atrocities that was filling it up, strangely light.
And then:
I was still sufficiently in charge of my thoughts to recognize my name and the voice that spoke it. I reluctantly took my eyes off the cremation and looked up through the heat-crazed air towards Pappy Gatmuss. I could tell his temper was not good by the motion of his two tails, which were standing straight up from their root above his buttocks, wrapping themselves around one another, then unwrapping, all at great speed and with such force behind their intertwining it was as though each tail wanted to squeeze the other until it burst.
I inherited the rare double-tail by the way. That was one of the two gifts he gave me. But I wasn't feeling any great measure of gratitude now, as he came lumbering towards the fire, yelling at my mother as he did so, demanding to know what she was doing making bonfires, and what was she burning anyway? I didn't hear my mother's response. The blood in my head was whining now so loud that it was all I could hear. Their fights and rages could go on for hours sometimes, so I cautiously returned my gaze to the fire, which, thanks to the sheer volume of paper that was being consumed, still blazed as furiously as ever. I had been breathing short shallow breaths for several minutes now, while my heart beat a wild tattoo. Now my consciousness fluttered like a candle flame in a high wind; any moment, I knew, it would go out. I didn't care. I felt strangely removed from everything now, as though none of this was really happening.
Then, without any warning, my legs gave way, and I fainted, falling facedown —
into —
the —
fire.
So there you are. Satisfied now? I have never told anybody that story in the many hundreds of years since it happened. But I've told it to you now, just so you'd see how I feel about books. Why I need to see them burned.
It's not hard to understand, is it? I was a little demon-child who saw my work go up in flames. It wasn't fair. Why did I have to lose my chance to tell my story when hundreds of others with much duller tales to tell have their books in print all the time? I know the kind of lives authors get to live. Up in the morning, doesn't matter how late, stumbles to his desk without bothering to bathe, then he sits down, lights up a cigar, drinks his sweet tea, and writes whatever rubbish comes into his head. What a life! I could have had a life like that if my first masterwork had not been burned in front of me. And I have great works in me. Works to make Heaven weep and Hell repent. But did I get to write them, to pour my soul onto the pages?
Instead, I'm a prisoner between the covers of this squalid little volume, with only one request to make of some compassionate soul:
No, no, and still no.
Why are you hesitating? Do you think you'll find some titillating details about the Demonation in here? Something depraved or salacious, like the nonsense you've read in other books about the World Below (Hell, if you prefer)? Most of that stuff is invented. You do know that, don't you? It's just bits of gossip and scraps of superstition mixed up by some greedy author who knows nothing about the Demonation —
Are you wondering how I know what's being passed off as the truth these days? Well, I'm not completely without friends from the old days. We speak, mind to mind, when conditions permit. Like any prisoner locked up in solitary confinement, I still manage to get news. Not much. But enough to keep me sane.
I'm the real thing, you see. Unlike the impostors who pass themselves off as darkness incarnate,
I was — no, I am — the sworn enemy of mankind. And I take that enmity very seriously. When I was free I did all that I could to cause pain, without regard to the innocence or guilt of the human soul I was damning. The things I did! It would take another book for me to list the atrocities I was happily responsible for. The violations of holy places, and more often than not the accompanying violation of whomever was taking care of the place. Often these poor deluded devotees, thinking the image of their Savior
It never worked, of course. And oh, how they would scream and beg as I pulled them into my embrace. I am, needless to say, a creature of marvelous ugliness. The front of my body from the top of my head to those precious parts between my legs had been seared so badly in the fire into which I had fallen — and where Pappy Gatmuss had left me to burn for a minute or two while he slapped my mother around — that my reptilian appearance had become a mass of keloid tissue, shiny and seared. My face was — still is — a chaos of bubbles, little hard red domes of flesh where I'd fried in my own fat. My eyes are two holes, without lashes or brows. So is my nose. All of them, eyeholes and nostrils, constantly run with grey-green mucus so that there isn't a moment, day or night, when I don't have rivulets of foul fluids running down my cheeks.
As to my mouth — of all my features, I wish I could possess my mouth again, just as it had been before the fire. I had my mother's lips, generous below and above, and what kissing I had practiced, mainly on my hand or on a lonely pig, had convinced me that my lips would be the source of my good fortune. I would kiss with them, and lie with them; I would make victims and willing slaves of anyone my eyes desired, simply by talking a little, and following the talk with kisses, and the kisses with demands. And they'd melt into compliance, every one of them, happy to perform the most demeaning acts as long as I was there to reward them with a long, tongue-tied kiss when they were done.
But the fire didn't spare my lips. It took them too, erasing them utterly. My mouth is now just a slot that I can barely open an inch because the scarred flesh around it is too solid.
Is it any wonder that I'm tired of my life? That I want it erased by fire? You'd want the same thing. So, in the name of empathy, burn this book. Do it for compassion's sake, if you have the heart, or because you share my anger. There's no saving me. I'm a lost cause, trapped forever between the covers of this book. So finish me.
Why the hesitation? I've done as I promised, haven't I?
I've told you something about myself. Not everything, of course. Who could tell everything? But I have told you enough that I'm surely more than just words on a page, ordering you about. Oh yes, while I think of it, please allow me to apologize for that brutish, bullying way I started out. It's something I inherited from Pappy G. and I'm not proud of it. It's just that I'm impatient to have the flame licking these pages and burning up this book as soon as possible. I didn't take account of your very human curiosity. But I hope I've satisfied that now.
So it remains only for you to find a flame and get this wretched business over with. I'm certain that will be a great relief to you and I assure you an even greater relief to me. The hard part's over. All we need now is that little fire.
Come on, friend. I've unburdened myself; my confession is made. It's over to you.
I'm waiting. Doing my best to be patient.
Indeed, I will go so far as to say that I'm being more patient right now than I've ever been in my life. Here we are on page 18 and I've trusted you with some of the most painful confessions I have ever made to anyone, simply so that you would know this wasn't some fancy trick. It was a real and true account of what happened to me, which, were you ever to have seen me in the flesh, would be instantly verified. I am burned. Oh, how I am burned.
It's a sign of your mercy that I'm really waiting for. And your courage, which I've somehow sensed from the beginning was like your mercy, a quality you possessed. It does take courage to set a flame to your first book, to defy the sickly wisdom of your elders and preserve words as though they were in some way precious.
Think of the absurdity of that! Is there anything in your world or mine, Above or Below, that is so available as words? If the preciousness of things is bound in some measure to their rarity, then how precious can the sounds we
