The Urban Book of the Dead (11 page)

I watched Judith for a while longer, the bump kicked a big bulge in her stomach and she looked down at it open mouthed. She pushed the leg back in and ripples appeared. Then a face stretched and opened its mouth over the translucent red skin of her belly, I heard a barely audible cry. Judith picked up a fly squat and patted her belly back in jauntily and enthusiastically, she looked at me smiling. “We’ve got a little acrobat in here” laughed Judith “whether he’s a little monkey or a trapeze artist he’s going in the circus!”

I went into the lounge Jay was still biting his finger nails on his right hand, pulling them with his teeth, they had elongated in the manner of cheesy string and he tried harder to bite them off; then he simply pulled them out, giving me a look and a smile that signified his inner frustration.

Jay’s eyes looked at me and went hypnotically deep, drowning deep, his face fell under the pressure of those depths, sank around his eyes, then his face really fell, a molten blank of loose ectoplasm and the mask said to me “Jon; aren’t you afraid at all”

“No.” I replied, I had no idea what that meant, “You saw me the last time I was afraid. It will never happen again.”

Suspicious I asked “Are you?”

Jay replied “No. of course not” pushing his face back up between his hands “I hope you can get us better bodies when this is over.”

I looked away from Jay, clearly Jay had a decision to make, one that should have been easy, but not for Jay; no matter; in some ways to have to struggle to make the right decision makes you the better man, struggle is heroic, habitually doing the right thing is a comfortable ease; I might say that I have for a long time, struggled to do the right thing.

I spoke to Judith; “I have to know before I die, what did the real Lucifer do, that frightens God so much?”

“What did you do? Nothing at first. An angel ordered to rebel, set up and cursed on the whim of a self confessed vain and jealous God. God got bored and wanted to play, he threw away chess pieces to play with real lives; and you; tumbled off the board with the kings and queens; you; carved out of wood; fell to Earth to be a wooden toy, with your wooden looks; the look of a condemned man. ‘I want you to fight me, I want you to cause some chaos, do your best because when you loose you’ll be a faggot in Hell’ is what he said. Thing is, you always won at chess, you had the battle strategies, you took the job seriously, having nothing to loose. It irked him, because people liked your ideas and always have done since. Read the Bible, it’s the propaganda distortion of the winning side, you stood for the liberation of desire, for the imagination, creativity, wholeness. God has always stood for a totalitarian corruption of the human soul, having made man like himself in vanity; he then had to deal with men, so everywhere he chained them.”

Judith looked sad, there was just one tear in her eye, all she would allow, she winked and peered at me through it like a broken monocle, magnifying what she desired and intimating hers, she continued, “I liked you, I liked you a lot. But you liked me more; you chased after me like your chasing after her now. Any way you paid for trying too hard. He didn’t send you to Hell, he took away your ability to regenerate and staked you in a town square for all to see, it was crows that time around, not pigeons; and they were like shadows that cut holes in all the good light, everything they covered lost its content and goodness, if they passed over a kind faced girl with mercy it would fill her with black hate as it passed, and they swirled and swirled, the people jeered as they pecked you to death, soon emptied of your eyes you did not have to see them anymore, and when they ate your ears no more did you have to hear them, that was the only mercy shown, it was accidental as well.”

Not exactly cheered up I put on the bravest mask in my collected thoughts and said looking at jay “I’m off to Hell Jay. We will meet at the back of the club at 12.15 am; me, you, and Judith. We will climb the fire escape and pick the lock and invade the head quarters. The minions of Hell will invade from the front and attack the night club people; who should all be on fire by then; a nice little pincer movement. Both of you take some of the hallucinogenic powder I made, snort it or inject it; or bomb it in some wrapped up rizla; it doesn’t matter.” My mind paused as I was about to set off “Here!” I gave them the ashtray, took a bit out and just bunged it up my nose, “achoo”; I sneezed on Judith’s face; Judith wiped her face with her hand unconcerned and turned away. I felt like we were all high on adrenalin, about to take on the most audacious act in human history.

Judith dislodged a bit of snot from her lip and said “Do you know how you’re going to kill him? Only you can you know.”

I nodded my head my eyes intent “Yes I know and I know. I’m relying on the dual nature of some other person; their autonomous action which I anticipate will decide the outcome one way or the other.”

My concentration was low with my mind filled with thoughts, I needed a boost to get to Hell, I said excuse me and went to the bathroom. I pissed on the floor, pissed it all away and the puddle ate its way to Hell, I pissed a big hole, “Ha-ha” the pleasurable pressure pushed me up by my dick, two feet, as it bent upwards, I held on tighter as it squirmed, warm yellow piss splashing upwards in a fountain, so used to keeping my light body from floating was I, it surprised me, I let myself fall down the hole, my arms waving, I heard Jay say “what’s the commotion?” as I drifted off.

I landed hard on the wooden jetty, sprawled with my hands on the deck and the cool breath of the other place knocked out of me so I gasped the poisonous fire of this one. Coming towards me on the lead sea was the boat, shadowed against the bright light; it was crammed full of figures, low on the sea and threatening to capsize or let in the hot liquid. A cloud of yellow overtook it and when it was removed the boat looked empty, then slowly figures began to appear again.

The hand that played with the play doe of real men rebuilt its toys automatically, according to the rules of unconsciousness, the rules of dreams, and unconcerned as the sleepy head of some cannibalising giant snoring on feathers and fantasising murderously over the indelible.

As the boat rowed closer I realised it was the rule of these creatures, my brave men which is what they were, to reject the human form given by God for those of their own imagination, and to conjoin like the ultimate pack of animals, or; what I had seen in human riots when a crowd does indeed become a single and very different animal than the sum of its parts. I saw men who had formed their joints together to form the bodies of double Kneed twelve foot men with two heads. Two had done that. The dragon with seven necks and six heads was also there, waiting in futility for my strange communion, for I was still attached to the human form, it still represented for me a thing of beauty and free autonomy.

One other figure was there who stood on legs that were arms consequently giving him the strongest upper torso possible, thick muscular legs that ended in sinewy hands. I saw all this because they were close now, also close in my mind. In my mind I knew them and could put names to them, so close to Lucifer was I that some kind of race memory was replicating its self, I called out to them in joy “Deus Ecstatic and the Angel of Death, the tall double headed twins! Colossus the torso and my own incomplete Satan! Welcome to land, we have quality here rather than quantity I see.”

My calling them by their chosen names had an immediate effect. The four got off in the sea and waded in for all their strangeness with the gait of sailors, they disregarded their burning flesh, the stench of which the air was always full of from your own blackening and smouldering body, we smelt like your mums cooked roast, and I wanted to tell your mum, I would lie down and die in the heat if she would only remove me from this oven, tray me and baste me only get me out of the heat. Slice me and serve me, eat me on the end of your fork. Chew carefully, seven times, lean back and like me reflect.

My men looked me in the eye to show their imperviousness to pain, they walked stylistically wading with their legs wide, burning up to the groin, the look in their eyes of sad endurance in the tall twins, and gallant nonchalance in Satan and Colossus; informed me that my pain that had been talked about and ran deep but I was barely aware of till this moment; was a pain they wanted to endure in their bodies because the physical pain was an insignificant token.

Until I saw close up my friends the memory of whom was so buried I would have had to scrape it off my brain with a spatula, and prod and poke till it fizzed and spoke to me, to understand and picture my deep sentiment; something I would do later. None of this had been real to me.

Tears sizzled on my face and I choked on the hot air, they had raped my love, I had been given a cursed life, and by showing no weakness for no sentiment of any one else; would do anything but make me feel weak and grateful for self pity, for my façade of keeping in my breast I beat so proud, an untainted human heart, when I knew that all I was capable was an affectionate autonomous evil, I had in my callous Sun baked interior justified every act against me, if you can’t suffer, if you can only play the game, if you can not forget that you live for the fight you have been invited to play and gamble for a life that every instant has been meaningless, hard and so empty, a denial you just pushed and pushed like a roulette wheel you gambled on till your arm grew fixed and solid, your long arm of your law, because all you wanted was the love that ran so deep in your strongest friend who had burned for thousands of years for you, who had fought as the ultimate blasphemer and the denial of his human nature as Gods nature, had shook off the human image in disgust; because Deus Ecstatic who had held the gaze of God and spat phlegm on him could not look you in the eye but rolled them all up to the Sun so it would burn out his eyes as his reddened face’s steamed with tears.

I didn’t see a monster or a menagerie anymore, I saw the early middle aged two family men Peter and Paul, who had charmed me with the stories of their young children, and saddened me when having to confess their early deaths at the hands of a hostile army. I saw the hate in the creases of their faces that had been taken on, and the kindness that calmed all these wrinkles as looking on a disturbed pond. I saw Peters thinning blonde hair, and I saw Paul’s thick beard and I knew him well enough to know he had grown his fearsome visage to hide a too feminine face and to spoil his own good looks. Here they stood, separated from God’s image out of choice. Peter’s lips moved silently, articulating for the story told on his face.

I clasped every hand, and with every hand I cast my gaze to the merciless Sun to burn out my eyes afresh in searing white pain so they would not have to endure my love after such a long time away. I knew I really was Beelzebub, Satan, Lucifer, the Beast and I knew if I wasn’t good I was better than God.

I was better than God and now I knew the enormity of the plan and I was afraid, a vibrant chill deep down, a breeze almost pleasant in the cold release it promised, the promises of lucidity whispered, it whispered I should tremble, that I would balk, but I knew I would not, I was not a psychopath, not a complete psychopath, I was only human, just as God; was; only; human. Struck by vanity, heady with power and destructible!

Now I realised what I had not seen all along because of my mania. I had not seen the trembling of Judith’s face, the strength of the defiance when she had decided she would no longer serve God, why she had obeyed him originally; it was not on a whimsical breeze she played but a torrent of pure terror she hid behind her stalwart humour. Jay; Jay was terrified; His biting of his nails, the jumpiness at McDonalds. I thought he had become more playful, his acts were becoming childish under extreme pressure, his personality was being squeezed and he wanted out, he wanted Hell rather than that. Try-to-kill-God. My hardened perceptions had kept it all together; my lack of deep concern had created an alternative reality to dwell in.

But that was just it, the fear didn’t stay or the love retain its meaningfulness, in a depth beyond sadistic play, I started to come round, did the heat there evaporate it, I don’t know, I think it was just impossible. I wanted to say “I want to be a human being just like you”, but I wanted to say it now as an ironic joke, a taunt of my own invincibility, I stayed the impulse.

I looked at Satan diving up and down his six heads and shaking them and laughing, “Ha-ha!” the atmosphere changed amongst us, even on this arid planet full of pain I felt suddenly like the torturous heat the Sun inflicted was an over enthusiastic attempt at radiating happiness for us.

The head of Lucius spoke from the Satan collective “You remember your mates then! It’s more than I expected, much more, and your face so hardened, you’re magic must be mighty, it’s going to be a breeze this time around.” All the heads smiled together. All the heads smiled, not just those attached in the Satan collective.

There was a chorus of ayes from all and Colossus clapped me on the back with his muscular arm, I fell to the ground, it was a fall of a man falling into affection, beaten by affection.

I spoke “We have to move my friends” I tried to regain my breath from the clap and filled my lungs with hot, dry poisonous air, my choking became a laugh. “ohh-ha-ohh-ha. Jane; the Whore of Babylon’s alternate self is being held in a night club, a place of dancing, I need you to enter the front of the building and do not be distracted by the strange things you see, an army will be waiting in there. I will have to contact my spy before I appraise the situation much further, God thinks he has the ace in his dick pocket with Jane, and he has plans to weaken me, but that article may blow and flap back in our favour. There are about one hundred foot soldiers, they are poorly armed and are human, they have no magic and we might be able to take them out in fire before lifting a finger.”