Wander through worlds where a woman craves even a poisonous touch..a man's deformities become a society's fashion...genetic regeneration keeps the fires of Hell away...and painted lovers risk everything to break the boundaries of their caste system down. Separate your mind from your flesh and come in. Welcome...
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Short Fiction: The Tantalus Effect, Part 4 (The Orpheus Project)
The stink of wild nano-spore filled his nose and stung his eyes and red tears stained his unshaven cheeks.
He had left Kim in Hell. He hadn’t been able to save her, any more than he could stop Mary from saving him.
Night after night since the explosion at the University, Grimm hunted the strip with dark bribes and foolish promises. The tangled human wreckage rapt in reality playbacks and Wetnet linkups littered the strip in patterns that spoke a language Grimm could only sense, but not decipher.
And then a hooker with an oral genomorph–a proper clean one, her pimp attested, not a dirty street job–nodded and mumbled through the modified labial folds of her ruined mouth that Yes, this is the right place: this is where you can find the Old Mother.
Grimm reeled with fatigue and fear down the crumbling alley, and there, beneath a faded candy-stripped awning, an ancient woman dressed in a shapeless smock of the same material squatted among piles of rotted carpet and old cardboard.
‘I’ve done terrible things,’ said Grimm. ‘I’m a murderer and a rapist.’
‘What’s that to me?’ the old woman replied. ‘In these evil times all men carry death and brutality in their hearts. Some act on their impulse and some do not. It is all one in the eyes of God. I do not give you even a rat’s arse for your guilt. Take it up with the shriver who works the strip.’
‘I need help. A girl saved me from… she saved me. She said the Daughters of Artemis sent her.’ The effect on the old woman was immediate. She looked up at Grimm through milky eyes and a thousand wrinkles. For a moment her face bent under a deep and terrible sadness.
‘I know you, John Grimm,’ she said. And then the sadness passed, and she gestured at the square of carpet in front of her. ‘Sit down. I will read the cards for your fortune, and then you must go and never return.’ Grimm sat cross-legged in front of the old woman. ‘The sight of you fills my mouth with vomit,’ she said, and she handed him a deck of worn tarot cards to shuffle.
The two cards in the centre are placed in a cross, for despite the lies, we still serve the cross. Through the cross we come to understand the heart of the issue. Ah, see? The first card is The Lovers, and over them lies the The Tower. Love is at the heart of your destruction.
It was Joel who led them to ruin back when they were full of the power of youth, but too young to know how to use it.
Joel Kosminski, Mary Kelly, and John Grimm had hung together for most of their time at Varsity. They all took the same classes and flatted together with a bunch of other students in a big old building that had seen too many parties to remember if it had ever been a real home. Stale puke and pizza boxes littered the floor in every room except Mary’s.
Other students came and went. The three of them remained constant. Over the months they lived there, the squalor became their own, and they guarded it jealously.
Their beer.
Their pizza.
Their puke.
Eventually they decided it should be just the three of them, and so they stopped advertising for replacement flatmates.
John loved Mary. She, on the other hand, loved Joel.
And Joel loved John.
Not that they didn’t each have their own respective boyfriends and girlfriends (girlfriends for John, boyfriends for Joel and Mary). But there was this thing between the three of them and rather than tearing them apart, it kept them circling each other. Anyone who came close to their triad got burnt by the heat. How could it have been otherwise?
Around the central cross we deal four more cards to form an outer, larger cross, incorporating the smaller cross at its heart. The left arm speaks of the past, and see? It is the Seven of Cups. Temptation lies there, and drives all that has come from the affair since.
Doctor Albert Grimm closed his eyes. Tissue-thin, the lids did little to protect his bulging eyes from the glare of several gas lamps. Light and leather filled his well-appointed office.
Darkness frightened Albert.
His eyelids peeled back again, and he raised a claw-like hand to rub his bulbous forehead. Wisps of hair floated about his blemished pate. Perched on his wing-backed leather chair, Albert looked predatory. Standing across from his desk, a young man with fear rolling off in waves trembled under Albert’s gaze. ‘You have betrayed my trust in you, young Sandlot.’ A croak.
‘Doctor Grimm, please… I can explain everyth–’
‘Silence.’ A whisper. Albert pointed a bony finger at Sandlot. ‘God’s blood, Sandlot, there are whores you could befoul yourself with that cost less than a shilling a time and it would have been infinitely less morally ambiguous than rutting with one of the lunatics.’
‘She’s not mad.’
‘Of course she’s mad. She’s in here is she not?’
‘There are many in here that shouldn’t be, Doctor Grimm. Rachel is an alcoholic. Her husband is a German-Pole. She said she would receive beatings from the brute whenever he got drunk just for her being a Jewess. She was sick when she was brought here, but she’s no lunatic.’
‘Jane.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Her name is Jane.’
‘She says her name is Rachel, Doctor Grimm.’
‘She is mad, Sandlot, and therefore not to be trusted. You will refer to the lunatics in my charge by the names I have chosen for them. And you–you have seriously jeopardised your career. Do not think this kind of thing has not happened before to interns, Sandlot. Lunatics are a foul and rapacious lot. They will sense weakness in you, young man–any flaw in your character is like a lighthouse beacon to them. They flock to it, and exploit it and seek to make you one of their own.’ Albert lowered his finger and leaned back into his leather chair. ‘I had hoped to make you one of my own, Sandlot. I had thought you might fit in here. Your father spoke well of you at the Society, and the year you and I have spent working together has been more than pleasant for me. My son Septimus is such a disappointment. He didn’t want to fit in.’
‘I can fit in, Doctor Grimm. It was a moment’s lapse, sir. I… she and I have spoken together often since I came. She seems so lucid. She…’ he paused, casting his eyes about the room as if searching for words. ‘…she broke my heart seeing her locked in that cell like an animal, crawling among the filth like the others. When I offered to clean her, she seemed so grateful. And when we were alone in the washroom…’
‘You were overtaken with lust at the sight of her nakedness.’
‘No! I am a God fearing man, Doctor Grimm. I would never allow myself to be seduced by a woman’s flesh. It was her gratitude at being clean. At being treated like a human again. Besides, she gave herself to me but when we were done… when the guard caught us, she kept calling me by your name. If you were not so obviously above such things, I could imagine she might have harboured a secret love for you. Such things are not unknown in asylums, and I could understand it. For I can tell you that having been in her company these past months I have come to experience perhaps some sentiment for her myself–’
‘What rubbish, sir! It was lust for a woman’s swollen flesh, plain and simple. I should have expected nothing more.’
‘No! Again, Doctor Grimm, no. I am better than that. Even if I had not sensibility enough to comport myself better than you suggest, I have seen what lies beneath a person’s skin so often that I have little regard for the sight of flesh intact. Please. I would do anything to continue studying under you.’
‘Then a woman’s flesh does not in itself excite you?’ (an edge to the voice)
‘No, sir. It does not.’
‘It is the relationship itself then, eh Sandlot?’(eagerness riding beneath the croak of age)
‘Indeed, sir. That it is.’
‘And what of our relationship?’
A pause.
The hiss of the gas in the many lamps sounded collectively like an interminable exhalation. Albert pursed his thin lips and considered. Distantly, through the thick oak door and the distance of long corridors, the thin wail of a lunatic broke the moment.
Albert blinked.
‘Er… our relationship, Doctor Grimm? Uh… it is that of mentor and protege.’ The young man shuffled his feet, a frown furrowing his brow.
‘In classical times, Sandlot, it was customary for masters to pick a favourite from among their apprentices, and for that favourite to dine at the master’s table, to tend to his master’s needs. Even to sleep in his master’s bedchamber.’ Albert rose from his seat, and shuffled around to stand beside Sandlot. He reached out with his claw-like hand, and touched the young man gently on the chest. ‘Your father said that while you were at Christ’s, you had one or two… special friendships there, Sandlot.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I can be your friend, Sandlot. I can be more than just your mentor. I can be your master, and you my favoured apprentice. I can make this entire incident go away. It was an unfortunate lapse. After all, filthy women don’t really interest you. We share that, you and I, as we share it also with most men who have the wit with which to think clearly about such things.’ The long nails, black with blood and ink, touched the young man’s cheek with the softness of a girl’s lips.
‘Get back!’ Sandlot slapped the old man’s hand away, and raised a fist.
‘You revolt me, sir! With your intimation that I might enjoy being your… your… catamite! You think me queer? In your filthy dreams, Grimm, and no-where else.’
Albert cowered, and licked his thin lips. ‘You pain me, Sandlot. I totally misjudged you. You have beguiled an old man in his dotage with your clean skin, and your ready wit.’
‘I’ll give you pain, you damned sodomite.’ And Sandlot took to the cowering old doctor with his fists.
Many have forgotten that the outer cross also forms a circle around the inner cross. But the Daughters of Artemis have not forgotten, for the circle is a woman’s sign and a woman’s power. The bottommost card of the outer cross as men have it, tells of the unconscious. But in recognising the circle, women know that there is no top and no bottom. That which is unconscious can become conscious, that which is conscious can slip into unconsciousness. Here it is then: The Two of Wands. Power. If it is unconscious, then you are its conduit. If it is conscious, the intoxicating feelings that come with power overwhelm you and blind you to your true desires and intentions.
It was Halloween.
‘I know what to do tonight,’ Joel said.
‘Get fucked up and watch some scary vids?’ Mary asked.
‘Better,’ said Joel. ‘I think we should have a seance.’
John laughed.
‘A seance?’ he said. ‘How fuckin’ boring is that? Me and some buddies tried that at high school. It’s stupid. People just push the pointer around to fool with you.’
‘No no,’ said Joel. ‘The way I figure it is this: for a seance to really work you need people you can trust. And who do I trust more than anything? You two! We’re too close to fuck with each other like that–we’d swear not to before we started.’
‘Can we get stoned first?’ Mary asked. John ignored her.
‘Soooo OK, it’s even more boring. We sit there and nothing happens at all.’
‘Oh yes it will,’ said Joel.
‘What makes you say that? You had a phone-call from Hell or something? And if you did, can Beezly-bub give you racing tips as well?’
‘Better. Prof Letink from neurophysiology filled in for Doctor Dutton today. You two wasters were still hung-over and you missed her ‘Medical Ethics’ class. It was great. She was telling us about how they used to treat nutters really bad, and guess what? Right here, this very building we live in, used to be an asylum. A real bad bastard of a place, with beatings, and hosings, and isolation cells, and the lot.’
‘I knew that,’ said John. ‘My great-something-or-other grandfather ran the place in the 1850’s. My father got into genealogy for a while to see if we were related to the Brothers Grimm. We weren’t.’
‘Small asylum,’ Mary said with a frown. Joel laughed.
‘No, not just this flat. The whole block. And that building next door too, I think from what she said.’
‘So why will that make a seance better?’ John asked.
‘Because they used to die in those places,’ Joel replied. ‘This site must be loaded with restless spirits. They died horribly, and they got tortured to death, and all sorts of revolting things.’
‘Huh,’ said John. ‘I’m descended from a monster. Sounds cool. I’m game.’
‘Can we please get stoned first?’ Mary asked again.
Joel just smiled and went and got the bong. John sat down and started drawing and cutting out letters of the alphabet.
‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘E’…
And here, on the opposite side of the circle, is The Magician. One hand points skyward, and the other points to earth. It is the masculine principle at work, and it seeks to wield the power of the universe.
Albert motioned for the two guards to tie the naked woman to the heavy metal chair. The guards wore small box-like cages over their heads, and their clothing was made from thick canvas. The woman had torn her nails on the clothing, and blood from the ragged flesh of her fingertips smeared both their fronts.
‘Leave us,’ Albert said through his swollen lips. One eye was closed, and his bald head had many lumps and discoloured bruises. As soon as the guards had left the room, Albert bolted the door.
‘For your protection,’ he murmured, although whether to himself or to the woman was not clear. He turned and shuffled over to a metal table that smelled of old blood and rusty iron. Powders and vials lay there, along with brass tools and potted unguents.
‘Doctor Grimm, please… I’m real sorry,’ the woman moaned. Her arms trembled within their restraints, and her legs broke out in goose bumps from the touch of the cold metal chair.
Or from fear.
‘For what, Jane?’ Albert struggled with broken fingers to unfasten the buttons of his waistcoat. Slowly they came free, exposing his pigeon chest and swollen old man’s belly.
‘For letting Doctor Sandlot ‘ave ‘is way wif me. It weren’t right, I know that. It’s you what’s looked after me all these years, Doctor Grimm. You what’s tried to ‘elp me. It’s you I love, not ‘im.’
Albert turned to face her, easing his broken and bruised body from his shirt and trousers. Skin hung from his bones like wet wallpaper from the walls of a derelict house. He took some small pouches off the table, and a long surgeon’s knife; brass both hilt and blade, but set here and there with silver and gold.
He shuffled closer to the woman in the chair.
‘Please, Doctor Grimm. Please don’t cut me wif that there wicked looking shiv.’
‘You disgust me, woman. You with your engorged teats and your cleft body.’ He sprinkled powder the colour of rust in a large circle around himself, and then drew marks on his face and chest with a creamy-yellow stick of lard. The marks seemed to move and change shape under their own volition. ‘I care nothing for you other than that you ruined a young man’s career. And ruined also my own designs for him. My love is pure and cerebral. You, with your foul fleshy enticements, beguiled him so that he filled your polluted flesh with himself and became broken thereby.’ The old man stopped marking his body and stooped to draw symbols at each point of a pentacle. ‘And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed,’ he said, his voice croaking with the effort.
‘Please Doctor Grimm!’ I’m sorry, I’m real sorry!’
‘Unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in pain thou shalt bring children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.‘ Albert closed his eyes, but the black pupils were still visible beneath his tissue-thin lids. ‘You are going to pay for my pain with your own, Jane. But where my pain is of the heart, yours shall be of the flesh. I learnt many things while serving in Afghanistan, Jane, and the most important thing I learnt about magic is that like brings forth like. I have to hurt myself now. But never fear. The thing I am going to bring forth from your noisome quim shall hurt you in kind, only increased a thousand-fold.’
And he knelt and began to cut away his own shrivelled genitals.
And here, on the right-hand side signifying the future, the masculine side, there is this card: The Devil.
They touched the upturned glass with nothing more than the tips of their little fingers. Their left hands. And Mary and John had their eyes closed. His head was swimming, and he kept feeling like a chasm was opening beneath him. But he couldn’t stop if he wanted to.
‘Who are you? Can you tell us your name?’ Mary asked, and the glass moved again. So fast, but their fingers didn’t leave it. They never lost contact once the glass started moving.
”M’,'A’,'R’,'Y’.’ Joel’s voice, because Joel was the one talking for the spirits; spelling out the letters as the glass slid across the table.
‘Hey, that’s my name,’ from Mary.
‘No shit, Sherlock,’ John murmured, but he felt goosebumps crawl up my back and he was afraid.
The movement of the glass was unnatural, and it wasn’t just the weed. So fast. It moved–so fast.
‘How did you die?’ John asked. And then the glass was racing around the letters again. He was too frightened to open his eyes and look. Joel called the letters out.
”I’,'W’,'E’,'N’,'E’,'E’,'D’,'B’,'L’,'O’,'O’,'D’.’
‘What? I we need blood,‘ John said. ‘What sort of shit is that?’
And again, the glass raced around the letters spaced in a circle on the table.
”I’,'N’,'P’,'A’,'I’,'N’,’ Joel recited.
‘In pain,’ Mary echoed. She sounded hollow. John kept his eyes shut tight, and swallowed. ‘Do you have a message for us?’ he whispered despite himself, his mouth dry with fear.
”I’,'N’, ‘P’,'A’,'I’,'N’, ‘T’,'H’,'O’,'U’, ‘S’,'H’,'A’,'L’,'T’, ‘B’,'R’,'I’,'N’,'G’, ‘F’,'O’,'R’,'T’,'H’, ‘C’,'H’,'I’,'L’,'D’,'R’,'E’,'N’.’
John opened his eyes and everything exploded in a riot of colour and shadow. The lights blew out, and a roar filled his ears making him scream. He couldn’t hear himself over the roaring, and red light splashed across the walls like apoplectic neon. Mary was shrieking, ‘Don’t cut me wif that wicked looking shiv! Don’t cut me wif that shiv!’ and John could feel rage in his belly and desperation in his heart.
Albert was in a pool of his own blood. It poured from his mutilated groin, his flayed arms, his open belly. The room was filled with a whirlwind from Hell–flame and shadow; blood and souls. Rachel had her head thrown back, agony spilling soundlessly from her open mouth into the maelstrom. Her stomach swelled so suddenly the skin of her belly split leaving scores of long thin wounds, and still it swelled. Excrement and blood smeared her thighs.
The lock splintered, and Sandlot burst into the room.
John leapt to his feet, and stumbled to the window. As he approached, it burst inwards, spraying him with glass. He whirled around, the nightmare light disorienting him so badly he stumbled to his knees.
And then he saw Joel.
Joel was kneeling with the broken seance glass in one hand and his severed penis clutched in the other. Blood spread over the front of his jeans, soaking them around the gaping fly and down his thighs.
Mary was lying on her back, her blouse in tatters and her jeans burst as her belly swelled below her breasts like a helium balloon inflating. Her mouth was open, but John could hear nothing over the roar.
‘Take me!’ Sandlot screamed.
‘Take me!’ John screamed. ‘Leave her! Leave her, and take me instead!’
Sandlot struggled through the flame and swirling shapes towards the woman writhing in the chair. ‘Come into me–I love her,’ he whispered.
And it stopped.
Grimm looked up at the old woman. Red tears streamed down his cheeks. ‘How could I accept that?’ he asked her. ‘It was the weed. Joel had a mood disorder. Mary must have been pregnant for months, she just hadn’t shown. I am a scientist!’
‘I already told you I don’t give a rat’s arse about that. Your black fortune is what it is, both past and future.’
Grimm leaned forward and clutched at the old woman’s hands. ‘What happened to the child? What happened to Mary’s daughter?’ But he already knew. He felt the terrible noose of his cursed heritage choking the breath from his throat.
‘She became one of us. And when you brought your horror back into the world, she went to save you. I don’t know if she succeeded.’ The old woman shrunk back behind her box and let out a long sigh. ‘You disgust me. Your black fortune leads to Hell and to your wife, but I believe you have neither wit nor courage sufficient to find your way from here to there.’
Hundreds of rats had gathered to watch in the lurid darkness of the decrepit alleyway, and spiders crawled there in thousands. John Grimm climbed slowly to his feet and straightened his shoulders. ‘If you’ll not teach me, then tell me how to find someone who will,’ he said. ‘Though your vomit and bile choke you, tell me where I can find someone to teach me these things, and I will trouble you no more.’ He closed his eyes and lifted his face toward the narrow strip of black and red sky far above.
‘Set me on the path to Hell.’
Bryn Sparks lives in Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, with his wife Christine and their three daughters. He owns no sheep. Bryn is CEO of a medical device manufacturing company, and is completing a PhD in Medicine at the Otago University, Christchurch School of Medicine.
Bryn’s previous publications include Wing and a Prayer in the February 2004 issue of Frothing at the Mouth, Seven Wives in the 2004 volume of the award winning Agog! anthology: Smashing Stories, and Whiskey in the Jar in the December 2004 issue of Aoife’s Kiss. They’re all worth getting from outstanding online vendors such as ProjectPulp or The Genre Mall.
Bryn Sparks’s short story “On the Shoulder of Giants” appears in the Apex Publications anthology Aegri Somnia. Order your copy today.
