Bohemian Rhapsody: Part I: Chapter 13

The bars of my cell were never colder than that evening, after the tape was played.   I stared blankly into them, through them, around them—I cannot say which—in a daze that was too complete even to be unpleasant.   Every so often I tried to think of some way to escape, some way to deny what I had said on the tape, but my mind was too scrambled.   Half-remembered phrases and loopholes ran helter-skelter through my mind, things I had read in books and seen on Law and Order, but I could not hold any one concept in my mind for more than a split second.   I was absolutely drained, but my skin still was tingling and I could not have fallen asleep for anything.1

I ran my fingers absent-mindedly through my hair, twisting it around on my finger, playing with the one thing left me.   Then in a savage burst I ripped the whole coil from my head and would have strangled myself with it had I not collapsed again in agonizing exhaustion.   There was no sound, no cell block tango, no jailhouse rock, no bohemian rhapsody for me to play with and synthesize into my own.   The floor at the cavern had never been this stiff, this cold.   I lay half-frozen, my eyes wide, my lips barely moving as I thought.2

Why?   That was the question, was it not?   Why in the name of the sacred gods did I ever speak one word to that evil man?   Why did You let me, why did You persuade me?   O my Father, O my Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?3

There came no answer from the Beyond; indeed, in my heart of hearts I had not expected one.   I knew I was beyond reach of the gods.   They had probably been only dimly aware of what had transpired here these last few weeks.   It was my fault alone.4

Why had I done it?   I was desperate, more than anything.   I needed an outlet for that undying love I had for the gods.   Everywhere around me I was being silenced, being forced into normalcy.   I was not allowed to pray, nor to talk with Baba about the gods, about our escape and about the Fandango.   I missed my Orchestra with a fire like almost nothing I had ever felt.   I was trapped by walls even tighter than the walls of my cell; for the first time the gods were contained in my very skull.   My mind was seething with the knowledge of their greatness and the knowledge that I could do nothing about it.   And into this maëlstrom of developing madness Henry A. Thornhill, a man I had taken surely for an enemy, was willing to shatter the reality I had constructed for him and breach my own.   It was, I had been sure, a gift from the gods.   He said all the right things, knew what I needed, and tamed me into telling him all my secrets.   Now I would lie forever in a tiny barren room.5

I heard footsteps coming, but they were not Baba’s, as they had been long ago when Flanagan came into my life and promised me my escape was soon to come.   Flanagan had collapsed after the tape.   He had walked numbly away to his chambers, not even glancing at Baba or me, as two bailiffs solemnly led us back to our cells for what was sure to be the last time.   Far more cruel was Baba’s cold refusal to meet my pleading gaze as we walked slowly back to the jailhouse.   I knew I had betrayed him as Alanna had; I knew he loved me as much as I loved him, and that he had truly believed that I would never raise a finger to hurt him.   And now I had condemned him to a life of confinement by the Man.   He simply walked into his cell.   In all likelihood I would never see him again.   Deserted now by everyone, even the love of my life.6

The footsteps grew to a climax.   I looked up dully.   At first, through hazy eyes muddled by exhaustion, I did not recognize what I saw.   Then the greyness of the wall behind him separated from his short brown hair, his square jaw, his spectacles.   His suit was, as always, impeccable.   How, I wondered softly to myself, had I ever believed he was more than a godless fiend.7

“I don’t expect you’ll want to speak with me anymore,” he said gravely.   “I just thought I’d say goodbye.   I did enjoy our talks together, regardless of what you may think.   They reaffirmed in me a sense of purpose.   For now I know what kind of monsters walk the streets.   And I am determined that every last one of them will one day stand in your shoes.”8

He bowed.   I clenched my jaw.   He turned to go and before I could begin to think I was slamming myself against the bars of the cell with such rage that it knocked the wind out of me.   I recoiled, sneered viciously at his startled flinch, shook the bars with my hands.   I felt as though I could rip them apart, and with them the whole world, everything and everyone who had ever looked at me with anything less than adoration.9

“So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?!” I shrieked, my voice hoarse and rough with solitude and shock, cracking and soaring and growling by turns.   “You think you can love me and leave me to die?!”   I screamed again and again as I hurled myself into the bars, willing them or my ribs to break, whichever came first.   I do not know what I howled into the jail, what obscenities and invocations I screamed at any who would listen.   I only know that when I finally collapsed to the floor again, my chest bruised and aching beyond reason, there was no one there.10

I sat there for a time, not moving, my chest pounding not only with rage but with dull and overwhelming pain.   And into the emptiness of that moment a different voice emerged.   It spoke into my heart and healed my wounds, and seemed the last thing I would ever wish to say to the world.   I would hereafter be a mute, and if I died for it, thus was the will of Beelzebub.   But first I rose one last time, fixed my gaze on infinity, and howled Charles Manson into the abyss.11

“Mr. and Mrs. America—you are wrong.   I am not the King of the Jews nor am I a hippie cult leader.   I am what you have made of me and the mad dog devil killer fiend leper is a reflection of your society.   Whatever the outcome of this madness that you call a fair trial or Christian justice, you can know this: in my mind’s eye my thoughts light fires in your cities.”12

I fell back once again, onto the stiff cot with its thin mattress through which the metal spokes of the frame prodded my back maddeningly.   I breathed the air still ringing with the coldness of my final words.   In my mind’s eye my thoughts light fires in your cities.   I lay silent, thinking of the life I had before me.   I had no gods now, none that I could touch or taste or commune with.   But something kept coming back to me, as if I had forgotten it and it was the key to salvation.   There was still one thing I could do to save myself, but it had just slipped from my mind.   In my mind’s eye my thoughts light fires in your cities.13

That was it.   I would light a fire in the city with my mind.   The plan came to me almost instantaneously, the steps of it fastening themselves together like mass production.   I smiled again.   I jumped off my cot and began thinking through what I would write, how to word it perfectly, and then I realized it didn’t matter.   The Post Scriptum would be enough.   I almost laughed aloud.   In the heat of the moment, the best thing about the plan was that it could instantly be put into action.   I barely had to wait.14

A few minutes later, at six o’clock precisely, a man came by my cell to give me my dinner, which was a drab affair even worse than what we had to eat at the worst of times back in the cavern.   I was already awake and as soon as I heard the footsteps of the man coming I tensed in excitement.   He unlocked the door and set the food down on the cot.   As he turned to leave, I spoke tentatively.15

“Um…excuse me.”16

“Yeah?”17

“I was wondering, could I please have a pen and paper?   I want to write a letter to my friends Outside, the Orchestra as they’re called.”18

“I dunno about that.”   He was tired and haggard, and was in no mood to barter with me, I could see.   I told him to fetch the warden, which he did.   The warden was much more lively and intelligent, and he quickly understood my request.   I told him I had been writing memoirs of my life with the Orchestra for two years now, and now that my time with them was seemingly at an end, I wanted to write the final epilogue and send it to my friends.   The warden understood this request and returned promptly with a veritable ream of paper and numerous pencils.   I thanked him and set to writing.19

This is the way the world will end: not with a bang, but a whimper.   So says T.S. Eliot.   Well, T.S. Eliot was a Negro.   If the world is myself, then it ended three weeks ago in the Grove when I split the stick.   If the world is itself, then it ends in a bang a thousand years hence.   No whimpering here; I’ll none of it.   I lie now cold & abandoned & alone in Cell 524 and I hear no music nor feel no breath on my face nor do I see even the faintest outline of any of those that I have loved before me.   I began this journey with a man named Baba, and now end it without him.   Along the way I knew Yael & Sadie & Rhiannon & Katrina & Fink & Charlie & Coco & Leslie & many others, children of the revolution that was happening in the very earth.   We danced and we sang and we lived with the willingness to do all things.   But all that’s over now, for I am trapped by the Man.   I slipped up once, perhaps.   It all depends on perspective.   But do I deserve this?   I am to wear a garish orange fat man’s leotard unto the ending of all things.   That alone is punishment too great for anyone.   But I was in love, not only with the people I knew but with everything, with the peculiar echoes of the cavern and the breeze that would sometimes blow in from outside; with the heat of the sun one morning when Rhiannon and I went jogging around the town and didn’t get back until we had sweated off ten pounds each and the sun was setting; with every word I ever heard anyone speak; with the moon; with the heavy, sweet, gorgeous air that we all shared.   Two years of magic, and an eternity of suffering.   I don’t think this is a fair bargain.   But I am beyond that.   I cannot think of this forever.   Already it seems a thousand years has passed since I began this final chapter.   Epilogue, really.   I cannot begin to fathom the boredom.   Ah well.   Hats off to the God of Justice—the God of Love is dead.20

PS-Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?   (thunderbolts & lightning, &c.)21

I could only hope they would understand the purpose of this communications.   I signed it with a flourish and called out for the warden.   I gave it to him with the instructions that it must be delivered to the Orchestra tonight, because I wanted them to know that I had not forgotten them over the past few weeks.   The warden understood immediately and took it from me.22

As I gave the paper into his hands I felt a great shock, a sensation I had almost forgotten.   It was as if I now stood outside myself, watching the scene from some omnipotent viewpoint above and beyond myself.   A thrill ran through my fingertips, chilling and wonderful even as I saw my fingertips quivering from this outer self.   I felt them again in my mind, silent, unobtrusive, but unquestionably there.   Beelzebub was once again smiling and I could see Him smiling.   I imagined myself throwing back my head and howling with joy, drenched in the light of the gods once again, feeling their tingling presence up and down every inch of my skin.23

The warden took my letter and went out of the cell, and my disembodied senses followed him, down a long cold hallway into an equally cold office where there were numerous manilla folders stuffed full of God only knows what unspeakable records.   He hung a ring of keys on a hook and left the office, emerging quickly into clear twilight.24

What a triumphant explosion of emotions that was!   I reeled with the shock of it.   For the first time in weeks I was breathing the free air, not on some excursion to or from Thornhill’s office but as a free man would breathe it.   I felt a cool breeze on a cheek that could not possibly have felt it, still sitting motionless in the cell.   I am sure I broke down, sobbing some stumbling prayer of thanks to the gods, simply admiring it.   And I knew where I was going; the warden was taking my letter to the cavern.   I was returning home, finally, after this long sojourn in crippling confinement.   I was in convulsing bliss, my mind and my heart pounding, the gods guiding me as smoothly and lovingly as they ever had.   It felt like the first time, truly.25

The warden got in his car and drove through the entire city.   Apparently the cavern, which was near the outskirts, was on the opposite side of the city from the jail.   For a long time I watched him meander through the streets.   It was like the excitement a child must feel in the hours before his birthday party, or the feeling of an actor sitting backstage, about to make his dramatic entrance.   It was incredible.   Every second I thought to myself that the tension and the nervousness could not be any worse; but the next second, I found that it was.   I was shaking uncontrollably, tensing the muscles in my calves and in my throat, aching for the sight of that bohemian place, with the clothes and blankets and sundry objects strewn everywhere, the stereo in the center like some kind of altar, and most of all my beautiful Orchestra lying about.   How would they take it?   Would they understand my letter, and the hidden command it contained?26

The warden parked his car on the side of the road.   I had never really looked at the place from the outside like this, at least not so that I remembered the scene.   It was about the same height as the warehouses that surrounded it, and the same dimensions.   But it was perfectly square, not rounded as the others were, and it had no windows or any kind of decoration on the outside.   It was plain and grey.   A single, tiny-looking doorway—without a door—stood in the center of the front wall.   It looked like nothing, but of all the things in this world it was the greatest, for it was there that the Truth was still kept in spite of all.27

The warden walked into the doorway, and O! the sight and the sound and the incredible rush of that moment will be with me forever.   The air of the open sky had been refreshing, true, but the air of the cavern was thick with wisdom and with the smoke of drugs.   There was no sound but the quiet lull of conversation, where Leslie and Coco and some others were having a discussion in the corner.   The tie-dyed fabric was still everywhere to be found; the stereo still stood, although it was not playing.   Flash was picking at an acoustic guitar so softly that you could hear nothing but a vague murmur from it.   The rest of the group—save Baba and Alanna and I, for obvious reasons—were lounging about on blankets, some probably sleeping.28

The place looked essentially the same as it had the last time I saw it fully.   The same calmness and tranquillity were there; the same people, the same positions, the same smooth grey walls.   But the feeling in the room was different.   Before the peace had been that of relaxation and confidence; now it was the uneasy peace of insecurity and loneliness.   They missed us.   I was aware suddenly that they had been quietly mourning Baba’s and my absences for weeks.   I was seared with tender affection for these my children.   They truly loved me and Baba, because we led them, and they knew in their souls that what we taught them was right.   They were so tender, so soft, so beautiful; even Oki at his towering height and his biceps as tight as ever was tenderhearted in his love.   With a sudden surge of recognition I saw my beautiful Yael, her eyes hollow and her cheeks listless, staring off into space.29

When the warden entered the room they all looked up at him in confusion.   I understood by the grace of the gods that no one outside the Orchestra had entered the cavern since my arrest.   We had presumably been identified in the newspapers as Dangerous And Fiendish Killers, and our Criminal Hideout had no doubt been similarly described.   So when the respectable-seeming warden entered the cavern, it caused much consternation.30

“I have here a piece of writing which is supposedly the epilogue to a book,” the warden said.   Coco and Oki exchanged a look of almost comical confusion.   “Apparently, a recently-arrested murderer, a fellow known as Rain, was writing this book.”31

There was all of a sudden a flurry of motion.   Sadie and Charlie were closest to him, and therefore grabbed him and shook him.   “Do you mean that what you’ve got there is written by Rain?” Sadie nearly screamed.32

“Yes, but just a moment,” the warden began.   Charlie ripped the paper from his grasp and hurried over to the others, all of whom were at this point up and about.   Yael seemed almost ready to fight for the paper.   The warden seemed about to protest, but thought better of it and left the cavern without a word.   My awareness—thank the gods for all their blessings—stayed.33

Charlie hurriedly unfolded the paper as the rest of them fell silent.   He read it aloud, quite movingly I felt, and let it fall.   There was silence for a moment, and then Flash spoke.34

“Well, the question remains, doesn’t it?” he said, looking around.   “Can we do the Fandango?”35

“Do you think he really wants us to?” Rhiannon countered.   “Alone?   Without his guidance, or Baba’s at the very least?   How the fuck do you propose we do it?”36

“What else could the PS mean?” Flash asked rhetorically.   “And then look at the rest of the thing, there’s a hint there too.   If the world is itself, then it ends in a bang a thousand years hence.   And then later, it says it’s been a thousand years since he started writing.   Meaning it ends now.”37

“Are we supposed to get to Golgotha by ourselves?   Rain never told us how to get there.”38

“I don’t think we have to,” Flash said.   “I think we can do it here, now, in this city.   Bring down the fury of the gods.”39

“Flash, the gods don’t speak to you, do they?” Nicole asked, astonished.40

“No.”41

“Then, how do you know what to do?”42

“I don’t know what to do.   I haven’t the foggiest idea what to do.”   He looked around, breathing hard.   I suddenly felt that he was infused with Beelzebub, something I had not felt at all, ever, from any member of the Orchestra except Baba.   It thrilled me, and it thrilled him as he kept speaking.   “I do know that we have to do this for him.   He’s been locked up by the Man for weeks.   I can’t imagine the torture he’s going through!   And he’s asking us to try.   After everything he’s given us—shelter, food, music, companionship, and the absolute truth of Beelzebub—we owe him this, don’t you think?”43

Yael chimed in.   “I’ve stood here for too long, sleeping on concrete floors, screaming my rage to music instead of to the world.   Let’s kill ‘em all.   Even if Rain didn’t mean for us to do it, I think we should; to avenge him!   He’s been assaulted by the Man.   What the fuck kind of disciples are we, if we don’t fight back?”44

The Orchestra murmured affirmatively.   Sadie rose her hands and silenced them.   “It’s the new moon.   We have to perform the Sacrifice.   After we are rested, and we have bathed in each other’s blood, we will go out, each of us, and perform our fury upon the people.   Yes?”45

“Yes!” was the cry.   I had almost forgotten the Sacrifice, so consumed was I by mundane matters of courts and attorneys.   I offered a prayer to Beelzebub for forgiveness, which He gave almost before I thought it through.   I felt that even the gods were relieved to have me back in their corner of the ring, even in this ethereal state.   It was a giddy feeling, to be so in favor with everyone.46

Sadie went to the corner and drew out the Sacrificial blade.   No one but myself had ever performed the Sacrifice before, but I realized that Sadie had always been watching me.   She had been with me since before the concept of the Sacrifice had arisen in my mind, and she was there when I first explained to my followers.   She knew the purpose of it, and the procedure; and now she demonstrated it admirably as she walked slowly, as if in a trance, back to the circle.   Had I ever been that stately, that beautiful?47

She was in the center, now, and in very little time all of the Orchestra had stripped what little clothing they had been wearing.   She sat, but instead of raising the knife and slicing at the part of herself where she felt most powerful, she laid it on the ground.   She threw her head back and wailed, shrieked, filled the entire echoing space with her wordless, tragic song.   It was the music I had always loved most deeply, devoid of any extraneous shaping or pretension.   It was pure emotion that she howled there, and it was surpassingly beautiful.48

Yael joined her, her voice much lower and dirge-like, providing rhythm and a kind of panoramic scenery to the sound painting.   Charlie then took up the song, and Katrina, and Coco, and Leslie, and all of them stumbling over the last, caterwauling in gushing arpeggios, each voice glancing off all others in a tremendous cacophony of noise.49

As I listened, the sound shaped itself into patterns that I saw as vividly as the rainbow.   Incredibly, the sounds ran together and harmonized in a demented fashion; the walls rang with echoed bursts of calculated music, the entire Orchestra now seemingly improvising as one instrument.   Tears were streaming down Sadie’s face in the center of the circle, and down almost every face surrounding her.   Suddenly she jumped to her feet and screamed louder and rougher than any sound I had ever heard.   She silenced the rest of them as she seemed to tear her throat apart with her grief, her inhuman shrieking growing louder and higher, all eyes on her now as she seemed about to shatter the very air before her bloodshot eyes with the incredible force of her screaming.50

All at once Oki jumped up from the circle and ran for the door.   This I had not foreseen, and neither had anyone else.   He seemed perturbed by all the screaming, and was jogging at a respectable pace.   He had not gone three steps, however, when Fink and Charlie and Jewel, who were closest to the door, had leaped from where they sat and pinned him to the ground.   He was wildly trying to slug Fink in the stomach as Sadie quickly ran over to him.   She stood over him like a goddess.51

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” she asked icily.   “Where are you going?”52

“You guys are all fucking crazy!” he said.   “Don’t you get it?   He’s gone!   We don’t have to listen to his bullshit anymore, about fucking Beezlebub or whatever.   He can’t terrorize us any longer.   We can be free, we can be our own Orchestra instead of his.”53

Mouths were wide.   Silence echoed in the cavern just as the howling had only seconds before.   I would have cried, if I had been in control of my eyes.   I had loved this man, and sheltered him.   He had been in a knife fight, and I had defended him because I thought I saw a spark of the gods in him.   I thought he was mine, just as everyone else was.   He was Alanna.   And I perceived that he and those like him might turn this whole group into Alanna.   I prayed to the gods not to let this happen.54

“He is our Father,” Sadie said, her voice trembling.   “His gods are the makers and destroyers of the world.   They willed this thing to be done; we must do it.”55

“Isabelle,” he said.   How did he know her old name?   “Listen to me, Isabelle.   Because that’s who you are now.   You’re not Sadie anymore, you don’t have to be.   I can be Mitch, not Oki.   We don’t have to live by his rules.   We don’t have to kill anybody.   Do you think that by doing this Fandango bullshit, you could bring him back?”56

“Maybe not,” said Katrina suddenly, “but it is what he would have us do.   We must do it.”57

“No!”   Oki shook Fink from his arms and stood.   “We are free people now!   We’ve all been under his spell too long.   You guys can’t think for yourselves anymore.   It’s fucking scary.   But just believe me.   I don’t want to be the new leader of this shit, if that’s what you’re thinking.   No way.   I don’t think we need a leader.   But it’s like Charles Manson, you’re all like the fucking Manson Family.   It’s freaky.”58

“The Manson Family were beautiful people,” Sadie replied.   “Their only failing is that they didn’t get Helter Skelter to come down.   Well, we’re going to get that far.   So help us, because we’re doing it one way or the other.”59

Oki shrugged.   “Whatever.   Go ahead, but I want no part of it.   Goodbye, you crazy fucks.”60

He began walking to the door.   Sadie stared after him, uncomprehending.   She shrugged and started walking back listlessly to the circle.   The tension in the room had not died, however, and suddenly Flash and Zoso jumped up from their places and tackled him again.   Fink was right behind them, and Charlie, and Yael, her strength equal to any of the men’s.   They spread him out, naked, on the floor of the cavern, and the rest of the group seemed possessed of a single mind as they reformed their circle around him.   Sadie, still standing poised like a pagan high priestess, walked to the center, and tall as she already was she seemed to tower over Oki and his captors in her rage.   She still held the Sacrificial blade, and without a word she raised it high over her head and brought it down into his chest.61

He bellowed like an elephant as she brought the blade back out, his blood already welling up and spilling across his dark chest.   I marveled at the determination of her will and the strength of her body as she stabbed him again and again, ripping his chest and his stomach apart.   She scattered the sickly-yellow organs across the floor of the cavern, now screaming again as she had before, but this time there were words to it if I could only hear them.   She was so beautiful, now, her arms drenched in blood and bile to her elbows, still utterly committed to me and to the gods, and to exacting our penance from the world.   I could feel that all the Orchestra were now more devout than they had ever been, and that after their long separation from me my letter had come as a reassurance of order, just as the gods’ return to me had reaffirmed my steadfast faith in them.62

Sadie had by now sawed the head off of something that no longer in any way resembled a human body.   What had once been a beautiful, if treacherous, man was now the product of a one-woman slaughterhouse, a ragged heap of bones half-covered with flesh and slick with blood and worse things.   She gripped his head by his thick Negro hair as she raised it above her own.63

“This is the Man,” she said, remarkably calmly.   “This is what we go out from here to do, to everyone we meet.   Be they men, women, or children; black or white; old or young; rich or poor.   This night shall be the bloodiest in history.   For Rain, and Beelzebub, and the Three Gods; we shall go.”64

Spontaneously, Coco, Katie, and Allison all rose and fled in such a flurry of activity that no one in the room had a chance to do anything about it.   I was sickened.   Had all of these people deceived me?   Why had they stayed with the group if they had not worshipped as the rest of us did?   I could not comprehend it.   The majority of them stayed, still in a circle surrounding Sadie and the ragged mess at her feet, but now there were chinks in the circle where the three had sat.   Why had I never seen that they were not committed to the gods?   I was not angry at them, I was simply hurt, as I had been on that night so incredibly long ago when Sarah had walked away from me as I sat on the edge of a pool watching the stars.65

Sadie left little time for self-reflection.   “After them!” she cried.   “They shall be the first to go!   In the name of Beelzebub, hurry!”66

So it was that the Orchestra flew from the cavern, nude and enraged, chased out by Sadie, who came running out last of all flailing her defiled arms in the air and yelling at them to hurry.   The twilight was quickly fading but I could see as clearly as ever as Sadie ran down the road after the retreating Orchestra, whom I could already see were splintering off, separating into ones and twos as they infiltrated the city.   Sadie herself jogged down the row of warehouses and made a beeline for the red-light district.67

She had not even truly entered it when she was stopped by a trio of tough-looking boys.   They took a single look at her beautiful naked body and literally began salivating.   They did not worry about the half-dried gore on her arms, apparently, since they seized her and started dragging her down to a place where they expected to rape her.   She tried to twist away from them, saw it was useless, and spoke.68

“Listen, boys,” she said.   “I’ll fuck you guys silly, but listen to me first and I won’t struggle while you’re doing it.   I want you three to take me to like an alley or something where you know there won’t be any people, somewhere close.   Take off your pants and I’ll blow all three of you.”69

They were stoned and stupid and did not for a moment question her motives.   They picked her up and jogged to a nearby alley which I had visited on more than one occasion, most memorably when I had found Yael there sobbing and half-dead after being raped.   They lined themselves up against a wall—the slaughterhouse conveyer belt, if they only knew—and pulled their pants down around their ankles.   Sadie chose the one on the near end, who looked to be the leader, and knelt before him, smiling.   I could see her plan, and I marveled at it.   The boy was smirking, his hard cock sweet and quivering in her hand.   As she took him into her mouth she felt his tattered jeans as discreetly as she could.   She apparently found what she was looking for very quickly.   She suddenly deep throated the whole thing, causing the boy to moan and close his eyes as she reached into his pocket and drew out a switchblade knife.   She pulled it out of her mouth, kissed it, and leaped backwards.70

The leader of the gang barely had time to look confused before he was treated in the same manner as Paul Henderson.   He fell to the ground screaming.   It was almost as if she knew I was watching, so cold and evil was she.   She, as well as all the others who had left the cavern, were possessed for the first time in their lives.   The fury of Lucifer shown through her eyes.71

The other two boys, trained for this sort of attack, leapt for her.   She gashed one through the throat but the other one landed on her and knocked the knife from her hand, leaving it embedded in the dying boy’s neck.   Her attacker had her on the ground and, his hand clenched in her hair, slammed her head against the ground.72

She screamed in pain and rage.   She spit in his face, and in the split second this gave her, she bit onto his lip.   I grimaced—or would have, in my body—and flushed with pride for my daughter.   The boy made a muffled noise and lost his balance, collapsing onto her.   She rolled off of him and spit out the piece of his lip that she had bit off.73

The boy’s face as he scrambled up was contorted in terror.   In a panic, he began wildly to run away, something that Sadie didn’t take kindly to at all.   She raced after him.   He was faster, but he in his panic forgot the streets and led her into a dead-end.   She butchered him there, gouged out his eyes, and ran off into the night with them.74

My vision seemed to shift over the dark city, as if I were watching a film happening all around me.   The gods guided me to Katrina, who was still on the trail of the runaways from the cavern.   Coco had ditched the two girls, but Katie and Allison were still running together.   It became apparent that they had no clear idea where they were going, and since they were naked they could not enter any building without being thrown out.   They were merely wearing themselves out, while Katrina was full of the gods and seemed to be as fresh as if she had been born a half-hour before.   Katie suddenly fell, and Allison in a panic tried to pull her up.   As one, they turned to face Katrina.75

She was tiny but she was amazingly vicious.   She jumped on Allison, pulling her hair and biting into her throat.   Katie tried to pull her off but Katrina was locked like Gollum to Allison’s screaming body.   Katie wrapped her hands around Katrina’s throat and attempted to strangle her.   Katrina simply threw herself backward, flattening Katie onto the ground.   She jumped up, kicked Katie across the face so hard that she simply ceased moving, and was knocked to the ground by Allison’s kick.   She screamed in anger, making a dive for Allison’s legs, scraping her chest excruciatingly on the ground as she did so.   She brought Allison down, then kicked her in a like manner.   Heaving and grunting, she picked up each of their heads in turn and smashed their skulls against the road until they took on the consistency of mush.   Then she too vanished.76

Jewel had gone to the Hotel Street crew and obtained from them a shotgun, with which she had shot them all dead.   Seventeen men lay dead behind her as she walked out the door like some pulp-fiction femme fatale.   I passed over her in a glimpse.77

I then came to my beautiful Yael, who was sitting alone in relative quiet in the park.   Before her was the body of Coco, which she had, after her custom, nailed to the ground through the temples.   She was stroking his cold flesh, as if massaging lotion into his back.   She ran her fingers through his hair, kissing his neck and his lips gently, like a lover.   I tried desperately to reach out and touch her, to lick his blood off her fingers, but of course I could not.   She kissed his chest softly, entrancingly, almost as if she knew she was being watched.   It was so arousing I kept expecting Coco to moan and pull her into himself, even as he lay dead.78

She climbed on top of him now, and gently drew the nail from his head.   She pricked her finger with it, and when a droplet of blood appeared she pushed it into his mouth, as if expecting him to suck it dry.   She smiled and began to draw on his chest with the nail, slicing the flesh.   As she worked the word Lucifer emerged entrenched in his cold skin.   I was transported by the sheer perfection of it, the absolute terror and beauty of what she was doing.   I could not even think; I could only watch.79

She seized one of the torn-up bits of skin in her hand and started to rip it from the body.   As she did this, however, and as she continued to skin him in the strangely deserted park, and to lay his skin carefully separate from his sinewy and messily-emerging corpse, a police siren approached.   It jolted me awake and I tried to yell at her to hear, tried to convince the gods to warn her.   But she continued, entranced by the methodical ripping of his skin.   She had covered almost his entire front abdomen.   She moved down to his thighs as I heard the police siren suddenly stop, and a car door open.   I cringed.   I loved her, and loved what she did.   She could not be caught.80

Into my field of vision suddenly stepped a familiar figure.   He leveled a flashlight on Yael and I realized with a sickening shock that it was the same wretched policeman who had walked into the cavern and arrested me, what seemed like years ago.   Yael was blinded and held up her bloody hand to block her eyes.   The man grabbed her arm and raised her to her feet.81

“You!” he said suddenly in recognition.   “I’ll be a hairy toad!   You’re the whore from the madman’s cult, aren’t you?   Out in the outskirts?   Rain and Baba?   You and me have a little unfinished business to get to, then I’ll be arresting you.”   Yael lowered her arm in disbelief.82

“You’ll never catch me,” she said, her teeth clenched, her voice high and bizarrely cute.   “You’ll never catch any of us.   This whole city will die tonight.”83

“Any of who?”84

“The Orchestra!   We’re all out here, except for a few, who are all going to end up like this guy here.”   She nudged Coco’s head with her foot.85

“Good Lord,” the policeman breathed.   “We’ve been getting calls all night, all over the city.   It’s all you guys?”86

Yael smiled proudly.   “Yes.”87

The man shrugged.   “Whatever.”   He pulled his gun out of its holster and leveled it at her.   “You’re under arrest for murder.   Suck my cock.”88

Such a non-sequitur I had never heard from a member of the establishment, and I wanted very badly to laugh.   Yael shrugged and knelt before him.   She pulled his stiff uniform down and I again felt like laughing.   The man’s penis was miniscule.   Yael didn’t show the slightest sign of disgust, however, and gently licked the tip of it.   She looked up at him, smiling innocently.89

Then she pulled a move which I had never seen before, but which was decidedly brilliant.   She quickly brought her head down and then quickly up again, head-butting him in the balls.   At the same time, she pulled his legs backward; and, being weakened considerably from the blow to his naughty bits, he fell on his butt.   He reflexively pulled the trigger but his shot went into the sky as he tumbled backwards.   She scooted out from under him as he fell and jumped on his wrist so hard I swear I heard it crack.   His hand opened and she grabbed the pistol.   She jumped away from him and kept the weapon aimed at his head.90

Fucked be all men, Yael!   All hail!   I needed to scream it out.   I could feel Beelzebub smiling at her as she approached him slowly, sashaying her hips.   “How now, brown cow?” she asked.91

“Listen.   I’m sorry.   I don’t know what came—”92

She shot him in the leg and he bellowed, as the saying goes, like a stuck pig.   She giggled like a schoolgirl and circled around him slowly.   “I’m sorry.   Did I break your concentration?   It’s just that I have an idea, here.”   She moved backwards towards Coco’s mutilated corpse, still training the gun on his head.   She picked up the nail she had used on him and walked back over.   “Give me your arm.”93

“What?”94

“No, sweetie, we’re done reciting Pulp Fiction.   Just give me your arm.”95

“Look, I’m sorry for everything.   Just let me go and I swear, I’ll forget you exist.   I’ll go back and tell them that there was no one here, that it was a false alarm.”96

She sighed.   She knelt down, right next to his face, and thrust the barrel of the gun into his throat.   She still spoke in her kittenish voice.   “Now, come on, big boy.   Don’t be difficult.   Just give me your arm.   Please?   I’ll be your best friend.”97

He grimaced as he rose his shaking right arm to where she could grab it.   She took the nail and gently gashed his wrist.   He screamed in pain and fear but she seemed not to hear it as she sat down beside him, cradling his hand in her lap.   The man stared at her, horrified, uncomprehending, and both Yael and I took such delight in his expression that we shared a sort of voodoo bond of experience.   She raised his limp arm over his face.98

“Drink.”99

The man, still shaking, simply stared back at her.100

“Drink the blood.   It’s sweet and warm.   You’ll feel better.   Just do it.”101

He slowly opened his mouth and let his own hot blood flow into it.   Yael pressed his wrist into his face, and I beheld the unbelievable beauty and truth of what she had here created: the circle.   The blood flowed out of his wrist, back into himself, entered the bloodstream, and fed the never-ending stream of gain and loss, of life and death that was the cycle of all things in the universe.   And Yael, watching over him, was radiant and full of the gods, possessed by them, ruling over the endless, monotonous, pathetic cycle of life.102

Then suddenly she broke the circle, shoving the man’s arm aside, as we were meant to do: destroy the cycle of all things, let destruction rule, cause everything that exists to flow to the end of its allotted time and then cease to be for eternity.   The gods were ourselves, and more than ourselves, and through us they gave this final summation and conclusion to the world.   This beautiful girl conceived of this completely, and of its beauty, and so created this microcosm as if specifically for me to see, to know that she understood.   It was amazing, to realize that she understood.   I had never known that any of them understood until then.   I would have wept and screamed and thrown myself at the walls of my cell had I been there in spirit as well as in form.   I had not failed; I had succeeded admirably, and nearly every one of the tender charges that Beelzebub had sent unto me had flourished into an ideal.   The Orchestra were truly holy.103

Yael jumped upon his quivering form.   He was so horrified, so maddened, so destroyed by Yael’s supreme ability to torture, that he could not resist as she positioned the nail at his temple, and with the butt of the gun began to hammer it through.   With each successive tap she faded from my vision.104

I was elated.   The world was crumbling, each particle of it in turn.   The Fandango was come.   For two long years I had waited for this, the violence and the rage and the overwhelming beauty of it—it was like being drowned in honey, breathing it, tasting it, feeling it invade every pore of my body, sticking together the strands of my hair.   It was so sweet, and so rich, and it was now and forever, and all things would ever be this way, my way, the way of the gods.   I sat in a cell, contained by walls and men and sickly principles of Right and Wrong; but I ruled this night.   Beelzebub was no longer merely my Master; He was myself, and I was He, and we flowed into each other and into all the other hellish sprites of this night, the blackest of all nights.   We would break down the walls and kill the men and unmake forever the boundaries of Right and Wrong; and Beauty, which was already sweeping the city and beginning to conquer it, would be the only criterion of existence.105

In a flash there was Charlie and Fink, in a parking garage, and between them a young girl.   They were in the classic position; that is, the girl was on all fours, Charlie was behind her, and Fink was in front.   They were cutting her up as they fucked her, this time symbolizing the symbiosis of sex and violence: Jehovah’s ultimate pleasure melded to Lucifer’s ultimate pain.   She kept rocking back and forth between them, blithely, as if she could not feel the knives protruding from her back.   Her nose lay on the floor next to Charlie’s foot.   She was covered in blood.   From her lips emanated a sound that was not of this world.   It was ecstasy and torture and rapture and orgasm and death and rebirth and the shrill horror of life, and it echoed in the empty room full of painted lines and One-Hour Parking.   No place was safe in its ungodliness; we would devour everything.106

Then there was Flash, driving a pickup truck at breakneck speed around the town.   In the bed of the truck was the owner of the vehicle, dead or asleep, I couldn’t tell.   The radio was playing Zeppelin and the windows were down, and Flash was singing along at the top of his screeching voice, doing a pretty good Robert Plant impression.   He barreled down Hotel Street, sending the prostitutes scattering for cover.   He cut over a corner of the park and headed back downtown.107

I saw his eyes focus on a hotel.   It was a high-class establishment, and I had once said that I wanted to blow it up, for a gag.   I saw the wheels in his mind turning as he fed the engine, his foot still clamped on the brake.   He took a deep breath, the motor roaring now, and released the brake.108

I wanted to scream No! but it was too late.   The truck rocketed forward, up the stairs, through the pillars at the entrance, through the class doors.   It careened through the lobby as people screamed and pointed.   I could see Flash relax his body totally an instant before the vehicle smashed into the wall, exploding and sending pieces of itself flying around the room.109

I stared, uncomprehending, at the growing flames.   The scene would not fade.   When I screamed for fires in the cities, I had not meant for my loves to throw themselves in with the infidels!   But this was what had happened.   And suddenly I was filled with dread.   I knew for certain, somehow, that they would all do this, they would all immolate themselves, baptize themselves in fire and pass on in their mad efforts to please me and the gods.   I saw and heard the screams of the people in the lobby.   I saw one woman drop her briefcase and run for the door.   She cut her foot on a shard of glass, but she ran on, trailing bloody footprints out into the night.110

Yes, there was beauty in this.   Fire was beautiful.   It was hot and destructive and sensationally colorful, and it reduced these snobbish people in seconds to mere animals, cowering in the jungle, afraid.   It would all have been perfect, but Flash had gone into it and he would never come out.   I loved him more than I knew until then.   He had been the newest member of the Orchestra, but he had taken to it instantly and become devoted, discussing the gods and the Man with Sadie and Rhiannon and I.   He had sat beside me that night I had witnessed the incredible dance of the stars.   He had first brought us the news of how to split the stick.   He was gone to me now, gone into some other place.   I wanted to cry.   Surely the gods had some plan, but I could not fathom it.111

I came to Rhiannon now, beautiful and exotic as she lay prone on the roof of a house in the suburbs.   She was planning to enter the house through a window, I saw, and slaughter those inside.   But then she seemed to be struck by inspiration, because she rose suddenly and scampered off the roof.112

She hurried silently into a tool shed.   She came out a few moments later with a bottle of oil and a lighter.   My heart sank.   I had been right—they would all burn.   I wanted to beg her not to do it, but of course I could not.   The gods were guiding her and I no longer knew why they did what they did.   She poured the oil all over one wall of the house, then held the flame to it.   The cheap wood burst into flame immediately, and she ran back into the tool shed, returning with more fuel for the fire.113

The occupants of the house—a mother, a father, and a young child—ran out and around to where the fire was.   They stared at Rhiannon in blank shock.   She slapped the man across the face and he fell dangerously close to the blaze.   The mother tried to pull him away, and Rhiannon took this small space of time to take the child in her arms and jump into the inferno.114

I watched on, thoroughly miserable now, as more and more of them did the same.   Leslie and Sadie met up near the park, and ran in to light the trees on fire.   I stared after them.   Sadie had been there for too long to go now, I thought, but as I watched she danced around the spreading flames, and threw herself in eventually.   I sighed, defeated.   Sadie was gone—Sadie!   She was the rock in the storm, almost as much as Baba.   With a start I realized Baba was still in jail and could not burn this night.   There was some little comfort in that.115

Jewel saw the flames rising from the park and ran back to the house on Keating Street where she had left the Hotel Street crew.   The whole place was in flames a few minutes later, and Jewel along with it.   Nicole somehow had a chainsaw, and she ran screaming with it to a gas pump to cut it open and spill the gasoline over the street and the other pumps and herself.   Zoso ran howling through the slums, his eyes bulging, his arms flailing, flames spouting from his hair.   I saw these things almost in a daze.   As much as I loved them, I was only waiting now for one thing, something that I knew I would have to see very soon.   The gods had moved every one of them to this.   She could not escape.116

Yael, with her hands over her head, contorting, wailing, her body twisting and erupting as if in orgasm—she stood alone, a mad priestess howling her soul for the last time.   A crowd watched her from a distance as she took off, running flat-out down the street, dodging cars with millimeter precision.   The road ran nearly the full length of the city, from the rich district in the hills all the way to the outskirts where the cavern was, the empty womb.   She was covered in half-dried blood and as she ran she still screamed intermittently, completely beyond any semblance of rationality or control.   Cars swerved around her as she ran, trying as it seemed to run past the universe itself into the arms of the gods.   Suddenly she dashed down a side street towards a mountain of flames where Nicole had decimated the gas station.   Her hair matted and clumped by blood, her arms flung out, her voice warbling past thought, her legs moving at superhuman speed—she leapt into the blaze.   Her beautiful hair was gone in an instant.   I could see her face twisting in unimaginable pain—and then it ceased to move.   Her skin began to crackle and wither, and to turn yellow.   She was consumed, as were all my children, and all my hopes.   And then there was only flame, rising here and there in the city wherever the Orchestra had managed to ignite it; and in my mind all converged, and everything was devoured.117

None of it mattered.   The flames would not reach me here, where I sat, motionless, dazed, lost, in my cell.   The final light of the gods would be extinguished, and I would live on here into miserable obscurity, and if perhaps I was able to see Baba now and then it would only be a reminder of what I could have had.   I felt the gods recede from me for the last time.   I moved my arm instinctively to brush the hair out of my face, a meaningless gesture.   There was nothing to see.   My back ached.   I was alone now, and worthless; and I knew that I always would be.118