“Think about it babes,” he went on, enthused by the entire notion. “We’ve heard of heaven on earth often enough and hell on earth, but what if they are the same thing and they are right here, right now? Gah! I’ve got so much I want to tell you but it isn’t going to make sense. I miss you. That’s something I’ve needed to say for so long now. There’s this ache. It’s got a name. I named it. I called it you. Yeah, I know. Stupid. Forget I even said it.” Damien sighed. It was a world-weary sound. “I’ve got some people I need you to meet before we go on much further. Monkir’s filming this for me. His brother Nakir is in the kitchen.” The camera swung around to show a powerfully built black man staring into the refrigerator. He was naked. He turned to face the camera, an ice-cold bottle of beer in his hand, and toasted the cameraman before taking a big gulp from the bottle. He had the most incredible eyes. I found myself pausing the tape to stare at him. His physique was incredible. His musculature was sculpted to the point of perfection. But it was his eyes that held me. I felt my heart tripping in my chest.
The video started playing of its own accord. Nakir grinned at the camera again then turned his attention back to the fridge.
“You actually eat this rubbish?” his voice was muffled but his distaste was obvious. I could only imagine the kind of moldy junk food Damien had given sanctuary to. When we were together it had been Chinese takeaway cartons and slices of Italian pizza, the stone baked oven kind, not the deep pan—not that there was a noticeable difference after ten days in the fridge. Nakir salvaged something that looked suspiciously like a rolled up won ton skin.
Behind the camera Monkir laughed, a deep bass profundo. I liked his laugh immediately. It had warmth and kindness. It resonated. It wasn’t like the lazy laughs some people rush through, shrill and soulless.
“Not only does he eat it,” I said to the screen. “He loves the junk. The greasier, the more disgusting it is, the better. Eh, Damien?”
Nakir chuckled. For a moment I thought he was laughing at what I had said but that was just me being stupid.
The videotape had arrived in the mail that morning. We didn’t talk anymore that was the extent of our failed relationship. I loved him; he sent me videotapes and kept himself locked up in that disgusting studio he’d rented on the Upper West Side overlooking a meatpacking warehouse and a bakery. The bakery made pastries for one of the coffee store franchises that insisted on ruining a perfectly good cup of coffee with vanilla or cinnamon or hazelnut swirls or some other crud. He always joked that the place was slap bang in the middle between heaven and hell. I had gone out for my usual two mile round the park run and taken a lazy shower before I opened the envelope and stuffed the tape into the machine. Self-flagellation can wait is my patented motto. It is right up there beside keep away from babies and small children. I got that one off a plastic carrier bag but it always seemed like good advice to me.
“Monkir, say hello to the love of my life.”
The camera tilted wildly and came into focus on a grinning ivory smile and eyes of pure chocolate. They were the saddest eyes I had ever seen. I wondered what they could have witnessed to instill such sadness in them and realized I didn’t want to know. This was the age of global terrorizm and weapons of mass destruction. I had never even heard that phrase until a few months ago. Now it practically lived with me.
“Monkir is Nakir’s brother,” Damien explained in case I had missed the familial resemblance. It wasn’t hard to see the pair were brothers. They were cut from the same DNA strand to be sure. “They are … hell you aren’t going to believe me if I just tell you. I wouldn’t believe me. You need to see it. Nakir, show Lee who you are.”
The camera roved again dizzyingly.
In the kitchen the naked Nakir was stood with his arms wide apart, displaying himself in all of his glory.
“Not like that!” I heard Damien say and could imagine him shaking his head exasperatedly in the background.
“But I like this body. It feels good. I want people to see it.” Nakir objected.
“We don’t strut around naked anymore. We’ve got Gianni Versace and Jean Paul Gaultier and Vera Wang to thank for that. We deport ourselves with grace and style. We vogue.”
“But this skin is just the same, clothing. You should revel in it.”
“He would if he looked like you.” I said to the television screen. It was true of course. Hell, if I had looked half as good as Nakir I would have made sure plenty of people enjoyed the view.
“Just show her, Nakir.”
“You take all of the fun out of life, Damien.”
The image quality went haywire, white noise and interference fretting across the screen, the picture wobbling in and out of sight. For a full thirty seconds there was nothing, only a brilliant, blinding white that filled the entire screen before the picture settled and I was left staring at Nakir, naked. Not naked as in my kind of naked, erotic, lithe, sensual naked, the kind that makes you want to lose yourself inside another person naked. He was naked body and soul. I understood what Damien had meant when he said I wouldn’t believe it without seeing it, and I understood why the video camera had struggled so much to capture anything more than light on the film inside it.
Nakir was glorious.
He stood, stretched and unfurled his wings, each feather a delicate, perfect, wondrous creation that defied everything I knew about nature, science, the world.
“Magnificent isn’t he?”
I was nodding at the screen. “That’s not word enough.”
“It was Nakir who explained it to me, nine layers of sky, nine circles of hell. The symbolism of the whole thing. It’s mind-boggling. He’s a bit of a philosopher our Nakir. Monkir on the other hand is the quiet brooding type. I found them—or rather they found me—in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery when I went to see Babe Ruth on his birthday. His grave was covered with stuff. There were seven baseball hats, six baseballs, four American flags, forty-eight pennies, an aluminum baseball bat and a handwritten note that said: ‘Thanks for all the memories and many more to come.’ I laid my own memento, a rookie card of a guy I thought Babe would approve of, and turned to leave. That was when I saw them. They were both hunched over a coffin as it waited beside a freshly dug grave, and they were arguing.
“You don’t usually see people arguing in a cemetery, so I was curious. You know me, dead cat man. When I got close enough to make out what they were arguing about it didn’t make the whole scene anymore normal. Nakir was passionately trying to convince his brother that the dearly departed deserved a shot at heaven but Monkir was having none of it. Once a sinner, always a sinner and all that. He was adamant the dead guy was off to wallow in Hell’s eternal flames. It was a fascinating conversation to eavesdrop on, believe me.”
“I can imagine,” I said, but I couldn’t. Who could?
“Then I saw it. This essence. It was difficult to make out at first but as their arguing intensified the essence solidified, as though their passion was giving it form. It was there, I could see it, but I didn’t know what it was. It looked like a cloud of black and white swirling in the air above the coffin. It twisted faster and faster as the pair of them argued, sometimes more black in nature, sometimes whiter.
“The black won. The white was completely consumed and I saw Monkir smiling. He had obviously won the argument because Nakir did not look happy.”
“Another one off to Hell.” Monkir said from behind the camera.
“Indeed,” Damien agreed. “Can you believe what they were doing? I mean all this talk of judgment day and weighing our sins, the notion that your life somehow flashes before your eyes … it’s all true, in a way at least. Nakir, explain how it works, will you?”
The naked angel settled in front of the camera. His beauty mesmerized me once more. He was perfect in every way imaginable.
“Made in God’s own image,” he smirked at the camera.
“Will you stop doing that?”
“Sorry,” Nakir said, looking anything but. It
was disconcerting, knowing this had been filmed two days before, and that he had somehow known exactly what I was going to think, and when. “All right, how to explain it. Put simply, we are the gatekeepers. We look at your soul and decide which way you are going, heaven or hell. Pretty simple really. Sometimes we argue, when it is a close call, but generally it is clear who’s going where.”
“Amazing,” I said, shaking my head.
“You might not believe in God,” Monkir said. “But unfortunately for all you non-believers, He believes in you. That’s where we come in.”
The camera focused on Damien again. He was taking his shirt off and folding it neatly on the arm of the couch. He always was a neat freak. I loved the way he fussed over the creases making sure they were just so. He unbuckled his jeans and pulled them down, then his pants. He folded all of his clothes up neatly on the arm of the couch. It was so long since I had seen him naked, but I recognized every beautiful contour of his body. This was Damien, my Damien. I felt my heartbeat tripping in my throat. Nakir wolf-whistled at the man I still loved.
I didn’t like the way Damien looked at me through the television screen.
“This is it, babes. This is what it is all about. I get to know. We get to know. You see, the brothers have agreed to help me out here. Ever since I met them I’ve been burning to find out what is on the other side … I mean I know for sure there is another side now. Knowing is driving me crazy. So they’ve agreed to help me because I am too damned scared to do it myself. They’ve been arguing about me all day, heaven or hell, heaven or hell. It is amazing the things they know about me. Things I’d forgotten, buried deep. It’s all coming back to haunt me.” He reached for something off camera, then brought it up to show it on the screen, to make sure I could see it.
A gun.
A dull grey metal gun.
He passed it across to Nakir who took it from him.
“This is stupid,” I said, my heart sinking as I watched the angel hold the gun to my ex lover’s head.
“This isn’t suicide,” Damien said, as though to reassure me. “See you on the other side, babes.”
It was all over in one shockingly brutal second.
Nakir pulled the trigger and Damien’s head ruptured. I saw his blood spray all over his neatly folded clothes. I closed my eyes. I wasn’t crying. I should have been crying. That was all I could think. I should have been crying. I had just seen the man I loved willingly killed in front of my own eyes—I should have been crying but I was empty.
Hollow.
“Heaven or Hell?” Monkir asked his brother, the camera still rolling. The sound of his voice after the silence that filled the void after the gunshot jarred in my ears. I stared at the screen feeling sick.
“He’s mine,” Nakir said, laying the murder weapon down on the coffee table beside Damien’s dead body. White mist swirled around his head where the gunshot wound had opened it up, twisting and swirling faster and faster before it evaporated into nothing. “What about?” he nodded toward the camera, toward me.
“We promised Damien they’d go together,” Monkir said. He lay the camera down on its side on the coffee table so I was left with a side on view of very large, very black angel cocks.
“Heaven or Hell?” I heard Nakir say as though the words meant nothing to him. They didn’t, I realized sickly. He had done this so many times, consigned so many sinners to their fate, why should he care about one more or one less?
“This one’s my turn,” Monkir answered coldly. “You got the last one. Besides, this one’s broken one of the cardinals and I am not in a forgiving mood. I liked that kid. He had guts.”
“Brains too,” Nakir said, then giggled. “But yeah, I know what you mean. Good kid. He’ll be okay where he’s gone. Okay, go get the other one, let’s get this over with.”
With that the screen collapsed into a swirl of white noise and the pair of angelic brothers were gone. I didn’t move. I couldn’t bring myself to. Damien was dead. I had just watched it happen.
The television screen sparked back into grainy life.
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I got up to kill it but stopped with my arm outstretched, reaching for the off button.
Slowly, beneath the constantly shifting spray of black and white I saw the saddest pair of eyes begin to take shape and heard Monkir’s faint voice say: “Coming, ready or not,” and laugh. His laughter was a vile, hateful, sound. I killed the power to the television. The apartment was swallowed by silence.
I stood there, thinking about Damien, about how I loved him, how I had hurt him.
Had I driven him to it?
Had I killed him?
Was that why he sent me his death tape?
To punish me?
This isn’t suicide. I’ll see you on the other side, babes.
I’ll see you on the other side, babes.
I heard the door open behind me.
I’ll see you on the other side, babes.
“Heaven or Hell?” I said without turning.
“Definitely Hell.”
***
Absence of Divinity
Hell, wrote the mad man in his lonely tower, is the absence of God’s love, not brimstone and sulphur and nightmarish visions. The pains of Hell are metaphorical as well as metaphysical. The tortures, the torments, imagined as perpetual flaying of skin and the application of saltpetre to the wounds, are nothing beside the emptiness where once there was God.
He put down his pen and stared at what he had written, a chill creeping into his heart. It was not as though he could claim ignorance. He knew, on a level bone-deep, exactly what he was doing. He could extrapolate—within reason—the consequences his actions would draw.
He, Leonardo da Vinci, the greatest of them all, was going to Hell.
There was a timid knock on the workshop door, probably one of Giuliano or Lorenzo Medici’s lackeys come to plague him. He left it unanswered. Tired feet shuffled away and he was alone again.
When he had commissioned the workshop in what had been Cosimo’s tower it had been for its proximity to the heavens. Every day he would rise up and work side by side with the angels in the sky, and now, like the brightest of them all, he was doomed to fall.
All for the sake of science.
The quest for understanding.
One page in one of his notebooks. A single drawing but its implications were legion.
The drawing, amid pages of inventions and ideas and studies of motion, even of God’s masterwork—man. Proportional and perfect in every way, even down to the musculature and anatomy. It was a blueprint for creation. Study after study of skulls, the secret geography of the flesh beneath the skin, where man was reduced to tendon, bone and sinew. He had studied the human form in all of its vagaries, examining a multitude of specimens, fat, tall, thin, short, lean, sinewy, muscled, hirsute, hairless, crippled, deformed, malnourished and bloated. He recorded what he saw. Each variant added something to his knowledge, allowing him to modify his blueprint for creation. Amid the sketches were organ system observations, bone and muscle structures and reproductive systems. How many of Florence’s sycophants would have blanched at and renounced his obsession with anatomy had they but known that the cadavers he stripped of flesh layer by layer had been stolen from the local morgue.
It had been an obsession with him. He locked himself away in Cosimo’s tower, a single window and the sliver of Florence’s rooftops that it revealed his only connection to the mundane act of living that went on beneath him.
A small bird flitted across his vision. Da Vinci watched its flight, the frenetic bursts of energy that helped it dart from one wave of air to the next. There was none of the easy grace of one of the bigger avians. This one seemed to be in a constant fight against the forces of heaven and earth—but it was doing it. It was soaring over the city, tasting the kind of freedom he could only dream of. Now if he could somehow transfer that notion into a mechanism, perhaps a rotating air-screw or a coiled spring.
The idea had merit, even if it so closely mimicked the vanities of Babel and mankind’s towering ego. He looked at the sky and knew, just knew, that one day men would fly like the birds and the angels.
Occasional sounds filtered through the stone floor from the workshops and forges below where the apprentices slaved away in the glow of thirteen furnaces, striving to enhance their master’s reputation. They worked on alchemy and more mundane miracles like cannons and construction braces for the city’s mighty fortifications. Many a Florentine dream was haunted by the rhythmic hammer blows emanating from the depths of Cosimo’s tower, iron striking iron, and the hellish hissing as the red metal was plunged into vats of water to cool.
A year ago he might have called this non-life Hell, but now he knew better.
Now he understood that Hell was something of man’s making.
The room was cluttered with evidence of his genius—or madness. It was a fine line, the distinction between scientist and heretic. If a delegation from the Vatican ever found their way into his dominion no doubt they would bind him and carry him out to be burned at the stake for profanities against the Lord with his prototypes of devices meant to elevate man to the realm of the angels so that they might fly through the clouds; designs so that the surgeons might open a man’s chest and understand the intricate map life within; and worst of all, the empty clay vessel he called Lucifer, the most beautiful of all.
Da Vinci returned to his desk.
The greatest gift is life, he wrote, each letter meticulously framed. Man without doubt the greatest of all His creations. We can build. We can shape and yet we cannot create. We are not Him. Or so the Church would have us believe with their scriptures and their simplicities. I believe we can create. I believe that in every one of us there is a small piece of Him that gives us that power. That is my sin. That is my damnation. Science and numbers are our key to Godhead. They ARE God. In science and numbers lie the answers to every question we can imagine. That is the genius of His creation. There are answers waiting to be found and questions waiting to be asked. God is not some intangible deity, some ephemeral religion. God is in the details all around us. We need only look to find the code to decipher His true face. The rest is Church fueled lies and hocus-pocus as they fear their power and influence could wane if ever people knew that they came into contact with the divine every day.
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