by L C Barlow
He was right, of course, but I still denied him. Thus, he continued evolving his questions, as well as his murders.
He began to frighten me. I did not sleep well anymore. Three hours, at most, I rested a night.
Cyrus, in both perturbation and eagerness to please the Other, had turned maniacal, religious. It made me wonder if something in him was simply waiting for permission to be born, like a latch ready to spring.
The fear culminated one evening when he brought me to a clearing in the back of his property, far within the woods.
It was night, and the grass glistened with a sweat that was sweet and stuck to the back of my tongue. When we arrived, already a crowd was gathered. There was a wooden podium, and on the podium three girls stood.
When I saw them I shivered. They were between the ages of eight and twelve. Their blonde hair streamed like silken banners and fluoresced like spider webs beneath the torches and flashlights that surrounded us.
"They must be blonde. They must be virgins," I remember Cyrus commanding just a few days earlier. I heard the voice then at the cusp of my ear as though hell was breaking loose.
"As you watch this," Cyrus said, before he stepped to the podium to stand beside those girls, "ask yourself, can you do what I do? Can you do it better?"
Cyrus enlightened the gathered group of what he meant to do. He told them outright, "Your daughters will be sacrificed," like a judge behind the bench, and without one more word, he ordered Alex and many of the other men to start taking them to their deaths.
From the left of the crowd, a hulking figure of a man leaped forward at Cyrus, and in a flash, I retrieved my gun from my pocket and dashed forward. But then Cyrus, without even looking up at me, held his palm up in my direction, as though telling me "Halt!" And I did stop. From fifteen feet away, I heard his voice cut to me.
"Die."
The man who had launched himself forward hit the ground with a smack like a bag of oranges, and he landed there amongst the leaves in such a way that there was no question. His arms and legs were splayed out at odd angles like a spider's arms plucked and mislaid. His eyes were wide open, and they peered in my direction. His hands twitched clumsily like the hooves of a baby deer. His pink tongue lolled in the dirt.
Following this failed attack, there was a small pause, a gasp really, and then several men and women also launched themselves forward, and again, Cyrus muttered like a conductor of an orchestra, "Die," and the musicians obeyed, piling upon one another like bricks. It reminded me of a cartoon, and this phantasmatic drawing continued until there laid before us a heap of ten bodies or so, and then there were no more saviors, only quivering families and their wretched uselessness.
The ones still standing balked and looked like frightened lambs during trimming season, and though others' weaknesses had always angered me, for the first time in my life I didn't blame them for their inabilities. I realized then how absolutely useless I, too, had become, perhaps had always been.
Cyrus did not need me to save him. He did not need me at all. He had his box, his word, his son, his money. He was perfected. He was like God.
When Cyrus strung the girls up one-by-one, I saw my sister in each of their faces, as though he had killed my own. As for myself, I knew where I was - at the bottom of that pile of dead families. I felt my heart swivel upside down like a wheel of misfortune, and it did not come right side up, for I heard his words yet again in my ear, "Can you do what I do? Can you do it better?"
Considering my past, I should have been able to say 'yes.' Inexplicably, I could not. I was not numb enough for this. I hated it and myself.
It would be three days before the girls were cut down, and I would refuse each day to near them. When the others would eventually pluck the girls like apples from the limbs, they would be even whiter than when alive, and this would eventually remind me of my room... the crisp pallid imbued once the Other had left.
During that night, though, I stood alone, in shock at the bodies of the children, and I talked to myself in my fear.
"You've got to wait," I whispered, standing beneath the feet in the trees.
"Wait for what?" the other half replied.
"You know what."
"Don't say it."
"Don't pretend. You can feel it inside of you, deep in your gut. It's ready."
Cyrus said the Other was appeased. He could feel it in the brisk air, he gasped, that we had done well and would be rewarded and so would those who aided him. He never did realize, even theoretically, like I had, standing there and watching the survivors and weak ones weep, trying to close off every organic trickle that had appeared within myself, that there comes a point in horror where rewards no longer exist, when money doesn't fix a damned thing.
When we returned to the house, it was almost three in the morning, and I intended to bolt straight to Roland's room, but I discovered he was out helping bury the bodies. I peaked outside a window and watched them work from a distance, but then, quite suddenly, Cyrus called me.
"Do you feel it?" he asked.
"What?" I was numb.
"It's satisfied. The house is. The Other is. My body is. It's glorious." He stretched his arms out and leaned back in his office chair. He spun it around like a ballerina and giggled. "It's so wonderful, so beautiful, so marvelous - this chaos... the ability to kill others with a word."
This power was one of his newest, and it showed. "I'm happy for you," I said to him, and I tried my best to smile. I couldn't tell if it worked.
"Yes. Harming another cannot harm you. It's a marvelous thing that we're so separate. They can't get in."
"Yes," I said. But for me, they had gotten in. I was in them... it. In fact, I had never been so in it in my entire life. And, as I sat in the leather chair across from his desk, I actually began to experience tinges of regret - for murders I had never done, would never do, and had always loved. The sickness filled me so that I felt my blood replaced with black tar, and I sensed this tar thumping in my throat as my very past regurgitated. It seemed the warmth in my stomach had suddenly turned to lava.
I leaned forward in my seat, rubbing my face, feeling the contents of my soul fall out of me like soup. I pictured my sister hanging from a rope again, her shiny pink shoes bopping, twitching, stilling. No! my mind screamed.
"Jack?... Jack?"
"Hm?" I said, and I looked up.
Cyrus was leaning to his side in the seat, smiling at me with pursed lips. "Now is the time you must ask yourself, are you truly ready to replace me?"
"What?" The word collapsed into a whisper.
"That is, after all, what you spoke of, isn't it? That night in your room, with It."
"You kill me, Cyrus," I replied, rolling my eyes. I thought of Meredith. "And your women kill me, and your boxes kill me, and your son, too. He kills me."
"Even more reason to question, then. Doing away with me. Working for another, stronger, more expansive being. Obeying It." He leaned forward on his desk. "Do you really think you can do what I do? Can you really give the world the evil it deserves?"
He thrust his hand in the air like he was brushing off all the imperfections between us like dust. "Not the dumb evil, the unwilling evil, the inexperienced, the hesitant, the flat, the pathetic, choking, flaccid, yawning, lazy, impotent evil that haunts the world. No! The evil that makes heroes what they are!
"The world cannot have a good hero without an equally good villain. Well, don't the others deserve such villains? And will you be there, like I am there, to make sure they won't be disappointed?"
He continued to thrust his questions at me like daggers. "Nobody wants the idiot to take him out of this world, Jack. No one wants a killer who doesn't give a damn or wants it over with, or doesn't think twice, but enjoys! Yes, enjoys intelligently, coercively, cunningly. Because then, oh what a great person they are - not to be done in by a mouse, but by a monster!
"Can you be that bastard?"
I looked at him like it was insanity that mad
e him sparkle, and I handed him the simplest answer. "No."
He nodded, and he seemed pleased. "Then I suggest you think on that. Because if I were to somehow disappear, due to something, or someone, making a choice very similar to the one that I once made, so long ago, under the tutelage of a man very much like myself, then you would be left to replace me.
"The box will not get rid of one if It does not believe It can replace me with another, and if you can't, It will inhabit you. Why the Other is interested in specifically you, I haven't the slightest clue, but don't believe for a second I don't know what's going on. It's in your best interest to make sure, no matter what happens, I do not die."
I sighed and flipped out my hands imploringly. "I have no doubt that that is true, but you don't need to convince me. I've already told you, I think you should burn the damned thing."
Cyrus grinned. "Like fire could do it... Let there be no question, we will keep following It, with me front and center."
"Of course," I said.
It was as though I had never said those words. "And to prove to you how much you don't want to lead the way, I'm going to inform you what our next little project is. It is called the Destruction of Faith. Yes, it has a name. We take a minister. We kill his family. We wear him down. When his faith is at its lowest point, we kill him and send him to hell."
Had Cyrus ever believed in hell? I wondered. "Why the fuck are we doing this?" I asked.
"Well... I suppose because God hates it."
I didn't believe it. I waited for more, but he gave me nothing. Still, I paused. "So?"
"Well, that's what we've always been about. Chaos over good."
I laughed aloud. "No, Cyrus, no. We murder for the pleasure."
"Jaaack..." he stretched my name out as he shook his head. He rolled his eyes lazily. "We've talked this over. Don't play dumb. It doesn't suit you."
"I don't play, Cyrus. Ever. You taught me well."
He peered at me as though looking through a magnifying glass at a chrysalis. "We've done what It wanted. We've waited for it to become more powerful. We've grown it. Now we're reaping."
"Reaping?" I asked and smiled. "You're telling me that when your wife was cheating with Townsend, and you had me choke him to death for you in the piano room as you drank mulled wine with the others, that it was all about 'angering God?'" I shook my head. "Do you not know yourself?"
"How do you think I knew she was cheating?"
I pursed my lips together in thought until I felt the blood seep from them. "You're saying the thing in the box told you?"
"Of course."
"Yes, but I thought you..." I stopped. I had suddenly lost my ability to explain reality. I began rifling through my head all the moments in time I had been ordered by Cyrus to kill - for Meredith, for money, for entertainment. "You're telling me this was all for God?"
"Not for God, per se. To bother Him, yes, and hurt Him. To feel that moment when His eyes are on you and will never let you go - to gain his attention forever, and to enjoy it. Pleasure has always come second."
"Oh wow," I said, and I gave one sad laugh.
"What?"
"This is so much worse!" I shouted, and I hopped out of my chair.
"Why?" he asked, teasingly. "Are you a closet Christian?"
"No!" I screamed at him, and I kicked his desk. "This was supposed to be about you! And me! And Roland! But now... It makes it all...! It's fucking cheap! That's what it is."
He sat there and guffawed. "How could gaining the gaze of God be anything but magnificent? Jack, you're being ignorant! It's the gaze of God! Do you know what that means? You are forever implicated, forever greater, in the great plan!"
"Fuck the plan!"
I turned to go, but when I reached the doors of his office, they would not open.
"Let me the fuck out!" I roared.
"No."
I continued to pull at the oak doors.
I heard Cyrus's voice behind me. It was all too tender. "Come on, Jack. Did you really... Did you really think that this was all about pleasure?"
I flipped around and glared. "You're the one! You're the one who gave me Roland! For my first kill, and second, and third, and I..." I stopped.
"What?" he said.
"You know."
He stood up from his desk, slowly drifted around to the front of it and leaned against its edge. His figure was in the form of a half bow when he said slowly, "I do not. Tell me."
"I love him."
"You love him?" he asked, and he said it in such a way that it seemed the words tasted acerbic.
"I loved you, and what you and he helped me do." I realized almost instantaneously that telling him this truth was a mistake.
"I see," said Cyrus. "So you thought that murder was, in a way, about love." He was looking at the corner of the office, his eyes flicking back and forth. "...and probably connection.
"Maybe it was a mistake keeping Roland alive. I had brought him back to help you make the transition from innocence, but maybe I erred. Maybe the innocence didn't leave, but... petrified. And maybe the box... Wait! What about the others? Those you've killed on your own."
It did not surprise me then that he knew about my extracurricular activities. Nevertheless, I said quite defeated, as though I had been explaining myself for hours, "I killed them because I wanted to. I desired to."
"And these were all men?"
"Of course."
"Around Roland's age?"
Suddenly, I did not appreciate his analysis. I knew the implication - that I, like many not so appreciated others, had a set from which I never deviated. "There's nothing wrong with consistency, Cyrus." I cocked my head. "Would you prefer I kill children?"
"Soon... you may be required to."
I sighed, my blood beginning to boil. "There's a reason you had me killing Roland all those years ago, rather than Roland killing me. The child kills the adult, not the other way around."
Cyrus replied sharply, "That's a rather smart thing to say," but then he seemed calm again. "And, in a way, you are correct. But, dear Jack, you have forgotten quite a lot."
"Forgotten what?"
"The berries."
"What are you talking about?"
"You remember. The plate like a mirror? You were about five at the time."
I could not acknowledge this, because I did not recall.
He sighed and glanced at his watch. "When we met for the first time, and I was considering taking you in, I put before you a plate of nine poisonous berries and one harmless, and I let you eat one of your choice. I figured, if there was any way to tell if we were meant to be, that was it. And... you chose correctly."
I could not hide my shock, but either I did not show it, or he did not notice. He said congenially, "I was perfectly willing to kill you. Just like I was perfectly willing to kill those three girls and did, tonight."
"You tried to poison me?" I said, for the first time replaying that day in which we'd met.
"I didn't 'try' a thing. I left it completely up to fate. I, like with many things, decided that if fate wanted you to die, you would. If it did not, you would come with me.
"I mean, truly Jack, put yourself in my place. How much could one expect from yet another bastard child without some sort of sign that you would be different? I needed something outside of this world to show me that this child is not like the others. I wasn't here to save the children of the world. I was here to do something very specific, and I simply needed to know if you were the one to join me. Luckily, I think... you were."
I was breathless, and I felt sweat beginning to collect along my body. "Did you...? With others?" I asked.
"Are you asking if there were other plates of berries and other children?"
"Yes."
"Closet-fulls."
I felt my mouth part against my will in awe of this monstrosity, and for the first time, I pitied my younger self. Faintly, I did recall the memory of our first meeting, but it was weak, like the flapping of b
utterfly wings against my brain. I blurrily remembered the circle of fruit on the plate and the angels overhead in the painting reflected in that very dish - how the tip of an angel's hand touched the berry I chose. "How could you not tell me?"
"How could you not know?" Cyrus asked, and he leisurely sprung at me, grabbing my arm and pulling me to him. "Where have you been all of these years? You were hiding inside your head, hm? Maybe you didn't want to see it, but you do now. You perceive me here - my gray eyes, my taut face, my white lips? The daggers in my smile." I did not fight him one inch as he pulled me close.
"Yes. What are you?" I said, floating in a pool of terror.
"A machine, Jack, with a few human tricks, which grow fewer and fewer every day."
"What are you really?" I asked.
"You want my title? They don't have a name yet for a thing like me."
"What... do you do?"
"You know what I do."
"Tell me."
"I grow murderers."
"Yes."
"I eat the innocent."
I said nothing, waiting for more.
"And I am one of the few in the world who can step backstage in this whole fucking play and return with props from another kind of reality."
"But when did this begin?"
"It simply always was."
"I don't believe you."
"You don't?" he laughed. "You still think I'm different than what I've shown you?" And he shook his head in disdain.
"You changed," I said, "when the box opened itself. You changed when I went into the woods and met that bright stranger."
"Jack, you are wrong. There is no difference between now and the beginning. That's not just true for me, but every experience we have ever had. Your first kiss, first love, first kill - they're all as bad as the last. There is no difference in horror between these later kills and the first. You only experience the first as love and the last as... despair."
I pulled from him then, and a small distance separated our warm bodies in the cold room, but I could still feel him, as though we were pressed close. I walked to the door, and he kept pace with me, my eyes pinned to him, and his to me.
