The girl and the boy with the jewelry, why, their skin's almost gray.
|
|
Lookit their skin, honey. Look at it. The other guy looks at you funny,
|
|
outta the tops of his red fire eyes, an' he's pale as death. Let'em be,
|
|
Buddy."
|
|
|
|
"C'mon, Dad," mewed the raven-haired girl, flashing me an
|
|
I'll-let-you-fuck-me-later smile. She was thinking of me, God bless her soul.
|
|
I could also tell she hated the her dad and I started to get hard. "Knock it
|
|
off. Please. Please. Please. You're makin' a scene. We all know you're
|
|
tough." At this, she giggled.
|
|
|
|
"You bet," said Buddy, first to his family, then to us. "I'm one tough
|
|
son of a bitch when I git goin'."
|
|
|
|
"Sir," I said, staggering to my feet and trying to be as polite as
|
|
ghoulishly possible and stepping into the light so he could clearly see me,
|
|
"may I have my magazine back -- or at least what's left of it?" I held out my
|
|
hand.
|
|
|
|
"Huh?" he said. "Why you wear all that fuckin' jewelry, junior?" he
|
|
asked me. "Haw. I see you even pierced your titties, kid!!!" Indeed, I like
|
|
body jewelry, a personal fetish. He went on, "Goddamn, junior, got a ring in
|
|
your nose, in your lip. Shit. You're a bitch, son!!! Bitch-dog ugly."
|
|
|
|
"Sir Swine, you are upsetting me," I continued. "Now give me my
|
|
magazine. Give it to me. Please."
|
|
|
|
He glowered at being called a name, then threw his head back and laughed.
|
|
"Sure, titty-rings," he said, stepping up to me, "I'll give it to you." With
|
|
that, he brought his right around and cuffed me on the side of my head. I
|
|
staggered back and fell against our table, knocking over our pitcher of beer.
|
|
|
|
I had my hand on the blade in my pocket, visions of cutting this fucker's
|
|
nose off dancing like sugarplums in my head, when Alex stepped between us,
|
|
held up his hand, and said to me, "Please, Nicky, this is my fight. I may not
|
|
have started this," Alex snarled, eyes flashing demonic red, "but I'll sure
|
|
fuckin' finish it."
|
|
|
|
Alex looked at Buddy, undoubtedly startled by the snarl, and said, "How
|
|
about it, fat boy?" Then he blew the man a kiss and poked him in the belly.
|
|
|
|
Bluto frowned fiercely, clinched his fists, gritted his teeth. "You
|
|
name it, Bosco," he fumed in a barely audible voice. "Where at?"
|
|
|
|
"You know the parking lot down here behind the Babylon?" Alex stood
|
|
inches from Buddy's face.
|
|
|
|
"Got my car parked there, Bosco."
|
|
|
|
"There's an empty dirt lot at the far end."
|
|
|
|
"I seen it, Bosco."
|
|
|
|
"Meet me there in fifteen minutes, fat fuck." With that, Alex calmly
|
|
strode out of the restaurant and headed towards the elevator. Lisa and I
|
|
followed.
|
|
|
|
|
|
III.
|
|
|
|
We three walked together to the Pit, a vacant dirt area at the far end of
|
|
the parking lot behind the Babylon. Surrounded by warehouses and a couple of
|
|
abandoned apartment complexes, now used only by the homeless, the pit was not
|
|
visible from the Strip or the hotel. And no one who didn't belong there --
|
|
this included cops -- drove on the old roads running through the dark
|
|
neighborhood behind the Pit.
|
|
|
|
By the time we reached the Pit, word had gotten round town. Word travels
|
|
fast in Vegas, and when Alex is in a fight it's an event. Sort of like Oscar
|
|
De La Hoya or Evander Hollyfield or, on a good night, Wayne Newton. When Alex
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performs, he brings the dead up out of the grave.
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About four hundred excited, blood-thirsty generaly ghoulish spectators
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awaited us. They cheered wildly when they saw Alex approach, walking nobly
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through the now nearly empty parking lot. I swear, Alex glowed when he walked
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that night. It must have been the lights in the parking lot. He was like a
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god.
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As expected, the pit was surrounded by cars and pick-ups, headlights
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pointed into the middle to give light. People -- mostly in their
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mid-twenties, but some younger, some considerably older -- gathered in groups,
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drinking, talking, dancing and waiting. The full moon hung suspended over
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head, blood red.
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A few thoughtful fans had their radios turned way up so the night air
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vibrated with Rush. One girl danced topless in the back of a blue pick-up,
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whose driver had backed his vehicle in, as some of her friends stood by,
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drinking Wolf's Head beer, laughing and encouraging her to take it all off.
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Seconds later, she did. A whole group of Lisa's friends from the industry
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were milling around a long, black limousine parked to our left as we took our
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position at the far end of the lot. Intermittently, I heard the usual howls,
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the guttural snarls, and I knew we were all ready for a good night.
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The blood of sweet flesh was immanent. I anticipated its delightful
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stench. It was your typical Vegas party-all-night atmosphere. Excited almost
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beyond words, I was tempted to get down on all fours, run around biting at
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people's toes, howling like a wolf. I restrained myself, remembering that I'm
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not a wolf.
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Waiting for Buddy and his family to arrive, Alex paced back and forth,
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back and forth, faster and faster and fast, howled, panted, hissed, like a
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caged lion that can't wait to be fed. Occasionally, he growled and bared his
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yellowish canine teeth. Alex was now in a terrific mood, almost manic. I
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howled in glee. Lisa and I had put Alex's demons of depression to flight.
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In a few minutes, Buddy arrived, shirtless, tattooed, with five equally
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large bullish men accompanying him. God, this guy thought he was tough shit.
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His wife and kids meekly followed. I could see fear etched on the face of the
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raven-haired chick.
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"Whar's this fuckin' little fag cunt whose ass I'm gonna kick?" bellowed
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Buddy, stepping forth from the crowd into the circle and looking directly at
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Alex and raising his fists in the air. Buddy acted like he thought he was a
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character from the Clint Eastwood movie _Every Which Way But Loose,_ setting
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to square-off in a winner-takes-all bare-knuckles fight. I wished that I had
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brought along my cam recorder so I could preserve the moment for posterity. I
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could send a copy to Buddy's family every Christmas.
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Feverish, furious, sensing the kill, Alex tore his clothes off, went down
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to the raw, revealing an incredibly hairy body. "Jesus K-rist," said the man,
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glancing back at his buddies, laughing among themselves, "I hate these fuckin'
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queers."
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As Alex circled his prey, Buddy kept motioning and saying, "C'mon, kid,
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come to papa. C'mon, kid, come to papa." Then, to the encouragement of his
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ghoulish fans, Alex began his wonderfully hideous transformation. He moved
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gracefully in a crouch, stepping gingerly, stalking his prey really, animal
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vertebrae suddenly forming new ridges on his back. It was like watching
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Godzilla dance to Mozart. Lengthening and thinning, his hirsute arms hung at
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his sides, as he sized up his opponent, emitting guttural growls. As he
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slowly, gracefully went down on all fours, never taking his red animal eyes
|
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off Buddy, his face changed: his nose pushed into a hideous black snout,
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eyebrows became black and furry, ears enlarged grotesquely and shot straight
|
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back. Alex gave a low moaning howl. The fans howled back.
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Buddy dropped his fists, rage gone from his face, mouth open in horror.
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As beast circled man, its arms became huge boney front legs, and its back legs
|
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sprouted long gray course hair. Hands became paws, and fingers became claws
|
|
ending with black, sharp nails. This was better than "Fright Night," I
|
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thought to myself. At last, Alex had become the god-beast his fans had all
|
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grown to love.
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Buddy stood, a mouse paralyzed by the eyes of a snake, as the beast Alex
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moved in, making the death circle smaller and smaller. Someone in the crowd
|
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started banging a drum, and soon many were banging whatever they could touch
|
|
-- car doors, boxes, beer bottles, garbage cans, two rocks, you name it -- all
|
|
of which synchronized in a primitive, bestial rhythm. "Kill, kill, kill!" we
|
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all shouted, drugged by the promise of blood. "Kill, kill, kill." The beast
|
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drew nearer and nearer to the visibly trembling Buddy.
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Suddenly, the crowd grew silent except for Buddy's wife and kids. The
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wife threw herself to her knees and, weeping, her arms extended in
|
|
supplication to the beast that was now preparing to tear her husband to
|
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shreds; she begged for her husband's life. Buddy's son was crying and
|
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yelling, over and over and over, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, run, run, run." The
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raven-haired beauty held her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide with fear and
|
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loathing. The family vacation to Vegas had obviously taken a wrong turn.
|
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At that moment, I actually felt a shred of pity for the family, the
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mother weeping hysterically and begging for Buddy's life, the son telling his
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dad to run, the daughter too sick with fear to speak or move. But ghouls
|
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aren't supposed to feel pity; anyway, life is full of hard lessons.
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Quick as lightening, splendidly bathed in a luminary glow, the beast ran
|
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and sprang for the man, both crashing to the earth in a cloud of dust. When
|
|
dust settled, the wolf loomed immense and deadly over the body of the
|
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prostrate and sobbing Buddy. It reminded me of one of those African safari
|
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movies when the lion stoops snarling over its most recent kill, waiting to
|
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devour flesh.
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"Wow!" I remember saying as Lisa stood next to me.
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"This is so totally cool, Nicky," Lisa whispered excitedly into my ear.
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We were about thirty feet away from the show.
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"Sure is," I responded, reaching over, taking her hand, and lovingly
|
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squeezing it. Pretty soon, it'd be time to eat.
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Then, in a moment of spectacular and predatorial glory, the beast-Alex
|
|
seized Buddy's neck in its powerful jaws, biting swiftly, loudly crunching
|
|
through flesh and bone, and finally severing the head, now a huge morsel which
|
|
the beast tossed flying in a bloody spray into a group of delighted, frenzied
|
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onlookers. Next, unbelievably, Buddy's corpse actually got up and wobbled for
|
|
a split second, reminding me of a chicken with its head cut off, stepped
|
|
forward once, and fell. Blood gushed richly from the gaping hole, a pool of
|
|
crimson forming on the ground.
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|
The crowd let out a roar of approval. "Yes!!" I screamed. Lisa grabbed
|
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me about the neck and kissed me on the cheek. We were loving this.
|
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|
Things weren't finished as the beast suddenly turned on Buddy's friends,
|
|
who had been frantically trying to escape but had been held in by the crowd.
|
|
The wolf attacked swiftly, relentlessly and, in a furious frenzy of blood and
|
|
howling, killing the men one by one, severing the head of each in geysers of
|
|
crimson ecstasy. It was a great show. Smelling blood, I screamed and danced.
|
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|
The beast then turned to the family. Slowly walking to the wife, it
|
|
sniffed her hair, and in a sudden savage shriek bit and severed the woman's
|
|
head, which tumbled to the feet of her children, now screaming uncontrollably.
|
|
Then the beast turned, ran to the far side of the crowd, and sprang -- flew,
|
|
really, like a celestial being -- effortlessly over the people and into the
|
|
night. Once again, Alex had become the ghouls' wolf-god.
|
|
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|
Now I was starving. With six corpses in front of us, we didn't know
|
|
where to begin. This was better than the buffet at the Rio Hotel, and the Rio
|
|
has the best buffet in town. Conscious that I was being probably watched by
|
|
Buddy's hysterical son and daughter (both of whom I would have to claim as my
|
|
wards later on), I approached Buddy's headless corpse with Lisa. We were
|
|
holding hands. This has to be done properly, I thought to myself, in good
|
|
taste. By rights, in the absence of Alex, now undoubtedly painting the town
|
|
red, Buddy was mine.
|
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|
|
"Shall we?" I asked my love, anxious to begin and gesturing towards
|
|
Buddy's headless trunk. This would be better than sex.
|
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|
"Let's," responded Lisa, her humor and good breeding rising to the
|
|
occasion. (Did I tell you her father is a big-time movie executive living in
|
|
Hollywood?).
|
|
|
|
"Love you, Nicky," said Lisa in nervous anticipation as we stood over the
|
|
corpse, ready to begin. It was almost what I imagine a wedding would be like.
|
|
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|
"Love you, too, Lisa," I responded. I tingled with passion.
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|
|
As my girl and I reverentially knelt together and began to drink and eat
|
|
Buddy, others -- led by Liz -- gathered in groups around the other corpses
|
|
and, kneeling, howlingly participated in a memorable feast of corpses. (This
|
|
was the feeding of the four hundred that some of you have likely read about in
|
|
tourists' guides to Las Vegas.) There was plenty for everyone, and no ghoul
|
|
went away hungry.
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|
|
Afterwards, Lisa and I returned to Barney's and rode the roller coaster
|
|
for the rest of the night.
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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State of unBeing is copyrighted (c) 1998 by Kilgore Trout and Apocalypse
|
|
Culture Publications. All rights are reserved to cover, format, editorials,
|
|
and all incidental material. All individual items are copyrighted (c) 1998
|
|
by the individual author, unless otherwise stated. This file may be
|
|
disseminated without restriction for nonprofit purposes so long as it is
|
|
preserved complete and unmodified. Quotes and ideas not already in the
|
|
public domain may be freely used so long as due recognition is provided.
|
|
State of unBeing is available at the following places:
|
|
|
|
ftp to ftp.io.com /pub/SoB
|
|
World Wide Web http://www.io.com/~hagbard/sob.html
|
|
irc the #unbeing channel on UnderNet
|
|
|
|
|
|
Submissions may also be sent to Kilgore Trout at <kilgoret@geocities.com>.
|
|
The SoB distribution list may also be joined by sending email to Kilgore
|
|
Trout.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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