by L C Barlow
Though, he did not keep me stupid.
Looking back, however, I cannot blame the others for desiring him to come into their lives.
I have seen things while with him and in his home that I simply... I do believe...
The Universe has its darker aspects. Would it be wrong to say those aspects converge? That they meet sometimes in places they are most welcome or find a brother?
How is it that psychopaths find one another?
How is it that murderers often propel themselves toward their own destruction?
Why do we speak of karma at all?
Often times, in the years that I knew him, Cyrus would simply stop me, in whatever I was doing, sometimes waking me up at night, sometimes planting a firm hand on me in a hallway, and he would say to me with the weight of an anchor, "You know what's going on here." And I would acknowledge that I did, despite the fact that, like water, it fell through my grasp. He and I had these little exchanges twenty, thirty times that I knew him.
"You know what's going on here, Jack."
"You know what this is."
"You know everything."
It killed my breath every time.
Of course, there were always things that had frightened me about living at Cyrus's. If it had not been for the fact I was rewarded with Cyrus's deep trust for killing the Havingers, if it were not for the tentative fact that I was saved by my actions as a child, I might have ended up as just a note on the old piano. Even with his confidence, I had still been anxious of him, and the other things in the house.
There were, of course, the little things. Aside from Roland, there was a man who visited one night, and his eyes glowed in the darker areas of the house. They did not shine brilliantly and not red, but like a camera prepping itself to flash, and he told me, "I've heard a lot about you." I was too embarrassed by this compliment and frightened of the man to return any answer, but he nodded as if he knew.
Other times, all the colors in rooms would disappear. One day the velvet curtains would be ruby, the floor sapphire, the walls a dark green with gorgeous yellow flowers carved into its skin. The next day, the room looked filtered, boiled to white - much like the White Room, where I had met Roland - and soon there were too many white rooms for me to note the White Room specifically. Sometimes, it was like walking through a dream that had forgotten pieces of the normal world. It was inexplicable, and the colors never returned.
There was, as well, the red box. I was not the only one that quaked before it. Cyrus many times locked people in rooms with it, and they usually died within the hour. Or, they went insane.
One Christmas Eve night at three in the morning, Cyrus roused all of us in his house for a little theater production. He had us dress like we were going to the opera, and when we were centered around the giant dinner table, he just about butchered a man in front of us. The man had a generic sounding name - Mr. Smith. Cyrus beat him in the head with a marble staff and all over his body, till the wounds were gushing with syrupy blood. Cyrus locked him in the room with the red box, its buckles unfastened.
An hour later, when the man came out, he was completely healed, but maniacal. He bit at the women on the left side of the hallway, and he ripped at their sequined clothes. Cyrus had to shoot him. The amount of blood that poured out of his body... I counted it. Too much for a man who had just been beaten senseless. Too much for a man in general. It was like some... thing was feeding the blood to us. Even when Cyrus buried him, the ground was soaked, muddy with red, for a good two weeks.
The first time I ever saw that box, I was young, and it was when I had first come to live with Cyrus, but after Roland and I had begun. Cyrus had brought me to his office in the morning, and a pure, crystalloid light was pouring through the windows upon us. It made Cyrus look quite white.
"Do you know," Cyrus said to me that day, "that you are a very lucky person, Jack? You are a very lucky person indeed. There are mounds of things in the world to seize - knowledge, power, love - the world is ripe, absolutely overflowing with the potential of things for you to have. I could never even name all that is open to you, for it multiplies every day into infinity. There are worlds beyond your world, pieces of you beyond yourself, and you cannot know how important it is to know all of these things until you know them. You're just a child, after all." He gave a small laugh. "You are a blank slate, like them all - the tabula rasa. But you are a very lucky blank slate because I am willing to do something with that. I am willing to help raise you, securely as my own. I am going to let you know of all the things that are in this world. I am going to strengthen you so that you may venture through it unharmed. I am going to let you know the lies from the truth. And I am going to show you something that nobody else in the world can show you except for me." At this, Cyrus leaned back against his desk, his hand reaching out to rest upon it, and his fingers slid ever-so-delicately over the lid of the red box before they touched down on the wood with a loud Clack! from his ring. "At least, in time...
"As you know, there are Christians in the world. And, as you will soon find out, there are those who believe more in Satan than they do in God. Satan makes more sense to them. And the others out there - the others of our little group - most of them believe in Satan, and they say that God does not exist. This is so obviously false. The things that I have seen... that eventually you will see as well, should convince you that God can do nothing but exist. Nevertheless, we cannot follow Him. That is not our way. It will not be how you are raised, or your sister, or any other child that is part of this assemblage. We believe in something darker. We believe in chaos, in the obliteration of cause and effect, in the love of absolutely everything. That is what we embrace.
"But eventually, it will tempt you - their side, the side of God. I have no doubt. And I want you to remember, no matter what those who live in Heaven say, Hell is what saved you before you even knew what saving was. The Christians, the pacifists, the people with their perfect families and dogs and colleges, those who have all the chances you never would have had without me, they will condemn me; but I, one sort of hell, saved you from the other. You will not be raped, and not because of their charity, but because of my gun. You will not be murdered, and not because of where their faith resides, but because of where mine does. You will not be a victim, and not because a shelter or a missionary found you, but because a little red box sits in this house, and it waits for another bite of the flesh of fools.
"So, if you ever start thinking that they're right and I'm wrong because their arguments seem logical and what I require of you seems so horrible - if you ever start to hate what you once loved - remember this moment and all moments of me, with whom you are perfectly safe, and realize what a tragedy it would be for you to leave all that I have provided.
"What I bestow upon you is unconditional protection - the kind of protection that people eat their hearts out for. You have it. As long as you listen to me, as long as you keep your faith in me, as long as you follow me and learn from me - and the journey will be hard, undoubtedly, but if you keep at it - you are safe. Nothing can harm you. No one can touch you. I am sealing you off from the rest of the world, Jack. The world can fuck itself like it always does, but it won't be fucking you. And I'm going to help you get revenge for all the things it could have done, were I not here.
"I love you. The best and worst parts of you. And you will love them, too. There is nothing more important than that. What is here and now, and what lies before us together, is more important than any other thing in the world. Do you understand?" he said.
"I understand," I told him.
"But if you do lose our way..." He tapped the box. "All of my protection ends."
I didn't even know how to lose the way, and I told him so.
"It'll come," he said. "It always does. The choice."
And that was the first time I had ever seen that box. It stuck with me because only days later I saw it used, and the words reverberated through me: "If you lose our way, all of my protect
ion ends." I was terrified.
It was things like this that made everything so precarious. Even with a solid foundation as a murderer, I knew that it wouldn't necessarily save me. The problem with being a "murderer" is that its power doesn't exist unless it is ceaselessly exercised. If I had ever stopped killing - not that I wanted to, not that it ever entered my mind - but if I did, I would no longer be salvageable. Cyrus's unconditional protection was conditional.
But none of this concerned me early on. Certainly not at the age of eight, or ten, or twelve, or when I learned how to want it, wait for it, and then drink it.
When I think about the years between Roland and sixteen, as horrible as it eventually became, those eight years were the most beautiful moments of my life - that is, before the power was cliché, before the loss of life was kitsch.
Yes, yes, by protecting Cyrus from Havinger, I had created an immense shadow to fill; but what is so important is how luxuriantly I filled it. I loved seeing the fear of the other followers when I entered a room, especially when they were twenty to thirty years my senior. I reveled in my reputation as "our little killer," and then "our Jack."
About seven years in, I was at my peak - full-fledged, quietly vicious. I did it so beautifully that even I hated me a little for it. Then, I began to kill on my own, without Cyrus's permission. He always was the controlling force, but at the age of fifteen, no longer. That was when I chose who I wanted to put to ground, and every one that went down lifted me up.
Who did I kill? Anyone I judged might want to kill me - that would have, had Cyrus not been there. I waited for them in the alleys with my pistol and suppressor. I never waited for them to condescend, but I could tell the ones who would. I've never been wrong.
I can only describe it as the perfect fantasy. The perfect... game. For me, every day was the day.
Murder is poetry, and many times I have introduced myself to people as a poet who always breaks the fourth wall. The first drops were always a flicker, a foretaste, of the raze that ensued chockfull of chaotic swell. Yet, in another way altogether it was short peace, like the silent gasp before a plunge, or movements deafened in the firsts of war. However, no matter what it was or how it seemed, men fell, and with them their lies and intimidation. Then, life was all pandemonium, where the safety of my liberty lay. I had never felt such relief in the flares of uproar and shadows of exhaustive destruction. It felt beautiful. A smoky sweet break of ethereal, an atmosphere of eruptive disgust. And it tasted like Cloves.
Often I lick my lips in lieu of it, such as now, awaiting cinnamon and smoke to nip. I am a vague addict to that flash of past, with need to satisfy in second tastes that my victories cannot be undone. For I fear that it will drop, that the past will come alive to choose different, and I’ll hear a voice threaded with authority command, “Hold out your hands,” or perhaps instead ask for my neck.
But they did fall, all vast cloaks and fayed soul, and how their bodies hit the ground seemed very tantamount to doll-like death, all fluttering eyelids and glassy gaze. In intimate fact I was unsatisfied with the quickness in which they lay. I wanted to yell at the bodies that toppled to floors to crawl. Crawl! Because their weakness warranted affliction and no misery did they betray.
Yes, yes, murder is poetry... and I have written chapters with knives.
But in less poetic terms, as curt as I can be, I killed men. And... I loved them as they died. That was how I loved.
It is beautiful.
And, as I have so elegantly been told, wrong.
But I will not denigrate it. Respect shall be laid where it is due. This is life. Not "therapy."
They were rapists, molesters, thieves, murderers, liars, psychopaths, sometimes women. Cyrus always asked me to. The innocent... yes, I have killed those as well.
And cleaned up the bodies. Disposed and closed. Roland helped me in this area. It was always to the furnace or the quick lime, and he never asked any questions. It became normality, this mobius strip. I began not to know where the beginning to the process had ever been, how I had entered this arrangement. It was smooth, like an organ pumping along. I went out, I found a wasp, I pressed my thumb to it until it died, and then I took it home, and Roland helped me burn the antenna, the wings, the torso, the head. Usually, anyway. There were times I knew I could leave the remains, and I did.
Though Roland never mentioned it, he knew some of the corpses I brought back Cyrus had never requested. There were too many. And, in this area, Roland helped me by keeping silent. Maybe that was Cyrus's intention all along, to grow me beyond himself. I don't know.
The first night I killed of my own desire, I remember, it was long ago, when I was teaching my sister how to drive a stick shift in an old Ford Sable. She was only eleven, but I knew she should learn, and we were on the shoulder of the road practicing. That night, a man rear-ended us. He nearly killed us.
He was in a black truck, and he was high, so high. When I crawled from the wreck and slinked to his vehicle, he laughed and laughed behind the driver's seat with his nose broken and bloody, like a demonic clown. Even when I retrieved a piece of sticky glass and slid it into his neck, he laughed at me. You can kill the man, but you can't murder the laughter. That's one of the things you discover. But killing the man was good enough for me. I'd learned to live with the rest of it.
I do believe that in all of this Alex was jealous of me. Killing did not seep from him as it did from me. It was not organic. But then, he had abilities that I lacked as well. He could make them scream. It just turned out that Cyrus had more use for killing wasps than watching them writhe and squeal. It took me years to realize it, but I had little to fear from Alex as far as death. It was only the rest of the package I need deal with. But I have never screamed. I've never learned how.
All along the way, Cyrus became more mysterious to me. I knew myself well, of course, but never Cyrus. I never knew him, only his work. I knew him through what he made of me.
I was infallible, perfect, evil. The closest I could come to any human being had already occurred. Roland and I were cemented. And, in a way, I believe I tried to repeat that cementation with the others. Yes, I wanted them dead, but at the same time I yearned for their return so that I could kill them again. That, after all, was when it became beautiful. It was how it was supposed to be. I chose to kill those that I would have desired to execute a hundred times, if I had been allowed.
Of course, they never fulfilled their part of the cycle, and to me, it was a sign of betrayal. I believed that their lack of resurrection was more their fault than my own.
All of it, from cover to core, irritated me. There was no kill like my first kill. And no future kill could satisfy me enough to be my last. I was addicted.
I remember I choked a man to death with piano wire in Cyrus's parlor as he and ten or so others watched like hungry eighteenth century genteel with fangs in their eyes. I had borrowed Roland's Bb string, and when I was done, it was returned to the piano to see how death made the music sound. It made me think of violin strings made from spider's web.
That specific man had tried to sleep with Cyrus's wife. I don't know why that wasn't expected, considering the sort that Cyrus kept around, but perhaps Cyrus enjoyed it that way. Yes, perhaps he harvested what he perceived as future prey. I had already received many chances to create and sample such peculiar tones on Roland's fine piano.
As I've said before, I was addicted, obsessed, but I oh so enjoyed my affliction. Much like a man who must wash his hands until they bleed to be at ease, there was something pleasurable even beyond my own personal desires. It wasn't me inside who was gratified. "It" - whatever "it" is - was sated.
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But then, something changed. Doesn't it always?
After eight or so years of me killing, things began to happen outside of our silky norm. Soon, the solid mechanical organ pumping along didn't work so well. The pattern of kill, dispose, repose got muddled in the cogs. The habit jammed.
Normally, Cyru
s would send me on my way to kill a man, or men, and when the job was finished, we'd meet at a diner - the same diner every time. By that time, it was usually very late into the night, and few others besides ourselves would be there. I'd order a meal and coffee. He'd order an Irish coffee. We'd switch. Then, as I sipped the smooth cream and bitter enfolds, I'd reminisce with him, glow for a while, put the murder in the past tense, and we'd leave. This was our one-on-one time, our Cyrus and Jack time. It also sewed things up nicely, partitioning these deaths like squares in a quilt.
Maria and Rebekah were our waitresses. I remember them. Cyrus gave them hundred dollar tips every time. And there was the owl clock on the wall. I always loved the way its silver wings spread on the hour. Cyrus and I sat in the same red booth each night. I appreciated the way the smooth plastic felt against my hands when I warmed them beneath my legs. And then the way Cyrus smiled when I gave him a memento, told him it was finished, was spectacular.
But then came the night I could not wait for the diner.
It was a wicked night, and I was seventeen. It was cold, and the moments that laid me out in a daze were when I was prepared to cook only to find a feast already on the table. It terrified me because, suddenly, I was no use. What is a murderer to think when his victim falls before his knife is drawn? What does a psychopath do when he tries to lure his prey, only to find she is already dead? Does he call the police? I don't know.
I had been sent to shoot two men who had raped Meredith - a girl my age who Cyrus lusted after.
It was twelve or so in the evening when I got a call to come to the Gillespie Hospital. It wasn't Cyrus who called me, but when I stepped out of the elevator, he was there straight down the crisp pallid hall.
It was cold, mid-December, and so he had his ebon trench coat on, and I'll admit it. He was graying, but still quite a stunning man. His looks made people listen.
I stepped to him, and as I tallied his words, I peeked in through the doorway he stood beside and saw Meredith sitting in a hospital bed, the green gown draped around her, crying. Others crowded around her, consoling. She was looked rough, had a swollen eye, not yet black, a jagged red on her lip, one more on her arm. Her hair glistened yellow, not white.
