Mister B. Gone

The human story is over. Now you know what the mystery of the Gutenberg workshop was you're probably thinking — and I wouldn't blame you — all this for a printing press? Ludicrous. No, I wouldn't blame you for setting fire to this damn book out of sheer fury, to have been given something at the end of your journey that turns out to be this inconsequential. But you can't say I didn't warn you. God alone knows how many times I told you to do the sensible thing and let the book go. But you insisted on waiting. You obliged me to tell you things, like the curious knot of feelings I had for Quitoon, that I would have preferred to keep to myself, but which I confessed out of respect for the truth, as a thing entire, not scraped together from bits and pieces.

Well, it's over now. You can still burn the book and be satisfied that you read the bulk of it. It's time. There are a few pages remaining, but why waste more of your valuable time? You now know what mysterious invention Quitoon had been in pursuit of — the same one that makes the existence of this very book possible.

Everything comes full circle in the end. You met me in these pages. We learned to understand one another as we went from the garbage heaps of the Ninth Circle up into the World Above, and then from Joshua's Field to the long road I traveled with Quitoon. I didn't bore you with a list of the places we went in search of some new invention Quitoon had heard about. They were mostly instruments of war: cannons and long bows, siege towers and battering rams. Sometimes a thing of beauty would await us at the end of one our searches. I did get to hear the first harpsichord make music, for instance, in the 1390s, I think. I lose track. So many places, so many creations.

But the point really is: Now that journey is over. There are no more roads to take. No more inventions to see. We have arrived back at the pages where we met; or rather at the device that first made such pages. It's such a tight little circle in the end. And I'm trapped in it. You're not.

So go. Go on, while you can, having seen more perhaps than you expected to see.

And as you are leaving, tear these pages out and toss them into a little bonfire you've made. Then get about your business and forget me.

* * *

I'm trying hard to be generous here. But it's difficult. You've rejected every offer I've made to you. It doesn't matter how much I open up my heart and soul to you; it's never been enough to satisfy you. More, more, you always want more. There's only one other person in my life who's hurt me as profoundly as you've hurt me, and that's Quitoon. You've changed me so I can hardly even recognize myself. There was kindness in me once, and boundless love. But it's all gone now, gone forever. You killed every particle of joy that was in me, every scrap of hope and forgiveness, gone, all gone.

Yet, here I am, somehow finding it in me, the Devil alone knows how, to reach out from these anguished pages in one last desperate attempt to try to touch your heart.

The fireworks are over. There's nothing more to see. You may as well move on. Find yourself some new victim to corrupt, the way you've corrupted me. No, no, I take that back. You weren't to know how much it has hurt me, how much deeper my bitterness is, to be made to walk again the sad roads I walked to get here, and to confess the feelings that moved through me as I moved through the world.

My journey ended in the prison from which I speak. I've given you plenty of stories to tell, should the occasion come up when it seemed appropriate to tell. Ah, the tales of damned souls and darkness incarnate.

But now, truly, there's nothing left. So get it over with, will you? I have no desire to do harm to you, but if you keep playing around with me I won't be so ready to end your life with a simple slash of my knife across your jugular. Oh no. I'll cut you first. I'll slice off your eyelids to start with, so you won't be able to close them against the sight of my knife cutting and cutting.

The largest number of cuts I ever made on a human body before its owner succumbed was two thousand and nine: that was a woman. The largest number I ever made on a man before he died was one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three. It's hard to judge how many cuts it would take to bring you down. What I do know is that you'll be begging me to kill you off, offering me anything — the souls of your loved ones — anything, anything, you'll say, only kill me quickly. Give me oblivion, you'll beg, I don't care. Anything, so I don't have to see your entrails, purple, veiny, and shiny wet, appearing from the little slices I made in your lower belly. It's a common mistake people make, thinking that once their guts have unraveled around your feet that the happy prospect of death is in sight. That happens to be true, even with a weak specimen of your kind. I murdered two Popes, both of whom were cretinous from the diseases their depravities had given them (but who were still pronouncing dogmas for the Holy Mother Church and its believers), and each took an inordinately long time to die, for all their frailty.

Are you truly prepared to suffer like that for want of a flame?

There's nothing, my friend, left to gain by reading one more word.

* * *

And yet you read.

What am I to do? I thought you still had some life to live when we were finished with this book. I thought you had people out there who loved you, who would mourn you if I took your life. But apparently that isn't the case. Am I right? You'd prefer to go on living this half-life with me for a few more pages and then pay the fatal price.

Have I understood correctly? You could step off the ghost-train even now, if you chose to. Think hard. The midnight hour approaches. I don't care if you're reading this at eight in the morning on your way to work, or at noon, lying on a sun-soaked beach. It's still much, much later than you think, and darker than it seems.

But you're unmoved by my desire to be merciful. Even though it's getting later and later, you don't care. Is there some profound metaphysical reason for this? Or are you just more stupid than I thought?

The only profound thing I hear is the silence.

I'm obliged to answer my own questions, in the absence of any reply from you. And I choose…

Stupidity.

You're just willful and stupid.

All right, so much for my gift of mercy. I won't waste my time with any further gestures of compassion. Just don't blame me when you're watching the contents of your bladder spurting into the air, or when you are invited to chew on one of your kidneys, while I dig out the other.

* * *

You can't imagine the sounds you'll make. When you're being really hurt by somebody like me, who knows what they're doing, you'll make such noises you'll scarcely believe it's your own throat that is producing them. Some people become shrill and squeal like pigs being ineptly slaughtered. Others sound like animals fighting, like rabid dogs giving throat to guttural growls and ear-tearing howls.

It'll be interesting to find out what kind of animal you sound like, once the deep knife-work starts.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Your kind like stories, don't they? You live for them. And you — my noxious, stubborn, suicidal friend — are apparently ready to die just so you can find out what happens when the siege of the Gutenberg house comes to an end.

Doesn't it sound a little absurd when you hear it put like that? What are you hoping to find? Is it that you're looking for a story that will have you in it? Is that it?

Oh Lord, it is, isn't it? And all this time you've been hoping that when you found that book you'd have a clue as to why you were born. And why you'll die.

This is that book, as far as you're concerned.

Am I right? After all, you're in these pages too. Without you these words would be black marks on white paper, closed up in the dark. I'd been locked up in solitary, talking to myself, probably saying the same things over and over:

Burn this book. Burn this book. Burn this book.

But as soon as you opened the book, my madness passed away. Visions rose up out of the woven pages, like spirits conjured by an invocation, fueled both by the need to be heard that is felt by all confessors, even humble stuff such as my own, plus your own undeniable appetite for things uncanny and heretical.

Enjoy them while you can. You know the price you're paying for them.

Back to the Gutenberg workshop, and then, we'll see what last visions I can find for you here where the air carried the sinus-pricking stench of ink.

* * *

There comes a time in any battle between the forces of Heaven and Hell when the number of soldiers becomes so great it's no longer possible for reality as it is perceived by Humankind to bear the weight of the maelstrom raging in its midst. The facade of reality cracks, and however hard Humankind has labored