fingers break the surface of his back with gentle insistence.
Shivering nerve-shatterings that might have resembled orgasms racked both their bodies as Red’s hands snapped nerve and muscle. Enduring this moment, over and over again, for a thousand centuries.
Not even
And this, too, he came to find out in the end, was a lie.
“Yes, my beloved.” When his black empty slits smiled down on the man, red tears fell and sizzled down his cheeks like running sores. “I coveted you many millions of years ago. When I knew that you were going to be ‘in flesh,’ I watched and ached and loved you from a distance.
“It was me that inspired the boy to push you off the wagon so you would jump onto the rusty nail when you were four. I kissed the crust of the scab, because of my desire for you. I led the other, when you were but a mere man, to throw you to the ground that broke your foot. I kissed the sweaty foot from below and you had a sense that someone was there, didn’t you?” The man humbly nodded. “I command you to always love your Fire Father, and always wash me with your tongue.”
“Dr. Mountfountain, your shock therapy is progressing rapidly. You hardly ever tell me anymore of actually living the lives as demons of Hell.
“Now, that
…brrrrrrzappp!…
The room was silent for a moment, making sure he was finished. Then it erupted. Many voices said things like, “Why would you even
Professor Delaney stood and walked to the middle of the class, her plastic shoes clacking on the hardwood floor. “Class! Class!” She clapped her hands. “Now, really. One at a time. This
The nude man stood grinning at them, pleased with himself.
The same big, beefy young man spoke. “If this were a former time, you would be hauled off to jail for writing a story like that. It’s shameful, at best.”
“Yes, it is,” the man said. “I agree with you.” Slowly, he began putting his clothes back on.
A young woman, who identified herself as Student Mortensen, spoke. “Chapter One” does not lead anybody to believe the novel will proceed in that manner. You told us before that you made this up. That it was fiction.”[1]
“It is,” he said. “Confused? Good. I intend to tip over every preconceived idea you have about conventional narrative. To you, young lady, I would repeat what C.S. Lewis wrote in the beginning of
“Maybe we really will hang you.”
“And not hear the
He put on his clothes and left.
The next week he came back, stripped off his clothes, quite unashamedly, stacked them neatly again, laid out a rug on the hardwood floor to sit on, and read four or five chapters in a row. A student, Dante, recorded for posterity that when one student objected to the shortness of the chapters, the nude model remarked that his records only showed them as fragments, not in their entirety. Many students reminded the man that he had proclaimed, more than once, that he had written them himself, not found them somewhere.
The old man seemed to enjoy laughing at them.
CHAPTER TWO
“THE CANTATA OF PAIN, OPUS 10”
A smile appeared on the handsome face of Red. His voice raked through the man’s brain like a claw. “Do you know what arouses me, my child?”
A puff of smoke hung in the air between them.
“No, my father,” the man said weakly.
The impossibly-muscled demon sat upon a thick throne. His two black orbs rested on the marble like massive rocks. He began pumping his member into the base of his beard. The orbs were dragged upward in their leathery sack and then quickly released to fall with a wet smack on the stone.
He rolled his head with pleasure and began to breathe heavily. He tightened his grip on the member and jerked it upward. The orbs kept slamming onto the stone, countless times, always the same.
“What really arouses me is when my son shoves his head up my ass as far as he can and… yes, that’s it, like that, my only son… and then breathes in the soul of his father. You can hear the sound of my great testicles slamming even in there, can’t you, my son? Yes, you can. Now, because you have done this great favor for me, I will do something for you. I will give you the present of always having the presence of me living inside you for eternity.”
Of course, the man knew that he was unable to do any such thing.
(In the time of the great explosion of the twenty suns — no Earth time can coordinate your understanding; here was a momentous occasion, the man was sitting in the soul of another. There are no separate identities here, only illusions of such things.)
The new arrival, a young lad of eighteen or so, spoke from blackened, smoldering lips, little puffs of smoke finding their way out now and again. “My, what is going on here? I will never again be me, will I? I will always be this entity of three.”
“Be happy, harpy. There are others who will do more than we, but you must awaken to this knowledge later. It’s no good thinking of it just yet. A green demon, your father/trainer will arrive soon. We (my father who occupies me) are only torturing you until he comes; to let you know that this is all there is. It amuses me to be in you, yet controlling you. It is orgasmic. And I will help him torture you when he arrives.”
CHAPTER THREE
“FALLEN LEAVES ARE ALREADY DEAD”
The young, baking Spanish woman ran wildly through the crowd of frying, milling villagers. The demon and his trainee watched from a hill that leaned over the village. The woman flailed her arms as she screamed into all the brains of Infernus.
“Don’t you see, my many relatives, this man you
She spread her arms high toward the blazing crimson sun. All the villagers fell to the ground like paper kites with no wind and disintegrated. She fell as well, and scattered harmlessly behind them.
