Splatterpunk Fighting Back

by Bracken MacLeod

  Christ on his cross, bleeding from wounds in his hands and belly, eyes upturned, as though the pain has rendered him visionary or imbecilic. Cameras outside when I go to speak with them; news reports. I don't see the broadcast, but Lucia, my agent, calls to give me a run down: Apparently, the BBC did a number on the protesters, framing them as barking, bleating hypocrites, leaving the audience with lingering and lurid shots of their signs and placards... the crude, scratchy images of Christ on their T-shirts. There'll likely be some official statements from the churches, Lucia says, amazing publicity, she says. The last book flying off the shelves. Wants me to do some sort of documentary.

  I can't. I can't. The cameras might see; how much of a failure, a fraud, I am. I can't stand there and pontificate to the world what art is when I don't know; when I can't so much as touch it. For that, I need perfection; to realise that first dream, that I recall from my crib, the womb: Legion in Love.

  No sleep. Coffee, a few tabs of MDMA. Time distorts, rippling and stretching around me. The telephone rings, once, twice, the sun going down, the sun coming up. I work; I sketch and write and scribble...I think, think, think, until it hurts. Until everything hurts. I can't do this; not alone.

  Who? Who? That's the question. The medium is problematic; the models, the acrobats, the contortionists...not enough; not fluid, too static, set in their own skins. The ones I need...the uncomfortable ones, who dream of splitting out of themselves; of hatching and giving birth to something beautiful...the cutters and the piercers and the mutilators. I need them. I need them.

  Give Yourself to Art.

  The summons. Lucia organises it; the BBC, TIME, the Guardian; institutions where I know people and people know me; who have profited from my failures. They send out the call. Requests for interviews which I happily give:

  “The call is somewhat vague in what it requires. Is that deliberate?”

  “I don't find it vague at all; it states what I require.”

  “Yes, but, give yourself to art...it seems to imply that those who answer...they will belong to you.”

  “Not to me, never to me; I wouldn't presume. But they will be like me; they'll belong to the art.”

  “So soon after your controversial Dead Dreams tour...this seems a conscious step up from that; from the dead to the living. What is it you are trying to say?”

  A shrug.

  “That people can have purpose, I suppose; that everyone is a potential work of art and, if they can't decide what that art is, maybe others can.”

  They love it. They love me. Proposals of marriage, requests for my shavings, my toenails; my spit and blood. Women wanting me to be the Father of their children, men to play Daddy for them. Endless, ugly photographs; those who take my statements on being art to heart, turning whatever instruments they can find on themselves; entire bodies shaved and swimming with tattoos; elaborately pierced, ornamented, surgically altered...these I keep, along with their contact details. They're the ones; not the models, the acrobats...the ones who send me images of their cross-hatched tongues and mutilated genitals; who've had their facial features surgically altered to resemble snakes, cats and lizards. I don't have Lucia call them; I do so myself; a medium for the Art. None of them denied; every single one signing their flesh to me.

  Mad. They all say it; even Lucia, the only one who's never raised a word in protest against any of my visions; even what she calls my “Herbert West Period.” No sleep; the sketches pouring from me, moving me towards my ultimate design. I anneal myself; the studio littered with fresh instruments; sculpting tools, surgical implements. Clotting agents, antiseptics and bandages. I can't do it myself; lack the expertise, the nerve. I need others to be my hands; others who understand. Surgeons. I send out the call, and they answer; the fled and the disgraced; the lunatic, the lauded. One, a name well known throughout Hollywood's enchanted circles, his business the maintenance of youth, the ironing of crow's feet; stretches, tucks and chemical peels. Another who found herself plucking bullets from the bellies of mob men; stitching up faces that have been slashed or doused in acid as recompense for some slight. They come, for the promise of new lives, of salvation...some, the ones I want most, because the art calls to them; because they've been waiting their whole lives for the summons.

  Not all of them are ready, not all of them ripe. It doesn't matter; nor am I; not after the first cut, the first cry; not after the tenth, the hundredth. Awake...awake and aware; I have to be; the art demands it; pain, violation, all parts of the process; of the beauty that will follow.

  Filmed. I want them to see; all of them. What I will do, what I will become, for my faith: walk out amongst them; the bleaters and lamb-worshippers; let them see how much stronger mine is. Icons? Images? What does that mean? When one of them comes to me wearing the wounds of their Messiah, I may acknowledge them.

  So many failed, so many too stunted, too withered from birth, to accept it. The BBC send several, all of them refusing me, walking away, even under threat to their livelihoods. No matter; a hundred others waiting to take their places; ones with the stomach and insight to do so. They love me, see me in ways no other has or can; slit and screaming, stretched and slathering, teased out, stapled down...praying, praying; to the God of those outside, to the Devil he threw down; to those that went before, the nameless, shapeless ancients that writhe, knot and mate; endlessly devouring and birthing one another behind reality's ragged curtain, waiting for it to finally unravel, for the blind to see...

  What good is this? Words. Scratches and scars on paper. Inert. Even if I slit myself, bleed and spurt on the page, it captures nothing; nothing of the depths and the heights; the sense of shrivelling into myself, as though the surgeons have punctured some fundamental valve, carving a hole in my heart from whose depths gravity allows nothing, not even light, to escape. I walk among the ghosts there; damned memories, old cruelties, lost loves, defeats, despairs; every secret, verminous longing, made manifest in the blood and darkness, aroused and inspired by the singing of my flesh. They swarm with cannibal lust, with slobbered pleas for a salvation I can't provide (not yet, not yet). Here! Thread the cameras through, press them into the wounds; let them see, let them know! This is the way to Hell. I grin, suppurating, swollen and maggot like, the ghosts that seek to cannibalise me devoured in their turn; fuel for apotheosis. This...what the art sings of, what Legion in Love promises; the message I will carry, when all is done, out into a world choked and blind with sun-lit lies...

  Sprouting; shimmering wings, laced with filth, carrying me up, up from the pit, back to where my body trembles and voids itself, where my features are stretched out and hooked to an iron crown driven into my skull, slit down the centre to form two tattered flaps, peeled back and pinned in place, jewelled fixtures shimmering, casting rainbows. Through the blood; the shit and the semen, they all hear, all feel it. Drips and heart monitors and sustaining engines, the song singing through them; the art calling. I rise, beyond my own skull, beyond the metal driven into it, higher, higher, beyond human edifice, beyond human concern, still trailing the shit that births me, still feeling every pang, but carried by them now rather than buried, soaring with the stars, the lightning; the states of pure inspiration that linger between. I see them; the engines of fire, the wheels of eyes; the things that churn at the hearts of suns, waiting their moment to wake and take flight.

  Systems of pure passion, hot circuits of inspiration. Inspirata. The Choirs. And beyond..?

  No written gospel to convey it; no poetry, no strain of music, that might evoke...The First, of which all others, myself included, are made in emulation, which we all aspire to; the ember of divinity in every soul, that we deny, that we bury, drown, to preserve sanity, to prevent pain. That we love, no matter what the world demands; that we turn to, in the depths of despair, in our ultimate wretchedness, praying to flare, and immolate us from within.

  I can't write what I see, I won't; no words, no language sufficient. Only what follows, when I open what remains of my
eyes, see what the surgeons have made:

  Myself; more so than I've ever been, than accidents of biology could ever contrive. An emulation of the things in the stars and sewers, whose contradictory messages I devour with equal appetite. Naked, still dripping, I step from my restraints, the cameras following, none daring to defy or stand in my way, as I go to meet them.

  Lucia raves. So do others; the Mail carrying a particularly viperous piece, its writer condemning me as: ...a symptom of society's cancer; a walking avatar of the immorality corroding our cultural fabric. Not content with spewing out abortion after abortion and calling it art, this...specimen, this parasite, now has the gall to present himself as some sort of Messiah? The fact that so many seem to have fallen for the charade stands as testament to how far we have fallen...

  How far we have fallen...not far enough.

  I go to them, stepping out onto the doorstep naked and bleeding. Let them see. Not only the gathered masses, but the world, cameras flashing, phones raised, cries and condemnations stilling, stilling. I raise my arms, half expecting the flocks to part, for the clouds to peel back, the sun to stream through. I can do it...this wretched art, this seepage across the canvas...reality; a bad joke; the true abortion... can wipe it clean, make the canvas ready for new inspirations.

  One step, another, and another, those behind following, intent on every moment. I don't know what they'll do; the ones whose hate I've watched seething and fomenting through the studio windows. Maybe they'll flee, maybe they'll vomit; maybe drop to their knees and praise me; a walking icon of the suffering they've made messiahs from.

  All of these and none. I walk, dust beneath my naked feet, sweet pollen in the air...the scent of their bodies, their eyes on me. A hush. Hearts beating; breasts about to burst, as though the organs sprout wings, ready to erupt from their chests, taking flight. Nothing would surprise me. They follow; the filmmakers, the photographers; the camera men. Those who can stand it. Others amongst the crowds, the first to recover, stars igniting before my eyes. Many do not; dropping to their knees, turning away, clutching at their bellies as they run. Others stand, hate and sudden adoration co-mingling, tangible; a concert of scents in the air. Rain pattering down, sluicing us all clean. I tremble, though not with cold. They call to me, cry, weep; demanding my murder, my lionization...calling me monster and angel. Both and neither. Eyes and minds bent upon me, the world seeming to slow and warp, the canvas stretched to tearing. A prophecy of art.

  No words. No requirement. The inspired, the truly faithful, see me for what I am; the article of faith my flesh has become. A poor reflection on them, with their tracts and placards, mass-published bibles and korans clutched close to their chests or waving over their heads, the smears of blood and matter I leave on the doorstep more meaningful.

  I raise my arms, my face to the rain, feeling it flow into every fresh runnel, every new seam and slit, washing severed nerves, running down my body tinged red. They break, clambering over one another, stumbling, trampling their kin against the concrete. The faithful, the lambs; the desperate for some place or poetry in their lives... come intent on hating me, on seeing me murdered, fantasies of lynching and burning; of me dragged out and stripped naked, kicked and beaten and bludgeoned 'til there's no article of my being or body that might offend, rendered sexless and imparticular by their violence. A pang of sorrow that it won't come to pass.

  Tearing at themselves, at their clothing; at one another, exposing breasts, bone; priapic cocks, beating hearts. Squirming in the rain and filth, lapping at the bloodied water, smearing it upon themselves whilst those who will never know, never understand, look on aghast. Some attempt to hold them in check -self-fancied shepherds, those for whom humanity is animal; cattle to be corralled - but soon falter, their faith not sufficient to warrant the loss of a tooth, a finger, an eye. I laugh, seeing them flinch and recoil, stepping back from the wives, the husbands; the children they proclaim to love, wishing that I could go to them; ride the tide of flesh, step upon the heaving, undulating backs of my believers, and show them; show them what I've given, what I've sacrificed, for Legion in Love; more than they have or ever will for their absentee saviours.

  Sirens in the distance, the luminous jackets and barked voices of police, shrieking ambulances. Taken inside, away from the scene, happy to be guided, though it pains me to part from those who love me enough to wish me devoured; to have my meat and blood in their bellies. Perhaps, perhaps; when the work is done; a post-rapture feast, a last supper.

  So many come after; so many who lend themselves to the work. No flight, though Lucia and others demand it, no answer to the summons of those that presume authority. Committed no crime, breached no law; nothing they can do, no one they can send. The BBC air the documentary, much to the protest of many within and without, others following suit, the footage of that moment; of the moments it inspires, soon familiar to every living room, every home and head within the country; in places far beyond. Calls for my arrest as frequent as demands for my murder; as threats from crusaders and jihadists who believe me the Devil or his messenger on Earth. They might be right, but what of it? What a glorious monster the Serpent must be, if this is what his ways consist of!

  I have the house emptied; its walls filled with glass and broken mirrors; with water kept in perpetual motion. Many flee; those who pretend to care, those who see in me only a means of making money, attaining status. Rat and maggot souls. It doesn't matter; so many more come to take their places; the inspired, the faithful; those happy to express and be expressed upon; my children and incestuous lovers, who lick the blood from me, whose tongues and fingers trace the paths of my scars, of the slits that will never heal. Those whom the police and shepherds fail to drag away, to imprison against their own desires.

  Lucia. My friend since the beginning; since before I was anything. My friend.

  “I can't do this any more. There are people...they come to my house, to my office. I'm afraid...”

  I laugh. “There's no need to be. Come and be with us; let me show you...”

  Angry, then, not understanding: “Don't try to feed me your horse-shit. I don't know what's wrong with you; I don't want to know. The world has enough problems...”

  The end. A click, a dead tone. Twenty three years, done in as many seconds. The world has enough problems...her world. Their world. Not mine. Theirs is ending; even insulated from it as I am, I know; my lovers bring whispers; tell me stories of the decay beyond the walls: The wars, the scandals, the collapses; trains that no longer run, hospitals standing vacant; the companies to which they've been sold grown cancerous, dissolving under the weight of their own corruption. Greece and Romania and Spain...revolutions, hangings, burnings. Mass riots in London, Manchester; clashes between white supremacists and Muslim extremists in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Brighton...

  The world they call sane. The world they wish to drag us back to, that they fear we might break... ha, no; provide alternative to; that we shame by our very being, the demonstration of our joy...

  The children of that world, to which we were all born...we see them suffering, hear them starving; barking at one another on the street, brawling, drunkenly spewing in their sickness; for lack of any other means of venting their frustrations...

  Our children...so different, another species; loving and loved in their turn. Even in pain, which we teach them to adore, even in anxiety, which they come to anticipate. Laughter, tears; both experienced with equal enthusiasm. Their parents and siblings; their guardians and saviours; the ones who bring them here, to taste the blood...we teach them, inspire them; they teach and inspire in their turn. A house of love.

  Petrol and broken glass through the letterbox, bricks and stones through the windows. The jealous ones; the judges, the crusaders, the executioners. By then, it doesn't matter; nothing they can do to hurt us. They fly when they see, when even the least of mine go to the windows or doorways. Those that linger...we bring inside, out of the rain, the cold; show them better, teach them
how to paint with tears, with meat and sweat.

  Legion in Love...they help me, every one of them; the lovers, the faithful; the fellow artists. Those surgeons that remain...the truly inspired, those who came not out of disgrace or desperation, but vision. They aid me, their scalpels, their saws, their bindings and braces, moving like instruments in an orchestra, guided by my conduct, my inspirations.

  Everything I've done and become; everything I've loved and learned, culminating here, in this moment. The end of me, of the world; of everything we've ever known. Hesitation? Perhaps; traces of old fever, of a nightmare that insists on itself; a leprous state in love with its own disease, knowing nor wanting anything better.

  We tremble, moan; every cut, every motion; every stitch and seam, bringing us closer to waking. My hands move over flesh, my blood beading it, flowing into it, as its does into me. We know one another...my children and I, more intimately than any congregation, any family or brothel's clientele; our most sacred shames; the taste of our skin and blood and sweat; the movements of our bowels, the diseases of our blood. Those outside...the ones lost in the world, never knowing; never born. Not in blood, though they will be, soon.

  Nothing left, of me; of them; of what we once were. We shed and shed and shed again; splitting at the seams, allowing our pith and seed to spill. Ripe to the point of fomentation; echoes of the world that bore us, its collapse imminent. None come to stop us, to waylay us; even the highest parasites, those that sustain off the rot, acknowledging our inevitability.

  I don't remember, any more than the hours after being born; the days and nights that follow; the sleepless dreaming, the waking nightmares. None of us fall, none of us fail; should we let one soul bleed out, come apart, the entire edifice would crumble, the chrysalis we've made of our own bodies, that we pour our collective souls into, rupturing, spilling the angel within prematurely.