—Psychopathia Sexualis
Richard von Krafft-Ebing
quoted in Sacred Sepsis
Dr. Louis Godard and Dr. James Singer
— | — | —
Chapter 22
Jim Singer left off ever fooling around with any of his female students. They always expected him to be so far out, perverted, exotic: an American Marquis de Sade. The result of his lectures which were the most exciting on campus, packing the lecture hall with scores of kids (many not even enrolled in his class) who flocked to listen to what they perceived as a counsel of a counter-morality.
In the past, when the book first came out and the notoriety was new to him, (finally escaping the previous ostracization which had equated with social and professional euthanasia) he’d actually given in and allowed himself to be lured off by some pretty freshman. Then he’d turn out to be into the missionary position and she’d be so, like, disappointed. Dude, didn’t all that bizarreness teach you anything special?
And the male students who rubbed up against him—how to let them down easily. Getting the point across that he wasn’t into the whole up-the-butt thing. He fumed at rumors that Louis and he had been lovers, seeking some archaeological validity for mutual attraction to the Hershey highway.
When Jim thought about how often, early on, their controversial work had inflamed parents or faculties into trying to get the docs’ positions (no pun intended) revoked, it made him want to chuck it all in the can and retire to some dig in the most primitive and remote site available. Among the dust, relics, and quiet shadows where he could study without grievance.
Yet now he was a minor celebrity. He’d appeared on PBS, the History Channel, The Learning Channel, The Discovery Channel. His photograph had graced the covers of Archaeology, Discover Magazine, National Geographic. He’d even been interviewed about the recent Shit Detail murders. He had tenure (finally!) and a measure of respect from colleagues, even if it was tinged by jealousy. He never tried to tell himself that Sacred Sepsis didn’t lean into the venue of pop science. He’d given up those feelings long ago. He knew it was popular now but his legacy for posterity might end up shelved at Half Price Books between 100 Jokes for the John and The History of Farts.
(But the relics Louis and he had delivered from the catacombs would forever be in a museum with their names upon the finds. The epistle of St. Aureola, a few old trinkets, the jars, two of which had held dregs of cassia-infused vinegar and, curiously, stained yet preserved crosses carved from wood—with a figure of a dog crucified on them in place of the Christ, and the third filled with dried human offal (an examination of which had showed the person who had excreted these had, just prior to dying, eaten a meal of underripe melon, onions, and dog meat.) These things, as well as the manuscript of the priest who’d served with Cortés—telling of Temictlazolli’s sickening ritual—and the skeletons, spearpoints and clay phalluses found on Mount Koshtan.)
Apparently he’d also given up that baby fat. About time, since he’d reached sixty. Since the book had come out, he’d lost fifty pounds. Not through any attempt at dieting or exercise. Maybe it was moving up the scale of self-worth that did it. He’d even chucked the smoking habit and it hadn’t cost him an ounce.
The photo on the first edition of Sacred Sepsis showed a pudgy, boyishly awkward dweeb. The picture on the back of the most recent (last year) reprint was of a slim, almost rugged (if not good-looking at least not homely) outdoorsman. He did go to excavations at least three months out of twelve. He’d been hoping to garner enough material for a second book but lately he’d started thinking about investigating The Shit Detail and writing about the psychotic copromaniacs.
Sometimes he wondered why he’d gone for so much irreverent humor in a book which was supposed to be a scientific treatise. He used to be such a serious fellow. He used to be straight as an arrow. But Jim had changed a lot. He viewed much of his work now as a dark comedy. Not much was darker than shit, right? He got hurt too easily when he was as he once had been. This way, it told the world he didn’t give a damn anymore. And if it offended some of the old guard in his field as he made money hand over fist, well he’d cry all the way to the bank.
Bathroom humor. It was universal.
Then the package arrived. He couldn’t help but be very suspicious about who had sent it to him…and why.
“Have we heard back on the mystery document?” he asked Myrtle Ave, his secretary.
A few weeks ago, Jim had received an odd parcel. In it was what appeared to be a very old manuscript. Containing additional information about the ‘criminal’ Aureola.
It started off with a historical retelling of Emperor Theodosius The First’s crisis with the city of Thessalonica. In 390, Theodosius was informed that one of his generals (some accounts said it was the governor) had been murdered during riots in Thessalonica, which was the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia in northern Greece. Furious, he gave orders that everyone within that city be massacred. The army was sent. They entered the city and shut the gates. According to most accounts, the slaughter was not complete but the soldiers did kill for three full hours. They hacked 7,000 people to death before they stopped.
The emperor had been away for a while. He returned home to Milan and left to attend services in the cathedral. But Bishop Ambrose halted him at the door, saying, “Go away. Go away, until you are ready to confess your sin and do penance for it!”
Theodosius was irked at being told he was responsible for any wrongdoing and refused for nine months to do as the Bishop commanded. He stayed away from the church, complaining about how he’d been mistreated.
“The Church of God is open to slaves and beggars,” he whined. “To me it is closed, and with it the gates of heaven.”
State officials pleaded with the bishop to withdraw his demands. But eventually the emperor came to the church’s door. He prostrated himself on the ground, confessed with heartfelt mea culpas. Ambrose received him back with an equally ardent te absolvo and permitted the prodigal caesar to take communion.
Theodosius went to the front of the cathedral during the service, mounted the steps, preparing to present an offering at the altar. Ambrose stood in the way. He told the Roman leader, “The purple makes emperors, not priests.”
Theodosius The First tucked tail to slouch back to his seat among the other worshippers.
According to this mystery document, Aureola was from Thessalonica. A little girl in 390, she barely survived the slaughter. She watched as her family was killed, living herself as a scavenger for weeks among the dead. Ambrose had sent a commission to inspect what had happened. She was taken by them to Rome. Later, those who’d taken her in died and she was homeless again. During this shattering period Aureola—now just into her teens—was abducted from the streets and put into a brothel where she was badly used. Already petite she was starved to look even younger to appeal to pederast clients. She was forced to perform in a staged sex act with a giant dog from Germany the brothelkeepers called Frater. Later she and the dog escaped. Living on the streets again, she attracted other young disaffected people who had no love for the empire. Aureola built a gang of thieves and murderers, all of whom claimed she was their patron saint, taking care of them when both Rome and new Church failed.
By now Honorius was emperor. Aureola had spies tracking down soldiers who had taken part in the Thessalonica massacre, those who had retired back to Rome. Or, in the case of those still in active duty away to some distant part of the empire—their families. She sent in these feral kids to kill in a grisly fashion, leaving messages in scripture behind to confuse the authorities into thinking the motive was Christian in-fighting.
Eventually someone talked under torture. Aureola was arrested and thrown into prison.
The document claimed that the dogs which had chased down and killed the guard responsible for feeding Frater to the girl hadn’t been dogs at all, but a mob of her inner-core followers.
It was during her incarceration that
she preached to those gathered outside her prison about purging to achieve purity. She struggled to make herself appear the martyr as opposed to the hardened criminal, hoping to incite a riot to free herself.
It also said that after her death an extremist group of her faithful went about at night acting as a pack of dogs, like the mob that had murdered the guard. They would select a single victim which they would then pursue, degrade, and kill in an act so bestial that eventually all of Rome was terrorized.
The group had taken refuge in the catacombs, shielded by other cult members who were only guilty of abducting people to starve and emeticize into thin salvation. Not really able to distinguish one from another, the soldiers sent by the Church had slaughtered them all. (They assumed all were destroyed, since the murders and abductions ceased immediately after.)
“Have we heard back yet on the mystery document?”
“Not yet, Jim,” Myrtle replied. “The lab promised to e-mail us as soon as the carbon dating results are clear.”
Jim had never regretted taking Myrtle under his wing. His colleagues had thought he was nuts (well, they’d thought this before, hadn’t they?) when he showed up with this dirty adolescent girl in tow, saying she would be his secretary. She turned out to be bright and a quick-learner. And, eventually, indispensable.
Myrtle had never lost her thinness from her time living in the subway tunnels. She always seemed like she was about to snap in two when she stood up from her desk. She rose now and grabbed his briefcase.
“Don’t forget this,” she said.
He’d been about to do just that. He had to hurry off to his lecture and if he’d forgotten the briefcase, he’d have had to return for it. Jim remembered how much he used to hate teaching. But now it was fun.
“Don’t know what I’d do without you,” he said.
She smiled. “Thanks. It’s good to be appreciated.”
She did everything for him, from his correspondence with publishers and other universities, to arranging all the particulars (including student crew) for the next dig, to getting his dry cleaning out. If he’d just been attracted to her he supposed he would have asked Myrtle to marry him, despite the sizable difference in their ages. But he knew he could never do that, even if he did eventually decide he’d fallen in love with her. He’d saved her from that terrible place by promising “no strings.”
“Oh! Your pager…”
He took it. “Anything else I’m forgetting?”
“Let’s see…” She pretended to appraise him, looking him up and down critically. “No, you appear to be the total professor.”
“Page me if the lab notifies us…”
“Will do.”
“Or if the post office comes through with that trace on who might have sent it…”
“Yup. Better get going, Professor. Bet the hall’s already full to bursting. They’ll start howling if you don’t show up soon.”
««—»»
THE SEPTIC HONEYCOMB,
TIME UNCERTAIN
Lights flashed on, motion-detector triggered, like tall-contact seeking lightning. Then they winked out, idyllic with relief, because no one wanted to see what lay on the walkways of these fungal tunnels. Not even she, perhaps. But to her more than to anyone were they dedicated. The billions of humans who’d lived since the beginning had spawned this place of concrete culverts she now walked. The dimensional result of homo sapiens’ psychic fatigue. Similar to metal fatigue that used to cause planes to fall from the sky, back in the days before they realized that steel grew tired. What happened to a race when that happened? How did it crash from exhaustion?
She was underground in an endless maze of sewers, containing the accumulations of every moment when people were at their most studied unsophisticated. Where every ounce and inch of the redundant by-products of civilization ended up, unwanted by the rest of space and time. The lowest common denominator counterpart to higher spiritual realms of rosewater and star-bright auras. Underground, yet there was wind, roaring—or breaking—as it rushed over the swampy contents in the canals, rippling them slightly.
The ley lines were really nothing more than all the conduits and sewers of nature and history, connected to form a considerable network of power.
Everywhere she looked were bodies, cluttering the walkways, or slowly turning in the churning water of turbid channels which ran unchecked to infinite lengths, forward and backward, left and right. For some reason they all looked like children to her, perhaps because the vastness of the place made everything seem small. Or maybe everyone just reduced in size with death.
These people were dead, weren’t they?
No, she saw many moving. They didn’t move much.
Was it possible to be both dead and moving?
(I am goddess here. Does this mean I perceive them as children because they are my children, being those under my care or power?)
These were not the dead who had been mourned, buried, forgotten. These were not the dead who had received proper attention—depending on the rituals of their family and location.
These were those who’d been lost, unaccounted for, missing in history’s action either from major catastrophe or trolling tragedy. And no matter who they had been when they’d been eliminated from the world, they became as children again (to her). The lost always returned to the most helpless state.
Old bodies, in wrinkled nakedness from having been folded into graves of burned leaves. In patches of redundantly fine silk that mocked their dry flesh. In reaper black and crone white, skulls and hip bones so frail these had gone from opaque to translucent, many hieroglyphed with fractures from both disease and cruelty.
Prime of life bodies: mothers and streetwalkers, teachers and thieves, farmers and shepherds, prophets and moneychangers and construction workers. Soldiers in every tattered uniform.
Then actual children’s bodies. So many faces from milk cartons, shopping bags, fliers tacked to telephone poles and taped to the windows of convenience stores. Hundreds, thousands, no trace. Had to go somewhere: must go someplace. Nothing organic vanished.
And she knew, seeing them in the maze, in animal skins and togas, Oshkosh ByGosh overalls, play suits, patched jeans. Clothes too adult for them, in halter tops, see-through lace, tight leather. Clothes too young for them, growing limbs bursting through frayed seams. In school uniforms and Sunday best and hand-me-down worst. Naked. She knew they’d been squeezed through the gutteral conduit, becoming trapped in the temporal pathology of a species’ waste. For what reason, she couldn’t answer.
She walked on, lights coming on before she reached the section ahead, going out as her bare feet graced that slippery patch of path.
The bodies were damaged, visibly ruptured through the orifices. Blood and pus and silverfish. Rubbery nodules of extruded internal organs and cockroaches. Legs splayed and arms outflung as if in Raggedy Ann lotus, making even the very old seem very young. Mouths open, lips hitched sideways, ears punctured, nostrils flared as if Egyptian embalmers had been removing corpse brains with a hook, holes in the tops of heads like pop tops in cans of childhood.
She’d found herself here a lot lately, walking down the conduit, returning from somewhere else. It was the place she had to pass through to reach the world again after she’d been to…
Aralu?
She heard the plumber making his rounds, swaddled in stench-mask and rain poncho until he resembled some modern sewer rat-Phantom beneath Paris. His drain auger rumbled, its ratchety echo bouncing off the shit graffiti in void syntax on the nitered walls.
It was a machine called ‘the snake’ in vernacular. It ground out a long, thin, spiraling metal member to clean out obstructions. Except this one went through the plumber’s fly and was attached to his groin. And as it vibrated, he grinned like there was no tomorrow.
(She thought, there isn’t a tomorrow, not down here. Not for them.)
It caused her to sob, thinking my children. But goddess or no, there was nothing she could do. She w
ondered why she couldn’t do anything.
She saw him, but he was so covered in unspeakable slime that she couldn’t see his face. Did he have a face?
The plumber muttered, spotting clogged points everywhere, like bloodclots threatening to stick in the brain or in the heart. Except they were made of shit and grease, hair and toilet paper. He paused at this and that “child’s” recumbent form, jabbing at them with the auger’s tip and smiling fiercely, then making the iron cable end burrow and climb. Trying to free something up: a passage into a brilliance he thought might be eluding him, a passage out of his psychosis. He worked like a maniac, his whole body shaking with orgasm as they wept and tried feebly to squirm away.
“See? Wasn’t I right? Wasn’t I right about this place?” he asked them as he drilled long and deeply.
Moaning, lost little fish trying to wriggle away toward the sea. There had to be a sea. He heard it, roaring and wet in the distance. In waves. Or perhaps those were waterfalls where the sewage gathered like a sea and plunged down steep steps and breaks on the other side of one of these curved walls.
“The truth is crap,” he whispered to them, almost gently, almost paternally. “Didn’t I tell you?”
Groaning, shock.
“Stop fidgeting! I’m only trying to bore some enlightenment into you!” he commanded as his hips jerked and the auger ripped.
Every now and then he would stop, turn off the snake, rush over to a ladder suddenly revealed on one of the walls. He’d grope his way up, then cry out when he found it simply ended without meeting a manhole cover to the outside. He’d climb back down, pick up the auger, begin drilling for the source of another blockage, a hemorrhage being preferable to an embollism.
Dread in the Beast Page 24
