Immediately we stepped behind it, the air became fresher. I could breathe easier, but it also meant that I was beset by a coughing spasm, in the process dislodging some nasty phlegm which landed on the floor with a wet splash. My host waited patiently, allowing me to recover and compose myself.
“Have you quite finished?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I replied, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Lead on!”
He led me down more passages, turning this way and that, until we finally came out into a cavern adorned with stalagmites and stalactites. This far underground there should have been no natural light, yet a sickly luminescence pervaded the space, giving everything an unhealthy cast. The smell wasn’t much better either: decay, putrescence, and death assailed my nose, making me gag and sending me reeling. My guide seemed not to take any note of the rotten aroma; either he had no sense of smell, or he was inured to it.
“Why did you come here?”
The words had emerged from the depths of the cavern, taking me by surprise. I couldn’t see anything as my eyes were full of tears, but somehow I felt glad of that. It wasn’t a pleasant voice: it possessed the timbre of death, and reeked of charnel filth. It made me feel nauseous and inspired vertigo: it sang of wallowing in the shit and piss of discarded morality and mocked the vomit that was humanity and its puny efforts. I didn’t want to venture any deeper into the Curator’s inner sanctum—his voice was enough to make me realise I had made a mistake in coming here.
“Why did you come here?” it repeated.
“To meet you,” I said, which was true enough. I carried on, mostly to avoid hearing him speak again. “I was curious. You had snared so many, and I wondered what manner of a man could inspire such obsession and devotion. I thought you a charlatan, a vain man, a would-be saviour looking for power and adulation. So, I followed a party of faithful, so I could discover who you really were.”
“Are you disappointed?” it mocked me.
“I’m not sure about disappointed,” I said, thinking carefully while attempting to keep my stomach where it was. “No, it’s more like I’ve had my opinion confirmed. You’re nothing but a parasite.”
“A parasite?” it said, false hurt tingeing its speech, “I am insulted. I am a true saviour—I take away their shattered and ruined lives, their pain and anguish at a world which has forgotten them, and a society which rewards evil over good. I take away their worries, and in return they give me allegiance, obedience, and worship. They have shelter here, a life among their own kind. They are safe.”
“At what cost?” I countered, “Judging by the followers I’ve seen so far, it appears they have no life in them at all—mere shells. I am inclined to think you’ve deprived them of their essential humanity, the one spark which gives them their uniqueness.”
“But they’re happy,” the Curator answered, “They have no complaints.”
“Probably because they’re unable to, or can’t!” I retorted. “All self-control has been taken away.”
“Self-determination and self-realisation only cause trouble, not just for them, but for everyone else too. We have reached an equilibrium here—and we don’t want that balance upset.”
“Only a monster would think like that.” I said.
“Monster, you say?” It said, a gentle laugh punctuating the sentence. “Maybe…come closer and judge for yourself.”
The last thing I wanted to do was to get any nearer, fearing what it was I might find. Conversely, my damned curiosity was fighting head-to-head with my reluctance. I had to admit, even in the face of the almost physical miasma of vile putridity which hung in the atmosphere, I couldn’t help wondering about this man, or whatever he/it was.
“Where are you?” I gasped just as a billowing cloud of noxious gas hit me.
“Walk forwards,” he said. I nearly threw up at that point—how I’d managed to prevent my food from escaping my guts into the real world was a mystery in itself.
I slowly edged forward, using my feet to feel for any stones or other impediments. My eyes were still streaming, still blurring my vision, but perhaps that was a fortunate thing under the circumstances. Still, maybe even the briefest of glimpses would be enough to satisfy my curiosity.
As I got closer, I heard wet slaps, liquid gurgles, and gaseous exhalations, none of which inspired pleasant images. Heat battered the parts of my skin which were exposed, accompanied by steam condensing on its surface. Eventually, my leading foot came up against a barrier: I reached out blindly with a hand, but didn’t connect with anything. I risked opening an eye, and saw a short wall in front of me, about four feet tall, holding back a body of steaming hot water. Bubbles popped constantly causing minute ripples and waves to radiate out. The air stank of sulphur and fungus: a devilish smell I thought, grinning inwardly at the unintended pun.
“Stand still, and look to your right,” the Curator commanded. This close, the effect of his voice was even worse than before: I felt like my intestines wanted to vacate my torso, along with every other organ I possessed.
I slowly turned my head, keeping my eyes shut. My face was bathed in a waterfall of sweat and condensed water, and my heart-rate had accelerated to a level I probably hadn’t experienced since I’d asked my first girlfriend out.
“Don’t be coy,” he said. Coming from him it sounded like the words were being raped.
“Fuck!” I shouted, just before projectile vomiting. The sight I’d been greeted with had demolished the last barriers to the contents of my stomach which had, without needing any further encouragement, raced up my throat and made a bid for freedom through my nose and mouth. In its wake the acidity had stripped my throat and nasal passages raw, leaving me coughing and spluttering. Incongruously, my only thought was, “that definitely wasn’t my finest moment.”
Some minutes later, I regained enough control to trust myself. Deliberately slowing my breathing down and steadying my legs, I straightened up to confront an image which should only occupy the nightmares of the disturbed.
He was a man or, rather, had been once. He stood within the pool of steaming water, only his torso, arms, and head showing, but that was enough. His skin consisted entirely of squares of flesh, sewn on layer upon layer onto his own, the patches hanging loosely and plastered across his chest, arms, neck, and face like bloodily soaked rags. Where his torso emerged from the pool, the swatches of skin floated like dead leaves on stagnant puddles. Some of his prizes were newly acquired, still retaining a semblance of skin colour, while others were torn and stretched to the point of sloughing off his frame. I could see tumescences and boils here and there, suppurations ready to burst in an eruption of stinking pus. Snot ran freely out his nose, while saliva dribbled from black lips, and hissed when it hit water.
“What the hell?” I exclaimed.
“I wear the ruin of people’s lives on my skin,” he told me, “I willingly take on their disappointments and failures, and free them from the anger and desperation they engender. These are the tokens of my promise, their votive offerings. They do so willingly and without complaint.”
“Is that why you are called the Curator?” I asked, well aware that my enlightenment had come at an inopportune moment.
“I’m impressed,” he said by way of answer, “Yes, I curate a collection of people’s ills and disasters. I display them on my body as a way of reminding people of what I have done, and that in return for their happiness they must sacrifice something as a reflection of my own.”
“I was right, you are a monster!”
“Perhaps, to those who have not the wit to understand the full importance of what I am doing for them. I had hoped you would have seen beyond the common morality of the herd, and to have realised that sometimes one has to do unpleasant things in order to wash away the sins of others. I am not unique in this: the history of this world is full of examples and, I have no doubt, there’ll be others to come after me. The cycle has begun anew with me, and I think you will help me.”
“Never!” I cried vehemently.
“You don’t have a choice in the matter. You will be my Witness,” he said, his tone laced with poisonous threat.
Before I could react, I was struck from behind, and oblivion claimed me.
<~~O~~>
I came to, somewhere brightly lit and with a light breeze. I was lying on something hard and unforgiving. I declined to open my eyes for a while, despite my discomfort, but when I did I found that I was lying on the floor of my shack. I had no idea how I’d managed to get here: last thing I remembered, albeit vaguely, was being somewhere dark and talking to someone. Someone important I think. Certainly he seemed to know deep things, aspects of life hidden to ordinary mortals, the secrets of happiness. I couldn’t remember his exact words, but I knew without knowing that they were about me, about my life and its troubles. I felt happier than I had done for a long while.
I attempted to get up, but a shooting pain shot through my stomach. I felt dizzy as it hit me, so I lay back down until it receded. Even lying still, staring at my familiar ceiling, I couldn’t escape the soreness on my stomach. I decided that I couldn’t stay down here all day, so I gradually inched my way up to my feet, careful not to make any sudden movements in case it set off the pain again. It took me five minutes or so, but I pulled myself up.
The first thing I did was look for some dried food: I thought perhaps that was why my stomach had been so painful. I found some in one of the kitchen wall cupboards. I wolfed it down, but even after that my stomach still felt sore. I placed a tentative hand on the area, only for me to recoil with the pain. I held on to the sink—it was the only thing stopping me from hitting the floor again.
Once recovered, I thought to check under my shirt. I moved to the bathroom, took off my top, and looked in the mirror. A square of my skin had been removed.
<~~O~~>
Later that evening, I sat out on my porch, knowing what it was I was meant to do. In the distance I saw lanterns emerging out of the dusky edges of Moosejaw. I smiled. I waited until they got within twenty feet of the shack before getting out of my chair and stepping off the wooden porch to meet them.
“Greetings, brothers and sisters,” I said, arms open wide, “I have such great things to tell you!”
Aftermath
—Gary J Shipley
I go home every morning and eat my head out with a spoon. I’m looking to throat-cut myself per capita. This much blackness in your skull used to mean something. Brains would turn to slime so God could turn them into something else. Sources of unnatural incandescence leaking through the eyes. But we don’t have the facility for melodrama. We got insomnia and morbid yellow lights. We got the gradual disintegrating suicide, the autoimmune disease that found its way to the top. Got cytokines in our wiring, our insides set on fire. The Mulatto would sit underneath showers with his mouth open trying to put it out. When that didn’t work he reckoned he’d turn it into something else, but it was a difficult way to drown. He gave up.
We all gave up and took back to Ersatz. We’d raped the Wire dry anyways, and we wanted the source, looking to gangfuck it, we joked. Even with our mood disorder we still made funnies. I put it down to my extreme whiteness, and the others their lack of it. At least there hospitalization will be a sickness we don’t have.
We clenched up inside our sigh. We were fucking hilarious. Watched the storage facilities burn all the way back. So many trillions of molecules gathered around five banal pulses. Our organs in Plexiglas burning. It was a high-concept malfunctioning, and we looked all the bleaker with our heads shaved to cool us down.
My sense of humour is prolapsed. It’s dressed in unseasonal frost.
First day back, we looked for our infection as if we’d lost it. In a circle in the city core we meditated. Levé let us use his mantra. We took his thickened O and bashed all kinds of nothing back in it. We couldn’t tell when we were done. It takes a lot of nothing to find an end to something. I can’t remember how long it took before one of us died, and the rest of us, noticing the alteration in pitch, moved on. The dead one’s mouth stayed open. But it looked more like an eye socket.
He must’ve went and swallowed it.
Gagged on it. Suffocated.
Suffered.
No more than us.
And we’re still at it.
How come we never noticed?
His name I remember was left undecided. At this point my policy on abortion became conflated with alternative sources of vision. I guess I’d heard babies crying somewhere from an open window. If we’d been in the desert it’d be sand I’d be waxing. All this is anecdotal of course. Imagine if it wasn’t.
If this was leading somewhere it wouldn’t be this.
We’d been gone for a year, and our homes had absorbed new people. We found them fermenting in our beds and curled up like cats in balls on our sofas. This was more of this great emptiness to us. Especially for Mark who, grossed out, had taken such overwhelming pride in the phantom pregnancies he’d administered. They seemed to us like twelve months of aftermath, like platters to our yet undigested ennui. We raped them till they were so much more than the dead they arrived at, and not a smidge of cum between us. Even The Mulatto’s electrodes couldn’t tease a drop. I want to impress the sadness of this. Such diseased pigs back then. So fanatical about not letting go that we barely got hard. If it hadn’t been for our dogged implementation of limbs they’d have lived through the week it took. And we’d have had roommates turning us spontaneously awake.
While I’m watching this dispersal play out, there’s the back of a woman looking out to sea. She’s got this white dress and her hair is dirt. If I ever see her face my cock will erupt a thousand breasts of five hundred dead women. And I’ll be warm again on the outside as if my mother were still alive. What is most still is most alive because of it. What a couple of thoughts to have wearing the cowl of this shit.
I really don’t remember raping quite that many sallow-faced children. God, how I must have done it though. And them sallow like that. What a way to be and then be this thing now. This blackened up on the inside. This ridiculously charred to buggery. I’m so ruined that the woman looking out to sea has a clown’s nose and a big fuck-off grin. That’s how much I’ve invested in the unreality of joy.
When we meet again, in the centre with the dead one not gone anywhere, we avoid the circle and copying the rotting pigeons sit in two ranks of two wearing our faces like we meant them. Levé happened to be canine-heavy. It wasn’t black but black enough he thought to have some answers if he kicked it long enough. So far it’d turned out full of nothing but vomit and twaddle. We looked at it the way we’d once glassed husbands. The way its nose dripped reminded us of that year’s ejaculate.
That ugly bag of cancerous drool is worsening the cause.
Informant. I’m calling it The Informant.
A resort for blow fly.
I plan to beat a world of sunlight out of it first.
It was a concept of colonization we needed to own. Our apocalypse had been flavoured to taste like toothpaste. Nevertheless, we remained pretty miserable. The dog didn’t amount to creative pessimism. To tell the truth, we couldn’t talk much after that. It was an old dog and it died on the step. Our voices collected in clouds of flies above our heads, bubbles of black buzzing speech that had circumvented our gobs. Consider the facts: the world right then was the inference of this singular state of having been poisoned, and we were no closer to a cure than we were to our atoms. My father used to fission as a matter of course. Needless to say, all five of us had had the same one. We left the dog with the dead one and circled the city by way of side-streets. We were feeling conspicuous. We decommissioned surveillance cameras as we went. We became fully introverted by nightfall, and the city lights turned us starless.
In our homes we contemplated mucus. Nothing about our predicament suggested the possibility of medicine. Without wanting to we sucked at the bloodstains on our sleeves. It took us till morning to imagine
rooms outside of the ones we were in. Our physiology was rotting every bit as fast as the tiger we were on. But there was still this thing called bijouterie. Yes, we were still raving for the good it did us. In some people this would be enough to sustain them till lunch. We were already dead by breakfast.
Whether or not anyone cares to admit it, it’s hard not to sissify genitals to which you no longer belong. We all felt this way. Mark cut his off in protest. The Mulatto was so filled with admiration he gouged out his left eye. It suited him that way, we all said so. He sported the socket like a figment of all the things he’d wanted to see. And so we retained some pride and some illusions. And were handsome too despite the putrefaction. As we spoke, the infection we shared bifurcated so that we didn’t have to. None of this clarified our migration. Sometimes it seemed that no one would ever get raped again ever, and that we’d be there to watch it never happen. In a sense, this ennui was just the blandest chewing gum.
Levé found what he thought was the source of our infection inside the loft space above his rooms that he couldn’t remember having existed before then. It was shaped like some coagulation of late-period Goya jowls, but with thousands of tiny legs. It squeaked when he approached it. The pitch made his ears bleed. The legs moved all at once and resembled brown grass on the side of a hill. He got to his feet, crouching, and destroyed it with the heel of his shoe. He turned up next day with it splattered up his trousers. He claimed he’d felt a slight release of pressure in his head after doing it, and that we should too. We concurred there’d been some easing of something. More would have to be found and disposed of, he said, before we’d be right again. The dead one and the dog were still there. Their untouched residues were becoming a comfort to us. We even extended them greetings on arriving. The Mulatto was having to constantly scoop flies out from his eye socket, and often looked less alive than the two companions he was supposedly more alive than. We all of us felt less real than the two that were dead.
Slave Stories Page 6
