God of the Game (Dreamstate) (9 page)

    Lucifer…
Damnit!
…he’s here; enjoying my end.

    My musc
les died. I think my pose was as a barbequed frog. 

18

    Slowly, I was filleted like fish. Bones totally removed, flesh hanging limp, except for my skull. I was still singing…
perhaps about a pirate’s life for me
. Noose round the neck, hung from a hook, the chef preparing a delicacy fit for royalty. He’d carved me in strips below the collar, so thin, so fine, like angel’s hair. I resembled a
toyol
, a forest imp caught in a jar, preserved, and now ready to be devoured. Placed on a gigantic plate requiring two servants to hoist, my meaty shreds were spread out evenly to be slurped raw. The internal organs, battered in flour and deep-fried, in the style of crispy tempura, was arranged in a basket at the centre. And as a finishing garnish, the prized possession, crown jewels, generational joy, my genitals were decorated with flowers and ribbons, a feminine touch, appearing girly, set at the other end of the platter, directly opposite of my leering face. Blood was pumped into the shaft, perpetually bloated and erected, hard like rock. The two testicles flopping off the dish like a mariner’s omen crafted at the prow of an ancient ship. At the stern, my mouth was still speaking; gibberish, nonsense, opening and closing like fish served in cruel Oriental cuisine, yet alive, gasping for last airs.

    Jahr commended the chef and his team, sucking noodles of flesh, inviting guests to partak
e of the feast. They dug in. Slurping, they stabbed into the basket of innards, cutting at my neck to fill a bowl of meatball spaghetti, a carnivore’s delight. And through it all, I was kept breathing by a respirator, mumbling lines from popular movies, from chart-topping tunes.

    Then a daughter of Jahr played with my penis, stroking it violently t
ill I erupted. Semen sprayed the air, gravity commanding the milky droplets down onto the unlucky crowd who’d forgotten their umbrellas. Smearing VIPs, divine aristocrats. Sperms taste like roe, caviar. They are the eggs of life after all. And these gods lapped it up. These goddesses lapped it all up. They finally passed my cock around, each taking a bite. A communion. A covenant. I was finished. The balls were given to the dogs. Suddenly it was a room of vampires, of demons; hellish faces ogling me. I returned a horrid stare; I knew what was before me, my fate sealed.
For once I had nothing to babble
.

    And the rush. They jumped on me, unlike highwaymen robbing coaches. Not gentlemanly. They sucked out my brain through the five orifices of my face, through the pores of skin. Eyes flopped from nerves; it was later gulped down by their devilish hounds. Now they also sucked from the sockets.

I could feel my mind swimming. Unregistered thoughts shooting in and out at light speed. Memories; some of them not even mine. Grey matter bubbled out from my ears, brain-pulp from nostrils. My intelligence was being drained by a straw, the patterns of the core organ diminishing, seeping out of the mouth. Unloaded and transported to vampiric blood, transfused to immortal flesh…and eventually,
I am
ready to die.   

19

   “It was you, wasn’t it?” Jai-I scolded.

    I gave a guilty gulp.

   “Shameless.”

   “Ha ha. So you saw
?”

He nodded his head. “Have you seen your own work?”

   “Not all. I just got back from the future witha copy of the mayhem.” I handed an optical disc, puzzled by the use of ancient technology. “What do you think?
”

“Your signatu
re style is written all over it,” he half answered. Jai-I’s attention was paid towards some programming task, humped like a hunchback turtle over his workstation. With him zoned in, no other conversation was forthcoming.

I put on th
e CD. The cursor went over the .wmv and a double-clicking sound ensued.                

    The video quality was like a home camcorder recording, blur and grainy. And the hands shaky.
Unprofessional. It started mid-section; either the earlier scenes were deleted or not recorded at all. Fucking pirated products. Screams; mad, naked bodies running amok. Wailing moans; the face of a man suddenly smashed on the lens, a gaping hole of mouth, bloodshot sclera. It was pretty boring after a while, mental patients of an asylum torturing and tormenting themselves, tearing at skin and flesh, like ripping aluminium foil covering roast turkey, or the plastic wrap for microwaveable food.

    Jai-I said, “You should have seen the owner, he was furious, condemning the asshole that turned Dionysus and Tartarus
into a sanatorium.”

   “I know; I was craw
ling the ceiling when they barged into the room, only to find her sucking fingers and biting nails. Transmigrated to a second childhood, fucking mind of a retard,” I laughed as images of the bitch in her pathetic state replayed.

   “Outside
, it was more or less the same,” I added, “more overgrown toddlers with fried brains. Haha.       

   “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the workings of my flatulence.”

   “Yah, your fucking signature style.” Jai-I nonchalantly contributed, still programming, and glued onto the monitor in a praying mantis’ pose. 

20

The Tree of Love

    ZOOL.A.ND was quiet. At least this side of it. I was hiking up a barren hill which leads to the Tree of Love. Sha-Rronne was going to meet me there. Right now, at this very moment, I am panting, cursing my lack of shape. The slope was steep and muddy, but she’d promised a view to die for at the summit. This view I’m fantasizing is Sha-Rronne buck naked with her maidens. Orgy the black cloud hovering with its tempestuous waterfall, unleashed at our very beckon and call. Corroding the golden bracelets and anklets on the girls, the necklaces becoming chains around the neck, a prison of pretty criminals, handcuffed, feet bound to iron balls. And still they were gyrating, shaking under the rain, without umbrella; even after the rain, puddles of water, female mud wrestlers; and till the sun shone a blistering heat, caking the sludge, scorching hot enough to burn flesh, they danced on, a feverish pitch, as if in religious fervour, a cleansing, a mutilation, washed of impurities by the torrents, and then dried and tried in the furnace; cut diamonds found to exhibit the finest indulgence, the most exquisite elegance, a glamorous balance. Glam-bang bling-bling. Premium meat.

    At the top of the mount was the panorama of valley. An accordance of many peaks circled from the very ends of earth, some snow-capped, but all leading, slanting to the
epicentre, a humongous crater. All roads lead here. And a grassy incline descends toward the axis, which is a giant tree growing out of a giant hole.

    Legends and fables tell of an enormous meteorite the size of New York City that came crashing on a
fine summer day long millenniums ago, depressing one surface of the planet that it now looks like a bashed-up face from outer space. Other stories spoke of Leviathan crawling out of hell to eat the souls and bodies of sinners alive, even as they yelped and yelled in repentance for god to forgive. Still, there were versions of the entire world as a test base for alien nuke-tech, extraterrestrials progressing on a universal vision to parasitically engorge planets of resources in order to become the one supreme race of the universe. There’s even a tale of a massive war fought by two warring clans at this very spot, an innumerable number of boys and men lost, their blood crying to the heavens from the ground whereupon it was spilled; a pointless agony, a suffering end, a lamentation of violence and vengeance against greedy lords luxuriated and fluffed in gluttony. Lives gone without cause; and the collective spirits of sorrow sink the earth, deflating it to a valley, and the abyss beneath. 

    The Tree of Love. Strong. The source and energy of
Life n’living
in this metaversal realm. Note:
Life n’living
is an international café and spa chain capitalizing on the twin paradoxical desires of the flesh –
greed and vanity
. A beauty parlour demonizing you for being too fat, not fit like a stick the way runway models and actresses are, easily slipping into that tiny dress - ridiculously tight, outrageously small, absurdly sexy, abnormally in, absolutely cliché and genuinely insane. A fashion designer’s dream – she. You? His awful nightmare. Lose some weight, burn that fat; eat those carrots…only the carrots. Not the cheesecake. Exercise; run five miles a day, ride those wheels. Dumbbell training, dumb alright…yeah, you – Dumb! Fat n’ Dumb! Join our gym. We promise you, toned and trimmed, abs deliciously evil, slim and beautiful, fuckable…yes, very, very fuckable. 

   
Envy. Everybody wants you.

    Envy. Everybody hates you.

    Envy. Everybody loves you.

    Now relax. Enjoy our aromatherapy, our sacred mud bath with healing properties, foot reflexology, massage. Therapeutic hot stones placed on the pivotal charkas of the body, spiritually defined, chi aligned, bringing into equilibrium spirit, soul, body and mind.

    Peace. You are at peace. Peace from the world. Peace from the troubles. The world can go fuck itself. My crying children, go on, scream. Scream till your lungs explode. I don’t care; I’m at peace. Endorphin overdose. My horny husband, seeking my attention only when sexed. Otherwise I don’t exist. It’s the newspapers, or the game, or the buddies, or even work. I’m not in the equation. Only whe
n your dick rises. That’s right, I’m sorry. Yer not getting any. God gave you two hands. Use them.  

    Peace.

    And now…eat. Enjoy the buffet. The leg of lamb, Kobe beef, roast pork, the fat and rind. Cholesterol oil. Eat! Eat! Clog up the arteries, grease up your blood. Alrite, we are a meat nation, a society addicted to flesh. Slaughter them animals; cut them throats. Blood oozing, pouring to the ground. Ribs on hooks. Headless chickens running around.
Headless chickens
running around.          

    Cream. Icing. Chocolate. Ice cream. All things nice. We have them; we have them all. Indulge. Roll around. Filthy as swine. Soiled with sweets. Snorting. Debased. Groaning and moaning while swimming in cakes. Your face is baptized in pies, a caramel beard, applesauce eyebrows
, and your mouth is overflowing sick.

    You overeat; you’re a pig, a cow. Pathetic. You throw up. Vomit mixed with caviar, foie gras, delicacies, and rich gastronomic delights. Now hit the gym. Drop down and give me fifty. You need a drill sergeant. You wretched piece of shit! Too fat, not fit like a stick the way runway models and actresses are.
..

    The Tree of Love. Its leaves are gold and green, branching to the heavens. Dripping like vine…like wine, and beneath a multitude of beasts take shelter. Little animals burrow in its thick trunk, making it home; and birds perched and nested, secured from storms. Fruits, red and ripe hang big, the size of a pumpkin coach in Cinderella’s tale, a hypnotizing glow of sickly pale illuminates from the inner core, but with a warm light, like a cosy corner of a Balinese-themed home inviting you in.

    There are no doors. They’re merely fruits after all, like apples and oranges, durians or rambutans. And we, individuals, couples, seep in two-by
-two through scarlet skin, as though god commanded; we, the animals, enter Noah’s Ark, one male one female, from the largest to the smallest. Dinosaurs to germs. Viruses, bacteria, parasites in Petri dishes, stem cells harvested from all manner of life, stored in a library of DNA and genome for the continuation of the species should there be a holocaust to wipe creation out.

    Aptly named, the Tree of Love, the collector of sperm and egg. Semen, the juice of love…clima
xing, embracing, souls entwined like the Tree itself, in shared breath, joined orgasms, rhythmic hearts and a proclaiming vision – that two become one, man and wife, the bride and bridegroom. The marriage bed. And at the pivotal peak of pleasure, break on through. Break on through (to the other side). Like Jim Morrison, like that The Door’s song. Hendrix, Jimi Hendrix, the guitar of love, music of love, at that time in the future, the year 35 billion 69, at the brink of the end of a universe, the galactic empire, sent back to tame the song…

    But th
ey were all wrong. Break on through (to the other side). Break on through (to the other side). And you will see. You will see the size of things, the scope of things; the universe, only a seed, your universe. All you hold precious, that which you deem important, miniscule, your rule and conquest, possessing galaxies, advancing wormholes for travel and exploration, commerce, trade, development and innovation, building for the future, nothing; a mere drop in a drop in the ocean, a single cell of eternity’s. Which is yet, all things, a potential to be, a brand new dimension, an original universe; a fresh face for creation, a nouveau god, you; a newer you, more confident, more jovial, all ready to face the challenges of an eternal, futuristic day. Whatever it throws your way, you smile like you’re in a fucking ad on TV.