I hope this letter finds you well. I hear that now that you’re an angel in training, this letter has to get sorted at the Empyrean Barracks, so it can get sent out to wherever you’re doing your secret training mission. It’s so incredible that you decided to do this. I really respect your bravery. I could never do something so brave.
I’m so happy that you’ve taken this new step, but I admit that I do miss you. Everything feels so hard for me, but I’m still not doing enough. Everyone is always mad at me and criticizes everything I do, even though I’m working so hard. I pretend I don’t care and try to keep trying harder, but often, I’m really very sad. Sometimes living feels so painful. But then I imagine talking to you about how I feel, and I start to feel better. You were always the only person that would listen to me and that I feel like I can be honest with. I hope I can talk to you again someday.
You’re the only person who ever said you wanted to listen to my music. I was so glad to hear that and feel so bad that I haven’t been doing it at all recently. I think I want to make music again, but every day I have so many problems, and I can’t even deal with all of them. I really hope one day I can play one of my songs for you, if I ever get around to writing and practicing them.
Whit keeps your pre-deployment portrait on the wall and everyday tells us not to forget about you. You know how I feel about the other kids there but I do respect Whit. He tells us every day we should think of what Cynthia would do.
As for something interesting going on here, a travelling funfair called the Carnival Of Sin is coming to town. It looks pretty interesting and I’m really looking forward to it. My mom would never let me go, so I’m going to sneak out. I’ll tell you how it was in my next letter.
I know you can’t tell me anything specific about what you’re doing, but I’d love to hear from you. I love to hear what you have to say about things. Please be careful and safe in your mission. I hope I can see you again.
Your friend,
Gunther
I reread the letter, written on blue pen on blue-lined, wide-ruled paper. My handwriting was clean at the beginning but gradually got worse. I had been putting off writing it for so long, worrying over and over about what to say, but finally just sat down and this was what came out.
Just as I set down the paper I heard a banging on my door.
“Gunther!! What are you doing in there?”
“I’m just getting started on homework.”
“Just getting started? Well, what were you doing?”
“Just relaxing for a bit.”
My mom abruptly opened the door and peered in.
“Well I don’t see any textbooks open! What’s that?”
She pointed at the letter I had just written.
“I told you, I’m just getting started on my homework.”
“Well, it’s already 9! Hurry up!”
“I don’t have that much today.”
“Well if you don’t have much you should already be done. Go!”
“I will!”
“And you aren’t hiding any empty soda cans in here are you?”
“No, we’ve been over this a million times.”
“But that’s what you said last time! Although it seems like you’ve already forgotten and don’t care about him, your father is suffering in the hospital now. He fought and risked his life to defend you from the ants you brought into the house, but you really don’t seem to care about that. You wanted to hurt your father. You’re the one who brought the ants in, so that’s what that means. You’re the one who hurt your father.”
I hated hearing her bring up Dad.
“I promise I’m not hiding any cans! I’m throwing them all away in the public trash can down the block!”
“You know what will happen if I find even one more ant again…”
“Yes, I know, now I need to start my homework! I’m running out of time!”
“I’m not leaving until I see you start your homework!”
“I told you, I already started!”
I gestured towards the letter on the table, confident she couldn’t see what was written on it and wouldn’t check.
“Well keep going then!”
I took out a small notebook and started scribbling in it, and she finally slammed the door.
When I heard her footsteps sufficiently far away I folded the letter and stuck it in an envelope, which I then licked closed. Next, I.took out the half empty can of strawberry soda I had been hiding in my hoodie pocket and took a furtive swig, scribbling some more in my notebook until my strokes became the letters of an aimless entry.
An enormous blue sky, as if I’m floating amongst cumulonimbi. No ground, only an endless blue dotted by brick chambers, each with a window on one of its sides, completely filled with water and a floating human trapped inside.
I’m in one with a black and white checkered floor, the corner of a grand staircase leading straight into the wall. From the window I can see that sky of endless clouds. I can see that it’s so beautiful, and that it must extend on forever, farther than I can ever see. I can see so many of those other floating chambers, some close, some dots on the horizon, all of them equally inaccessible to me. Even further beyond must be things I can’t see, things I could never even imagine. I know that I’ll never touch any of it. I know you’re somewhere, in one of these chambers, far from me.
I bang on the window and on the brick walls, until I feel the bones in my hands break. Compelled by burning pain, I open my mouth to gulp for air, water streams in my stomach, then into my lungs, my brain loses its oxygen, and I drown.
I put down my pen and chugged the rest of my soda, opening my desk drawer to throw it away into a heap of empty soda cans swarmed by thousands of ants.
It was time for our youth lecture at Whit’s house. Whit, a stocky old man with a white walrus mustache and bushel of hair parted down the middle, dressed in a blue ironed dress shirt, ironed khaki pants and dark khaki sweater vest, stood in the corner of his shadowy living room with an open book in hand, which he held aside as he gestured us to calm down.
I was already sitting Indian style quietly, but the Deedledum boys, propeller hats spinning, were romping around the house in their rainbow-striped shirts and overalls.
Whit half-heartedly tried to get them to calm down.
“Boys! Boys!”
The twins ignored him, throwing Whit’s collection of antique rocking chairs at each other.
At last Suzy Blu stood up.
“Can you sit down and stop it! You are so annoying!”
At this the boys finally quit their horseplay to go taunt Suzy.
“Hehehehe, look it’s ugly face.”
“Yeah, who cares what you say, you’re ugly.”
Suzy instantly collapsed into a pool of tears when Whit came over and put his hand on Suzy’s shoulder, first addressing her softly.
“Oh don’t listen to them, Suzy.”
He then raised his volume, clearly intending for everyone to hear.
“Because you don’t need to care about such foolishness. If you want to hear nonsense, you’d do better listening to a can of baked beans than to what these mush-for-brains have to say!”
All the kids, except for me, erupted into laughter, and even Suzy chuckled. The third worst boy, Dumpert, stood up and pointed at the Deedledums with his mouse face.
“Hahahahahaha! He called you a can of beans!”
Everyone’s laughter intensified and even the Deedledums grinned as they started play-slapping Dumpert.
“No, he called you a can of beans!”
While all the kids were laughing together, Whit had returned to the corner of his brick-walled living room, exhaling through a gentle smile as he looked on at the children.
“Okay, okay! I think we’re ready to get started here. Today we’re on Canticle 34…”
Everyone sat Indian style and listened.
On the wall, behind Whit, was a A4 sized, laminated photo of Cynthia, her long blue hair spilling generously on either side of her face, thickly streaming from her blue velvet angel-in-training shako, a polished tourmaline set on its tall cylindrical crown, an arrangement of wings, fire, and stars embroidered around it in shining silver thread. Behind her was a mist of pale blue fog, the silhouette of a monolithic tower in the distance.
Even through the lamination, her large, unclouded, light blue pupils seemed about to spill from her boiled-egg eyeballs and down her powder-sugar cheeks. Her shimmering lips, of a pink so pale it was almost white, were curled slightly open, her eyes fixed wide on some great expanse, a world so large, so beautiful, and so sad. I stared at her photo all through the Canticle.
After our daily reading, speech, and thinking time, it was time for our one-on-one check-ins with Whit, held in his tiny laundry room on two folding chairs. I was up next. The members of the school wrestling team were behind me, with their mouthpieces in and singlets and headgears on, playfully pushing at each other. One punched a hole in the wall, much to the hilarity of his teammates. Their groin guards weighed down their singlets like ripe fruit.
Through the laundry room door, I could hear Suzy’s sobs and the deep hum of Whit’s consoling voice, but couldn’t make out the words, already muffled and further drowned out by the wrestlers taunting each other behind me.
“I bet you’re too scared to go upstairs!”
“You mean where Whit has his secret room? Ew, gross, that’s where he keeps his dead wife! The room’s all covered with lace, and with pictures of her all over the walls!”
“Yeah, but you’d probably want to go because you’d want to check out the pictures of her! You like all the girls hahaha!”
“No seriously though, his wife was hot!”
The boy made cupping motions under his chest, eliciting a fresh peal of laughter.
“But that’s not the problem! He keeps her skeleton there, in a cradle! He keeps her skeleton in a white frilly dress and a bonnet!”
“Ewwwwwww,” the boys all said, laughing, some of them feigning vomiting. Another boy spoke up.
“You guys are gross! You like dead old ladies! Fuck that! You know what’s gonna be cool? The Carnival Of Sin!”
All were instantly enthused.
“Hell yeah, the Carnival Of Sin’s gonna be amazing!”
“Fuck yes, you fucking bet I’m going.”
“Goddam, my dad’s being a little bitch and telling me I can’t go.”
“Dude, just sneak out, who gives a fuck.”
“Yeah, what the fuck pussy. I sneak out all the time. Just tell your dad to fuck the fuck off because you need to concentrate on your homework, and then sneak out the window. You afraid to sneak out, pussy?”
“No, of course I’m gonna sneak out! I’m not afraid to at all! Sneaking out is the easiest thing in the world to me. I was just saying my dad is a bitch.”
“Yeah, and he raised a bitch son.”
They all started laughing and pushing each other anew.
Finally the door opened, and Suzy came out, a smile of resigned consolation and hesitant happiness formed over her red, tear-engorged face. She seemed to be holding in a laugh, staring at the ground as she walked away, almost exasperated by an unacknowledged hope overpowering her sadness. Whit jovially leaned out.
“Alright, Gunther, you’re up!”
Leaving the pile of wrestlers behind me, I followed Whit and took my seat in the narrow space in front of his dryer.
“Okay. Well, how’ve you been Gunther?”
“I’ve been fine.”
“Really? Everything okay at home?”
“Yeah.”
“I heard your dad is recovering.”
Why did he need to bring this up?
“Yes. I throw all of my soda cans away outside now.”
“I know, I know. I’m not worried about that. I know it’s hard for you and your mom right now. I just want you to know that your mom is doing her best too. I hope all three of you can feel better soon.”
Whit’s comment annoyed me.
“I’m doing everything I should and she does nothing but criticize me.”
“She cares about you, Gunther. She’s trying to reach you, but sometimes people can’t reach each other. We have to accept when we’re wrong and be open to learning.”
“I already am. I already did all of that.”
I recalled how I had told my mom to just kill me.
Whit closed his eyes, smiled softly and slightly nodded.
“It’s okay, Gunther. Hang in there. And how are you doing without Cynthia? You must miss her.”
Although it hadn’t been my intention, I felt hot tears on the corners of my eyes. I spoke at a lurching cadence to avoid crying at the sound of my own voice.
“Yeah, I miss her.”
“I do too, Gunther. But it’s like what I said about your mom. People aren’t always going to be what you want them to be. Loving someone means loving them for who they really are, not for who you want them to be.”
I wasn’t listening.
“Yeah. I just miss her.”
Whit patted me on the leg with the hint of a chuckle.
“Okay, Gunther. Oh, and one more thing. Not that I think you would do something like this, but just in case, you may have heard of this Carnival of Sin thing coming to town.”
I stared down at the vinyl flooring.
“It’s a really rotten thing, and it has some really bad messages. I just want to make sure you know not to go there.”
“Okay.”
Whit smiled.
“Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?”
I hesitated a moment before speaking, imagining Cynthia asleep in a cradle in a white frilly dress and bonnet, getting thinner and thinner until she turned into a skeleton.
“You know, I noticed that you have a room upstairs, but the room’s always locked, so I was just wondering what’s in there, and if it’s okay for us to go there.”
Whit’s eyes got a slightly watery look as he maintained his smile.
“Gunther, the first thing I can tell you, is that there’s nothing particularly interesting in that room. I know some of the boys like to spread silly rumors. Whatever you’ve heard, I can guarantee it’s not true. That room is just a private place for me. You see Gunther, everyone has a secret place just for themselves. If you think of a person as a vortex, or maybe a cyclone, then there’s always gonna be a little hole where the cyclone disappears, right smack dab in the middle, a little hollow piece of nothing around which the whole thing’s turning, right? Well, that’s like everyone’s secret. You’ve got one, the Deedledums have got one, Suzy’s got one, I got one, and you bet your mom and Cynthia have got one too. To me, that room is something that can never be shared. Does that make sense?”
It didn’t make sense but at least he was being nice to me.
“Yes.”
Whit smiled and nose-exhaled.
“Gunther, you’re gonna be alright. You get along with your mom, and who knows, maybe you’ll get to see Cynthia again someday.”
I unexpectedly found myself smiling and looked at Whit in the eyes.
“Thank you, Whit. I’ll do my best.”
“I know you can, and I know you will. See you next week, Gunther.”
“See you, Whit.”
I stepped out of the laundry room together with Whit, who playfully untangled one of the boys from their knot of brawling limbs to drag him into his check-in, to the hilarity of his teammates. From the window I could see my mom’s van parked outside waiting for me, a sight that always made me tense up. But Whit was right. If I kept trying harder maybe everything would be alright. Maybe I didn’t even need to go to the Carnival Of Sin.
As I opened the door of the dark green Dodge Caravan and got into the middle row, I noticed my mother’s stiff shoulders, clenched jaw, and twitching fingers. I remembered what Whit told me and tried to do the right thing.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Gunther, we’re not going to say a word on this car ride. I want you to sit silently back there. There’s something I want you to see back home.”
Everything else I had cared about until that point became insignificant. I froze as we rode back silently, imagining tortures and executions.
Finally, we pulled into the driveway, and my Mom briskly walked to the front door, gripping the knob and waiting to open it until I caught up with her.
“Look,” she said and opened the door.
A glistening carpet of ants flowing in double-helix streams completely covered our floor and walls, swarming in and out of electrical outlets and vent grilles, displacing our furniture in wide foraging columns, pheromone-formed trails searching for my hundreds of hidden cans.
It seems like my mom had already fueled and pressurized her flamethrower, which was now strapped across her back, but before igniting it, she grabbed the back of my head by the hair and thrust my face into a pile of ants, some of which were already starting to climb up our legs.
“Do you see these? Do you see these now? Do you see what you’ve done??”
When I tried to breathe I inhaled a clump of ants, tarsal claws and antennae flailing down my gullet, latching onto my larynx and trachea. I started coughing uncontrollably and tried chewing and swallowing again when I couldn’t spit them all out. I ripped my head out my mom’s grip and tried to grab her flamethrower, yelling through masticated ants on my teeth, flying out of my mouth with spittle.
“BURN ME! BURN ME IF YOU HATE ME SO MUCH!!”
“Gunther what are you saying! We need to get rid of these ants!”
“FUCK YOUUUUUUU!!!” I yelled as I kicked her away and ran off of the porch.
“Gunther, you’re doing to kill this whole family! It will be your fault when we all die!”
“FUCK YOU!!! FUCK YOU!!!”
I sprinted down the now nighttime road, only slowing my pace to a walk when I was certain no one was chasing me. I took one of my secret cans of strawberry soda out of my hoodie pocket to wash down the ant bodies lining my interior. I gulped can after can to numb the sensation of phantom eggs inside me as I made random turns from one neighborhood to the next, occasionally passed by a car, running to get away from everything.
I reached a large intersection with a streetlight and gas station on every corner and nothing else but fields on all sides. On a digital billboard on the side of the nearest gas station a heavily made up, pig-tailed woman chugged a can of strawberry soda in one gulp, before looking at the camera and quietly burping.
The ad transitioned to a montage of disembodied, floating hands throwing empty soda cans under sofas, under car seats, out of windows, leaving them on bedsheets, on counters, on top of fridges, even deliberately spilling sugary residue onto keyboards, each fallen can’s impact approved by a flashing green checkmark to the rhythm of folky dream pop. A red NO sign softly faded onto the screen when a mom tried to scold a son about littering, and an androgynous, raspy voice read the following.
What is a can, anyway,
but a little flag of presence—
aluminum proof that I was here
and don’t give a damn?
It’s cool to throw your cans away
in places where you shouldn’t,
to let the sun glint
on something no one asked for.
Ants? Give them their centuries,
their tidy little highways.
It’s time to leave our mark
And for the world to step over it.
The music picked up a Scandifuturist electro beat, and a group of hip young people in different colors of vinyl jackets and sunglasses floated through clouds while rhythmically littering soda cans, as the voiceover concluded triumphantly.
There’s nothing wrong with drinking lots of strawberry soda. Drink more and more, whenever you want.
Angel wings grew out of the kids’ backs, which they beat in place to speak in unison directly to the camera, cans held aloft:
I’m proud to be a strawberryhead!
I huffed and kicked the billboard in frustration.
“Hm! So fucking stupid! I hope Mom sees this! I hope Mom sees this and apologizes! I’m not as bad as these people, and they’re in a fucking commercial! So fucking stupid! It’s her fault for being angry all the time!”
As I took a gulp out of another freshly opened can, I realized the Carnival Of Sin must be going on now, and the bus stop at this intersection could get me there in about 20 minutes.
At the stop I saw some kids in dark robes huddled under the streetlight, taking puffs from long, thin pipes and whispering together. They must be headed to the Carnival Of Sin too, I thought. I tried to look nonchalant and cool, as if I belonged there.
Two oddly proportioned, middle aged women with close cropped voluminous pixie bobs, nearly identical except for their hair colors: one aqua green and one purple, were waiting at opposite sides of the stop, both wearing thick woolen sweaters and wide trousers.
When the bus came into view a couple of lights away, the ladies rushed to be the first in line, violently bumping and shoving on the otherwise empty street corner. The hooded kids glided over like ghosts to get onboard.
I noticed an ad on the side of the bus shelter:
BOTTOM LINE SUPERMARKET
GRAND OPENING
UP TO 7% OFF SELECT ITEMS
PICKLED HERRING $4.99 PER TUB
SLICED HEAD CHEESE, ONLY $3.99 PER POUND
CURED PORK FAT AT $4.99 PER POUND
SOUR CHERRY PRESERVES JUST $6.99 PER JAR
The bus rolled to a stop just as the aqua green woman had finished stomping the purple one. She must have wanted to be first at the supermarket, I thought.
As I got on the bus, I tried confirming with the driver that it was the right one.
“Excuse me, uh, does this bus go to the Carnival Of Sin?”
The bus driver’s peaked cap was nearly falling off his head, which he was scratching in confusion with one finger through his thick curly hair.
“You gotta tell me where that is man, you can’t expect me to know the name of every place in town… where are you trying to go?”
“The Carnival of Sin? It’s um, at Skull Pond.”
“Skull Pond? Is that inside the Haunted Forest?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay yeah, This is going to the Haunted Forest. Get in.”
He scratched his head while checking a map he pulled out of his pocket and nodding.
“Sorry, I don’t know this neighborhood too well…. and where are you two going?”
He gestured to the two women, who were already seated. They both impatiently tapped their tattered Bottom Line Supermarket flyers.
He walked back to squint at the address written on one of them, shaking his head as he walked back to his seat and checked his map again.
“I’m telling you guys, I’m not a very good driver…”
After looking at his map for a couple of minutes and crumpling it back in his pocket, he slammed his foot on the pedal, swerving violently across lanes at top speed, and we took off into the dark, moonlit fields.
Sodium lamps lit up the clearing in the woods, dense trees leading into darkness on all sides. We got off the bus and were immediately greeted by a vampire at the gate.
“Velllcome…. to ze Carnival….. OV SIN!!!!”
The other kinds had already reserved and printed out their tickets, which they produced out of their cloaks to get in. I hadn’t reserved one, so had to pay in cash.
“Zat vill be…. EIGHT DOLLARS!!”
“Eight dollars?? Just to get in?? And that doesn’t include any attractions or snacks?”
“Yess, yess!”
It was too late to turn back now. I had $11 in my wallet, so had a little change left for hopefully at least one attraction.
The lamp-lit clearing was dotted with tents, stands, and clumps of kids flitting between them under the pitch black sky. Brittany Spears’s “Gimme More” reverberated off the vibrantly green grass and beckoning trees.
“Step right up, step right up, get your gnome sticks!”
A huge, bald man with a bloody, greasy apron was grilling skewered gnomes. Behind him a younger man in a backwards hat took more dead, frozen gnomes, still in their Phrygian caps, out of a cooler and started loading them onto the grill.
In front of another stand, a skulleted man with an oily, melting face, rimless aviator glasses, and poorly fit sweater blankly stared in front of a stand of 100 pound pink teddy bears, above which was a sign reading “PRIZE.” To his right, under the letters “SHOOT”, several double-barrel coach guns were strewn about a table, a couple of meters from which a number of bear cubs, fur dyed pink, rotated in cages attached to mechanical octopus arms. The cubs, already suffering from toxic poisoning, skin damage, and impaired thermoregulation from having their fur dyed, cowered in fear as a boy with enormous buckteeth picked up one of the shotguns, and when, squinting, he landed a perfect headshot on one of them, the cub’s head exploded like a balloon full of blackcurrant syrup, splashing on the boy and his jubilant, similarly bucktoothed girlfriend.
What I had been thinking, coming here by myself? Everyone else was with friends and knew exactly where to go. I didn’t know where to go or what to do and panicked.
Glancing around I noticed some particularly popular tents, each with hundreds of kids lined up.
One’s sign read “ALCOHOL.” The wrestling team from our youth group was having a Miller High Life chug contest, seeing who could chug the most before blacking out or vomiting, the surrounding kids egging them on, chanting and clapping rhythmically.
Another tent, “DRUGS”, emitted pale purple smoke, and was surrounded by kids lurchingly twirling or rolling around in mud. The Deedledum boys sat in front of it, their eyes turned into lightning-rainbow swirls, inhaling from devilishly curled water pipes, exhaling pink clouds full of sparks and little fairies. They smiled dumbly as their heads bobbed about.
The most popular tent was “SEX”, though there were more kids surrounding and gawking at it than there were in line. Suzy Blu and Dumpert tensely held hands while waiting to get in, their eyes darting about in various directions away from each other.
My panic continued to deepen, as surely the whole Carnival must have been wondering why a pathetic loser like me was here by myself.
A man behind me surprised me when he suddenly said “Excuse me,” in a thin, apathetic voice, sniffling snot into his nostril. I didn’t say anything as I turned to look at him slouching in his too small grey suit and square glasses, short, greasy hair perfectly parted down the middle, approaching me with a pen and clipboard in hand.
“Hello… is it okay if I ask you a few questions?”
“Sure,” I said. At first I had worried that the man was going to call me out for being out of place, but that didn’t seem to be the case, and I felt a small amount of relief in something that could dilute my dread.
“What school do you go to?”
“Abbadon High.”
“What grade are you in?”
“Tenth.”
“Do you wear diapers?”
The question frightened me.
“...do I wear diapers?”
“Yes, do you wear diapers?”
“No.”
“When did you stop wearing diapers?”
The man’s sniffling intensified and he slouched in further.
“I guess when I was around three.”
“What was it like for you to stop wearing diapers?”
“I don’t remember.”
The man lowered his voice and leaned forward, shaking, speaking with deliberation.
“This is really important, so I want you to really try hard… What kind of diapers did you wear? Disposable, or cloth? Please try really hard to remember the brand, the color, the size…”
I took a step back.
“I don’t remember…”
The man closed in even further, taking a $20 bill out of his pocket and flashing it in front me.
“Try really hard to remember…”
For some reason the $20 bill sent me into a panic, and I took off running.
“Wait! Wait!” he yelled, running after me, clipboard in hand.
Now I was standing out more than ever. I wanted to run away from everyone. I fixed my eyes on the ground to avoid seeing everyone staring at me as I fled. When I neared one of the carnival’s edges, close to the trees, I looked up and saw a tent with no one in line at all, just labeled “BABA VEZRA.” In my madness I boldly walked in to escape.
Inside the tent, the bassy rhythms, hedonistic squeals, and angry shouts of the carnival completely disappeared. The small, dark space was perfectly silent, the only decor a small table on which rested a crystal ball with two short stools on either side, the one in front of me empty, and the opposite one occupied by a woman with a sunken, long oval face, skin sagging down her neck, eyes a dull, deep orange under heavy lids, a red shawl and headscarf wrapped around everything but her face and hands.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to enter here.”
“But you did… sit down young man.”
“I’m sorry I just…”
She looked directly at me. There was a prettiness in her decrepit form.
“I think you do belong here, boy. This is the right place for you. I know what you’re looking for, and I can help you find it.”
I paused and thought of Cynthia. Maybe this lady could help me see her again. I sat down on the stool in front of her, feeling strangely at ease.
“I hope you can help me. What should I do?”
She waved her hands around the crystal ball.
“Before I can tell you that, I’m going to ask you just a few questions. Are you ready?”
I gazed into the ball, full of clouds like a sped up sky. Maybe this was my chance to get what I wanted.
“Yes.”
“Good, good. I see there’s something you think you want very much. Would you really be happy if you had it?”
I immediately teared up.
“Yes. I’m very unhappy.”
“I want you to think about your answer… Do you really know what you want?”
The crystal ball’s light intensified.
“Yes, I do.”
The ball’s clouds started to turn stormy.
“Think harder. Would you rather get what you want or not have to see yourself fail?”
The question made no sense.
“I don’t know.”
“What are you willing to lose to get what you want?”
I tried thinking about the question.
“Anything.”
“Then why are you afraid?”
I looked down at the ground.
“I haven’t done anything wrong but everyone hates me and I hate my life.”
She widened her eyes in the crystal ball’s light, struggling to decipher its message. I was annoyed that she showed no sympathy for my answer.
“Do you want to be known as you are?”
I thought of Cynthia listening to me, and cried through my nose.
“Yes.”
“What would you be if no one was watching you?”
I looked straight down and spoke in a tiny sulk.
“I wouldn’t be anything.”
Baba Vezra menacingly smiled.
“Would you rather be seen and suffering, or invisible and safe?”
I thought of my Mom invading my space, always angry at me. My anger dried my tears and I kicked the table in frustration.
“Invisible and away from everything.”
Baba Vezra rolled the crystal ball, which had nearly fallen off the table after I kicked it, back into place with an invisible force emanating from her hands.
“If you got what you want, would you hold on to it?”
“Yes.”
“What if it changed?”
What a pointless question.
“I don’t know.”
She looked up from the ball and directly at me.
“If you were dying now, would you beg to be rescued?”
Her eyes and mouth were glowing red.
“I don’t know.”
She leaned in closer.
“Would you still sing if no one could hear you?”
I looked down at the ground again, and thought of my unused keyboard, and then imagined Cynthia listening to me singing.
“No.”
She nodded, as if she had now collected the information she needed.
“I can help you.”
I looked up eagerly.
“How? Please, help me.”
From somewhere under the table, she took out what seemed to be a thick manga anthology. On the cover, a girl with pink hair in a thin, sleeveless pink dress, face flush and hesitant, looked guiltily back at the reader. Through a cracked mirror her hands, fingers curved in submissive vulnerability, met those of another girl with long black hair in a black, suspendered uniform, her twisted, confident smile seducing the pink-haired girl into the other side of the glass. Both had identical, bleeding cuts on their cheeks. I took the volume in my hands.
“This looks interesting…”
“No, no, that’s just the cover so you can hide what you’re really reading! Don’t let anyone see the true contents of this book!”
She pulled off the false cover to reveal worn marbled paper, a spine frayed at the edges, and yellowed, thick pages with a soft, fibrous texture, smelling of dust and grass. The dense serif font on the cover read “Phänomenologie des Geistes.”
“This is for you. If you carry this to the end—not just read it, but suffer it—you may find what you’re looking for.”
As I was feeling disappointed by this less stimulating cover, Baba Vezra leaned forward to me, the whites of her eyes turned to pits of cold ash and her pupils to dying embers.
“But what you find will not be what you think it is, and you will become what you never knew you were.”
I didn’t understand but knew that I just had to read the book, which I clutched as I backed out of the tent.
“Thank you. I will read it.”
I could hear her voice follow me as I hurried out of the tent.
“Remember, the truth always arrives in disguise, and it may not forgive who you were before you knew it!”
Outside the tent, it seemed like the carnival was already winding down, the sky a soft pink and the birds tentatively singing. Hours must have passed. Most of the vendors were packing up their tents, while a few kids still rolled in the dirt, mumbling incoherently. I resolutely walked to the bus stop, tome to my chest, ignoring any stragglers. Soon the first morning bus would come. Waiting for it alone on this road surrounded by trees, I felt the weight of the book, and then of my neck, shoulders, and back, conscious for the first time of my legs on the ground.
My digital clock turned to 3 AM. A textbook cover on which I had written “MATH TEXTBOOK” in permanent marker disguised my copy of Phänomenologie des Geistes as I carefully parsed the 178th paragraph in my new, tortoiseshell Windsor glasses.
„Es ist nach Aufhebung der unterschiedenen geistigen Massen und des beschränkten Lebens der Individuen sowie seiner beiden Welten also nur die Bewegung des allgemeinen Selbstbewußtseins in sich selbst vorhanden als eine Wechselwirkung desselben in der Form der Allgemeinheit und des persönlichen Bewußtseins…“
My concentration was broken by a gentle knock on the door.
“Gunther… are you up studying this late?”
“Yes, mom.” I confidently held up “MATH TEXTBOOK” where she could see it as she gingerly opened the door, eliciting a sigh of relief from my mom.
“Gunther, it’s amazing how hard you’ve been studying. It seems like you haven’t slept in a week. Another all-nighter tonight?”
I calmly removed my glasses and sat them down with my book.
“Yep. No time to sleep when there’s so much studying to do.”
“That’s amazing, Gunther. I’m so proud of you. You know, recently, it’s been hard for me too, and I’m sorry I took some of that out on you.”
My lamp accentuated her permanent frown lines.
“Here, I’ve made you some milk and cookies.”
She brought in a plastic tray with a plate of freshly baked cookies and a glass of warm milk.
“Thanks, Mom."
“You just keep doing your best, Gunther.”
“I will.”
I held a smile while we locked eyes for a moment, until she closed the door. I waited until hearing her take a few steps to stuff the cookies in my mouth and chug the milk in a hurried gulp that trickled down my chin and onto my shirt while I brushed cookie crumbs onto the floor. Oily blots seeped into the pages of my open book.
In line for our next round of one on one check-ins, I could hear Dumpert complaining behind me, to an eruption of laughter from the other boys.
“Yo, that bitch texted me 800 times yesterday! She needs to shut up! Seriously!”
The wrestling team, all with empty Miller High Life cans in hand, stumbled into walls and corners. The Deedledums sat slumped over, still coughing up purple gas, their eyes spinning rainbows, smiles turned to confused frowns.
Suzy Blu burst out of the laundry room door in front of me, bawling with her face buried in her hands. Whit walked after her.
“Suzy, wait!”
She stormed straight out without acknowledging Dumpert. Whit followed her outside, saying, “You all wait here,” before closing the door behind him.
“Hahahahaha! What’s she crying about?”
“Dumpert made her cry, hahahaha!”
“Hey, how am I supposed to respond to 800 texts a day? It’s insane!”
“How many of her texts did you read?”
“I stopped at the first one!”
More laughter.
“Hey, let’s break into the secret room upstairs.”
“Haha, yeah, let’s break the door down!”
The boys all started making the way for the stairwell when I rushed in front of them and blocked their path
“You guys stop right there. That room isn’t for you.”
They all stopped for a moment, taken aback by my denial. While glancing at each other to coordinate their reaction, they slowly organized into two facing parallel lines in honor guard formation, with Dorsman, the captain of the wrestling team, standing at the end between them. After sizing me up for a second, he made his lumbering way towards me, coming within inches of my face before unleashing a stale, acrid burp smelling of wet bread and tin. I flinched but held my ground, tightly gripping my book in my hand.
“Since when were you so brave, little bitch boy? I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard you speak. What’s the change? Is it these stupid fucking glasses?”
The boys in parallel lines all started rhythmically clapping as Dorsman gripped my neck through my polo shirt collar and pinned me against the wall, taking off my Windsor glasses and crushing them in his other hand. The shattered lenses streamed trickles of blood down his veiny arm.
“You think you can tell us what we can or can’t do, eh? Well, I don’t like that.”
Somehow the situation emboldened me, and I gurgled out of my throttled throat.
“Like I just said, that room isn’t for you.”
“Oooooh” some of the boys cooed, acknowledging my parry.
”I’ll do whatever the fuck I want, bitch boy. And right now, I want to beat the shit out of you.”
Just as he was about to punch me in the face, he noticed my copy of Phänomenologie des Geistes in my satchel, and I realized I had forgotten to hide it in a false cover.
“What the fuck is this..” he said, taking it in his bloodied hand, still pinning me to the wall with his other.
“Stop! That’s extremely important!”
“Ha! Well what if I said this book isn’t for you? You wouldn’t like that so much, eh bitch? But you thought it was okay to tell me what to do, so I’ll do the same to you. But first let’s see what kind of stupid book a bitch boy reads.”
He looked at the cover before chuckling in dismissive disbelief.
“Phänomenologie des Geistes… you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Looks like the baby’s trying to put on daddy’s imperialism. How cute, right boys?”
He held the book aloft, to the rancorous laughter of the rest of the wrestling team, some of whom offered some mocking quips.
“Hegel? Seriously? Little bitch boy thinks he’s bad now and he hasn’t even decoupled his dialectics from narrative linearity?”
“Seriously, fuck that shit man, does baby boy still think difference needs to be reconciled? That’s some pre-critical, arborescent bullshit.”
“I remember reading that when I was like seven… I did plenty of underlining… IN PISS!”
After everyone had had the chance to make a mocking comment, Dorsman violently threw the book on the floor, took another can from the beer belt propped over his singlet by his grenade-like bulge, and, opening it with his teeth, started pouring it over my head, and then over the open book on the floor.
“Stop… please, stop…”
“No… because unlike your pathetic philosopher here I’m not interested in such bullshit as mutual recognition… I submit to the spiral of domination, and right now, I can’t wait to see that spiral break you.”
Dorsman reached into the crotch of his singlet and pulled out a dense, paperback brick of Nick Land’s collected writings, Fanged Noumena.
“Now here’s a real book, bitch boy…”
I started to feel like I really was a baby like they were saying. How could I be so sure I had really been potty trained? Just as I felt a warm push from my anus and Dorsman raised his anthology of para-philosophy to smash my brains in, a voice boomed behind us.
“What’s going on here??”
Whit must have returned without us noticing. Dorsman nonchalantly released his grip on me.
“Nothing sir! We were just simultaneously doing some exercises and discussing our favorite books while we waited for you to come back!”
Whit concernedly picked up my book on the ground and looked me over while addressing everyone.
“All of you, get back into line! Gunther, it’s your turn.”
I followed Whit into the laundry room where he took a small towel out of the closet and started wiping my lager-soaked head.
“Gunther, are you okay? What happened?”
“Nothing… everything’s fine.”
I remained focused on not crying, carefully forming words that would seem as normal as possible.
“Was Suzy okay?”
Whit smiled gently as he sat down opposite of me.
“That’s very nice of you to ask about Suzy, Gunther. She’s as okay as she’s going to be. We're all going to need to support her. She and a lot of the other kids went to that Carnival of Sin and are dealing with the consequences. We’re all gonna need to put in a little extra effort to support them in their recovery. Can I count on you to help?”
Usually, having to lie made me feel uncomfortable, but now I didn’t have the energy to care.
“Yes. Yes.”
Whit smiled.
“Thanks, Gunther. By the way, what’s this book you have here?”
Whit picked up the beer-logged Phänomenologie des Geistes, and, looking at the cover, showed concern and surprise.
“Where on earth did you get this Gunther?
“I just found it somewhere.”
“Well, I hope you haven’t read too much of it. This is a very dangerous book. You shouldn’t be reading this.”
I looked down at the ground.
“Gunther… I don’t know what kind of funny ideas this book has given you, or why you wanted to read it in the first place, but I do know things aren’t easy for you now, and when people are in pain, sometimes they make bad decisions. But this pain you feel… it doesn’t need to be sublimated into some kind of synthesis, some kind of resolution, like this…”
Whit disapprovingly squinted at the cover.
“...like this Hegel fellow would have you think. Remember what I told you last week about everyone’s little secret empty space?”
I didn’t respond.
“Well, it’s not exactly empty. There’s actually something in there, around which it’s all swirling, all the anger, the regret, the wishes, frustration, even the joy and appreciation of beauty. Do you know what it is, Gunther, what’s at the center of all of that?”
I responded in monotone, my gaze still fixed downward.
“No.”
“It’s a wound, Gunther, A bleeding open wound that can never be shut.”
I look up.
“Gunther, the answer can’t be found outside of us.”
Whit put down the barley-soaked book. Mildew ate up the glucose and maltose.
“We’re all in a battle, Gunther, trying to get what we really want. And none of us have it. None of us really know it. We all want things we can never have. Thinking that things are going to get better or resolve themselves isn’t the point. It’s running towards what you love, trying to know it as much as you can, running as fast and fast as you can. But you won’t get there. You’ll lose everything; you’ll feel shocked and deeply shaken. You’ll realize it’s you who lost it all. And that wound is going to open up and just fester and fester. You need to take care of that wound, Gunther. Not look for resolution. Does that make sense?”
I thought about never seeing Cynthia again. What if I really never would see her again? I felt like the ground suddenly emptied out under me and I was dangling ten thousand feet in the air. I looked around and the world’s supports seemed terrifyingly flimsy. I felt like I couldn’t trust the ground or my legs. It seemed like surely this house could collapse at any moment, and my body would be crushed by everything in the world.
Whit, who seemed to notice my distress, smiled gently and leaned in.
“It’s okay, Gunther. You, living, is you. And you’re going to keep on living, right?”
My lower lip shook as I held my eyes wide open so as not to spill tears. I desperately tried to control my breathing so I could speak without sobbing. I wished Whit would just keep talking but he seemed to be waiting for my response.
“It’s so hard…”
Whit good-naturedly nodded.
“Yes, it is. But you’re going to do it. I know you can, Gunther. Because it’s love, Gunther. It’s love, the blood that’s gushing from that wound. And I know you want love. We all want to gulp up love, we want to drown in it.”
Colonies of fungi constructed fusty towers, which jutted like a skyline from the mass of pulp on the floor.
“Your wound is still so small, Gunther. Some little rocks have torn away at your skin, or maybe it was some tree bark. They’ve ripped open some little holes in what should have been whole and clean and forced themselves in, those unwelcome particles. But that’s okay. The closer you get to people and to the world, the bigger that gash is going to get. Everyone you meet and everything you do is going to be like a little pin that’s going to prick and prick you more until your heart gets red and juicy. And the more someone loves you, the more it will hurt. You’re going to gain so much, all so you can lose it, just so you can know that nothing is yours.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“What can I do?”
Whit softly smiled.
“How about this? Next time it feels like too much, and it hurts so bad, put your hand on your heart, Gunther. Feel it beating. Think of whatever it is that you want and don’t have, and feel it beating. Imagine your heart. Imagine how warm and wet it is. Imagine those damp red chambers, those squishy, looping vessels, all wiggling gently with every beat. Imagine how hard your heart is working, pumping blood all through your body. Imagine all that wet blood flowing all through you. And that heart is doing it. And imagine how this pain you feel is hurting that heart. Because it is Gunther, all of this, it’s hurting your heart. It’s hurting it, bad. It’s making it harder for it to do its job. Remember a time you’ve run too hard and you can’t catch your breath. That’s how your heart always feels. But that little thing, it’s still beating on, still shaking itself. Imagine your heart, Gunther.”
I put my hand to my heart and could feel it - the laceration, the slit in my left ventricle, its swollen edges, its folds of endocardium, and that gushing well of blood. I felt like blood was falling all over me; I felt soaked, dyed completely red. I could feel my pants and shirt sticking to me, and that delicious salty drink pouring into my mouth.
I wanted to gulp more, but when I opened my mouth and stuck out my panting tongue, all I could taste was a waft of noxious gases. I opened my eyes, mouth still agape, to see a forest of mycotoxins jutting from what had been ink and pages: poisonous, beer-fed mushrooms, devouring that iron gall New High German.
That night I had a dream that all of us kids from our youth group were friends, and we were working together to build a system of steel scaffolding to keep Whit’s head, a house-sized bulb of melting wax, in place. When we fixed his face to his glasses, which were connected to the scaffolding, we all high-fived and jumped for joy.
Whit looked down at me with crinkly wax eyes and could see how twisted and knotted up my heart was.
“So much hate…” he said, full of gentle worry, as one of his disembodied hands floated into my chest. I could feel him untangling something inside me, until he slowly pulled out a long, dry reed, carefully, so as not to damage the surrounding structures. When it had been fully removed, he smiled and softly dropped the withered graminoid in my hands. It felt so light, and had been so easy to take out. I wondered why I had ever needed to feel so much pain. All the problems in the world had been caused by this slender grass inside me all along.
“It’s okay now… you can go into the room.”
He said this nonchalantly, as if it had really been okay to go in all along.
Next, I was on that stairwell, and a dusty ray shot through with shadows streamed from the door.
I passed the threshold to the immediate sound of laughter and the sight of an array of delicious treats laid out on a table: purple frosted muffins, enormous chocolate cinnamon rolls, honey balls, scones, cannolis, and scanolis.
All the kids were there, having fun and eating the pastries. The space itself was wooden-beamed, full of asbestos, but sweet smelling, iit by a large round window on one of the walls. Whit was there, laughing, cinnamon roll in hand. Cynthia was too, gently smiling, nibbling on a scone, waves of cerulean hair brushing against her cheeks, her eyes perfectly clear pools set in azul marble. Sugar and crumbs trickled out of the sides of her mouth, her face, hands, and outfit all dusted with flour.
I walked up to her and she smiled at me.
“Cynthia, can I hug you?”
Her smile widened, and, still holding the scone, gave one excited nod.
I drew close to her and put my arms around her sky-blue mozzetta, fringed with white fox fur, so soft on my palms. Her tunic of that same blue reached down to her feet, revealing her silver-embroidered, darker blue boots. I gripped tighter, putting all of my life’s until-now useless energy into gripping as hard as I could, and as I did, the folds of her clothes gave way under my hands. I fell forward into a tangle of fabric, spinning, wrapped in silk, wool, and velvet, an endless maze with nothing to hang on to, nothing to break my fall, and no reason to be afraid. I twisted in an infinity of soft blue until I reached what I knew must be the center.
I found myself hovering before a cradle of muscle and bone that slowly bloomed to reveal a heart the same color as Cynthia’s lips: pale pink, almost white, with four glistening chambers swelling and releasing, systole inhaling blood, diastole gushing it out, valves fluttering shut with soft, muffled clicks. I approached the heart and peered in one of its holes to see a liquid surface glisten through a gauze of thick shadow. The darkness of that chamber seemed to be turning away from me, to be growing ever deeper, as if the space inside the heart itself was running away from me through some labyrinthine expanse, continually veiling itself.
I somehow felt a tender connection, expressed as a warmth in my extremities, to this slick, pink tissue, that I had never felt toward anyone or anything before. It seemed like I had left myself and was borrowing someone’s eyes to finally see for the first time. I knew if I had to start being me again I could never touch this heart, and all along t it had been me being myself that had kept me from it. I tried slipping into one of those quivering contractions and swiftly fell into that fibrous orifice, plunging into the bloody ocean, soaked and gulping it up, breathing in wetness in a sea of black blood, infinitely energized.
Just as I felt I was about to explode, I woke into clinging sheets and a surge of norepinephrine.
I kept my hand on my chest, counting the beats, focusing on the rhythm, hiding under my covers, when I heard a bang on the door.
“Gunther, wake up!”
I ignored my mom and pretended to be asleep, but she only banged louder.
“Gunther, wake up!!”
I walked to the door.
“Mom, I was asleep.”
“Gunther, it’s your father. He’s going to come home. He’ll still need to stay in bed, but the hospital said he’s okay to come home now.”
I forgot everything I had been thinking of before.
“When?”
“Right now. There’s already an honorary hospital parade on its way.”
Suddenly, my room no longer felt like my own. In every corner was some incriminating evidence, some reason I was worthy of an endless stream of pain.
“I need to go take a walk. I can’t sleep.”
“But Gunther, he’ll be here any minute!”
“I feel sick. I need to get some fresh air.”
“Gunther, your father fought to save your life! He forgives you! Your father loves you Gunther!”
“I SAID, I FEEL SICK! SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
Dodging my mom, I ran out of the house, down the stairs, making a sharp turn and narrowly darting between a couch and table.
The otherwise dark room was lit by moonlight glinting from a silver plaque on the wall, depicting an enormous, dark ant towering over a white-robed figure, whose golden locks flowed from a tall, shining helm, rapier drawn from a decorative scabbard, protecting himself from the ant’s monstrous mandibles with a wide, silver shield, the words “OUR FATHER, OUR HERO” emblazoned beneath.
Every day when my mom made us sit beneath the plaque to meditate on our thankfulness for our father I always felt so blank and empty. I didn’t care about my father and would feel better if he were dead. I was glad to leave the plaque behind me as I continued out the door into the night, choosing backstreets I knew the honorary hospital parade wouldn’t take.
No one was awake or outside. I listened to my own footsteps and breath as if they were music. The cracked moon slid across the sky like a piece of paper.
Every house seemed to store a shadowy pit of secrets, which I felt I needed to grasp. I wanted to collect every talisman from each of these houses, keep them for myself and wield them when appropriate, polish them, taste them, and brandish them as weapons. I imagined myself as the lord of this slippery, empty kingdom. I would rule all of this while I waited for Cynthia’s return. Surely she would hear of the great Lord Gunther when my domain had spread across the map like spilled ink.
As long as I never had to go home, I would be fine. What was I so worried about? I never had to go back to that house.
I found myself on a familiar street: Whit’s house. So many times we had played in this yard as our moms came to pick us up one by one, but now it was spread over with a layer of obsidian that sublimated into the crisp, silent air.
Until now all of the hundreds of homes I had passed had been still and dark, but in Whit’s a green light shone through a round window near the roof. I put my hand on my heart again like Whit had told me to. There was no way its excited, heightened beating could be telling me not to go in. I could feel hot blood flowing all throughout my body. Everything seemed stupid except for going in that room. I promised myself I’d go buy a can of strawberry soda, which I hadn’t drank since the night of the Carnival, later and chug it. I thought only about chugging that strawberry soda, telling myself I had no choice in what I do and that it was too late to turn back now, having already entered Whit’s driveway.
We all knew there was a key to the house hidden under a gnome statue on the back porch, which I used to let myself in.
The first floor of the house was dark, a ghost version of the space in which we had all been gathered less than half a day earlier. The moonlit surfaces were silent, except for some sound coming from the direction of the stairwell.
Looking up at the door of Whit’s secret room, I could see green light streaming out from the edges, together with what sounded like a muffled, high-energy hip-house rhythm. I climbed up the stairs one at a time, carefully measuring how much sound I was making, my nerves’ implacable demand to continue to the door making any realization of the situation’s riskiness seem worthless. As I approached, I could more clearly make out a pounding four-on-the-floor kick, crisp snare hits, and a looped, disco piano riff.
“Come on swing it… come on swing it…”
I knew I had heard this song somewhere before. Emboldened by the music’s increasing volume, I briskly walked up to the door. Just as I put my eye to the keyhole, a soulful vocal hook descended like caramel being poured over a chocolate bar in a commercial.
“It’s such a good vibration…
It’s such a sweet sensation…”
It was Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch’s number-one hit, “Good Vibrations.”
Through the shining brass keyhole, the first thing I could make out was a massive poster of a bulge-chested, thickly-muscled young man, his hand rudely thrust over his genitals, whose prominent mound created a complex web of folds in his firm yet supple Calvins, whiter than a supernova. His expression was one of weaponized stupidity, teetering between helpless child and cruel tyrant.
Kneeling before the poster, hands clasped in prayer, I saw a pile of dumpy flesh, eager to melt away from itself, bursting out of black puffed sleeves and a short ruffled skirt, over which was draped a white pinafore apron, this stern monochrome softened by voluminous lace.. A frilly headband rested on a bushy head of white hair, knee-high socks leaving a gap of wiry, grey-hairs between them and the hem of the skirt.
“Marky Mark… if it be your will, please lend your pee pee to this pee pee-less body… may your strong, pulsating cock please grow onto this flesh…”
Whit read from a notebook as he prostrated before his god. I realized his face was no longer a face. What I had always seen and accepted as Whit was no more Whit than castle ruins could be called a castle. Here was the ground-zero of what had once been a human being, a cursed, ruined husk, zombie remains, an exhalation of smiling death. He paused to droop his head in deeper prayer before continuing.
“Thank you Marky Mark… Now, this dick on my body is yours. It comes wholly from your beautiful body, from its baby skin, its warrior fury. “
Marky Mark barked orders from the vintage JVC RC-M90’s pulsating speakers.
“Come on, come on!
Feel it, feel it!”
Whit stood and proceeded reverently to the far side of the room. What I saw when my gaze followed him there sent a painful jolt down my nerves. My mouth tensed up and gushed with saliva, and an acidic, rancid column tried to push itself out of my throat, which I swallowed back down.
What looked like a huge, suppurating wound was growing off the wall, something like a ruptured, puckered fissure, molded maybe from rubber or gelatin polymers, the inner cavity glistening with glycerin gel.
Whit looked back down at his notebook.
“O, my wound… my pierced heart… my gushing cavern of recollection… may all of your desires, your pulsating chasms be comforted and healed by this cock, this magic wand…”
As Whit began to lift up his skirt, I put my hand on my heart in an attempt to calm myself, as had been my habit since earlier in the day, but what I felt there wasn’t me: it was a hard, dangerous machine, a perturbing alarm, announcing some impending, horrible disaster with mechanical indifference to the destruction of my flesh, promising me that I wasn’t okay, that the world was my enemy, and I was losing.
In the days since my father had come back home, sometimes I felt like I should move, but couldn’t. I was fine holding my piss until everyone else was asleep and pissing out the window. Shitting into a grocery bag and similarly throwing it out the window was easy. Eventually I felt good enough to try going to the bathroom. I carefully held my ear against the door, making sure no one was there to intercept me, before sprinting to the toilet, averting my eyes from my father’s rotting flesh, peering through his bandages in the crack of my parent’s bedroom door.
When I closed my eyes, I could see those folded edges, those flourishes of purple and red airbrush I had seen in Whit’s attic. If I tried to look away, I was met with my father’s mess of torn skin, exposed fat, and pus-swollen abscesses. Both hovered like motherships above and below my thoughts.
When she could for a moment get away from caring for my father, my mother would immediately come to bang on my door.
“Gunther, are you doing your homework in there?? You better be doing your homework!!”
I always ignored her, covering my ears until I heard her go away. But this time there was a new addition.
“Gunther, I don’t know what it is, but there’s a letter for you. Don’t even look at it until you’ve finished your homework! And if it’s something strange, you better throw it out!! You know you shouldn’t be looking at anything strange! I think those strange things have messed you up! Actually, you know what? The more I look at this this looks like a weird envelope. I don’t think this is from your school! Let’s get rid of this right now!”
I bolted out of bed in my rotten underwear and noisily opened the door, causing my mother to back off and gasp.
“Give me the letter.”
“Gunther, you are evil!!”
“Give me the fucking letter!!!”
“No!! I am not giving you this!!”
I grabbed my mom’s wrists, forcibly clasping them together and holding them in place with one hand while I tried to wrangle out the letter with the other. My mom shrieked, and when I tightened my grip she responded by headbutting my forehead and kneeing me in the balls. I took both blows directly and screamed, but the pain only tightened my grip. I ripped the tri-folded sheet of translucent blue vellum from her, stitched at the seams with waxed linen thread, sealed in white wax with the insignia of the Empyrean Barracks.
I pushed my mom away, slammed the door back shut, and locked it.
“I’m calling the police, Gunther! You’re going to kill your father! It will be your fault when he dies! I’ll get you arrested for murder!!”
“Fuck you!!! Leave me the fuck alone!! Fuck you!!”
Knowing that she would soon have to return to my father’s side to resuscitate him before his heart stopped pumping again, I went back to my bed, got under the covers, and switched my lamp on.
Thin mica sprinkles shimmered across the parchment, smelling of ozone. My heart and breath quickened, stomach twisted, and hands trembled as I removed and unfolded the thick, crisp paper, and started to read.
Dear Gunther,
May the true spirit of life, the silver thread of love perfectly weaving the universe continue to animate your soul. May you always be saved and protected by it, no matter where you wander. And I can see how far you have wandered. I pray that your return may be gloriously commensurate to the length of your wandering.
Through this letter, in the name of all truth, may my sincere cry reach your soul, which is in great peril. We here in the heavens are constantly fighting for all of you, just as our enemies are constantly fighting to destroy you. This is no different for the most glorified of your saints or the most vile of your sinners. From here, we can see all of the people crawling over the earth. All of you look so precious to us, like shining little beetles, round and powerless. Our greatest joy is to protect you, to guide you onto the right path. Imagine if you, as a human, saw one beetle trying to lord over the others, insisting that only he was real, and ran from all the other beetles to die alone? Gunther, that is how you look to us now. Do not indulge in hate as a substitute for your heart’s true desire.
The devil and his host of insidious demons have many stratagems to drag you into perdition. Their vicious wiles and subtle deceptions far exceed the ability of you humans to resist, for they are like us angels, of perfected intellect, though, twisted by malice, they can only tell lies.
And their lies will seem beauteous; they will fatten you with wishes and fasten you with chains, laughing as they lead you off the unreturnable cliff, enticing you with sweets that they never intend to give.
They will appear to you in disguises, dressed in what seem like ecstasies or terrors. They are shapeshifters; they may even appear to you in my mantle. Their artifices will inject you with promises of joy that are nothing but traps that will lead you to ruin.
They cannot, however, access your soul, the seat of your beauty, the shining, singular source of your being. All they can do is try to make you neglect it. Your soul is always speaking with us. Yours is in distress, and is crying out for help, though the eyes looking over this paper now, the ears drinking in the silence of your room are ignoring its summons, leaving it to die while they chase ghostly treats. Your own soul is crying out for help to you, Gunther. I beg you, please stop killing your own soul!
Those unhappy spirits have convinced you that another’s gain is your loss, and that your victory is another’s defeat. But you were brought into the world by another, and it will be another who leads you out.
Gunther, silence those futile voices and listen. Stop grasping and look around you. Stop huddling and listen. The truth is always with you. Let go of what you think is you, what must be you, what, if it isn’t you, you think you will lose. It was never you and was never yours. Gunther, you are already yourself. It was never your place to create or judge the world. Someone loves you already, as you are. A thing is still beautiful even if you aren’t gripping it. In fact, it can only be beautiful if you let it go. Stop grasping, stealing, and greedily protecting. None of those things were meant to be yours, including yourself.
If you feel exiled, it is not because you have been cast out. You have attempted to build your home in the wrong country. Leave it behind and return to your home, which is this world we share, not the pitiful shell you are trying to construct.
The ache you feel is someone knocking on your door. Do not run from what you think is pain. Those demons try to tell you that you’re cursed, that you’re wronged, and that you must protect what little you have from the world. But what you think is the world is just a room of mirrors. Shatter the mirrors, and find a world of skin and stars and strangers, bound in a war for the fate of the universe.
Your heart is indeed being hollowed out, not to kill you, but to hold something greater. Of course it will feel like an evisceration. It must be broken for it to be filled.
Build walls up around your heart, and it will fester. Open it up, and it will become a spring, nourishing both yourself and the world.
Gunther, the brackish water of your heart, where your impulses, emotions, and reason mix and become gentle waves brushing the shore of reality is where you can reach others, who are also outside of themselves, ankle deep in their own saline pools. Walk with them, and together, somehow, get to that place outside of yourselves, that desired, destined place beyond everything you know. Relative to that ultimate distance, the space between you and me is as if nothing. We walk together.
Gunther, even now, through this dull, buzzing world that is not paradise, through the pain and uncertainty that is not your dream, you are being called. All of the things you think you hate sustain you, and your destiny is hiding in the things that hurt you.
Gunther, look at your own heart, and know, the most beautiful thing in the world is a free offering. You know that it’s what you yourself want, nothing less: for someone to give you everything, and to ask for nothing in return. That’s why your heart, freely offered, is being requested, because it’s the most beautiful gift. That is why you are allowed to wander. The farther you go, the more you fill your mind with delusion and body with poison, the harder, the more impossible, it becomes for you to return, the more beautiful it will be when you stumble, nearly dead, through the doors of paradise, rattling blood, heaving and collapsing to celestial applause.
Gunther, let me tell you about our training. We passed on white boats over a lake made of silver. A fuzz of white clouds blended into the grey sky, and sheets of cold mist extended far beyond the shore. We drifted for days until we reached a waterfall that, though plunging into foggy depths beyond our sight, was nearly silent, with only the sound of a soft, clear stream. Over that precipice was a clothesline, Gunther, curves of twine punctuated by clothespins, anchored on either bank by wooden posts.
What could we do, Gunther? I thought I would fall. I was so afraid. I want every human to know, you are not alone in your fear. All humans, as I was then, are afraid.
When all I could know was a storm of pain and terror, my body was lifted lightly out of the boat, as if drawn by a string, floating limp, at peace, free from the gravity that, until now, had always held me. And when I looked down, I saw my body, and the bodies of all my fellow trainees, draped over that clothesline, left out to be dried, to be washed, bleached, and folded, before we will one day return to them.
And all of those devils that had been following us until that moment revealed themselves in a vicious panic, knowing they would lose, lunging at us in their hopeless mission. And we, little children, untrained in combat, found ourselves wielding double-edged flaming swords, spears with heads of crystalline fire, halberds with orichalcum axe heads, blasting trumpets, heralding the judgement of an authority not our own. And we, dead children who had just lost our bodies, floated slowly, effortlessly upward, swinging softly, without strain or even will, at least without any will of our own, as we now accepted a different power. There was no longer any veil between us and the true source of all power and goodness, our wills perfectly aligned with it, and we were therefore able to wield it perfectly, and we felled those forsaken demons in endless streams. Their forms were shifting moment to moment, at once like a beast, then like an insect, then a young woman, a pure boy, a king, piles of excrement, heaps of gold. We felled them in numbers beyond counting, they so frantic, and we so certain, until none were left.
And then, when we seemed so far from the world that surely we would perish, we saw it beyond the horizon, impossibly far but impossibly huge, that shining, translucent, castle. Compared to the enormity of that castle, the space between us and earth seemed like nothing, the millenia before we would return to our bodies a mere blink of the soul. Its walls were like every dewdrop on earth rupturing at once, like emerging from the tunnel at the end of the McDonald’s play place to an astral star pit, galactic promenades. Its bartizans were every street of every parting, every arrangement of lights and shadows, in the night so deep it seemed we’d fall off the earth, the edges of our view blending into sheets of rain. Its machilocations were every window, on one night blowing in an alien chill, on another softening the world with warm breeze. Its crenellations were every sincere word, taluses and bastions our ever-fading dreams, the solitary landscapes we curate within. But it was still so distant, and we were so small. No such distance can be seen from earth, no such enormity, such that the universe itself must be one of its gardens. There are so many trials that we must pass through, so many mazes, grottos, forests, lunar pathways, nebulae, loops and arcs, riddles of the heart.
Gunther, we’re all being summoned to that castle. That is where we’ll be together, praising truth and being itself, which wants to know us, to be known by us, and for all of us to know each other, dancing, climbing, embracing, gazing. Gunther, please don’t reject such a summons!
This world is passing away, Gunther. Everything is dying. Life feeds on itself and other life. Life comes out of death. You can futiley try to suck away on the life of others, but that blood you suck too is a dying, fading food. Gunther, drink from the veins of God, and mingle your own blood in them. Walk invisible paths. Jump over bricks of nothingness.
We too are struggling Gunther. The waters wail with the voices of damned souls. The stars are unlit, forgotten votive candles. What more is there to say? The rain here is endless. Grey cold waves all day, and black waves all night.
But we are not alone. Just as I strive to help you, there are others who can help you. And you can help others. Come, let us strive together! Gunther, cast off your hate and join us! Jump into what feels like death, as long as it is outward and upward, as long as it is blessed by love. At the point of perdition, where you lunge yourself into a defenseless freefall without protection or safety, when you climb onto the pyre to be transformed, not consumed, your true name will be revealed, and my hand will be waiting for yours.
We see Gunther’s dark room, lit only by his lamp, him huddled under the covers. He sets the letter down on the table beside his bed, from which he emerges and walks straight to the Casio WK-3000 on the other side of his room, a Shure SM58 mic clamped to the keyboard’s stand, its cable twisted into a tiny Behringer Xenyx 502 mixer. From there, the mic and keyboard both feed into a Peavey Rage 158. He takes some time to dust the knobs and inspect the jacks for corrosion before plugging in the cables, flipping the switches one by one, and sitting at the bench.
Without looking at any sheet music, he seems to improvise the following song. We see his bedside lamp fade out, and in turn a single spotlight descends, illuminating only him and his keyboard.
At 1:23, as the violin enters, another spotlight fades in, and we see Whit mournfully playing the violin in his maid outfit. As the song progresses, the camera zooms out and rotates around them, and we see they are performing to an empty auditorium. Before Gunther plays the last twinkling notes, he bows his head deep, resting his forehead on the keyboard. Whit holds his violin at rest, eyes downcast.
As the lights fade into darkness amidst silence, the camera turns its gaze upward, and we see that gargantuan castle, shape obscured and desaturated by distance, shining through the haze in an uncreated brightness. The disparate streets of the town, all of the dark houses, until now a random scattering, somehow seem like a maze of roads all leading to this castle, spiralling up into invisible paths, on which the moon, planets, and countless stars are checkpoints, populated by numberless invisible spirits, wandering and crawling on these bridges to eternity.
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