Infernus

He flipped through a few pages in his in box, and frowned. “I wasn’t aware there was a preface.”

“No, don’t look for it. I didn’t include one. What the poor soul was forced to write, apparently, was this: ‘As in Hell, so there are tears continually in Heaven. Both weep evermore. One feels only horror and an unspeakable pain; the other sees nothing but beauty, and can only be grateful.’”

As she was leaving, she thrust a small piece of paper into his hand. “You can choose to include this as part of the book, if you choose. I don’t know what to do with it. It was an explanation I wasn’t sure belonged in the book.”

He looked at it. It was seven short numbered notes. He read it as he stood there, and she waited, glaring at him the whole time.

“A few things to remember about ‘life’ in Infernus (I must tell you a few things so that we can communicate in a common language).

1) You (whoever is receiving this as an exercise in automatic writing) are writing what happens to me in the present. Everything you write will come to you in the present tense; it’s up to you to change that, if you feel it is necessary.

2) The reason this is so is because there is no time here. A fitting phrase that is as follows: To live in a nanosecond that never ends. It is a definition that can be understood by you. Everything that will ever happen to you in Infernus happens during the same nanosecond. Imagine every paper cut, every severed finger, every toothache, every disembowelment, every cold, all happening to everyone at once.

3) How you are able to hear me at all from my eternal exile is unknown to me. I just sense that it is so.

4) In Infernus, no one ever tells the truth. There is no longer any need for truth or maintaining the truth — for there is no hope here. Everything in Infernus is in an absolute state.

5) Since all the pain of all mankind is shared by all, no real conversations take place. Consequently, no permission is ever asked for anything, and none is ever given by anyone. The strong take what does not belong to them — the souls of others.

6) All of the mouths of all mankind are opened as far as “inhumanly” possible in a permanent Scream Eternal. All happens here through a veritable sea, a tumultuous wall of sound. Ten billion souls screaming and screaming and screaming.

7) Either you are made to do things by those who outrank you in authority (the only thing that determines strength here) or the words scrape through your brain like a migraine. No, a migraine is bearable compared to this. This is like a bag of broken glass that sits in your head that someone can shake when they wish to. No actual conversations take place ever — all is done in the brain as bursts of hideous migraines. The smallest words sound like hammers. However, in order to convey everything I am compelled to share with you, you must write down everything that I dictate to you, so it will flow, as a narrative.”

“See what I mean,” she spoke in a tired voice. “I’m not even sure where I’d put it. Maybe just throw it away, right?”

Then she left his office, and closed his door with a smart, metallic click. She barely stifled a laugh, but thought instead: He bought that, hook, line, and sinker. She walked to the elevator, and pushed the down button. Dark Brotherhood, indeed. “More like Dark Motherhood,” she said aloud, but hadn’t meant to.

“I thought so,” he spoke softly behind. He pulled the lit cigar out of his mouth and blew smoke between them, obscuring them.

She turned, smiled, and entered the quickly closing elevator. They never saw each other again.

She went home and had a dream that night that she was floating beneath 17,000 layers of flame. The same dream she had had ever since she was a little girl.

* * *

A brief silence followed his last words. Then a male voice in the back of the room said, “What the hell was that?”

Another voice said, “Hey!”

The teacher stood. She sighed, and the class could hear her breathing. “Do you plan to come back and finish this story?”

“Yes, I -”

“That story was boring!” an anonymous male voice shouted at the back of the class.

“Boring? What? Why?”

The young man stood up at the back of the class. “It’s just a conversation between two talking heads.”

The old man was clearly surprised. “But, I thought it was exciting because it is so necessary to what follows.”

“No,” he repeated. “I would suggest that you put this chapter at the end of the book, as an appendix, so anyone could read it, if they wished, when the whole thing was over. Just go right to chapter two, where I assume the meat of the book begins.”

“Hmmm,” ruminated the nude man. “That might not be such a bad idea after all. I’ll think about it, how about that?”

The young man sat back down without speaking again. The nude man smiled, and began deliberately, slowly putting back on his clothes. “You will ask me to stop reciting my book somewhere during the next few chapters. Nearly everyone does.” Bright sunshine was glaring through the windows in amber streams and bathing his naked, hairy body.

A woman in the room asked, “Why?”

“Because people tell me it is hideous, unrelenting and it gives them nightmares.”

Another voice: “Isn’t it just a story?”

“Yes,” he said, pulling his pants to his waist. “I made it up. Completely! We cannot proceed unless that is established first. It is complete and utter fiction.”

A large, beefy young man stood up. “Then why? Why would someone tell you to stop reading it?”

He calmly looked at the young man, sunlight glittering in his green eyes. “Because,” he began, then laughed, “maybe it is a novel in Hell.”

The young man smiled and shot back, “You mean a novel about Hell?”

“You tell me next week what you think,” the old man said, wearing his pants now.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” said another.

“I hope not.” He began pulling his T-shirt over his short-cropped, gray hair. “It is merely a novel and a short one at that. But, what if I could get inside your head? What then?”

“I hope you do,” said a young woman named Josie.

“With a blender?” he asked, then left.

AFTERWORD

“THE REALITY OF INFERNUS”

In 1991, I discovered that my first lover, Michael was HIV+. His previous lover found out that year that he was HIV+, so I insisted Michael be tested. I wanted to find out what my future was going to be like. It wasn’t until ’93 that he began contracting the first signs of AIDS.

That was bad enough, being confronted with the reality that someone you love very much is terminal. That you are actually going to lose them. And you feel so amazingly helpless because there isn’t one damned thing that you can do about it. The utter helplessness you feel is overwhelming.

I’ll never forget Michael leaning into me as we sat on the couch one evening and saying to me, “I don’t wanna die.” We both cried together, silently, for a little while.

At some point in ’93, I began thinking of writing some book as therapy. I had no idea what I would write.