Coffin Island

by Will Berkeley

  Professor Coffin and The Red Lady were disturbing my thought process by yammering in the background. They were pleading for their lives in their thoughts. I was hearing their thoughts now. Let them plead all they want. I won’t hear it.

  However interrupting murderous contemplations is never a good idea even if you are fruitlessly pleading for you life. You’ll hasten the indelicate process. The only thing that was holding me back was that I knew that their headless corpses would continue haunt me in this world. Their decapitated heads would keep speaking even on the end of pikes. I knew this because I had already tested this theory.

  Professor Coffin and The Red Lady were singing sea shanties in decapitation. They were memorializing the horror of their predicaments. They were recounting their deaths in songs. Their corpses were carrying on a bit too. Their headless corpses were jigging around the pikes.

  Professor Coffin and The Red Lady had been operating without intelligence for centuries. What was another four hundred years of decapitated robotics?

  We had our powers back. By me, I mean, Madison and me. The other fools got nothing which was precisely what they deserved. However it wasn’t a cause for celebration. The disheartening part was that they were horrifically enhanced. I was operating at a level of the highest order. And it wasn’t pleasant at all. Our powers were massive. They were of uncertain authenticity. They were to be seriously questioned. And they were earth shattering powerful.

  I felt like a god of staggering proportions. Who wants to be a god in hell? Isn’t that job already taken? Why has the devil ducked his obligation? I thought that beast delighted in his domicile.

  Had he quit his job? Had the devil walked out? Casually turned out the lake of fire? Pulled a cigarette from his pack? Snapped his lighter? Taken a deep lungful of smoke? Blown a cloud of relief? And slyly drifted away from the thankless task of eternal torture of the damned? Who possibly benefited from that? There was going to be hell to pay if the devil didn’t come back. I wasn’t doing his job.

  Meanwhile Professor Coffin and The Red Lady were moaning about their lack of power verbally and in their thoughts. I had been giving them the cold shoulder, Casket Island style, with all the power that I could muster. The knob in my mind, that I had turned down to concentrate, was beginning to breakdown from overwork. You could only tune out the idiots for so long apparently. Then you must suffer them. And suffer them you will. Sadly, at some point, listening to their babble became unavoidable. This parable helped explain the necessity of execution.

  You could, in fact, change people. I was seeing the wisdom in this maxim as I peered at my elders. The elderly, in particular, could be changed. You could hasten up the natural process towards regression. It also helped explain while in post-revolution the idiots and intellects are rounded up for swift execution. The imbeciles and the intellectuals are nothing but trouble. The elderly are sucking up all our resources. The intellectuals are questioning everything. They all have to go, pronto.

  Professor Coffin and The Red Lady had no powers. I wouldn’t have cared but they were groaning so vociferously. Decapitating them didn’t even help. That was particularly discouraging. However it demonstrated that they weren’t real people.

  Professor Coffin and The Red Lady were part of the test. Something outside of the frame of Crypt Island was running them. I had already plumbed the costumed fool’s thoughts. He was mystified by what was happening. The Red Lady was just as clueless. They were just part of the theoretical platform. That’s all.

  I put their heads back on to make throwing them into the sun more economical. I didn’t want to miss anything. However they just carried on like nothing had happened. They started right back on that act of theirs. They expected me to pretend that I hadn’t seen right through them? Just because you’re some sort of puppet on a theoretical platform doesn’t make you human. You’re a test human. That little puppet show of yours must be quite the charming act in whatever sock theater that you crawled out of but it isn’t going to fly here.

  Did I just think that? Or shout it out loud? Witchcraft is making me flip out to the point that I can’t tell when I’m merely thinking or shouting. There is the bend and I am firmly around it. Back behind me is the line that I have just crossed. I think that my examiners are taking their last crack at my mind to see if it will snap. I snap back, examiners. I gnashed my teeth for dramatic effect too. Sometimes you’ve got to play the crazed fool to back down your tormenters.

  What was even more hideous was that I wasn’t going back. It was all about the future now. And it was going to be loud, fast and out-of-control. Of this much I was certain. My mind wouldn’t lie to me. Or maybe it just did. I’ll get to the bottom of it. Or I won’t. Something is bound to turn up.

  I turned that volume control up in my mind. I wanted to study Professor Coffin and The Red Lady one last time for old time’s sake. It was all becoming deliciously clear. That whole grim musical of hunting was making perfect sense.

  You must study your prey before you kill it. Sit in that tree quietly with the arrow pulled back. Collect a little evidence before the lung shot. Only then do you let go. The bow will do the rest.

  Why have three worlds named after the final resting place? It was all becoming clear to me. The death of your instructors was the only way to graduate.

  Professor Coffin and The Red Lady were groaning at great length about their revised position on The Great Chain of Being. The thing that I admired was the audacity with which they pronounced themselves creatures on The Great Chain of Being. They were the roaches of this theoretical platform for all purposes. I feel like I was being extremely generous in that classification. Frankly they were beneath categorization in this world. What good are scavengers in this world? Who cares about carrion if that’s all a world consists of? Why bother having any vultures even on the insect level?

  The only reason that I granted them roach status was so I had a justification for stomping them to death with brutal force. I was classifying them so I could kill them with passion. Why execute something that you hate if you aren’t going to celebrate? You don’t scalp something without juvenile gloating that is unnecessary and vulgar. Being high toned doesn’t get your point across. It makes your critics think that you’re a fraud which you are. And we couldn’t have that.

  Chapter

  Professor Coffin and The Red Lady needed to be stomped to death with a vulgar brutality that bespoke them. I wanted a suit of their skin that was exquisitely tailored by a furrier. I wanted to put it on and strut around a bit. Foreshadow for their boss what was going to happen next. You’re skin is going on my back next. Maybe some kidney skin slippers too. Why not flash around a bit?

  This grim hell was what qualified as an education at The Coffin Island School for Witches? Although that was some sort of misnomer calling The Coffin Island School for Witches a school. My examiner was a demon. And that school was hell too.

  Why not make education as evil as possible? You’ve got to crucify those pupils to teach them anything. Otherwise your message just won’t get through. That’s why we have to put you on a cross on a hilltop. We’re going to drive our point right through the palm of your hands. Welcome to the Crucifix. Who are we nailing up there, you might ask? Well, what about you?

  My examiner had set this horrible destination into motion with a flick of his wings. And even if he hadn’t, which he had, I didn’t care. The tail was getting pinned on that donkey. There was nothing that ass could do it about it. Let him honk all he wants. Nobody will hear him because all the horses have gone to war. We’re going to pave that path of destruction with skulls because the cobblestones are all in the catapult. There is a grim logic here if you’re willing to go after it. But how do you march on something that you cannot precisely locate?

  Why not locate yourself on a map before engaging in brutal over-the-top war on a theoretical plan with some sock puppets that deserve it or at the very least their handler that is in hiding?

  We had the br
oad outlines of what it was, or where it was inspired from, a Flemish portrait of hell, made by a frontal lobe madman who should have been shot along with his benefactor. It was an ungenerous assessment but I was the one currently standing in it. Not gazing at it from the safe distance of the exterior of the frame down through the ages. Or at the very least the responsible parties should not have given the madman a paintbrush to quiet his troubled mind.

  That was the first mistake that set this brutal hell into motion. You couldn’t argue with that. It was trying to placate a Flemish madman that was the first wrong move. It had sent this whole demented dimension into motion. Attempting to find a safe haven to occupy that unquiet mind? The arts were a decidedly poor choice.

  What about tulip cultivation? You don’t like flowers? You’d much rather paint a vision of hell? Here is your paintbrush and oils, madman. How about a stipend for absinthe too? You had to admire the stupidity of the fools. Perhaps some hallucinatory roots from the forest might suit you too.

  An artist had thought of this grim hell then had been permitted to paint it. It was the permission that I was taking issue with. That was the big omission because we’re all constantly having unsettling thoughts. We just don’t have the courage to do anything with them.

  We mercilessly stamp them out in ourselves. We also mercilessly stamp them out in others when they have the audacity to not self-censor. Otherwise someone will create something that will make us all uncomfortable. And we don’t want that. We prefer to cower in our holes.

  However the good news is that the really dark edges of art yields three destinations, the bughouse, the big house and the penthouse. The artist, the creator of this uncomfortable truth, tends to top out at one destination. The select few go two. And some rare birds like the ones in this Flemish hell do the revolving door before they finally climb into the oven.

  It’s worth noting that there is a holy fool or two in every generation. The world permits the holy fool to become massively rich and live in a castle to keep the flicker of the arts alive. Also we like to watch the holy fool explode. It’s highly entertaining to watch the talented explode. Who doesn’t enjoy a spectacular flameout on the castle level?

  The world permits the artist some monitored freedoms such as standing in Flemish hell. Starving the artist does not serve anyone as much as we would like to do it. We would gladly put the fool in a padded room and starve it to death but you’ve got to take the long view. It’s the elite down the hereditary line that need their vicarious thrill. We don’t want to starve them of that.

  They’re the rightful recipients of this art. We want them to exercise that right, that’s right. The foolish amount of money that they pay to procure all this misery is a form of art too. It makes the artist in the grave shudder. Or laugh. You pick.

  Really hellish art is often made at the expense of the life of the creator. Or the life within is so damaged that creating really hellish art is all that it can do. The creator is a pariah either way. It doesn’t even really have a gender because nobody likes it. It’s just an unpleasant thing to be around for all parties included including the artist itself. It’s the output of this unsavory character that must be persevered and honored. Not the pariah itself. We throw it out like a bag of garbage in some ashcan of an atoll on the emerald ocean.

  Were these bodies in Flemish hell the corpses of the creators of art? Was I beginning to see a violent symmetry here? Were the bodies a body of work too?

  Chapter

  The horror that the artist produced, the art of Flemish hell, was someday going to be ghastly expensive if we could cart it out of here. It was going to adorn the walls of the future elite. Perhaps sit on their bookshelves in the form of books too. Why not scribble a bit on those ghastly corpses?

  We permit certain fools the luxury of art. Or we just can’t make them stop short of killing them which we sometimes do. The artists have got to go into the ashcan of an atoll in the emerald ocean periodically too. Authoritarianism demands it. It’s very strict that authoritarianism.

  It’s enough to make you believe in religion because it’s all predestine. Really hellish art goes straight to the top. It goes straight into the hearts and minds of people too. It will also go the distance. Longevity is the ticket. Bury all the critics, literally. Step aside pallbearer there is a novel here to defecate on the deceased literary critic. It claims that it won. It’s gloating too.

  Punishing art is going to gaze into its owner’s eyes way down the line. There is nothing to stop it. The competition is nonexistent. Peering into those greedy eyes of the future is a given. Those eyes of the future squinting into this Flemish hell are as grim as the eyes of the creator. I could attest to it because they were mine.

  My eyes were just a different type of grim that this world had awarded. I was still standing here. And it was going to keep on awarding me because I wasn’t quitting. The truly hideous thing was that this Flemish hell wasn’t going to let me go. I didn’t want it too either. I might have cringed and cried along the way but I refused to let it go now because of how far I had traveled to get it. You don’t put that horse to bed cold and not shoot it. It gets up hot for revenge. Time to get bucked off, cowboy baby.

  Was this the last stop on the railroad? Where the train jumped the track and went screaming off into the hills? I was one the glorious ticket holders. Hell had taken me into its warm embrace. There was no question about that. How are you enjoying the destination? Don’t blame the keeper because the keeper is you. You turned up the heat.

  However there was that cold handshake to contend with. It was a more pressing matter because it was extended and waiting. It had kept me waiting and now I was keeping it waiting a bit. I had to seize that hand of the dead before it skipped a generation.

  That cold hand formed a deadly chain back to the dawn of writing. It was warmly extended to me, or at least that’s what it looked like. It was hard to tell because it wasn’t real. Figments of fevered imaginations are hard to read especially when it’s your imagination. You lose perspective a bit as it were. No matter. What’s a delusion at this point?

  I had certitude. A human chain of dead hands went through corpse after corpse on that killing field in Flemish hell until it terminated in the original bloody hand. I thought that I could see that suicide over the horizon. It was waving at me to come hither.

  I can’t say that it is a pleasure to meet you. Frankly, I didn’t know that I was seeking you. You snuck up on me unannounced, my slit wrist. However I am sorry to disappoint because I can’t say that I’m afraid of you. On the contrary, my suicide friend, you should be afraid of me. I have actually come here to kill you. It’s lights out for you, suicide hand.

  You’re just another terror in the night that I can easily dismiss. You’ve haunted me too many times before. You will have to beg for that handshake now. Plead for my forgiveness for keeping me waiting.

  That heartless cunning that other people might mistake for wiliness or Coyote wasn’t either. It was success. I had bested witchcraft at its own grim game. However it wasn’t an honorific. Crypt Island, the painting that I was currently standing in, as well as the curator of, had pulled a fast one. This painting owned me. Not the other way around. There was no question about it. It had bought me. And it played for keeps. So I had finally been purchased off a block and this is what bought me? Perhaps those fables about the devil and the crossroads were more than tall tales.

  But where precisely was this Flemish hell located in this unpleasant universe of witchcraft? Perhaps tackle that slippery cat, geography. Locate yourself on a map. Worry about the theoretical underpinnings, at a later time, from a safe distance of centuries if at all possible. That happened to me more than four centuries ago. You can’t possibly be referring to that little mental collapse. I’ve put that in my rearview. In the parlance of the mental health community, I’ve moved on. You should move on too before I do it for you too. I’m dangerous like that. Cats scratch. It’s the only residual piece of insani
ty that I’ve hung on to. I’m sure that you can understand as I put this claw into you. Why meow around if you’re not scratchy too? Put the needle on the record.

  I glanced around. I couldn’t entirely visualize the end of this world but I sensed that there was wood out there. There was wood over the horizon. It made perfect sense. Why wouldn’t Flemish hell have a wooden horizon? It needed a frame around it. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a painting. It would infiltrate all parts of our lives and we would all go insane. It wouldn’t be art. It would be real. We’d be living inside someone else’s delusions instead of our own.

  It was hard to draw the distinction between delusions at this particular moment but the frame was out there. There was no getting around that. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a painting. It would be something too horrible. The mind would revolt at the concept. Irretrievable madness would have already taken hold. I laughed at witchcraft. Trickery and jokes, I thought. You don’t fool me.

  This acceptable level of madness was a very good sign. It was a madness that you could work with. It was only mildly unreasonable. Fevered at times but that was to be expected. You couldn’t expect your madness to not misbehave a bit. Scamper like a squirrel on a telephone wire. Otherwise it wouldn’t be madness. It would be something that wasn’t worth qualifying. The madman must be bugged out because if he’s not he’s just an ordinary man after all. Freak out moon age daydreamer. Freak out. Then keep on freaking out. You’re not a moon age daydreamer otherwise. You’re just a daydreamer without a freaking moon. And we aren’t paying for that.

  There was definitely a wooden frame around me. My madness couldn’t deny it. I could smell it. I could feel it too. Wood was giving off its wooden vibrations. That faint odor was definitely wood. There was a box around me. This was a very good sign.