MOAB � Mother Of All Boxsets

by George Saoulidis

  It was a sensation that can only be described with words that barely caress the very surface of its meaning.

  It was falling in love.

  She played, and we loved her. Madly, deeply, profoundly. Love at first piano stroke.

  All, except one. The cook did not love her, and she felt it back. Her wail pierced our ears, she arched her back, screaming even louder. We fell upon the man and clawed him, ripped him into pieces with our bare hands and teeth.

  When we came to, we weren’t even sad about it.

  The days after that blended into one. All I could think of, all I ever wanted, was to please my mistress. Please her, care for her, comfort her. Worship her. She took a liking to me as a servant so I became her personal one, demoting another to my former assignment out in the lands.

  I missed the outdoors at first, but then I discovered the pleasures of urbanity. Mistress Evryali hated the fact that I was crude and uncultured, so she took me along to the finest operas and dressed me with the finest threads of the finest tailors. She had me study with a tutor, which proved immune to her love, so we ate him, and so we switched to another tutor who loved her dearly. He taught me so many things, history, music, the visual arts. How to behave, how to study books, how to recall information from the encompassing information web.

  To my sorrow, no matter how much mistress Evryali enjoyed my servitude, she never desired my flesh. Bound by a plain cohabitation agreement she was as faithful to her husband as any woman betrothed in any religion’s ritual.

  Oh, I have tried to taste her flesh. Sometimes she demanded a massage for her aching performing hands, so I have comforted her pleasurably. Other times, I have gathered up the courage to let my gaze fall upon her body while she bathed, for amounts of time inappropriate in any culture. One time I caressed her right breast as I clothed her in preparation for her performance, cupping it and squeezing it gently.

  She has never allowed me to go any further. My heart seizes every time. Then my eyes bleed, and my vision blackens, and my throat hardens. And I still love her.

  On the matters of the flesh, she wasn’t ignorant. She made love to my master, loudly and intensely, wailing at the top of her lungs every time, each stroke a part of a sonnet, each duo performance sending out waves of pleasure and emotions to the household. We all felt it, we all endured it, we all desired it.

  She wasn’t ignorant of my advances either. On many occasions she had a devoted fan come over and stay for a few days, a fan which had been properly gorgonised, so she had the fan writhe in ecstasy with me as we listened to her music and we made furious sex and stained the carpets. The women dropped all inhibitions, forgot about their husbands and fiances and proper rules of household, and they only loved Evryali and I too only loved Evryali so how could it possibly matter if we had sex together in celebration of our mutual mistress?

  The haze stayed on for days after each session. It was euphoric, and it made devoted fans visit again and again, only when invited of course, needing her musical touch a few times per year. It was a clique, a secret society of devotees, gorgonised men and women who loved her yet could not touch her, only listen as she performed the music of the divine.

  I was there, in the periphery, each and every time. Some might say I should have gone mad by the constant exposure. Some might say I already have. But I do not feel mad. In fact, I feel better than I ever have been. I’m safe, educated, well fed. I have travelled in all the places my mistress has travelled these past decades. I have been treated with anti-ageing so that I can remain by her side.

  So I’m well, extremely so.

  I have been frozen in time like a marble statue, immutable, perfect, sculpted. The rest of humanity whizzes about while we remain standing, learning, performing. The devotee fans are there with us, in shorter intervals, flitting in and out of our stasis.

  The three of us. My mistress, me, and my master.

  I try to ignore him but he’s always there. To say I envy him would be inadequate. I also respect him because all I have is what he has given me, but I cannot control my heart like my mistress can. I envy him, I envy that he speaks to people at parties next to her, I envy that he places his arm around her waist when they photograph them, I envy that he tastes her lips when they stay all night in bed with me aside bringing champagne every hour.

  That is the real problem with company when you are statuesque. You’re stuck with the ones you started with, and that is not always fine. While an eternity with Evryali would feel like heaven for me, an eternity with her betrothed to my master is the other thing.

  I sometimes caress the scar above my heart without thinking. I find it funny how I used to think about augmentations, whereas now I have lost count of the surgeries and modifications I have done to myself to stay young.

  One drunken night I confronted her. “Why do you reject me? Why do you keep me around if you want to reject me every day? I see your glances with the master. You no longer sleep together. You no longer kiss goodnight. Surely, now it is not a violation of your coupling.”

  “Lick my high heels,” she answered. And while I did, she explained that I was silly. “If I let you love me to the very end, you will die.”

  “Mistress, that is a price that I’m willing to pay,” I said, gasping. Pleading on my knees.

  She shook her head. “No. I need you, Iannis.” That wasn’t my name. But since she liked that name, the name of the composer that had given her fame, she gave it to me. And I happily accepted it.

  “For what? To torment me?”

  “No, silly. It’s not about you. Nothing is about you. I need you, to love me,” she said, breathing out the words.

  I passed out, and when I recovered she was gone.

  The next day my master called for me. “Iannis,” he said, “you have been with me from the very beginning.” He was conspiratorial and quiet. “Can I trust you?”

  “Of course, master. For anything.”

  “Good.” He looked around, we were alone in his study. “Come outside to the balcony, my study might be bugged.”

  We went outside. It had a perfect view of the estate, one that I hadn’t seen for so long. Wait, was that the pair of trees I had planted myself? Were they old and withered and dying? Already? How long had it been since I had taken a stroll on the grounds?

  “Iannis, we cannot let this go on.”

  “I do not understand, master.”

  “This thing, this. The devotees, the gorgonised fans, this thing we’re doing. It’s wrong, you can see that of course, right?”

  “Of course,” I chuckled. But I didn’t.

  He paced up and down the balcony, breathing out his words in anger. “I love Evryali, you know I do. But this is perverse. I woke up the other day, my hands dirty with coagulated blood from the man we had eaten hours earlier. And why? Because he was a bad man? No. Because he didn’t love Evryali.”

  I nodded in agreement. This was still my master after all. It didn’t matter how much leniency and freedom I had gained over the years, it could all be taken away if he so wished.

  “Now, listen. I don’t find myself innocent. None of us are. But this has to stop, and it needs to happen now.”

  “But how?”

  He leaned in close to me, looking behind his back. He licked his lips. “I have a device that will cut the gorgonisation. But only from half the people, unfortunately it’s very close range and with limited power. Half a dining hall, at most.”

  “What would that achieve?”

  “It would make half the attendants see the others clearly, free of the enchantment. Unshackled. Remember? Remember the chef, that first time. That feeling at the back of your head, that knowledge that what we were doing was deeply, profoundly wrong?”

  “Yes.” My throat caught. I could indeed remember such a thing. It was faint, but it was there.

  He went inside his study and opened his safe. He took a tiny device out, it looked veiny and glassy. Dark glass, shiny circuitry inside. He put it in m
y hand and cupped it with both of his. “It’s all up to you, the most loyal member of my household. Can I trust you to activate this tonight, around as many devotees as possible?”

  I hesitated, feeling the cold surface of the device and my master’s warm breath on my hand.

  “Yes. Yes, I will do as you ask.”

  The performance was set up perfectly, of course, since I was in charge. The maids had cleaned everything thoroughly, the music hall had been optimised for acoustics and the champagne flowed like a waterfall.

  My mistress was about to perform in twenty minutes. My collar was strangling me and the room was too hot. I scolded a servant and sent him off to adjust the air conditioning. The devotees ate and drank and laughed as prerecorded music played, from excellent but no more skilled musicians that were popular these days. It was all too hard to keep track of, the faces changing so fast, coming and going like the tide. Who could possibly bother learning them all?

  The estate was my mistress’s favourite, so it had become her permanent residence. We had expanded it with music halls and guest rooms and staff rooms. It was all like a small but lavish hotel, so we had hired people from that business to run things. I only took over on events like these where the mistress was about to perform. Anything less than that was too much waste of my time.

  We could all feel a flutter in our hearts. We all had a piece of Evryali inside us, so we felt her anxiety. Even after all these years, she still had tremors when she was about to go on stage.

  I didn’t need to ask for silence. Everybody suddenly hushed and turned to the stage. The curtains opened. She walked on stage, sat on the piano bench and just started pounding on the solo as if it had stolen her favourite canapé.

  The devotees, myself included, felt their eyes droop and the music bathe their bodies. Their hearts in perfect tune with the frenetic tempo of the piece, that irregular jazzy arborescence, that proliferation of melodic lines born from a generative contour, that piece of divinity on Earth.

  I took in the performance feeling ecstatic.

  My master grunted behind me.

  I came to my senses. I placed my hand inside my jacket pocket and caressed the device. It had a smooth surface, with only a button, just a depression really the size of your thumb.

  What would happen if I went ahead with it? Would I hurt her? No, that was ridiculous. It was just a connection. A wireless communication, it couldn’t harm anyone. Then I remembered the chef. There was something more about him though… What was it? Who was that first victim, that chef who became the feast itself?

  I remembered. He was a friend.

  How could I possibly have forgotten that? The man was a dear friend to me and I had just bit into his flesh along with the others and torn him to digestible pieces just cause he didn’t love our mistress.

  It was madness.

  We were all mad.

  Armed with that, I pressed hard.

  The effect was instantaneous. Random people around me shook their heads out of the stupor. They held their chests over their hearts, they tried to dig out the implant. They wailed in agony over what they had done.

  Evryali stopped playing. She stood up. “What is happening?” she demanded.

  I looked around, mouth wide. “My mistress, I…”

  My master spoke. “They see what you really are. They love you no more. It was fake after all.”

  She pointed at my master. “Kill him,” she hissed.

  I obeyed. So did some of the others.

  After I ate my master, I found a moment to think clearly. He was no longer in the picture. Now, it was just my mistress and me. Now, I hoped, she would finally love me back.

  The devotees scrambled away. The ones that survived, at least. The staff fled. I stayed.

  I took care of my mistress’s depression with patience, for I knew that I needn’t hurry. She would soon get over the death of my master and love me instead.

  But she grew weaker as the days passed. Day after day, she demanded that I remained further and further away from her, until I simply brought her meals behind a paravan at the door of her rooms and was told to move away.

  I stayed there silent, behind the door, listening, being close to my mistress.

  I noticed a lock of white hair one day. She saw my shock for I could not contain it, and she rushed away.

  “I cannot ignore this any longer, mistress. You wither away!”

  “Leave me.”

  “No, mistress. I do this out of love. Tell me what is wrong.”

  “You dare to demand that of me? You? My traitor?” She stood up, her face right up to mine. She turned her cheek. It was no longer supple and soft. “There, give me a kiss so you can complete your betrayal!”

  I said nothing.

  She stomped in anger. She wailed right where she stood and pierced my eardrum. I flinched, but nothing more. I felt warm blood drip down my ear, along my neck.

  Tinnitus. She spoke, but I couldn’t hear. I didn’t care, anyway.

  I put my arm around her waist and she tensed up.

  I pulled her close to me and gazed into her eyes, waiting.

  She relaxed.

  I kissed her deeply, and she kissed me back. I loved her deeply, and she loved me back.

  Finally.

  Then my heart stopped, and never beat again.

  Then I withered away, so that my mistress could live on.

  The End

  Black Asklepios

  8 Sklippie

  “Why can’t I be the flag-bearer?” Sklippie asked, disappointed.

  His teacher bit her lip and looked away. “Well… It’s that… Look, the other kid’s parents want a Greek boy to carry the flag, because it’s a national celebration you see.”

  “And what am I?” the black boy asked.

  “Look, Asklepios. Remember last year when you scored first in class again, and we made you flag-bearer?”

  “Yeah, miss.”

  “Well, remember when the parents didn’t let their kids show up at the parade? Wasn’t that sad?” The teacher glanced towards Mr. Papadopoulos and his son. The father was fat and bald, and the son was a tiny version of him.

  “Yes, miss…” Sklippie looked down at his feet.

  “We don’t want people missing the parade, do we? Why put a wedge in the celebration when we can simply have someone else be the flag-bearer and avoid this sort of conflict?”

  “I guess…”

  “So it’s okay with you, Asklepios? We know you are the best in class, everybody knows that. And usually it’s the best student who’s the flag-bearer, but this time we’ll have the second best. You’ll be right there, behind the flag-bearer, just not carrying it. Alright?”

  “Yes miss. I don’t want the other kids to miss the parade. Whatever you think is best.”

  15 Sklippie

  The electrode sparked and Ace shook violently. “Oh man, why d’you do that?”

  Sklippie laughed, filming the whole thing on his phone. “I needed to test the conductivity of real skin.”

  “On me?” Ace whined, rubbing her hand.

  “It’s science, Ace.”

  “Then, ouch, bitch! Anyways, are you done now?”

  “Nope. I tried it on myself, you. I need one more for the readings to be statistically significant.”

  “Ty!” they said together.

  “I’m bringing him over, you be ready to film.” Ace took off, excited to punk her friend.

  Sklippie reset the capacitor switch and listened to the electric hum of the defibrillator. It was tuned way down, he didn’t want to make a heart stop, but it worked as proof of concept.

  Now all he needed was to make it all fit on a drone. All seven kilogrammes of it.

  7 Sklippie

  It was October 30. Kids don’t go trick or treating on Halloween in Greece, but there’s a celebration, so they had the foster home all decorated with some cheap ornaments. Sklippie was on the top bunkbed with Ace.

  “She’s my hero,” Ace
said, fawning over the woman in the video they were watching. It was from years ago, of the internet celebrity Sexy Cyborg. She was a Chinese woman that hacked hardware and invented new stuff. Ace wore her protective glasses over her head, it was like a permanent accessory for her.

  Sklippie nodded. “You wanna be a maker, like her?”

  “Yeah… I mean, sure, there’s never gonna be a second Sexy Cyborg, but I’ll try.”

  “You can do it Ace, you’re smartest person I know.”

  She looked away.

  Ty grabbed the bed and pulled himself up. He wasn’t tall enough to look, so he hung on for dear life. “Oh my gods, look at the boobies on that!”

  “Yeah, Ty, but we’re watching it for the making. Look, here she 3D printed a part that she then used-” Sklippie said but was interrupted.

  Ty elbowed him in the shoulder. His other hand grabbed the bedsheet so that he wouldn’t fall down. “She might be her hero, but I don’t think Ace will ever match her in breast size, you know what I mean?” he whispered.

  “I’m right here,” Ace said in anger and flicked one of Ty’s fingers.

  “Ow! Don’t do that.”

  She flicked them again. Then again.

  Ty let go of the bedsheets and fell back on his butt.

  Ace leaned over the top bunkbed. “You asked for it. What are you even doing here, anyway? Go home or something.”

  Ty rubbed his elbow. “I came to copy your homework.”

  Ace snorted. Sklippie agreed. “Nice way of asking for it, man.”

  They all laughed together.

  And then a brick came crashing through the window.

  Ace froze. Sklippie pushed her protective glasses down over her eyes and covered his own.

  Their carer rushed inside. More bricks came flying inside. Also beer bottles. They smashed and filled the foster home with green glass. “Kids, watch out!” She covered them with her body, Ty at her feet.

  The rest of the kids cried loudly. The carer tried to reassure them but she was shaking herself.