“Babylon in all its desolation is a sight not so awful as that of the human mind in ruins.”
-- Scrope Davies c.1782-1852: letter to Thomas Raikes, May 1835
To realistically convey what happened on the evening of 2011 is impossible, and perhaps inappropriate. A convention of Hell is its unspeakable nature, which sometimes leavens the horrors of the inferno, but which can also torment the imagination in a way that makes damnations fires all the worse. How to describe an act that even the perpetrator disbelieves? How to bring order to the chaos of memories that even to this day Nicole Merryweather refuses to acknowledge?
-- Scrope Davies c.1782-1852: letter to Thomas Raikes, May 1835
To realistically convey what happened on the evening of 2011 is impossible, and perhaps inappropriate. A convention of Hell is its unspeakable nature, which sometimes leavens the horrors of the inferno, but which can also torment the imagination in a way that makes damnations fires all the worse. How to describe an act that even the perpetrator disbelieves? How to bring order to the chaos of memories that even to this day Nicole Merryweather refuses to acknowledge?
North of Queen City, in the Village of Birch, Stekel and Nicole became separated. Stekel went to the bathroom and when he returned she had vanished; we know that evening she went in the direction of the docks. On the infamous Waterfront Boulevard she may have wandered into the Roosevelt or Venice. In these dens of Jagermeister and Ecstacy, under the strobe and throb of Finnish Hip Hop, she may have found herself caught in the black light, gazed upon in electric motley, and undressed by violating eyes--but it is more likely that she searched unnoticed, through the obscure streets...
She carefully noted the ways of the tavern women. Finally, she found a group of men from the Plutonist-Zeit-Brigade. Carefully she chose an arch-misogynist she perceived to be a hater of people in general, so that her sin might be mitigated by its moral purpose, and that her crime would be even easier to commit. She signaled the man with a flourish of thigh. He led her through a maze of basement corridors and then down a hallway into a small room illuminated by a single naked bulb. He closed the door.
Time seems suspended in moments of supreme significance, whether this sign is one of desolation or ecstatic joy matters little. The doors of perception, temporal gateways, become unhinged. At these moments the present is forced to bear its heaviest burden; when life is suddenly sapped of the strength to throw the now into the then; when the illusion of chronology is caught in its lie.
In this atemporal suspension, in the eternal present of unconscious perception, did Nicole Merryweather reflect even for a moment on the death that inspired her obsession? It is probable she thought about it just long enough to compromise her plan. She thought (there was no escaping it) that the violation she was now inviting was atonement for her disease, that moment long ago when her body set up her father's death.
But out of the pyre of this self-degradation, like a Phoenix from the ashes, her personal revenge on the collective violence of the ages, would rise up and sweep away the guilt and sorrow. She thought this with submissive rapture, and then immediately fled to the sanctuary of obliviousness.
The man--an Italian or Finn--did not speak English; he would be Nicole's avenging scepter; as she was his deliverance from carnal desire--but she was an object of pleasure, while he was a mock-sacrificial lamb on the altar of retribution. In Nicole's solitude she dreamed with eyes wide shut.
In her black lace panties was the money he had promised. She flushed the bills down the toilet. While putting on her clothes a mixture of sorrow and disgust welled up in Nicole's soul. In chiaroscuro, the room was light and shadow, the dusk offering a Poe-esque setting. Furtively, she fled the scene. At the Little Garlic Bridge she got into a rented Cherokee, and sticking to her purpose headed north for Squaw Beach.
The onrushing present pushed the memory of what had happened into the blessed past. She rode through stands of timber and granite that assured her of nature's obliviousness to existence. Paradoxically, her abject despair turned to resolve, for it reinforced her commitment to the details of her plan and blinded her to matters of motive and intention.
In the minds of the locals, Claude Guerre was quite simply a psychotic recluse; to those few who knew him well a criminal sociopath. Earlier in that year he had howled at the moon in the Big Bay cemetery, leaving what little money and jewelry he had on one Doris Campbell's headstone. He was notorious for burning money, and had been barred from everywhere but the Corner Store for burning the tips left at the tables. He professed religious conviction; believing he had a psychic conduit to Jesus Christ. In return for his manic prostrations, he was excused from any social obligation. He lived alone in the woods below Clear Crick. On the banks of his secluded swamp he feared real and imaginary demons; tied up on a short chain behind his shack there was a starving Rottweiler, and in his outhouse a double barreled 12-gauge. Head shaved, cadaver thin, and dressed in gothic black with a coal goatee and gray pallor, he was staring at the sunset, talking to the whining mastiff.
He watched her come down from the high ground and descend into the miry mists. He smiled at her detour around the screeching dog. Her lips were moving, as if reciting a devotional mantra. Over and over she scripted the indictment she would make Guerre suffer in the face of his accuser.
Nicole had a vision of this moment. But reality does not a vision make. Over and over, she had rehearsed the pointing of the gun, the coercing of the final confession and plea for forgiveness, the revelation that some divine or natural justice should prevail over human ignorance. She saw herself as an instrument of absolute justice, beyond celestial or terrestrial accountability. She envisioned a blast to the stomach, a gut shot that would give Guerre that moment of grim recognition. But this is not what happened.
Standing before Claude Guerre, Nicole felt (more than an urge to avenge her father) the necessity to compensate the degradation she had purposely initiated--a self inflicted outrage. Now she had to kill him, having suffered an absolute dishonor. The premeditation was over.
Recognizing the look and smell of insanity, she played to Guerre's disease, invoked the demons they shared, mentioned Lina Flately's name, insinuated other victims, and abruptly stopped, feigning weakness, as if overcome by emotion. Her behavior confused him; retreating to the shack, Guerre searched the hovel for the instruments of his criminal madness: the knife and the chloroform.
By the time he returned, she had the 12-gauge. She pulled both triggers at once. Guerre's emaciated torso imploded in a whoosh and whump of cordite and gore. The sheer force of the blast sent the knife through the bottom of his chin and out the crown, impaling his head like a skewered olive. His face contorted in angry astonishment; the bloody mouth gurgling vile obscenities. When the disembodied voice refused to cease, she reloaded and shot him again. She reloaded. The dog, straining at its rusting tether, howled incessantly. A gusher of blood overflowed the broken yellow teeth and spattered his beard and boots.
Nicole now held court over the convulsing body, as she began her long rehearsed indictment: "Retribution is my redemption; my Father is avenged," but it didn't matter, because Guerre was no more. She would never know if he understood his executioner. The dog's maniacal barking shattered her trance-like stupor. The unholy howl trailed off in the whine of the icy lake wind as she headed south along Peep-A-Day road.
She carefully noted the ways of the tavern women. Finally, she found a group of men from the Plutonist-Zeit-Brigade. Carefully she chose an arch-misogynist she perceived to be a hater of people in general, so that her sin might be mitigated by its moral purpose, and that her crime would be even easier to commit. She signaled the man with a flourish of thigh. He led her through a maze of basement corridors and then down a hallway into a small room illuminated by a single naked bulb. He closed the door.
Time seems suspended in moments of supreme significance, whether this sign is one of desolation or ecstatic joy matters little. The doors of perception, temporal gateways, become unhinged. At these moments the present is forced to bear its heaviest burden; when life is suddenly sapped of the strength to throw the now into the then; when the illusion of chronology is caught in its lie.
In this atemporal suspension, in the eternal present of unconscious perception, did Nicole Merryweather reflect even for a moment on the death that inspired her obsession? It is probable she thought about it just long enough to compromise her plan. She thought (there was no escaping it) that the violation she was now inviting was atonement for her disease, that moment long ago when her body set up her father's death.
But out of the pyre of this self-degradation, like a Phoenix from the ashes, her personal revenge on the collective violence of the ages, would rise up and sweep away the guilt and sorrow. She thought this with submissive rapture, and then immediately fled to the sanctuary of obliviousness.
The man--an Italian or Finn--did not speak English; he would be Nicole's avenging scepter; as she was his deliverance from carnal desire--but she was an object of pleasure, while he was a mock-sacrificial lamb on the altar of retribution. In Nicole's solitude she dreamed with eyes wide shut.
In her black lace panties was the money he had promised. She flushed the bills down the toilet. While putting on her clothes a mixture of sorrow and disgust welled up in Nicole's soul. In chiaroscuro, the room was light and shadow, the dusk offering a Poe-esque setting. Furtively, she fled the scene. At the Little Garlic Bridge she got into a rented Cherokee, and sticking to her purpose headed north for Squaw Beach.
The onrushing present pushed the memory of what had happened into the blessed past. She rode through stands of timber and granite that assured her of nature's obliviousness to existence. Paradoxically, her abject despair turned to resolve, for it reinforced her commitment to the details of her plan and blinded her to matters of motive and intention.
In the minds of the locals, Claude Guerre was quite simply a psychotic recluse; to those few who knew him well a criminal sociopath. Earlier in that year he had howled at the moon in the Big Bay cemetery, leaving what little money and jewelry he had on one Doris Campbell's headstone. He was notorious for burning money, and had been barred from everywhere but the Corner Store for burning the tips left at the tables. He professed religious conviction; believing he had a psychic conduit to Jesus Christ. In return for his manic prostrations, he was excused from any social obligation. He lived alone in the woods below Clear Crick. On the banks of his secluded swamp he feared real and imaginary demons; tied up on a short chain behind his shack there was a starving Rottweiler, and in his outhouse a double barreled 12-gauge. Head shaved, cadaver thin, and dressed in gothic black with a coal goatee and gray pallor, he was staring at the sunset, talking to the whining mastiff.
He watched her come down from the high ground and descend into the miry mists. He smiled at her detour around the screeching dog. Her lips were moving, as if reciting a devotional mantra. Over and over she scripted the indictment she would make Guerre suffer in the face of his accuser.
Nicole had a vision of this moment. But reality does not a vision make. Over and over, she had rehearsed the pointing of the gun, the coercing of the final confession and plea for forgiveness, the revelation that some divine or natural justice should prevail over human ignorance. She saw herself as an instrument of absolute justice, beyond celestial or terrestrial accountability. She envisioned a blast to the stomach, a gut shot that would give Guerre that moment of grim recognition. But this is not what happened.
Standing before Claude Guerre, Nicole felt (more than an urge to avenge her father) the necessity to compensate the degradation she had purposely initiated--a self inflicted outrage. Now she had to kill him, having suffered an absolute dishonor. The premeditation was over.
Recognizing the look and smell of insanity, she played to Guerre's disease, invoked the demons they shared, mentioned Lina Flately's name, insinuated other victims, and abruptly stopped, feigning weakness, as if overcome by emotion. Her behavior confused him; retreating to the shack, Guerre searched the hovel for the instruments of his criminal madness: the knife and the chloroform.
By the time he returned, she had the 12-gauge. She pulled both triggers at once. Guerre's emaciated torso imploded in a whoosh and whump of cordite and gore. The sheer force of the blast sent the knife through the bottom of his chin and out the crown, impaling his head like a skewered olive. His face contorted in angry astonishment; the bloody mouth gurgling vile obscenities. When the disembodied voice refused to cease, she reloaded and shot him again. She reloaded. The dog, straining at its rusting tether, howled incessantly. A gusher of blood overflowed the broken yellow teeth and spattered his beard and boots.
Nicole now held court over the convulsing body, as she began her long rehearsed indictment: "Retribution is my redemption; my Father is avenged," but it didn't matter, because Guerre was no more. She would never know if he understood his executioner. The dog's maniacal barking shattered her trance-like stupor. The unholy howl trailed off in the whine of the icy lake wind as she headed south along Peep-A-Day road.
1 comment:
Love reading the installments of this fiction, and was particularly impressed with the style of this piece. The element of serialization coupled with the seemingly random juxtaposition of events winds the reader through catacombs where William S. Burroughs meets Raymond Carver with an apocalyptic pulp twist. It's screaming to be a graphic novel or film. Kudos!
Post a Comment