Murderland

by Garrett Cook

  Fortunately for everyone, the leader has a cellphone, and half crushed though it might be it’s able to get an ambulance for poor Joey. I don’t even linger to let it come, it’s all too disgusting. All too symbolic, thick, painful symbols of Reap is all about. This is what you get for walking to work in America. Kids kill each other, kids kill themselves and a bunch of them wanna kill you. I’d feel like drinking if I didn’t remember the sort of good that did me.

  I honestly don’t see why I bother getting up just to do this. This job is almost a bigger obligation than my need to purge the world of the Dark Ones. It feels more bloody, disgusting and dangerous than all the killing does. Perhaps it’s even less moral. I’m not a healer, I’m a Pez dispenser. Not the man who does the job, but the machine who works when the man walks out. Walk in, hand me the slip. Walk out with the pills. Enter pharmacy, take in slip, and dispense pills. “Thanks. Have a nice day now.” I wish they could, too, but clinical depressives and vicodin addicts, cancer patients, 95 year old women who need medication to piss don’t have nice days but I honestly want them to. In spite of all the Dark Ones and the killers and the curtain of oblivion outside your window, by all means have a nice day says the Pez dispenser called Jeremy Jenkins on most weekends. For seven hours I do this until my watch starts to beep. I’m not sure if I’ve heard or thought a thing up until the watch starts beeping.

  When the watch beeps, you go home. Helpful device A says helpful device B is all done with helpful time. Sorry, injured high school hockey players sorry somebody’s grandmother, sorry housewives who need more Xanax and Welbutrin, sorry teenage artist, no more Lithium Jeremy Jenkins shuts off and goes home to be himself. I feel like I should have died at le Couteau last night, if you want me to be perfectly honest. Then I feel like I should have died at work. My heart does not give out during the walk home, though trucks may honk too loud like angry geese though soccer moms might nearly run me down with purple vans in their fanatical quest for more tube socks, though the scent of meat and sauerkraut from the hotdog cart nearby may make my stomach churn, this is not the time for heart attacks.

  The time for heart attacks over, the agency of my demise arrives as I open my apartment door. It arrives as a punch in the stomach that paints the carpet in watery puke. I try to stand up straight again, and lo and behold, Cass’ knee meets my groin with the only possible results. I look up at her pleadingly, hand cupping my wounded testicles. She looks like the sort of angel that God had assigned the task of incinerating heathens. There are no virtuous pagans.

  “Get in here,” she snarls, “right now. Get the fuck in here!”

  So, of course, I stumble into the apartment. Cass grabs a towel and wipes up the vomit on the welcome mat as I look around the room, uncertain of whether I’m supposed to sit or stand. I get this feeling like there’s no room for any mistakes right now. I’ve made a huge one, whatever it was. I hope she didn’t see me walking out with that Whitechapel girl or dancing with those two Ripchicks. That would be beyond awful. But if that’s beyond awful, then I can’t up for a term for the actual mistake I’ve made. I left my journal on the coffee table. It looks like it’s been read.

  Although I feel like being meticulously careful, I still do something incredibly stupid.

  “You read my journal?” I shout. The shout runs off and hides in the corner like a shameful little dog that just shat on the carpet. The look of rage on Cass’ face fades into disbelief and then into amusement.

  “And yet I didn’t kill almost four hundred people before having done so. By the way, I’m the only person in this room who can make that claim.”

  Her smile is scimitar sharp. With all the arguing and conjecturing and shameful speculation I’ve done with myself, seeing her here with this look on her face makes me feel certain that I am going to hell. I want to gasp out the fact that I am sorry, but it’s too late. I try to forget the cuts and the stench. I try to forget the screams, but I hear them, I smell them, I feel them. Like Lady Macbeth, I wonder if the blood will wash off my hands. I fall to my knees and my face grinds against the carpet. I feel tiny, too small to bear my weight, too small to stack the corpses on my back and she…she is as large as worlds can be. Stars seem to circle her head, ridden by angels with burning blades and blaring trumpets. Here is the shame again. She she…she is almost innocent.

  The strength of an angry lover is Herculean. If I’d been unfaithful, her eyes and posture would make me smell every drop of cum spilled during my infidelity. But, this is worse, far worse. What I’ve done is horrible, but now it’s worse. I seldom remember the stench and now my nose is full of decay. They are dead, so many are dead and they only get deader, they only rot. And the worst part is that it isn’t all the death that makes me feel bad. There is something awful and selfish in me. There is something that cares more about her walking out than about all the graves I’ve filled .The graves will be full and I will be even more empty. We don’t need her. I am going to be emptier. As her love walks out of my life, trampling on me on the way out the door, I cannot help but feel that everything but kissing her, feeling her against me and telling her how much she matters is wrong. We don’t believe that. We can only do what is right. They feel small, the big things I’ve done for everybody feel small WE CAN ONLY DO WHAT IS RIGHT the big things are so tiny I can barely see them WE CAN ONLY DO WHAT IS RIGHT and I think she’s right. The despair is taller than the stack of bodies.

  “You’re a liar and a hypocrite. You do one thing and you think another and you walk around like you’re just a regular fucking person, and you’re not a regular fucking person…”

  We don’t need to hear this. Jeremy is being stupid. Jeremy is jeopardizing the integrity of the mission. Jeremy needs to shut up and let this happen. Nothing should be in the way, let alone soft, vulnerable Dark One bait whose probably one of them already. He should wonder why she doesn’t understand. Obvious. She watches the crazy men on the television and the nanites have crawled out and gotten her. She is one of them and we no longer need her.

  There are two voices, one of them isn’t words, one of them is racing thoughts, one of them is the angel of fear that does the things I do for me and one of them is the angel of hope that turns against me. It is easy to listen to the workings. It is hard to listen to her right now. A decision must be made and I don’t really know how to make it. Heads, it’s a judgmental lecture. Tails, she’s a fucking robot. But she isn’t. She’s flesh and warmth and imperfection and the kind of happy I know right now. There is a lot of we talk in my head, a lot of somebody else, but this is personal. This is not about the mission. Fuck the mission; I have to think of me. WE DON’T NEED HER! Fuck the mission.

  “And you make me feel like I’m bad, Jeremy. I hate it when you make me feel like I’m bad when you’re the one who’s actually doing it. I’m not a hypocrite, I wasn’t fooled and I’m not bad. You’re the bad one; you did all the things you think are bad. You’re the hypocrite, I’m not…”

  She starts to tear up. I can feel her shrinking down to me and it’s a relief, it’s a hell of a thing. This predatory instinct I have makes me want to jump in and cut her down to size and lecture her about all the terrible things she encourages, but she’s small like me, and I want to protect her. I don’t want to hurt her even though this is the time to do it. When she’s upset, she turns on the TV. She can’t get away from it. I guess she just needs somebody else’s noise. Who can blame her? I just wish it worked. I wish I didn’t get the visions of people trees and human machines sputtering down the street from letting the breeders go. I wish I didn’t have it flashed in front of my face every few minutes. I made a commitment, a commitment that told me it wasn’t my decision, a commitment to Lud’s army and a bright future.

  On the TV, two reapkids whiz by an old lady on their skateboards. One of them opens a can, pouring some disgusting, red juice concoction down his throat. He tosses the can at the old lady, smacking her in the head. She shouts something inaudible before the kid runs into
her with his skateboard. His friend does the same and they repeat this ritual five or six times until she falls face first into a puddle of mud. She gets up, sopping wet, defeated and injured and she picks up the can.

  “Diet Slash Energy Drink, do you play hard enough?” screams an announcer with all the dignity and poise of a strip club DJ.

  Through the tears, Cass begins to laugh and this makes her cry even more.

  “What the fuck is wrong with me?” she screams.

  No more commercials. There is a crime scene report. It is sobering. It sickens her out of her fit. These are the victims of a man who kills with his teeth, covered in scratches and bite marks, missing bits of skin on their faces. Carved on their bodies with sharpened fingernails is an ancient Egyptian symbol, a jackal’s head. A man who thinks he’s Anubis walks among us and he has decided to prepare the dead by killing them himself. Am I this crazy?

  Cass’ tears have faded and she has become calm and eerily lucid.

  “You’ve done it wrong, Jeremy. Thomas Gennaro, Kris Kringle that was right. But all the rest were innocent and I can’t forgive you, but I think I’m mad because you’ve shown me a thing or two about Reap. This is what’s real and I want you to do the right thing.”

  She looks into my eyes and there is both compassion and urgency.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, though I think I get it.

  “Every couple’s an army, Jeremy, making war on what they don’t want life to be. I don’t want you to do this alone, and I promise there won’t be any more monsters.”

  After a thorough examination of the crime scene and the three shredded victims, they return to the studio, where Godless Jack is sitting with the anchor, as he often does on WBLD Reap News. I stare into his eyes, looking into the nothing behind the tinted snake yellow of them. As he speaks, his unhinged jaw makes him look like a grotesque marionette. I understand now, I’ve been fighting the wrong war.

  I look away from him, making a promise deep in Cass’ eyes.

  “No more monsters…”

  ANGELO BRONZINI

  BOOK 2- Life During Wartime

  “After the hero, the familiar

  Man makes the hero artificial.

  But was the summer false? The hero?”

  -Wallace Stevens, “Examination of the Hero in a Time of War”

  The Anatomy of Decay” Reapchic.net, October 31 st, 2004

  Long ago, Halloween was a sacred thing, a celebration of the dead, a sabbat and a festival of the convergence of darkness and light. Yet, now our streets are flooded by Power Rangers, Scooby Doos and four-dollar instant vampires. It is a second-tier Hallmark, Wal-Mart, Disney Channel holiday that mocks the sacredness of the Celtic death god’s festival and rites. Ritual gives way to rut so easily over the years and the anemic imitation of an old world’s most deeply held beliefs ends up supplanting the things themselves. Makes one wonder what will happen when Christ has at last gone the way of Samhain, Daghda and Lir. Will Christmas and Easter become experiences like Rocky Horror? Will apostles be among the Spidermen and fairy princesses? Are ALL sacred things simply destined to be profaned?

  Halloween is upon us and it is a bloodless carcass of a holiday in this day and age. A real shame considering what it could be. A celebration of the truly dark, the truly macabre? Yes, Slashcats and Corpsekittens, that’s what I’m getting at. But is there more? Of course, my lovelies. Your dear uncle Ian would not leave your empty and hungry brains so wanting. How could I show my face in public again if I were to do such a thing? The current fate of Halloween is not just a casual gripe of mine, you see, it is a warning to the Reap community at large. Ignorant children in over priced plastic masks may not be quite so different from us as you might think they are. Unless, that is we as a subculture can remember what Reap is all about. Of course, you all remember what Reap is all about, don’t you? Well, if the mascara and the splat games have lured you poor acolytes away from the inner circles of the truth, listen up and listen hard, because I take my job very seriously.

  Reap commandment number 1: Reap is Tragedy. And not in the way that Punk is the tragedy of a failed establishment or Goth is the tragedy of our youth driven into existential malaise. Reap is concerned with Death descending and Death ascendant. It is a reminder that every man holds in his hands the potential to bring tragedy down upon others or to be afflicted by tragedy themselves. Wear your menace proudly, or proudly display that you acknowledge the coming of tragedy, that it will be thrust upon you and you have chosen to love it. Reap is not about rage or depression, but about the feats committed by the enraged and the depression that will inevitably come in their wake. As Godless Jack wrote, “the moments of killing and dying are the highest spiritual ecstasies. Live in these moments for not death or life but the occurrences of dying or killing are the most satisfying and primal things. Live as if you are killing or about to be killed.”

  Reap commandment number two: Reap is ecstasy. Following Godless Jack’s statement above can lead us to some of the most ecstatic moments of our being. Those who kill are most often selective in their pleasures and dedicated to them wholeheartedly. Which means? Hedonism is all well and good, but be discriminate. Love fiercely and frequently, but not without both passion and discretion. We do not have to fuck everyone, snort everything and break all valuables we come across. Our idols are serial killers, NOT rock stars.

  We must also be unflinchingly assertive in our attainment of these pleasures. Does this give us license to commit rape at our leisure? I think not. We need not be amoral. Rapists are cowards and miscreants of the worst kind. Yes, many psychopomps are also sex offenders, but they do not leave shame, pregnancy and psychological scars behind them. Humiliation and violence are done, but the victim is granted release from the harshness of having to live with them. Remember also that most of us are not blessed and cursed with the madness, vision and feeding frenzy that leads people to kill. If you don’t plan on killing the poor girl, don’t make a mess of her or take you want from her with excessive force. Your passion, intensity and assertiveness will get you what you want most of the time.

  As well as the act of killing, Reap shows that one derives ecstasy from the act of dying. Whitechapel and Bundy girls remember: take joy from both pleasure and pain. Much of the time you are potential victims in society, so enjoy life as though death were likely to come to you both quickly and painfully. The ecstasy of dying and the pleasure of pain do not mean that you should cut yourself or be constantly depressed, however. Take note of these as important distinctions, because those who misinterpret the idea of enjoying mortality are likely not to enjoy it at all. Rather, know the pain and terror that come with dying in your erotic and narcotic pursuits both and you will gain some of the excitement that the journey toward death brings and be able to fight off much of the fear.

  Reap commandment number three: Reap is wisdom. Reapers wear their costumes to remind all around them that anybody might be dangerous and that life itself requires us to be tough, discriminating and clever. The guise of the victim is the medieval epitaph “as you are so once was I, as I am so shall you be.” Society is perhaps more dangerous because of the number of Psychopomps at work, and to let everyone know that they have the potential to be either victim or killer reminds them to be safe and smart alike.

  From observing and idolizing psychopomps, you should also gain wisdom. Know what you are, what mankind is and what they can become from looking into the mind of the psychopomp. We learn about repressed drives, the consequences of mistreating our children and the dangers of unexplained and out-of-context ideologies. (I daresay Reap can sometimes be one of these.) Serial killers therefore teach us to be respectable parents, emotionally expressive people and sensible practitioners of our religions. So remember, Reapkids read a book every once in awhile. Remind people that Reap doesn’t make you an imbecile. Sometimes even read one about something BESIDES Reap. We also gain clarity on our lifestyles from them. Faulkner, Oates, O’ Connor and many others remind us of
American tragedy and the danger all around us.

  Reap commandment number four: Reap is courage. As I said in the ecstasy section, we must be unflinching in pursuit of what we want. This includes respect. Wear your Reap garb proudly and do not tolerate derisive laughter or the taunts of the ignorant masses. Remember that we have nothing to fear from the school bully or the bored middle-aged beat cop. If they huff or laugh in your face, either stand your ground and keep walking proud or ask them what’s so funny. Go on, ask them. The courage and defiance native to Reap go far beyond turning a parking structure into a splat tournament. Remember this and you will be far less likely to get harassed or antagonized. Psychopomps don’t take any shit in this day and age, so why, then should you? If you believe in your lifestyle and the integrity of Reap, stand up for it, because nobody will but you.

  If we do not show solidarity and an understanding of the things we believe, we are liable to end up becoming mockeries of it, shallow cardboard skeletons where once true and deadly monsters stood. This night, look around you at the trick-or-treaters; take a gander at the animated specials. The Celts who started this festival fought fierce enough to be a threat to Rome. Think hard about that, and remember the epitaph I discussed: “as you are so once was I, as I am so shall you be.” None of us wants Reap to be a fad or a joke. We are not acid-washed jeans or mood rings. Stand by Reap, stand proud and use your brains, so that we may stand among the ruins of Samhain Eve as the best Reapers we can be, suitable replacements for the ghosts that absconded long ago. This is Ian Sterling, telling you to be a better bogeyman, kids.