“Is that seriously what you have faith in?” I accidentally snap my teeth shut with a loud crunch. The Dog & Cat Twin stops arguing long enough to look over. My thoughts careen out of control.
“Sure. We’re privileged. And how much longer is this gonna last?” I ask her. “You know it. When was our last show? Do you remember it? They’ve become few and far between. You know why? Y’ever wonder why? Thought they were the apex of evolution. What a laugh. I read their minds; I know the truth. Runaway remnants of a dead-end species. Pathetic.” I’m sickened.
“How do you know that?” she asks me. From the bar she grabs a rolled up copy of the Memory Hole, that rag written by the squid, and places it in front me. “We can’t know anything since The Unwriting. How do you know anything?”
“I don’t know anything,” I say. I look past her at the mirror. My face appears green and flat at this angle. I tilt my head—back to normal black gator maw. Odd. “That’s not what I mean,” I say. “Even though amnesia rules, my instincts know the difference between cruelty and kindness.”
“Oh, is that right? Then why do you enjoy torturing them so?”
“I put the mirror up to their face and show them what’s there. S’why I dress like a black hole,” I snap the sleek, black latex outfit that covers all but my mouth. “It’s the cruelty of truth. Time they faced it. By this point it’s too late. So I might as well go down hurting the monster that brought this on.”
“That’s speciesist. You’re a speciesist.”
This conversation isn’t going as I’d hoped.
“Maybe so. They’re the last species left. So fuck ’em.”
“Yeah. And you’re under this traveling shield because … ?”
Time to withdraw. I slam my drink, grab the squid rag, and head for the stage. The Twin stops to squawk at me, but I throw the withered newssheet at them. I don’t remember fuckall from it anyway. What good is it? All the goddamn chatter about the kinkers and their bits.
Peeking out from behind the stageflap, Maphroditee winks at me and rubs the canvas against hes tits. That randy rabbit boygirl, my stagehand, fucks anything that fits … I like that mind … wish I had hes incorruptible stamina … my desire, much more seasonal. Don’t envy what’s inside hes eyes: saffron with flecks of madness. Time to hit the stage in the small ménage tent.
Maph has already taken the guest and sat him in the spiderflower with contact points against all meridians.
Put you on stage and drown you in my bloodstream, magical blood.
Look at this crowd. Look-a-likes, feel-a-likes, act-a-likes. The chromatic codification and behavioral modification, thought control, emotion suppression, self-rejection, abdication, genuflection.
A red suit, eh? Helmet on the open seat in the first row. Eyes fishing—more scared than your compatriots. Red suit. Well, the novelty wears off quick. The cruelty of your interior … let’s take it in … empty it, take your nothingness and wrap it around my finger, my legs, my ass, my stomach, my tits, my arms, my neck, my face, my eyes. All slick black, obsidian black … touch my sickness. The truth … you think. I know what you think—black is nothing.
Black is everything.
Sit down behind the large, square magnifying lens and tap my chest; ah, not again, no, yes—spikes pierce my nipple-holes. Maphro hooks my left entry-hole into the vat. Grit hard. Take it. Rushing through me like magma … my hands give off steam from arteries close to the surface. The blood, the blood, plied with blood. Spills from my right exit-hole onto the surface of my electroskin.
“Command: Close your eyes,” I say. Center. Thoughts are energy. So: across the barrier I quantum tunnel into your mind. Time to vibrate unsympathetically. Matter of will. Bleed thoughts on black. My skin reflects a story. Time for questions. Begin simply. “Query: Your name,” I probe. comes the response, so I write it across my tits.
“Query: Family,” I continue. Nothing. Blankness. “Query: Cohabitation.” Sputtering words and slithering sensations. The tropes gibber and wabe before—yes—they cohere enough … release, expurt them onto my stomach. Forms, faces, movement around my head and ass. The flow and dance.
“Command: Identify beings.” More faces, bodies, a female’s face—draw a picture. A small child. Names.
“Query: Their locations now.” Confusion. Chaos. No clarity. Give it to me; open up. There: inchoate but: the woman with tools stands next to a thresher in a large room among other machines. Unusual Pure, Sys, your thoughts so disorganized.
“Query: She is your, your, your sexual partner,” I push. Affirmative I hear; write next to the illustration on my stomach. You sad Units … can’t keep your eyes off my magnified body. Excuse to ogle.
“She is not here with you today?” Disappears … fear. I write Come back to that.
“Query: Good fucking. Command: Describe sexual encounters.” Sys/my POV: tongue on my cock; my cock inserted into vagina below me; her body sweaty, sliding across mine; her face contorted, her chest compressed against my chest; her punching me in the chest, smacking me in the face; her touching me with long fingers. Scenes of semen squirting, dripping, convulsions, clitoris. Sketched in lines of red as if I haven’t seen this scene unmemorably many times before.
Trephinate: “Recall: Your, your, your cruelty. Your, your, your selfishness.” Veer to a face, a female … see her as … less attractive, inferior. In quick succession: she is talking to me, a jumble of words (boredom, change); a military figure on a projector speaks to me; uniformed guards—a military force—rush into a room and take the female who is whimpering. Drag her out, her wild face looking at me. This scene ducks behind another: walking into a larger room pressing buttons on a machine, eating food. Her face comes back. Paint that face with red tears.
Ah, you try to think a new scene. Typical. Scrape that off and reveal that you Units want it shown, exonerated, made worse. You want to feel the pain again, to pick the scab and let it bleed to prove you’re alive. You want it out of your control. Seen enough of this. Let him change the subject.
“Query: The child.” A child sits in a room facing a wall with Rsim machinery. I graff it.
“Query: Reason they are not present.” A thresher machine. The view from a thresher projected on a wall. A purple eye fills the view.
“Query: This event.” Words answer: Projection: Machine destroyed. Decon-structed imagery of the thresher flipping end over end—the memory fizzles. Signified hypothesized. Draw it flipping end over end. Smashing.
“Analysis: Not so good, Sys.” Projection: Exile. Guards force me me me out of my my my home. Thrown out the gate. Creatures come at me me me. Creatures: all teeth, claws, spines, blades. Blackout.
“Analysis: Your reason for being here without your sexual partner and byproduct: escape.” Fearful: A blast of light and perceptions, he twists in his seat trying to look at me.
“Command: Close your eyes! Turn around!” Face him with a wall of teeth. He turns back, closes his eyes. What’s wrong here? I’ve seen this … back of my mind, cannot pinpoint. His story is familiar.
“Query: Reason you at Zirk.” Overlapping madness, a frenzy of thoughts: pulling ropes, unrolling tents, lifting … prancing … flying, a trapeze … cleaning, sweeping … cocks come at me, in my mouth … in chains, lashed … black and white fizz …
I cannot stand it. “Command: Off the chair. I have had enough.” And the images trail off me onto the floor in a puddle.
He scrambles up, tearing the contact points off his head—SCREEEEECH!
[FEEL: Unsteady.]
[DO: Breathe, stand still.]
[SEE: Hemorrhage mess, long-faced animal with many teeth and hard black nullsuit.]
[ANALYZE: Fortune Teller.]
[HEAR: Baby Joh-ee. Heez the one you will need to bargain with.]
[DO: Walk to chair. Grab helmet.]
[FEEL: Vertigo.]
[DO: Mismanage route into crowd.]
[SEE: Darkness.]
… breathing darkness and sensational c
laustrophobercizing light evaporous darkness shining
“Hear me, females and males and spawn of such! Purest of Pures! Homo saperior! Command your attention to the center of the ring. Around the ancient pole sculpted from one of the last noble trees. Our totem that protects us from the deadly outside. Command: Look at the stage now. Query: See life. Query: See anything. See nothing! Nothing at all! You see nothing. Nevertheless, analyze: He is there. Agap. The moon dragon. The terrific tenebrific serpent of subfusc with a beak so sharp it cuts dreams. He lives in his own sphere. He is there and not there. Nevertheless, you will meet him. Command your patience. You will see him. He is worth the wait. He will find you, and you will know when he is there.”
hello creatures how are you rhetorically speaking this moment never to exist again already gone slipt its mooring lost its bearing like Zeno trying to reach life all the monkeys in your backs I am mythmaking I am meditating without time no time allowed I do not want to know time anytime when I am needed they come get me although I am alone because they know I am the heroine heroin so they cannot approach what they want only one thing really what they want I give out is null in the void the null set it is a thought and a thought is nothing so nothing is nothing is nothing is nothing is nothing you are null and avoid facing your nonself your nonsense this non-set is null and the void swallows up love and love in a vacuum must be abhorred therefore I am most hated of all they despise what they want because they cannot have it again oh the humor I enjoy the giving of love because I never want it I can even stop time fuck time it does not does not exist you hear me of course you do knot give out love but yes love in a vacuum cannot abide therefore I am most hated of all I am amused and enjoy the giving of love because I never have to receive it because let me tell athink you cannot love time because time does not exist in a vacuum like like does not and love does not made up to lookalike but I give out life but life in a vacuum will ab nihilo ad nihilo what does this mean I mean how can meaning exist in a vacuum and we live a chasm-pierced existence a vacuum a lovelife sucking vacuum ab nihilist ad nihilist this behind-the-scenes scene in front of the schemes I give out love in the vacuum that inholes and yowls banshee in nihilate in time into time is a tool that does not exist and the love goes yowling down into the vacuum abomination I am the smiling mask of love in the scenes but where is the substance of the mask if you look sideways it vanishes and if you look backways it is ugly and that is where all the action is and I give out love in a vacuum is unhated because it is unrevealed and who sees the humor I do and enjoy the giving of love and those who hear go in one and out the other in one and out the other is the process repeated endlessly until death do us part is an old phrase unheard unspoken anymore except the sound of your own voice screaming it in a vacuum which is to say ab nonthing ad nonthing is a vacuum but there is life in a vacuum not our version but it is whirring with life even nothing has life and a gap is the thing and the hole is the whole and I see the beauty of nothing which is the beauty of love I have been called centimental before because I am one hundred times crazy with love that is the show it is inescapably the show because brother got to eat right although that is metaphorical I do not eat I just absorb the light and synthesize but I do need H two to the Oh and it is the same thing and in the sweet thereafter later much later in the aftershow glow it lazily builds in the back of your minds a nagging a dawning that it deserted you and you do not have it and you never had it you are not and you cannot and you want and you will get emptier and emptier and the falsehoods are told and they drop in the holey bucket as the vacuum sucks it out of you because a vacuum ab whores you and I am not ab whored ad whore because I am not taking and you are not giving and that leaves me with everything and you nonthing but to the show of love which is reification in action my friend my good friend my love it is a field that is felt but how does meaning mean anything and what greater meaning than love when the end is coming it is all coming to an end the end is unavoidable undeniable unimpeachable does it matter when my pictures of love melt in the sun does it matter when my words of love burn in a nuclear furnace when the asteroid comes when the whole will become the hole but despite but the spite of it all I am love and can transform you and stop the asteroid death from coming love can change the course of the deathteroid the dathterdlyroid I am I can dehydratoid of love astrotime does not exist it is all time all the time perhaps that helps perhaps not perhaps love matters or perhaps it is beside the point no point no nothing know nothing knowing nothing the audience simply sits as they are defined to do as they always do nothing even when they are doing something ab something ad nothing and as I enter the stage you do not notice me I am faint tenuously bounded by stage lights and I begin:
breathing darkness sensational light e v a p o r a t e s
becomes more and more d i f f u s e
light sources absorbed shrink
and sublimation settles in
Weigh on you until you cannot move not a limb nor head
I fill up underneath you and you are cupped weightless hanging inches above your seat
You
I swim into your veins warming you
you who will die with an ice-cold heart understanding barely the surface of bodies blindly grope for each other no matter how hard you push never
get inside
filling your cold heart with
I love you
chemicals
I love you
quieting
even the most frenetic
in this age of anxiety
I love you
I love you
calm
your inner voice
and all is
quiet
a nonsensation
.
.
.
until I release you to fall back into convention, slide into your seat, weight lifting, objects returning, noise rushing in until
CRASH
“… scape artist. You will never see a more daring, more amazing escape! For Orfeo Six will escape death itself!”
I’’m in the ring..
Raw..
The audience..
Anophelese wanders up to my side..
The audience recoils..
They’’ve never seen insectivora..
He rubs my leg with his antennae..
He spreads his pincers and takes a chunk out of my calf..
He drops the strip of fur..
After preening the blood from his face with a leg,, he begins licking my open wound..
I can see it in their faces,, the audience cannot fathom my stoicism..
Pain,, comfortable friend,, fire of life..
I turn you into a snake,, a spiral,, and encase you,, hold you close,, wrapped like a gift..
You beat like a heart..
Clear space for contemplation..
Soon my insides have stopped flowing out,, and the wound begins to heal..
In moments,, it has healed over..
Anoph rubs his carapace against my leg and wanders offstage..
The tight rope..
Will it be the tight rope today??
Looped around my neck by the Bigboy Tender Hooks the musclegirl..
One end of the rope in Tender’’s hands,, the other wrapped around the horn of the ponderous rhinocerasaurus,, Buttons..
Backing toward diametrically opposed points of the ring,,
the loop becoming snug around my neck..
Tender steps up onto the ring and leans back;;
the rope tightens on my neck like a brick chokehold;;
Buttons steps over the ring with her hind legs,, her middle pair of legs,, her front legs up on the ring,, and then she sits back;;
the rope slices into my neck,, squeezes through the muscle to my esophagus,, which soon ruptures,, and my head lolls forward dangling by my spine..
My body will fit loose,, held up like a sheet clipped to a clothesline..
Buttons and Tender strain until the rope sunders a verteb
ra,, and my head thuds to the floor,, my body slumping in a heap..
I can see,, the last sight with my eyes,, clear spinal fluid dripping onto the stage before … …
then what??
Tender:: I scoop you sometimes into a bucket or drag you … … tuh the witch..
Gnesh.. The body maker..
Somehow with the same memories..
I feel like the same person who just died..
I can see myself having died over and over again,, so it would seem I have never died..
My memories..
I don’’t know if I’’m real or not..
Swallowing razors,, perhaps today I will swallow razors..
Sit in a chair watching them watch the life seep out of me,,
too weak to lift my arms and then
too weak to move my eyes and then
my perceptions cloud over or it is my thoughts that
became clouded and unsure before … …
I have tried every time——the reason I agree to being this person,,
this undying phoenix in the show::
I want more than anything to grasp that moment
the transition from life to death..
To know what the going over means..
The process,, yes,, the process,, but that moment of … …
passing … …
from wake to sleep … …
the threshold … …
the border … …
inscrutable..
Objectify it,, hold on to it..
This episode will be different..
I shall use will,, use it,, pin the moment,, don’’t let it go..
I will remember,, remember,, remember..
I cannot conjure up a single memory of the time between..
Do I dream??
Can I range beyond life??
The rebirth that will come..
The rush of endorphins and anguish —— like blood rushing into a sleeping limb..
Each day is my last..
A Greater Monster Page 17
