Quest for Sex, Truth & Reality

The writer urinated in his pants, just as promptly. “Don’t shoot me. I’m only a novelist.”

The masked sergeant seemed very sad. “Bock and Jones. I had to send them out. It’s a DECON field order. The lowest ranking men go into the final exclusion perimeter first.”

Final exclusion perimeter?

“I think it got them,” the sergeant said

It, the writer reckoned.

In the mask’s portals, the sergeant’s eyes looked insane. “When my daughter was an infant, I’d rock her in my lap every night.”

“That’s, uh, that’s nice, sergeant.”

“It gave me a hard on…. She’s fourteen now. I drilled a hole in the bathroom wall so I can watch her take showers.”

“They have counselors for things like that, I think.”

A dark suboctave suffused into the words. “At midnight, the wolf howls.”

The writer winced. “What?”

“I never knew my father.”

Then the sergeant shot himself in the head.

Sound and concussion hit the writer like a physical weight. BANG! It shoved him off the top of the vehicle as the sergeant’s mask quickly filled up with blood.

I HUNGER FOR TRUTH TOO, loomed the voice. BUT TO SEE IT, IT MUST BE REVEALED. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? YOU MUST UNDERSTAND.

The writer strayed into the yard. Yes, he thought he did understand now. Here was what his whole life had been leading him to. All that he’d sought, in his absurd pretensions as a seeker, had brought him to this final test. There could be no going back. His preceptor awaited, the ultimate seeker.

A second decon soldier lay dead in the grass. There were no hands at the ends of his arms, and the stumps appeared burned. Some colossal inner pressure had forced his brains out his ears.

“Get out of here, you civvie fucker!” someone commanded. A third soldier strode through shadows, a kid no more than twenty. “The light! It’s mine!”

“Are you quite sure about that?”

“It’s…God. I’m taking it!”

A TEST? WATCH.

“Watch!” the boy cried. “I’ll prove it’s mine!” He ran manic to the trench, his young face in awe above the radiant black blur. “Hard-fucking-core, man! I’m taking God!” He put his hands into the light, eyes wide as moons, and picked it up. But in only a second the light fell back to its resting place, melting through the boy’s hands. He stood up stiff and convulsed, a silent scream in his lips.

The voice trumpeted. ALAS. FAILURE.

This disconcerted the writer, for he knew he was next. For the last time in his life, then, he asked himself the ever important query. How powerful is the power of truth?

I’LL SHOW YOU.

The boy’s innards prolapsed through his mouth in a few slow, even pulses; the writer thought of a fat snake squeezing from its hole. Lungs, liver, heart, g.i. tract — everything that was inside now hung heavily outside, glimmering. Then the red heart, amid it all, stopped beating, and the boy fell dead.

ONLY FAITH CAN SAVE YOU NOW.

“I kind of figured that,” the writer admitted.

THE TRUTH IS MY SUSTENANCE. I EXIST TO EXPOSE IT, TO GIVE IT FLESH. I DRAW IT OUT SO THAT IT CAN BE REAL AND, HENCE, SUSTAINING. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? TOO OFTEN THE TRUTH HIDES UNDERNEATH. WITHOUT REVELATION, WHAT PURPOSE CAN THERE BE IN TRUTH?

Good point, the writer mused.

WE’RE BOTH SEEKERS, WE BOTH HAVE QUESTS. LET OUR QUESTS JOIN HANDS NOW IN THE REAL LIGHT OF WHAT WE SEEK.

“Yes,” said the writer.

WILL YOU MINISTER TO ME?

“Yes.”

THEN THERE IS BUT ONE DOOR LEFT FOR YOU TO ENTER. GLORY OR FAILURE. TRUTH OR LIES. THE TEST OF YOUR FAITH IS UPON YOU.

The writer looked into the shimmering trench. This would either be the end or the beginning; it was providence. To turn away now would reduce his entire life to a lie. He began to reach down, softly smiling.

I am the seeker, he thought.

He put his hands into the light.

YES!

He picked it up. He looked at it, cradled it. The glory on his face felt brighter than a thousand suns. The test was done, and he had passed.

Was the black light weeping?

CARRY ME AWAY, it said.

He took it into the Army vehicle and closed the back hatch.

THERE’S SO MUCH, SO MUCH FOR US TO SEEK.

In the driver’s compartment, the writer lit a cigarette. Looks simple enough, he observed. A t-bar, an accelerator, and a brake. Automatic transaxle, low and second. The fuel gauge read well over half.

He thought of sustenance, the first pronouncement of the light. This town had been too small; that was the problem: tiny, dry. There weren’t enough people here to provide the truth its proper flesh. But that was all right. He knew it wouldn’t take long to get to a really big city.

SUSTENANCE, SEEKER, whispered the light like a lover.

The seeker put the vehicle into gear and began to drive.

Afterword

In 1989, I was in love with a girl named Mary. Things didn’t really work out, to say the least. It was a violent relationship: she punched the crap out of me many a time, and the relationship ended abruptly as a car crash. It was a wonderful disaster, however, a fabulous catastrophe. I loved her — too oblivious to realize the incompatibility. I was blind. Much like the protagonist of this story, I felt I was searching for something, and when I found it, it was already a heap of ashes. It had changed. Something I felt was a certain truth had changed into something else. Nevertheless, my involvement with her provided a tremendous creative impetus for which I will always be grateful. She was a “formalist”; she was a ballerina — she manipulated the strictures of art with her body. Then one day she simply gave it up. She stopped searching for whatever it was she sought.

There should be some obvious symbolism in this piece. Too often the things we think are most important to us are supplanted by something altogether opposite, often something outrageous. A philosophical writer seeking “truth” finds out that the real truth is little more than a gross-out B-movie.

Pay Me

(For Betsey)

I’m trying to think what this is.

Providence? A confession? No, not even close. Words like that ring too thinly, don’t you think? Nor could it be anything so stale as a rite of passage. My God, a passage to what?

These are excuses — lies. Like touching a lover’s thigh and feeling shadow instead of flesh.