survived as marks on our flesh. Through us, an unholy tradition is preserved.'
'And what about me,' Patricia said.
'One of our number died recently,' L'Index said. 'It happens, of course, in the due process of time. Usually, we initiate a relative, often a child. My grandfather, for instance, was the Index before me. In this case, however, that was not possible. Part of my job is to find a suitable successor…'
Gripped by an extraordinary fear, Patricia dropped to the floor.
'Don't be afraid, Patricia,' L'Index said. 'Not you.'
As she lay there, he pissed on her hair. She lifted her face into the hot stream, grateful for an act of degradation she could still understand. It helped her to know he still cared.
'Will you abandon your last claim to self? Will you embrace the final release, Patricia? That is what I'm asking of you. Will you step over the threshold into a new world?'
'You sound like an evangelist,' she said. His urine steamed in her hair. Patricia breathed deeply, inhaling a mineral fragrance. Slowly her heart rate came to match the pulsing of the room. She thought of what she had been and of what he had helped her become.
She held her breath for a moment. Counted to ten.
'Yes,' she said hoarsely. 'Yes.'
Patricia did not hear them enter, nor did she hear L'Index welcome his guests. She sat in her chamber, listening to the fall of surf on an interior beach. On the bedside cabinets were vibrators, clamps, unguents, suction devices, whips: all the ludicrous paraphernalia of arousal. She was familiar with each and every item and she had endured or perpetrated every possible permutation of indecency that the body could endure.
Or so she had thought.
She touched her own smooth skin. She had removed the bells and the rings and toweled the oil away. Her skin was blank, like a parchment upon which L'Index wished to write unspeakable things. The music of Debussy crashed through her confusion.
We are all of us, she thought, written upon by time. Our skin is pitted and eroded by the passage of years. No one escapes. Why not then defy time by becoming part of something eternal? Why not give up all claims to individual identity and become little more than a page in a book which renews itself endlessly? It was, as L'Index had said, the final surrender.
Patricia removed her headphones and made her way downstairs.
L'Index was waiting for her and he introduced her to the members of the Braille Encyclopaedia. Blind hands stroked her naked body and, finding it unmarred, lost interest. She trembled as, one by one, they approached and examined her with a shocking frankness. Shameless fingers probed and penetrated her: the dry-twig scrapings of old men and women, the thin furtive strokes of wicked children. By the end of their examination, Patricia teetered on the brink of delirium. Her darkness filled with inarticulate flashes and fireworks displays of grotesque color and grossly ambiguous forms.
'They don't speak,' she said. It seemed terribly important.
'No,' said L'Index simply.
She felt them crowd around her in a circle, felt the pressure and the heat of unclothed flesh. No sound. They made no sound.
'Are you ready?' L'Index asked, touching Patricia's shoulder gently. She nodded and let him lead her into a tiny room at the back of the Chateau. Soundproofed walls. A single unshaded bulb, radiating a light she could not see. L'Index kissed her neck and instructed her not to move under any circumstances. She wanted to say something, but she was too afraid to speak. The words jammed at the back of her throat.
And then the door opened. Someone she did not know came into the room. Patricia suddenly wanted to run. The light was switched off and candles were lit, filling the room with a sickly sweet narcotic scent.
Patricia heard then a thin metallic ring. A sharp-edged sound. The brief conversation of scalpels and needles and blue-edged razors.
'L'Index?' she said nervously. 'L'Index, are you there? I'm afraid…'
No one answered. Patricia rocked on the balls of her feet. The air was too hot, the candlesmoke too bitter. She gulped lungfuls of oily, shifting smoke.
Someone came toward her, breathing harshly, sometimes mewing.
'L'Index?' she whispered again, so quietly that it was no more than the ghost of a name. In her head, the noise and the colors mounted toward an intensity she felt she could not possibly bear.
The first cut caused her to spontaneously orgasm. Her brain lit up like a pinball machine. She swayed and she cried out but she did not fall as hooks and needles were teased beneath her skin.
Moaning, coming again and again, Patricia was delicately scarred and cicatriced. Alone on a private beach, she realized what word it was that she had scrawled in the sand. And in that moment of understanding, the surf surged in and obliterated every trace of what she had written. Her identity was finally erased in the white glare of a pain so perfect and so pure that it could only be ecstasy. Fat, awkward Patricia was at last, at last, written out of existence by articulate needles.
She came to her senses and found that she was still standing. Thin spills of blood streamed down her body, pooling on the floor. She touched her stomach. The raw wounds stung but she could not help but run her fingertip along the lines of braille. She read one sentence and could hardly believe that such abomination could possibly exist let alone be described. Her whole body was a record of atrocities so rare and so refined that the mind revolted from the truth of them. How could things like this be permitted to exist in the world? She felt dizzy and could read no more.
'I'm still alive. I'm still alive,' was all she could say. At last, she fell but L'Index was there to catch her.
'Welcome to the Encyclopaedia,' he said, salting her wounds so that they burned exquisitely. 'Now you are Entry 207 — The Meat Chamber.'
She nodded, recognizing herself, and he led her out of the room and down an unfamiliar corridor. She could feel herself losing consciousness. There was something she had to ask him. That was all she could remember.
'The Chateau,' she said, slurring her words. 'Who owns the Chateau?'
'Can't you guess?' L'Index said.
He brought her into the ballroom, where they were all waiting for her. Hundreds of people were waiting for her. She smiled weakly and said, 'What now? Can I please sit down?'
'These gatherings happen only rarely,' L'Index said. 'The entire Encyclopaedia is not often assembled together in one place and so our lives take on true meaning only at these moments. I can assure you that what is about to follow will transcend all your previous experiences of physical gratification. For you, this will be the ultimate, most beautiful defilement. I promise.'
He sat her down in a heavy wooden chair.
'I envy you so much,' he said. 'I'm only the Index, you see. The mysteries and abominations of the flesh are denied to me.'
He pulled a strap across her arms, tugged it tight and buckled it.
'What are you doing?' she said. 'Is this the Punishment Chair? It's not, is it?' She began to panic now as he clamped her ankles to the legs of the chair. The Encyclopaedia was arranging itself into a circle again. Footsteps sounded down the corridor.
'This is the Chair of Final Submission,' L'Index said. 'Goodbye, my love.'
And he clamped her head back.
