You couldn’t give up if you wanted to, you sick narcissist who’s addicted to yourself. You even kissed your own reflection that one time in the Target bathroom. You justified it by saying the light was good, but you just can’t admit you have a problem. And so you decide to put on a show for your fellow classmates. The jocks, the geeks, the hot ones, and the ugly friend the hot ones keep around; all of them. You’d bet most of them hadn’t heard live instruments since high school, but there’s a Jello-Wrestling Jamboree every Wednesday, and it’s the hottest ticket in town. But they haven’t heard the true artisanship of expressing oneself through the magical medium of music. You can feel Mike Johnston’s “fag” call echo from many years prior. You’ll show them now. You enter the reunion, and find the small theater crew already cliqued out in the corner. There’s Seth, the chubby comic relief who always stole the show on guitar. Danica, your bassist who you always had a crush on, but was always dating someone else. Ian, a shy nerd trying to break out of his shell on drums. He’s brilliant, but somehow not smart enough to shower regularly and use deodorant. And Xavier, the mute light operator, who wears all black whether working or not. Also a few other peripheral characters not worth mentioning. You’re catching up when the gang wants to go grab more drinks, except for Xavier who’s still nursing his first.
Category: DONE
Give up like they did
You miss the rush of being on stage. The attention. The flashing lights and the red carpet. Why aren’t people looking at you anymore? You go through periods of binge drinking and mixing Chinese food and pizza (Two for Tuesdays). But you find your need for adoration and over-inflated ego gradually decrease to healthy levels. You settle into a career as a high school drama teacher, and eventually, get married and have a family. You make a large impact on your small community, but dreams of making a difference in society as a whole slowly fade with your hairline. But you’ve found peace through meditation, psychedelic mushrooms, and copious amounts of medical marijuana. The weed is for your cancer. You have cancer now. And you just died from it.
YOU DIED!
Demure, and suggest that someone else goes forward.
Looking at the stage, and the empty space in its center, you are convinced of one thing: you don’t want to be there, you don’t want any part of whatever it happening, regardless of whatever networking opportunities it could possible entail. You say as much to Achitophel.
‘Umm, you know what, my thespian skills are a little rusty – how about you go, instead? I’m happy just watching.’
‘There is no light on the outskirts of life,’ Achitophel sighs, after pain streaks across her countenance at your denial.
Ajax nods sadly. ‘You could have been great, you know. Remember Junior year Spring Break, in Bayonne? You showed such promise, then…’
Did you? You remember that trip, vaguely – a farcical idea on Achitophel’s part, who suggested taking a vacation to a mundane destination. The trip itself was as unremarkable as its premise promised: twice-daily commutes to a local Denny’s, movie marathons, ketamine. You’d slid into a K-hole, it’s true, and retained your sunny sanity only by adopting an entirely different persona – Kathleen Third-Eye, a Messenger from the Shadow Realm of Urlu-Ketańa-Rå – and speaking in tongues for twelve hours. Afterwards the world was your domain, and you ordered blueberry pancakes with Himalayan repose, your palm raised in the air as you said to the waitress (who had a degree from the University of Las Vegas), ‘There was a time when I would have said, No, I would never order breakfast at 9pm. But I once told myself that I am many things, which I am no longer. There is only the pancakes, the stomach, the hunger, and time is maya created by the pantomime of the self’ and then you poured syrup on the pancakes before eating them with your lustful hands. Sure, you were quite the mystic, then… but that was before resume writing classes, before seeing yourself in the mirror in a shirt and tie for work, before losing years of your life to something far less awe-inspiring than the Void.
‘I show plenty of promise in professional life,’ you reply, defensively, ‘I can become a member of the bourgeoisie while retaining my bohemian values.’
‘Perhaps. Per-haps,’ Achitophel replies, walking in a tiny circle while facing away from you, towards the stage, ‘but there can only be Nine, and the Nine are each spokes seeking to return to the One, who both Is…’ and then turning to you, planting her feet, ‘and Is Not. Ajax, Levortho Nil’Enkala.’
Taking a purple Gameboy Color out of his back pocket, Ajax approaches you. You haven’t seen a Gameboy Color in years. Yours was purple, too – is that somehow your Gameboy color, that Ajax is holding? You’d lost yours, or, then again, your mother took it away from you – was she in on this, too?
‘You refused to play the game,’ Ajax says, placing a hand on your shoulder again (though, this time, it’s the opposite shoulder), ‘so the game must play you.’
Ajax kicks you in the crotch. You collapse, gasping for breath, streaks of light criss-crossing your vision (since when do you get migraines?) as Ajax drags you by your hair onto the stage. Scream all you like, entreat them about the Halcyon days you shared, it’s no use – they’ve drank some kind of Kool Aid, and it goes well with something they’re gonna serve you to. The skin-colored star of the dancing alumni uncoils and starts chanting as Ajax places you in their center, opens your mouth, and forces the Gameboy into it.
This is so fucked up you reflect, accurately, as the Gameboy grates against the inside of your throat. The other alumni are about to do something to your body, they’re pulling on your limbs, you hear cracks and gratings of the bones – this isn’t gonna end well. In fact, to cut to the chase…
Run.
You push the youth out of the way and run for the door. Alas, along the way, one of the alumni trips you, and you look up in time only to see the Infinity Bludgeon coming down on you, and again, and again.
No.
No, you do not want to die. Sure, you had joined the on-stage ritual in the hopes that you could somehow survive a bit longer, but the appearance of the offering makes things abundantly clear: you are meant to face the offering – this naked, young, oil-soaked man – in a combat to the death. The other alumni are arrayed in a triskelion around you, Ajax and Achitophel look up with thirsty eyes, and the offering approaches you tentatively, holding the silver shiv in his right hand. He looks afraid, yet also dazed – you can’t quite tell if he’s been drugged, but you are certain that he’s looking to survive this encounter. So, the question remains: are you willing to kill this youth to survive, or will you attempt to run even now?
Yes.
Yes, you welcome death. You want to be an offering to the death cult which you have worshipped since before you admitted it. All the mysticism, all the posturings – they were merely garnishes on the final fact of your profoundly anti-humanist impulses. When you accept the blade in your neck, it is like your mother’s first kiss. The nihilism is strong in this one. A shame, too – you could have been a hero for Life, for the beauty of the Struggle, for the fringes of the Mandala which are arguably more Real than the center itself, or at least inseparable from it. Either way, you’re about to find all these answers, because your blood is spilling across the stage.
Take your place center-stage.
‘I know,’ you say, ready for a ceremony which you’ve been preparing for your whole life.
In fact, you’d foreseen this night years before, on a Junior year Spring Break trip with Ajax and Achitophel to Bayonne, New Jersey – a farcical idea on Achitophel’s part, who suggested taking a vacation to a mundane destination. You’d slid into a K-hole, it’s true, and retained your sunny sanity only by adopting an entirely different persona – Kathleen Third-Eye, a Messenger from the Shadow Realm of Urlu-Ketańa-Rå – and speaking in tongues for twelve hours. Afterwards the world was your domain, and you ordered blueberry pancakes with Himalayan repose, your palm raised in the air as you said to the waitress (who had a degree from the University of Las Vegas), ‘There was a time when I would have said, No, I would never order breakfast at 9pm. But I once told myself that I am many things, which I am no longer. There is only the pancakes, the stomach, the hunger, and time is maya created by the pantomime of the self’ and then you poured syrup on the pancakes before eating them with your lustful hands. Sure, you were quite the mystic, then… but that was before resume writing classes, before seeing yourself in the mirror in a shirt and tie for work, before losing years of your life to something far less awe-inspiring than the Void.
Stepping onto the stage, you reach the center and watch as the other alumni begin to dance again. They move in exquisitely choreographed yet disturbing jerks and stomps, all following an atonal rhythm. You remain still and silent, facing forward: you know you are the spoke of the Unseen, that which both Is and Is Not. It’s astonishing, how easy it is for you to slide back into your old ways, to forget your name, to forsake the strictures of civilization and join the cult of Death.
An offering is brought forward: he is naked, young, and caked in black oil – yes, he will do nicely. Perhaps that is the ultimate horror: the knowledge that, if you so wish, you could strip away your morality and become a sentinel of the Shade, that the Death-Wish is ever-present, ever-appealing. The faceless alumni are kneeling to you now: for your service here, you shall be accorded a high pedigree indeed in the highest echelons of corporate power, moneyed interests in offshore accounts, and the preterite and proletariat alike shall be kept under heel in your name. Yes, the ministers of Kal’Alhoum are assembled, and will provide no quarter. The boy is given a silver shiv, which winks in the red light. The drums are thundering now, but no one moves – only the boy, as he advances towards you, lunges, and misses.
You pirouette out of his way, adopting a cobra pose, your face placid. Have you come here to die?
Continue Through the Front Door
Putting on your best Crusading Protagonist, you force open the double doors and stride (or perhaps strut) in, eyes darting around to survey the scene.
A group of alumni, alarmed, have turned to face you. One has a wild mane of red hair and looks like he just left a Korn concert (your older cousin listened to them, not you, you assure yourself – your inner monologue making that reference doesn’t make you old. Though they did appear in that one South Park episode). His hands are empty, yet that is not true of the woman standing to his left: she’s your age, as well, sports the entire Vineyard Vines Summer 2014 catalogue, and brandishes a two-handed Infinity Bludgeon. It is an elegant weapon, from a more civilized age: the adamantium handle is sixteen hands long, and laced with a criss-crossing inlay of silver which blossoms out like a mandala over the bludgeon itself, a heavy boulder famously dug up by the school’s founder, Erich von Straussheim, in The Year of Our Lord 1744.
“Where did you get that?” you ask automatically, momentarily forgetting the situation.
“What’s wrong, old friend,” she asks, fingering the handle playfully, “a few years since graduation and you’ve already forgotten that I know all this school’s secrets?”
Your eyes adjust, and suddenly it dawns on you: the Vineyard Vines Summer 2014 catalogue – of course! She was wearing it the last time you saw each-other in civilian dress, the day before graduation.
“Achitophel!” you cry, throwing out your arms and embracing your old friend with postcard joy. Yet something isn’t right.
“Something isn’t right,” the red-maned man growls, and, looking over, you recognize him, too.
“Forgive me, Ajax,” you say, allowing him to kiss your hand, “I got a little freaked out on the walk over here.”
Naturally, you expect a cordial response, yet Ajax offers none: he simply stares back at you, with a blank expression. The others do the same. Huh. Looking around helplessly, you say, ‘So… is there something I missed?’
‘You missed the Light of the Nine, evidently,’ Sphinx-like Achitophel observes, ‘otherwise you would have known that fear is never to be forgiven.’
Achitophel delivered this last line as matter-of-factly as a weather report. ‘The Nine?’ you ask, bamboozled.
‘We’re not here to discuss theology, old friend,’ Ajax replies warmly, laying a hand (suggestively?) on your shoulder. ‘We’re here to enact it, in mystery cult theatre 3000.’
Leading you forcefully, with Achitophel following close behind, Ajax ushers you through the antechamber’s antiquated doors into the main theatre. You feel as if you’ve stepped into the shelled out ruins of a czarist palace flooded out when a dam retaining a reservoir filled with Arizona Iced Tea collapsed: the upholstery of the tiered seats have been eaten through by maggots, the incongruous Roccocco molding caked in gold varnish (imported from a Medici estate thanks to a generous contribution by George Gordon O’Hoolahan himself), and the stage itself – large enough to hold a performance of Phantom of the Opera, even though the theatre department principally serves as a front for the school’s poaching of oil oligarchs (backdoor purchases for the performance rights of fictitious plays, seven-figure matinee seat prices, ‘Ibsen’).
Most alarming of all, however, is on the stage itself: a dozen alumni of varying ages – you spot a septuagenarian in there, surely – run in a circle on-stage to the atonal beat of a timpani drum, each wearing flesh-colored suits and featureless masks over their faces. What kind of networking event is this, exactly?
‘So what is this, The Rite of Spring?’ you ask, trying to retain your composure.
‘You were always a literary type, friend-o, but no,’ Ajax replies, taking a hand off your shoulder, ‘this is the ultimate networking experience.’
‘Some real participatory theatre,’ Achitophel adds.
‘I thought you were putting on Shakespeare?’ you recall.
Achitophel lays a hand on your chest and looks deeply into your eyes. ‘You were performing Shakespeare out there. We’re moving beyond that here.’
And with that, the maelstrom onstage halts, with each actor (participant? Victim? Potential employer?) stopping in place to form a triskelion: three lines of people, four in each, extending from an empty center, which Achitophel points to.
‘That’s for you,’ she says, as the players on-stage and Ajax turn to you.
So, what are you gonna do?
Jump down onto the stage and attack Achitophel
Thinking impulsively, you jump off the rafters, land on your feet alongside your compatriots, and start attacking Achitophel and Her Alumni Dancers…
Or, at least, that’s how you’d hoped that would go. Instead, when you jump off the rafters you break your ankle, and start screaming in pain. The woman of a certain age landed on her feet, and she starts exchanging judo chops with a faceless alumni, whereas the twins each landed right on top of a dancer, and are having trouble untangling themselves from their targets.
‘Ajax! Get over here!’ Achitophel shouts, recognizing you, ‘turns out we’re having a proper reunion, after all.’
‘Achitophel! What the hell is going on!’ you demand, clutching your foot.
‘I wouldn’t talk about hell if I were you,’ Achitophel replies, wielding her Infinity Bludgeon, ‘You’re heading to the Shadow Realm, after all.’
‘Wait!’ you cry, as she prepares to bring the Bludgeon down on you. ‘Wait!’
She doesn’t.
All-out attack on Achitophel.
‘Let’s do an all-out attack on Achitophel,’ you say to the others, ‘c’mon!’
Letting out a war-cry, you all stampede the stage. The faceless dancing alumni turn just as you approach, and you each push one out of the way, carving a path to Achitophel. She yells something angrily – ‘you? What are you doing here?’ or ‘why are you attacking us?’ or ‘why aren’t you the resurrected spirit of Erich von Straussheim?’, perhaps – but it doesn’t matter.
Holding up her Infinity Bludgeon, she hits you in the shoulder, and you feel it shatter, collapsing on your side. You’re passing out quickly, but not before you watch your comrades gang rush Achitophel, knocking her out. A dancing alumni was starting to strangle you, yet you feel their grip soften, and they collapse on top of you. You are in an intense amount of pain, your vision is fading, but as you pass into sleep you have the mildly thrilling knowledge: you are going to LIVE. That is too bad about the mime, though…
Homecoming of Horrors 