Dread in the Beast

by Charlee Jacob

  Neela nodded, painfully. “Yes, we’re the Parrish sisterhood.”

  Dorien was glad she had the sunglasses on. She couldn’t bear that Neela be able to see in her expression that Dorien knew Neela would soon die.

  Hell, every woman there was going to die long before what should have been her time.

  Everyone but Dorien.

  Dorien ended up the last to be called but she sensed the scene as it proceeded without her. Through the doors swinging open onto the large yet somehow claustrophobic chamber, like a vault, like a crypt. There was Gavin himself, in the defendant’s seat, arrogant (or did it still pass for a kind of charm?), good-looking like a biohazard Ted Bundy. He turned around and flashed a forty carat grin at the women. (Should that have been measured in roentgens?)

  “Hey, face this way,” a guard told him sternly.

  “All rise!” announced some officious uniform.

  The judge entered, black robes rustling like a raven’s wings.

  Naturally, some of the women couldn’t rise, those who’d already testified yet who remained to increase the daily number of his accusers. Neela surely couldn’t after she had her turn and was wheeled to the back, near the jury, her skin like a dark lace, every cough a poetic line in a ghastly eulogy.

  Dorien saw them through the walls, producing the sheets encased in plastic, with the names of women (VICS) scrawled in magic marker. She heard in sough and static as every lady was brought to the stand to testify about how Gavin Parrish had given them a deadly disease. When the prosecutor finished with each, they were turned over to the defense. They had to repeat what they’d just said: how they met Gavin, when they went out with him, not if but when they went to bed with him. But this time they had to go into the details of sex (embarrassing, shaming because every one of them had never had another man before Gavin Parrish).

  They were made to look nerdy and needy by the defending lawyer. Possibly spurned and vengeful women trying to maintain a false propriety when they might have simply said ‘No.’

  He never asked whether or not Gavin Parrish had told them he was H.I.V. positive. No, that had been the D.A.’s question.

  Piece-of-shit lawyer: “Did Gavin Parrish rape you?”

  And they had to admit he had not.

  Piece-of-shit lawyer: “Did he put any pressure on you to have sex with him?”

  Well, no.

  Piece-of-shit-lawyer: “Did he slip you a drug?”

  He had not.

  Piece-of-shit lawyer: “Did he get you drunk?”

  Nope.

  Piece-of-shit lawyer (with shit-eating leer): “How many men have you been with?”

  Red faces. Not because the ladies had slept with dozens but because they hadn’t been with anyone else. And that simply wasn’t the standard these days. Sluts were normal, virgins were weird.

  Piece-of-shit lawyer, drawling, tongue in cheek like a turd clinging to the side of a toilet bowl: “Did Gavin Parrish treat you like you were just another pretty face?”

  D.A.: “Objection!”

  Judge: “Sustained.”

  Dorien was finally called in, that door swinging open, sounding as if it were cast from a single block of steel. She went to the stand and was asked to swear to tell the truth. Gazing over at Gavin she wondered if she knew what that was. (Let’s see. What is truth? Well, it’s what rumbles out of us without force, a physiological/spiritual/irrepressible dynamic. It is the by-product of precise sciences and of correctly interpreted dreams. But not of religion. Religion might spawn dreams but never produces accurate formulas. No, what religion makes is purely masturbatory.)

  But Dorien assured them she would tell the truth. Solemnly.

  How bright it was in the court. She felt it even through her dark glasses. So she closed her eyes. What did it matter? They couldn’t see her eyes anyway.

  D.A. (after establishing Dorien Warmer had shared the same brief, unpleasant relationship with the defendent the other witnesses had.): “Are you now H.I.V. positive?”

  D. Warmer: “No.”

  The turn of the defense (like the turn of the truculent worm in succulent ordure…).

  The lawyer asked her the same things he’d asked the others. Some of them had broken down on the stand, weeping, humiliated. But not Dorien. She sat in the witness box like frost chipped from some half-recalled ice age, opening her eyes into slits behind her sunglasses, fixing her covered gaze upon Gavin until he fidgetted. She showed little emotion when the same questions were put to her.

  It was because she felt so detached from that event now. As if it were no more real than the dreams she’d had lately. Wait! As if they were less real than the dreams…

  Piece-of-shit-lawyer: “If you’re not H.I.V. positive, why are you present in this courtroom? This case is to determine the guilt or innocence of a man accused of willfully and with malice infecting a woman, one Jesmiah Monroe, with the AIDS virus.”

  D.A. “I object. Ms. Warmer’s name was on one of the sheets found in the defendent’s possession. All of the women whose names appear on those pieces of evidence were called to testify to the defendent’s character and mode of manipulation.”

  Judge: “Sustained.”

  Piece-of-shit lawyer: “Did Gavin Parrish rape you?”

  D. Warmer: “He seemed to want me. I offered him my body. Then he fucked over my spirit like a crocodile with a dick.”

  Piece-of-shit lawyer, feigning exasperation: “Your Honor…”

  Judge: “Ms. Warmer, please refrain from obscenities.”

  Piece-of-shit lawyer: “Did he put any pressure on you to have sex with him?”

  D. Warmer: “We’d just witnessed a murder, of a homeless woman in the park by The Shit Detail. I’d freaked out and fainted. He took me to his place, gave me sherry and a hot bath, then carried me to his bed. I was vulnerable as hell and he damned well knew it. We’re taught in this society to…”

  Piece-of-shit lawyer: “Just answer the question, yes or no.”

  D. Warmer: “…respond to sensitivity, to this romantic bullshit ideal…”

  Piece-of-shit lawyer: “This isn’t part of my question… She’s hostile, Your Honor.”

  Judge: “Ms. Warmer… I don’t want to have to cite you…”

  D. Warmer: “…and then some Typhoid Marty with a psycho agenda comes along like Lochinvar, like those nonexistent Harlequin cover sugar-pricks, and…”

  Judge: “Young woman, I’m giving you fair warning.” Gavel slam!

  D.A.: “Wait. Your Honor, I think the witness is simply overwrought. All of them are. I can’t blame them.”

  Judge: “Well, that may be, but a certain amount of decorum is expected even from the overwrought.”

  D. Warmer: “…it most surely is a kind of rape because everything in this society programs us to respond to it, to accept it with our legs spread and our asses raised. And if you dare to ask how many men I’ve been with instead of punishing him for how many innocent women he’s been with, then I’ll tell you just one.”

  Judge: “…..cite you for contempt!” Gavel slam, slam!

  D. Warmer: “I wish I hadn’t, wish that I were still a virgin, not some misguided child who thinks the pretty girls on TV who fuck everything in pants are cool, that it’s expected of them and that if they haven’t spread their cheeks for every sweet-talking, prancy, boy’s band, soul-patched cock, it’s because nobody in their fucking mind could possibly want them, even if there are some men out there that’ll nail down anyone who isn’t steel, and they have to accept it because everybody else appears to accept that the only thing worth being in this world is desirable…”

  Gavel slam! Gavel slam! Gavel slam slam slam! Oh, that hammer of justice.

  Judge: “Officer, remove the witness!”

  D. Warmer: “…And if you can’t be that, you might as well get cut and twisted and sell peeps under a blanket for two bucks a look.”

  A strong hand landed on her shoulder. She was pulled up and led out of the courtroom. Gavin s
mirked, his lawyer standing there with arms folded akimbo, trying to suck a stray pussy hair out from between his teeth. The women watched her leave, awed, wondering if they could have said what she did.

  Neela applauded, cheering softly, the lesions on her hands bursting with each clap. She then held them up to show her stigmata.

  ««—»»

  The character of the Trickster from the Winnebago tribe in North America had the ability to use a magic trick to make the planet out of shit, mud and clay.

  There was one particular story: the Trickster had been warned not to eat a root which would fill his gut with gas. He did it anyway, and with every fart he was taken higher into the air where he helplessly flailed his limbs and grew very dizzy. He summoned people to come hold him to the ground. They hurried to help and all the thanks they got was to have his last broken wind scatter them across the earth.

  —Sacred Sepsis

  Dr. Louis Godard and Dr. James Singer

  — | — | —

  Chapter 18

  ROME,

  1990

  Jim woke up in the hospital. The first thing he did was look down.

  Have I lost my legs?

  If he had he would try to kill himself. Take a good hand and yank out the IV in his arm. Wriggle to the edge of the bed and unplug machines that kept him breathing.

  Where were they? At first he’d been on breathing machines. Too much dust. Somehow he recalled this and the smell of pure oxygen.

  Not anymore. But the IV was there, all right.

  He looked down. There were two extensions past his hips.

  Wait. Had he looked up to see them last time?

  Yes, both legs had been in traction for a while, suspended from the ceiling by pulleys and ropes.

  Well, just how long had he been out?

  Jim knew he’d been conscious for a short time. First, after having been blown out of the collapsing catacombs, ghost hissing in his ear. He’d seen Louis Godard’s body and tried in a not-thoroughly lucid state of mind to put the old man right again.

  He’d not been alert when found, when loaded onto a stretcher and brought to the hospital in Rome. But he had been awake for a short time, after his legs had been operated on, as they swung like cement monkeys from the ceiling.

  But he would have been in traction for weeks, wouldn’t he? So, why had he been out long enough to not be in traction anymore?

  He didn’t pull out the IV. Well, why should he? His legs were there. All of him seemed to be present and accounted for. Thank God, because he had trouble figuring out how he could be an on-site archaeologist without legs.

  Jim did find and press a call button.

  What a flutter! Nurses and doctors came running.

  He tried to ask them but found his tongue uncooperative, dry as dust. Just a relic of an organ of speech. A nurse began to give him cool water through a straw. They seemed to understand what he wanted to know.

  “You have been in a coma for two months,” a Dr. Cabrera informed him a little sheepishly, an expression tempered with obvious relief. “We knew nothing of your medical history and you had a reaction to a medication.”

  A call was placed for him. Jim had no family of his own but Gerard Godard came to visit.

  “We have everything,” the young man told him with a smile. “Quite safe.”

  “Not here I hope. After what they did at the catacombs, I’m afraid the Church would go to any length… You could be killed,” Jim replied, not believing for even a second that he was overreacting.

  Gerard shook his head. “No, in Paris. When you are well, Linda and I will take you there. You will have everything you need.”

  Jim choked up, put both hands to his face. “I can’t believe what they did to Louis…”

  He wasn’t ashamed of the tears. He’d known Dr. Godard for thirty years, since he was eighteen and first pursuing an archaeology degree in college. What he did feel now was shamed by his inability to save Louis. He’d been going up those steps leading out, they were almost safe…a half a minute away from it at the least.

  The explosions and the cave-in had carried stone and other debris far into the field. They wouldn’t have made it without a good ten minutes lead.

  Yet, Jim also blamed himself for being so rude to the priests who’d visited the docs at the hotel, to warn them off. He’d been combative, determined not to be brow-beaten no matter how nervous they made him feel.

  Gerard touched his shoulder. “I have brought something for you,” he said. “Perhaps you will get some use out of it before they release you. You know, working on notes for whatever you will do with the information you and Cousin Louis found here.”

  It was a small video camera.

  Jim would put it across the room and tape himself as he told the story of the two docs and the Catacombs of Saint Aureola. He felt a little uncomfortable at first, talking to the thing, but he soon got over this. He found he had quite a lot to say in the way of tribute to his late colleague. This was what he was doing, in fact, when the door opened and Father Malvezzi entered the room.

  Jim glared at him, unhappy with the interruption but moreso at who his visitor was.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  “To see how you are doing,” the priest replied, mild as ever.

  “Getting ready to write a book,” Jim told him. “Are you going to kill me like you did Louis?”

  Malvezzi sighed. “What happened to Dr. Godard was a terrible thing. You have my deepest sympathies. But I must still caution you against making public your findings.”

  Jim was incensed. “Oh? What’ll you do? Blow up the college I teach at? Or the offices of whatever publishing company buys the rights?”

  Malvezzi folded his hands across his stomach and tried to say quietly, “You do not understand who you are dealing with…”

  “I think I do,” Jim argued. “My career specialty seems to have been shit all along. And, brother, do I know it when I see it.”

  The priest seemed about to say something more but then simply left the room.

  Jim stared into the camera which he’d noticed with glee hadn’t been spotted by Father Malvezzi.

  “Didn’t exactly deny it, did he, sports fans?”

  Eventually out of the hospital, on a trip to Paris with Louis’ cousin and charming fiancée. Then back to the States. He sent a copy of that video tape to Father Malvezzi, C/O The Vatican. Jim included a note which informed the priest that copies of this tape were in several secured locations and would be released should anything of a sudden nature happen to Dr. James Singer.

  Then he wrote the book, Sacred Sepsis. He shared the authorship with Louis, putting the other doctor’s name first. He also gave half of all royalties to Godard’s family.

  Times had changed. He had success professionally with it. He also found a curious popular notoriety out of it. Sort of von Danniken-ish. A few years before this might have rankled Jim, but now he didn’t seem to mind. At least he was being respected for his shit.

  ««—»»

  William James wrote, “God is not necessarily responsible for the existence of evil. The gospel of healthy-mindedness casts its vote distinctly for its pluralistic view. Whereas the monistic philosopher finds himself more or less bound to say, as Hegel said, that everything actual is rational, and that evil, as an element dialectically required must be pinned in, and kept and consecrated and have a function awarded to it in the final system of truth, healthy-mindedness refuses to say anything of the sort. Evil, it says, is emphatically irrational, and not to be pinned in, or preserved, or consecrated in any final system of truth. It is a pure abomination to the Lord, an alien unreality, a waste element, to be sloughed off and negated…the ideal, so far from being coexstensive with the actual, is a mere extract from the actual, marked by its deliverance from all contact with this diseased, inferior, excrementitious stuff.”

  Yet Paul the Apostle said, “Nothing is unclean in itself.”

  And then James Frazier
wrote, “Taboos of holiness agree with taboos of pollution because the savage does not distinguish between holiness and pollution.”

  Therefore, what is holy and what is evil? What is sacred and what is sepsis? The distinctions blur: black versus white = gray; right versus wrong might be as simple as intention or as complicated as a nation’s declared manifest destiny.

  —Sacred Sepsis

  Dr. Louis Godard and Dr. James Singer

  — | — | —

  Chapter 19

  CAIRO,

  2001

  Jason hadn’t returned to the United States with the rest of the army. He’d spent the ten years after Desert Storm going around the world, supporting himself selling drugs or slaves or performing assassinations (some being paid hits and others being the act of rolling rich drunks). Apparently Big Garth Listo had connections which introduced Jason into certain circles he would otherwise have been viewed with suspicion from.

  He’d enjoyed India, Southeast Asia, and South America, delighting with the things buyable and stealable in Calcutta, Bangkok, Buenos Aires. He’d visited every place in Europe that Crowley had been, including staying at the Villa Cefalu in Sicily, where Father Perdurabo set up his infamous abbey. He even disguised himself and visited Mecca, which Crowley didn’t do. He stood on spots where magick had been done and tried to summon up the old power. Attempted to use it to open the gateway to that place without horizons. But he didn’t see so much as a twinkle of darklight peeping from there, although—depending on what narcotics he might have recently ingested—he did sometimes feel tingling in his scrotum and across his scalp and smelled the odor of his own burning blood. He did find a piece of paper written in Crowley’s own hand, buried under floorboards, lost for decades.

  He believed he’d left it there for himself, as the Beast knowing that one day the Superman would come along and discover it.