God of the Game (Dreamstate) (14 page)

(*Note the paradox)

    Returning to the Morning Star, after his exile from
G.o.D’s land, he became a rock star! Music was his thing. Swoons of screaming fans and a diva’s life was norm; but as with all successful poets, fame could never satiate nor exorcise that melancholic poison residing within. It was not simply about being rejected by G.o.D. In actual fact, he was a mutant of creation. In the fables, angels were programmed with mindless tasks in view. They carried out G.o.D’s whim without questioning. Lucifer, (or in some translations, Lucipher), was accidentally encoded with a dormant creative gene, an evolving cipher supposedly barred from celestial hosts, an assembly line defect escaping QC checks. Eventually the DNA kicked in. Even more bastardly, he was an archangel; one of twelve, and to have an error so serious at the pivotal echelon, the central command, meant G.o.D was inept. Lucifer’s problem was that he started to think. And he was influential. G.o.D chucked him out. And when I say G.o.D, I mean G, o and D; he was just one of the guys, like Jahr, or Leper and the Gunk.
Genomes on Demand
(G.o.D).        

    Had he forgiven his master? Had his master forgiven him? I dunno. Neither Vesper nor Lucifer ever spoke of it. Morning Star tried patching the holes of his being
, but new ones spouted. Imagine him a soft-shell barrel with a puncture. Cork him up, but the pressure within is too intense that a second gash spurts. Worse still, the corked up aperture too succumbs to the stress, and soon the poor devil is spilling like a waterfall. For a while he tried materialism:
so full of hype and foolish tits, there’s no disguise
. The crater was excessively vast. No glorious city could be built above. 

    Later you learn just to accept the facts. This is your beginning, your history; and your everlasting life is based upon the scars of your past. Lucifer, and Vesper
, too, quickly found home with similar fiends. And home is
20007-8
. 

27

   
20007-8
is the number of his apartment. Twentieth thousand and seventh floor, lot number eight. Hades is the name of the condominium, and the developer is Vesper’s and Lucifer’s good pal, Beelzebub. It has two horned structures, a dome in the middle, and a towering inferno, which from afar likens to a goat with a torched tail.

    The Morning Star had amassed quite
a sum for himself; he is a rock star, after all. And this penthouse in the West Horn of Hades, having its foundation hammered and rigged in the electrifying bowels of Hell, is his personal purgatory. Souls are traded and bought in the open-air marketplace fronting the lake. Branded, owned, and taken to an evil spirit’s abode for torture and filleting as of the demon’s trademark designs. 

    Luc
ifer is picky. He only skyjacks the souls of G.o.D’s disciples. Saints. It’s a vendetta; since he can’t get to the deity, he deceives and nets his subjects. Imagine their shock and horror after a lifelong servitude when they find themselves short of G.o.D’s bosom upon death, and instead, in a bargain bazaar operated by imps and werewolves.

    This
elaborate gambit is orchestrated by hacking into the subconscious of unsuspecting followers, and altering the wires of their psyches to drift towards Hades’ pull, rather than Heaven’s gate. The homing beacon is cloaked with distortion, a visual loop of paradise ahead, but in actual fact, the course of the fooled spirit is southbound, heading towards damnation, instead.       

    But
then, Vesper, who takes on the task of conviction, is a kind evil. Aeons exposed to internal sufferings, like sunrays on skin causing cancer, but later healed by the panache of boggling miracles, nursed by the good graces of Samaritans, (not to mention his own super-willpower), makes this devil pragmatic in heart and thought. After intimidating G.o.D’s devotees by standing them in front of the living-room wall of his five-star abode for ‘a while’, similar to five-year-olds punished for disobedience, he forgives them like father, making them understand the reason for the chastisement. Sure, at first they claw at the cement, crying out to their master, uncertain whether to curse him for their foolhardy faith or repent of a secret sin; but they soon realize that Vesper is kinda nice.  

Eternity is opened before their very eyes, and
they grasp that life infinite (or rather just life, regardless momentarily or always) is more than mere belief. The omniverse cascades before their eyelids, imprinted on retinas, even as Vesper leads them by the hand like a lover to his balcony to absorb the absolute view of a marvellous sunset - the orange globe descending beyond the sparkling gems of reflection ignited on the lake of fire. Vesper promises to show them the rest of Syurga and the constellations next door as well as afar, and they switch allegiance to his older brother in a snap of the swindler’s fingers.

    I notice in the room that only men lined the wall. They were shaking, as if facing a firing squad. “Where are the women?” I asked, curious.

   “In the TV room,” came the reply.

   “I decided to separate them,” said the voice of Vesper.

    The new addition to the Evening Star’s fetish is the inclusion of Lol
la Lollipop, his latest muse and lieutenant. “It was her idea,” the poltergeist hum added. She was in a jarring rainbow coloured cat-suit. Ex-Bitch of Mercy smacked the buttocks one by one, copying the exploits of a school disciplinarian; and I enquired, “Who’s guarding the chicks?”

   “One of my boxy toy boys,” Lol
la responded before shouting, “Strip!” accompanied by a candy-cane thunder on Vesper’s timber floorboard.    

    The men, in tears,
frightfully obeyed. 

   “Looks fun. Can I join in?” I stated, and without waiting for an answer, quickly removed my attire and stood at the corner
, in between one fat, balding man and another skinny, hairy hippie; breaking the distinguishable shape of ‘a perfect 10’ they made standing side-by-side into two.

   ‘Whack!’
I felt Lolla slapping my bum even as I grimaced in pain; an absurd mug of happiness crossed my face even as I
…Whack!…Whack!…
sensed the same joy coursing in my neighbours’ gaze.    

28

Esotoria Lane

   “Want to go for an adventure?” Vesper offered me some wine.
It’s
wrung from the blood of the sailors who died; young white bodies adrift in the tide
. *

I took a sip. The rich texture vaporized my mouth to numbness. Vesper and I sat in his study of mahogany wood. Old maps and charts strewed across several tables untidily, whilst occult books from centuries foregone were flipped open to pages showing varied diagrams of geometric alchemy. There were also many g
lobes of arcane worlds, most of which I’d not encountered. And it was all generally pretty cool. You could touch the dots representing towns and cities, or place your palm on a continent or country, and historical facts and myths will project onto a screen. This high-tech function seemed out of place in a mildewed atmosphere of magic, reminding me suddenly I lived in the end of times, and was not in a fantasy novel as I’d first romanticized.

    Vesper in his study is a serious scientist, a contradiction to the modish or psycho avatars he wears in public. Here he is just a bohemian gentleman, a bit rapt in his studies. I wonder if this was his true form; but I never asked. He’ll just give me some philosophical answer on the existence of being. I know,
`cos I’ll probably do the same if solicited. A substantial problem for life, in whom all things are possible, is that we lose count of the number of characters we’d composed throughout the ages, and thus, muddle up the image of our origin. Perhaps that’s why life is so fucking confusing. And that’s why life is as fucking confusing for creatures of mortal qualities. In each and every cell that makes up their being, its essence is from an eternal source. And the film or mote that blows into the formation of that cell can be myriad, from a zillion galaxies and dimensional timelines, a whisper of dust flown across the universe, carried by the winds of ages to settle in the components of that cell, influencing the entire body, soul and mind, rumouring secrets to the brain concerning the alpha and omega, baffling it with countless anecdotes and algorithms birthed from far flung corners of existence’s expanding jigsaw, assorted flakes dipped in DNA (like fondue or steamboat), asserting contradictory versions of truths on that poor human being who cannot make matter or meaning of his life. 

    I coughed. Fine particles puf
fed into the air and on to my face when I jumped onto a chair.

   “Don’t you clean things around here?” I asked, choking and sneezing out the powder entering my nose.

   “Don’t want to disturb the aura.

   “Shhh…watch,” he added.

    I wanted to voice my ignorance, but stopped, partly due to Vesper’s gesture, but more so because of the dusty sprinkle now glistening and gleaming in the musty air.

   “Pixies.”

   “Ohh…” I was dumbfounded. Residues danced before my visual sphere, singing a tune lulling me to slumber. It wasn’t dirt, but tiny, almost microscopic life-forms with wings, pointy ears and miniskirts.

    As sleep crashed over my consciousness I heard Vesper chanting…something about opening the passages to Esotoria Lane. 

*
Soul Cages - Sting
      

29

    The crunchy whiff of
keropok lekor
(fish crackers) wafted up my nostrils, fried and oily. Makes me miss
chau taufu
(fermented smelly bean curd) sold at
pasar malam
(night bazaars) back in Ipoh, my hometown of Malaysia. 

    One minute I was in
Vesper’s study, the next, I’m at Petaling Street…Earth. Hawkers holler for the pockets of tourists. Petaling Street is the Chinatown of KL, but what’s odd and amusing is that there’re no Chinese manning the stores. Everything is run by the new wave of immigrants from neighbouring countries like Myanmar and Nepal. 

    The Chinese came much earlier. Now, fuelled by the economic boon of the 21
st
century, hordes of aliens flocked, looking for work and opportunity. To greener pastures, from poorer states.  

    The Chinese bosses w
ere nowhere to be seen, only when collecting money do they show their preserved fat faces fluffed with luxury.

    Ironic, that Chinatown has no Chinese. We should rename it Burmese town or something. O
h well, the price of development.

    I rummaged through the goods on display, ever so often contouring my body to allow some traveller from the West or Middle East the space to pass by the cluttered walkway. Caucasians, golden brown and sun-soaked, in strappy tops highlighting tan lines, and Arabians in
burqas
, black and formless with only a slit for eyes, but inside, lingerie for their husband’s delight; they create a contrast of culture collide.

   “Hi,” there was a tug at my shoulder. “We will be your guide.”

    I turned to come in contact with one fat man and a little boy.

   “I am Fat Man,” said the rotund, “and this is my compatriot
, Little Boy,”

   “We’re wanted for war crimes,” added the kid, “Between the both of us, we’re responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Japan.”

   “And you now work for Vesper?”

   “Penance.”  

   “So it must be kinda boring, assigned to mindless tasks as escorts in Petaling Street,” I joked.

   “Esotoria Lane
, you mean,” said the round one.

   “Esotoria Lane? Looks like home on Earth to me,” I injected the obvious. “You must be mistaken. Perhaps a screw up with the Portal?”

   “Where did the Master pick this idiot up?” asked the child who couldn’t be more than nine.

    Fat Man
returned an expression which made me want to smash him in. But I didn’t want to cause a scene. “Let us enlighten you,” he said, “walk to the end of the road without touching a thing.”

    That should be easy.

    I started my stroll, but soon the shouts of cut-throat dealers pierced my brain. It was as though someone shot a sonic ray directly into the cerebral cortex, and into the deep regions of the subconscious. The words spelled, “
Rolex watch, Rolex watch. Cheap, cheap, very cheap.
”

    Then came, “
Football jersey, football jersey
,” on another frequency. Under normal circumstances in my ex-Earth-life, I would have walked on, unbothered by the calls; but this being Esotoria Lane, as Fat Man said, meant something was working against my sanity. Like the dust dancing to the puff of Vesper’s sofa, the sound waves also took a different tune. A visual stimuli. It is uncanny when you can see what’s heard. Synesthesia is the word for it, a paradigm shift imposed upon the five senses, mixing them up like a cocktail, shaking it like a bartender, leaving a tail of mayhem like a monster’s path in downtown Manhattan.