A mournful, distorted organ piping sounded from somewhere. It had a mechanical, lifeless quality, that was no doubt generated by the clockwork cathedral itself rather than by any hand. With its unsettling slow motion dreaminess, it sounded like the moaning of ghosts.
In the center of this main hall, a desk rested atop a raised platform like a circular altar. Seated behind the desk was one of those balloon-headed, skeletal administrative Demons like the one whom I’d been brought before upon my entry into Hell, and upon my release from prison. Its translucent, seemingly boneless skull was lit from behind by a hissing gas jet on the wall, and I saw silhouetted veins and a dark cloudiness within which almost seemed to churn, unless that was the rippling effect of the flame. The lipless grimacing face turned its glowing eyes onto me, as the soldier Demon held me in place at the foot of the altar. I imagined that it was probing my mind in a kind of telepathic and unwilling confession.
After a few wordless moments, a gaunt arm lifted, a bony finger pointed at one of the doorways lining the room, and without further ado the warrior led me toward it.
Behind the door was a small room with only a chair bolted to the floor, thick leather straps affixed to its arms and legs as if it were an old fashioned electric chair, and—facing that—a tall narrow window. Its shape and position told me it must be one of the red stained glass windows I had seen outside, but on the inside it had a different appearance. It was a black emptiness…though I thought I could just barely make out the odd geometric designs I had seen on the outside, a blacker black against the darkness.
I didn’t resist as the Demon strapped me into the chair, concerned only that he might detect the shape or weight of the guns in my jacket pockets. But soon, and without another word, he left me alone in the room, closed the metal door after himself. My head, too, was strapped to the chair however, so I couldn’t look back at him.
The torture commenced after only a few seconds.
Whether the window was a kind of portal, or nothing more than a sort of television screen, I don’t know…but gradually the darkness lightened, and I watched a scene already in progress.
What I was shown didn’t at all surprise me, as if I’d been expecting exactly this. Then again, maybe they would show me only what I expected, the programming I devised in spite of myself.
My wife Patricia, who I called Patty, was lying on an unfamiliar sofa, and behind her head I could see a section of a Christmas tree which sent its mix of pastel light across her face like sunlight through a conventional stained glass window. Lying atop my wife was her coworker Keith, now her boyfriend. She had on a red nightshirt with a cute snowman on the front, hiked up around her waist, while Keith’s sweat pants were pushed down far enough for me to have to watch, hypnotically, his colorless and stubbled buttocks which pulsed rhythmically as if they were the very heart of him. Every detail of this lingering scene (did Keith have a lot of stamina or was I watching an endless loop?) etched itself with increasing sharpness, branding my inner head more forcefully than my outer head had been marked, until I noticed that one of Patty’s green socks with their candy cane patterns had a thread hanging loose, and that Keith was trying not to be too conspicuous about peeking at the TV, which was out of frame but evident in the blue glow reflected softly on his profile, leaving me to wonder if a sports program or a porno was on (I doubted it was a National Geographic special or
A Room With A View
).
From my room with a view, I watched as Keith’s pulsations mounted, deepened, and Patty seemed to be moaning though there was no accompanying soundtrack. But as Keith ground his orgasm into her, and Patty’s fists squeezed the folds of his sweatshirt, I didn’t avert or close my eyes. While perhaps my subconscious mind had told my captors that this was the type of scene that would most torment me, in fact it stirred only a small degree of loss and anger in me. To mourn the loss of Patty now felt to me like resenting someone for removing a steak dinner from under my nose and then revealing to me a dead mouse buried in the mashed potatoes; I should be grateful for the revelation. I couldn’t hate these two. They were pathetic, as I was in life. Sad, rooting little things, hungry and greedy, scared and discontented, squirming in their nest. I had lusted after other women when I was married. I might have cheated on Patty first had an inviting enough opportunity come along. I was not purer, less sullied by much.
But there were two greater reasons that I was fairly unmoved by the scene. For one, the suffering I had experienced in Hell had taken the edge off this torture, which once would have had me bawling. And, most importantly of all, I was in love with another woman now.
I blinked involuntarily, and in the space of that blink the scene changed. This scene was more painful, and this time I did feel more of an ache at the loss of my wife. Because at this time, we had been a couple, and sharing a great suffering. We were in the waiting room of a clinic. We were waiting for the test that would confirm what we already knew…that Patty had had a miscarriage.
I remembered—no, I felt again—the anger, more than anything else. The resentment that these other women around us were still pregnant, had not had their dreams crumpled like paper, too. That teenage girls were getting pregnant, getting abortions, even while we sat there, despairing. We had planned this baby. But the Creator had apparently had other plans, just to remind us of who really pulled the strings.
Another scene; my father’s funeral. He was wasted and withered like a mummified gnome in his coffin, with his red plaid tam-o’-shanter on his head and, because he no longer had a nice suit coat, wearing my russet corduroy jacket he had helped me pick out to wear to my cousin’s wedding when I was a teenager. Worse, I saw my poor, small, wilted mother, dazed in the funeral parlor as if embalmed while still alive. Suddenly I had a great terror of seeing my own funeral, of seeing my mother in
that
funeral parlor. I mustn’t think about it, lest my captors seize upon the idea! That scene I
would
have to look away from, in guilt. The agony I had inflicted on the woman who had brought me into this world, who had already suffered the loss of her husband, the loss of her unborn grandchild. How selfish I had been, how blinded by my own petty concerns. I thought, then, that if they showed me moping over my fat file of rejection slips for my writing, I would die all over again out of sheer embarrassment.
But the sequence of scenes appeared to be in reverse chronology. I saw my old dog Tippy die in my arms by lethal injection. I hadn’t cried at my father’s funeral, but watching Tippy die when I was ten years younger and ten years less hardened to the world made me feel that young again, and tears started to film my eyes. I couldn’t wipe them away and the next few scenes were somewhat blurred.
One of the last scenes I watched was curious to me because of its subtlety when compared to the more conspicuously dramatic ones.
I was in third grade, in art class, and a pretty young woman who was substituting while our regular teacher was on maternity leave had us making cards out of colored construction paper to give to our mothers for Mother’s Day. We were instructed to put glue on the back of the central overlay for the card, and then approach the front of the room so the teacher could position it for us on the card itself. She told us not to put too much glue on the top layer; just dots here and there. I suppose I didn’t think that was really going to be enough to hold, however, and I put on a more liberal amount…so that when I approached the front of the room, the substitute snapped, "I told you not to use too much glue." And in disgust, she slapped my glued section onto the card, so that it was blatantly crooked.
I remembered clearly my dismay as I looked down on this card that I was supposed to give to my mother as a gift. But just like when my child was miscarried, my sadness at that moment was secondary to my anger. It was anger at a kind of injustice. I knew that my crime, of squirting a little too much glue on a Mother’s Day card, was of less significance than the reaction of an adult woman who should be so moved to contempt by so simple an act of a child. It was as if I suddenly realized how small even grownups were, filled up with their anxieties and failures and resentments so that they’d rather inflict those feelings on others than see to it that no one else suffers as they have. I felt a precursor of the injustice I’m experiencing now, again from my supposed betters. I did not feel shame, however. I did not feel regret. I knew then, as I do now, that I was unfairly judged, unfairly treated. But it obviously stuck with me, this small, seemingly forgotten incident. Because it wasn’t about someone beating me, cheating on me, abandoning me. It was one of the smallest but most numerous pieces of the mosaic of the Hell we live when we’re still alive.
I remembered trying to pry the card apart so I could reglue it properly. In the end, I threw it away before I left school…and when I went home, I recreated it as best I could with my own construction paper and glue. It wasn’t crooked, at least. And my mother loved it. It was a triumphant feeling, in a small way. Like a tiny act of defiance that doesn’t undo the incident, but at least preserves some sense of dignity, balances out the injustice ever so slightly. It’s all that we can really hope to achieve, in either version of Hell.
My tears had dried by the time the Demon returned to unstrap me from the chair. I felt the spirit of defiance in me still, and wanted to tell him to give me a bucket of popcorn next time…but I didn’t want him to strap me in again for a second feature. Maybe my own funeral, this time, after all.
Not really sure just how long I had been inside it, I left the Black Cathedral…and I was not interrupted again on my way home to my hotel.
But Chara was not waiting for me there.
Day 73.
W
hen I first heard the close gunfire, I thought the Angel motorcyclists still hadn’t left Oblivion, were still hanging around until Chara could be caught and brought to justice. But when I went to my window and looked down into the street, I saw a furtive figure run by on foot, apparently with a rifle or shotgun in his hands. He wasn’t wearing white robes. He had to be one of the armed, rebel Damned…
In the distance, now that I was close to the window, I detected more gunfire; either rattles of automatic fire or crackling individual shots. And then, a flat heavy thud made my window, already trembling from the vibrations of the machine building, shudder more deeply. It had to have been an explosion.
On the tail of this thud there rose from the city a terrible ululation, that sounded like a perfectly synchronized chorus of children wailing in fear or agony. It took me a few minutes to realize that these were the voices of the pumpkin-like Overseers, in their six towers along the boundaries of the city, calling out a siren-like alert. It was pretty ghastly. It kept up for a good fives minutes, during which time I think every synthetic cell of my body squirmed.
As I sat penning a formal proposal to Necropolitan Press, in the hopes that they might publish these memoirs, I heard more gunfire shift and spread through the city, and occasionally there were more of those heavy thuds…one so loud and rumbling that I actually felt my floor quiver. Even had the Overseers given no warning, there was no question now what was happening…
The force of Celestials had arrived in Oblivion, to do away with its untrustworthy Demon population. To squelch the rebel movement. To put the whole town back in order.
"What’s going to happen to Chara?" I asked Lyre, who gazed up at me dolefully. And what would happen to me? Could Inspector Turner really be trusted not to send Celestials here to arrest me, and spirit me away to tortures that would make everything I had yet experienced pale in comparison?
As the hours passed, and I paced the flat, unable to concentrate on my query letter for long, I eventually grew restless enough to descend to the street and take a better look at what was going on in my local vicinity, my view from the window being so limited by the machine building.
I smelled smoke in the air, straight off. And the crack of gunfire was more sharp, distinct. I even heard far-off screams and shouts. Not much different from any time in Oblivion, really, but there was a subaural hum in the air, a vibration, as one might feel before an encroaching tornado…ominous forces building…
Concealed on my person, under my coat, were my two pistols, but they were not much comfort against this awareness that the city around me was becoming a battleground. Tilting my head back, I stared at the roiling molten sky, that hole in the clouded heavens like a vast red eye glaring directly down on Oblivion. The ruddy glow reflected on the upper face of the soaring machine building. The hateful, blood-soaked eye of the Creator, not so much frowning on the violence below but thriving on it, lusting for the endless wars and jihads. I wanted to pull my useless little pistols out of my waistband and fire them straight up into that lake of fire.