[thisislife]

There is, nestled in the bowels of any respectable university, a generous number of worms. I speak, of course, of so-called secret societies: tacit understandings of agreements between individuals to the effect that clandestine unions are made and boundaries drawn. The reason I say “so-called” is that many of these are unearthed, so to speak; they are made public – though still unofficial – and as such become trinkets, toys, piddling collaborations which retain the thrill of secrecy without the truth in it.

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Here’s the second half of the short story.

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I was safely nestled into the maritimes on a warm breezy day in September when the sun was pinned neatly amongst the clouds and it was then that in my mind stirred an exceptional urge to walk about in the world. So I strode from the dark murmuring corners of my artifice, and no sooner than I had left my residence I stepped into a grand bounding day where across the glistening marshlands swept the cordoned fingers of the wind, twining so that swept from the left of me and from the right of me and from the back of me buffeted a breeze which struck off of me in such gusts that the ricochet molded myself into the air and it was as though I was pressing my face into clay. Such a wind it was that I nearly had to adjust my path, leaning in time with the dysrhythmic volley that was besieging me. But still I surged forth. As if in defeat, the wind abided by my will, falling limp and subsiding, and I journeyed onward toward the long winding trails that awaited me in Waterfowl.

As he walked past yet another club, a listless voice called to him: “Hey man, you got a light?”

The Devil stopped. “Sure thing.” He took out a matchbox and struck a flame. The passer-by took a deep draw on his cigarette. “Why don’t you have a lighter? Not that I’m saying anything. Just sort of strange to see matches in this day and age and all that.”

The Devil shrugged. “Just never got used to them, I suppose.”

The passer-by took another draw on his cigarette. The butt glowed furiously. “Fair enough.” Another draw. The butt was really incredibly bright; must be quite hot, the Devil thought. They stood in silence for a little while, neither quite knowing what to do. The passer-by smoked some more. The Devil looked at the cigarette. The end was glimmering, glowering, caving in on itself, contorting into flames, searing itself apart. A bit of ash fell off the end as the passer-by tapped it. The Devil blinked. Some smoke was blown in the air’s general direction. “Well,” the Devil said, “I should get going now. Have a good one.”

“Yeah man, you too.”

The Devil didn’t get ten feet before the passer-by took another draw on the cigarette. But between the blaze and the screaming and the face melting into fire and the people running to and the people running away and the people on the other side of the city doing nothing at all and all of the stars burning so heavily beyond the pollution where nobody could see the Devil didn’t bother to look back.

I can find nothing but bitterness. Wallow and wither, wallow and wither where were those halcyon times when your sweet innocence was unbruised as peaches in the orchard? What has been taken from me, but what has been given to hold — it is a bleeding thing that stains my hands by myself alone I stood by the window and watched him play in the meadow, the field, the forest, the grass bending wholeheartedly in his passing and the wind smearing his hair into the palette of the world whereby I could conceive of no end to him nor beginning but rather an all-encompassing oneness that lay bare in the night and seeped in the sunlight so that he himself was no longer a boy but he stretched across the sky, back-bending gracefully, drinking from the fringes of the sea and the froths of my mind. That was oneness. But what have I now, when the surgeon’s knife has split me from me and him from my home so that I can no longer witness myself in such a state? Nothing. O, he can hear me no more; things fall apart, the omphalos has moved, and is moving farther and farther from here by my brother’s hands and I cannot stop the churning of the heavens or the gyration of the earth; my hands would wear to stubs – lament! – my hands in stubs and my body in flame.

We were going to have a picnic, by the river where the water rills. We would tear bits of bread and toss them to the ducklings. And with jam-stained fingers he would have eaten the sweetest of meals until we were both full and I would lay there while he stumped around the riverbank. The wind would have brushed his hair lovingly and struck the sunlight from the water so that, perhaps, it would freckle his face with the sheer blue of the river. The pure nymphal bliss. And together we would gaze through the trees to see the clouds rumbling across the skies in all of their enormity, the immenseness captured in the branches and the soft green leaves. We would have a picnic there, with the river rippling past us all the way to the salt-sea and the gulls that called out to the horizon.

I cannot see it anymore. It is past the curve of the earth, descended beyond the boundaries of the world.

The man lay beside his buyer, staring into the leaky blue of a stranger’s eyes. His own were as pits. He had discarded himself on the floor, the rumpled pile a monument to defeatism, a shell split of itself. He was tender. “So, what exactly do you do?” His buyer asked, reaching to tuck a strand of hair behind the man’s ear. He closed his eyes – I am of stone – and smiled weakly. He heard himself say some vague thing to which his buyer responded with a sickly rattle. His teeth, the man thought, they must be coming loose. His buyer shifted forward in a long drawl; his stubble scraped slightly against the man’s cheek. His breath filled his ear. “You don’t say.” Amidst his revulsion the man felt himself nod. The stars outside were coming loose. The steady gyration of the earth was grinding. The falcon could not hear the falconer, if only for a little while. The moon swayed in its path and danced queasily in the night; then his buyer shut the blinds and there was nothing left save for a darkness too long.

There are a multitude of maladies that I might surrender myself to–
In truth, the names of despair are legion–
And seated in their long yellow rivers I would wallow my way
To the inevitable confession,
The repentance,
Punishment,
Short, nasty, and sharp;
Deep-seated in my mid-brain I can feel that this is what I crave.

And would it be that I could call out from my lolling tongue:
“These are my bloodied hands!”
And at long last, wandering eastward with every passing winter,
I might return to the seat of purity, the wonders
Of those flowing boundless hills.
But what thirst is left to be satisfied when none remains?
And an inkling in my battle-brain shouts at me to repent
While every fiber of my being roars back in a tidal wave,
A sweeping deluge,
Ripping upstream and apart, through rapids and rip-tides,
And into my eyes whereby I conceived of the strangest things.
And upon waking could remember none.

The names of despair are legion, but the harshest is paradox,
From whose scorn I flee.
But while I quibble and quake between the highest glistening walls
And the gauged sloughing pits, I am starving in the midst of an abyss.
In this space it is the fruit of the basest mind which blossoms,
Unfurling,
And although its nectar is poison
I must eat.

I can see my feet walking in the darkness,
But they are not on the path.
They must not be mine, I tell myself,
But there is nowhere else left to go.

I have seen the world and it is burning;
I have seen my flesh and it is burning;
I have seen the topless towers of Ilium come cascading
Down down down
And burning
To the deepest pit
Is burning
And my eyes
Are burning and opening wider than I have ever known.
But these sockets–
They sputter sparks like an engine
And scatter cinders in spirals.
All this is burning
And this is truth.

I believe myself to be carrying acrid fire.
I can feel it on lonesome days when the rain falls
And my sadness seeps through my legs
Until I cannot get up any more.
Drizzles of gold leaking through my window—
Fear death by water, wreathed in poppling boil.
I smell like dust and ancient things, I like to think,
But perhaps that is merely the bedsheets.
They hold me like tradition.
They are sure in this world
And this is truth.

But my mind is aflame and quivering still;
Take these thoughts from my head: they are burning.
Take these breaths from my lips: they are
Burning.
Take these words from my tongue: they
Are burning
And eating of me
Until there is nothing left
But the vicious want that spits from my lips:
The guttural consonant,
The streams of molt.
This burns me new, but I fear my hunger
And I wish for something to hold on to
Yet still know that nothing is certain.
I have seen the towers of Troy fall
In unwavering defiance to their majesty,
And in short, I was afraid.
I am scared of what might be real in this world,
And this is truth.

I remember the horror in Priam’s eyes
When his world was toppling down.
And on some nights I wake, sultry,
Damp with fear of the fire.

“Hello? Is that Mr. Jeremy Clapham? I’m afraid that I will be requiring your services tonight.”

When Evelyn’s eyes rolled to again, the operation was complete. Jeremy Clapham, pet taxidermist and avid amateur surgeon, had transplanted the courage of eleven or twelve gerbils – we still are not sure if one got away – directly into Mr. Peters’ brain. He gave a few blinks and regarded us wearily.

“Now, Mr. Peters,” I asked him one last time, “what did you want to say? Please do hurry; I am late for dinner and my wife will be furious.”

Evelyn stammered and stuttered and mumbled and gaped, but at last managed to jot out a few minute sounds. “Professor Peach,” he wormingly whispered over the course of a few minutes’ hesitations, “what does your field do? I really have no idea, but am thinking of enrolling in a course or two.”

And at that, I frowned. And I creased. And I regarded this poor young man with a simmering pity as he dripped away in the chair. Already I could see the fear growing in his eyes. (The courage of gerbils is hardly of sterling quality.) But although I knew my time was brief, no answer came. “I am sorry,” I said, “but even I am not certain. The entire field of Razzamatology is devoted to reflexively determining what it, in itself, is.” And although I knew this was hardly a satisfactory response, I had to let Evelyn go.

It was such that I remained in the flicker of the candles while Mr. Evelyn Peters tramped off outside. I do not know if it is just my fancy, but I remember him turning back one last time before disappearing into the streetlamp gloom. The rest of my memory is nothing more than dull flame, and the raindrops that martyred themselves on the upturned collar of his coat.

-END-