by M F Sullivan
As Dominia reached for her gun, still at hand, Gethsemane stayed her. “Do not forget what the attendant said, please. We mustn’t trouble the other guests.”
Teeth clenched, she instead tore part of the pillowcase away and sprang neatly upon the floor four feet from the bed, a simple matter to any former child afraid for their life every bedtime. As her bare feet landed upon the wooden boards, an intake of breath like a lover’s gasp hissed from beneath the box spring and left shuddering Dominia to dart far from the noise. With her eye set upon it, she backed toward the armchair, and the darkness beneath the bed breathed at the pace of the thing concealed. That thing sometimes twitched: a motion that, with Valentinian’s light (as was all light in that place), illustrated mere glints of its bulbous gray shape. She cracked the coatrack over her knee in a grimacing act a deal harder than anticipated, which also left her glad she took care to exercise in her nightly life. Many martyrs relied on their advanced metabolism to increase their speed and strength, like her useless brother Theodore, or (she presumed) skinny Valentinian. In a place like this, without the endurance from actual training, they’d be as physically weak as kittens. Even Dominia bruised herself in the process of trying to snap the rack and came to the final solution of shattering it over the armchair, which also shattered—and yielded a more desirable proto-torch than anything she might have crafted with the precious seconds given her. After selecting an upholstered piece of wood for the nasty spring protruding from its tip, the General edged toward the nightstand and its waiting lamp.
With a howl, the horror whirled from beneath the bed; Dominia cried out along with previously unflappable Gethsemane, who bolted upright as the odious thing received a gouge across the—face?—courtesy of the General’s weapon. Infuriatingly, the thing wheeled in the direction of that precious glass lamp. Jostled from position, it shattered on the floor.
The dark room shuddered as the laughing creature slithered off to regroup in some far corner. As the General clambered upon the nightstand, the nymph whispered, “Are you all right?”
She received no answer. Dominia’s toe bumped the pack of matches with which Gethsemane had lit the lamp. In silence punctuated only by the arrhythmic sound of infected lungs rattling after moist breath, the General bent, took them in her hand, and struck a match.
Mixed feelings bloomed in that second of light. Relief, namely, because had she struck that match but half a second later, it would have been upon her. However, it was hard to deny the sheer terror that poisoned her body as that blipped image revealed it mere centimeters from her: the clearest and most fang-filled vision of its hanging, tattered flesh she’d yet to receive. A visage like that made even the General scream. The thing screamed, too, and, blinded, retreated beneath the bed. Jaw set, Dominia struck a second match and, deciding her torch to be too unfeasible a proposition, set the edge of the bed ablaze. Gethsemane cried out on instinct, for she still sat upon the mattress, and moved to quell it, but she recoiled when she saw that lurching, six-eyed fiend that, with a shriek out of time and space, threw odious gray arms above its writhing mandibles to retreat from the light into the shrinking shadows of the room.
“We have to kill it,” Dominia insisted again. “I think we’ve made plenty of noise by now.”
She drew her gun, and wondered how long—and how well—it had dried since her emergence from the pond. She feared its ability to fire, but, as always, human engineering impressed the martyr General, who shot a trio of bullets into the shape. It screamed in a duet of agonized voices: that of her dead wife, and that of something else.
“It found you by your grief and shame,” said Gethsemane while sliding from the bed to back against the wall. In the shadows, the thing’s blood oozed with unearthly viscosity. “But it would have always found you in your guilt, anywhere. By bringing it here, we can cripple it.”
“Can we?” she was forced to ask, for it began to stagger up: but it did so from its position behind the door, which, thank the Lamb, flew open. Light from the gold-carpeted hallway streamed in to reveal, in glorious silhouette, that miraculous Lady named Trisha.
“I thought I told you girls about our noise policy. And I thought, Gethsemane, that we discussed our visitor policy already.”
Ruby heels clicking with every step she took after the thing that fled her light, the attendant stooped to collect a piece of shattered coatrack. After regarding its heft, she used it to impale the screeching beast.
“All visitors must enter through the front and register with the desk. Absolutely no exceptions! Can you imagine what kind of loony bin this place would be if I allowed my clients to run roughshod over me like that?”
The thing howled; the porter edged it closer to the dust-caked window, heedless of its efforts to pull itself the length of the stake. Indeed, Trisha emitted a pettish noise at that, and with a mighty shove baptized the thing in the flames of the bed. Its cries rose to alarming pitch, and the otherworldly tulpa thrashed in agony: while it lost control, the redhead stuck it through the dusty window as though the glass were made of plastic wrap, and the creature she expelled like a prosciutto-wrapped date upon a toothpick. She was not some toned woman of military or other physical might, yet the act was so careless Dominia was flabbergasted—more shocked, perhaps at the column of moonlight unleashed by the act, for she had not realized night was upon the city. She dashed to the window to watch her wife’s profane imitation fall, screaming her name in thirty horrible voices, a final few feet before its deformed body shattered on the pavement.
Far from victorious, the General felt ill at the sight. Trisha dusted off her hands in theatrical symbol of victory and said, “There! No harm, no foul. I understand how these things can happen. This place is…special.”
“I told her,” Gethsemane said, pounding the blaze that started to overtake the bed. The General, still near the window, insisted, “Not soon enough.”
Outside, the thing’s pelvis twitched to kick its legs into a horrific mimicry of activity. These twisted limbs tried to drag its walking body east until its yet-unruined arm had to get in on the job. The forearm looked shattered, but the elbow, judging by the uncanny, crustacean pace and method of movement, remained intact.
“Shouldn’t we go kill it?” asked Dominia.
With low urgency, the porter returned to the hall for a fire extinguisher she used to aid the nymph. “That’s someone else’s job now, dear. The guards will come and sweep it away, and that’ll be that. Just try not to attract another one.”
Grimly, Dominia stuck her head out the window to track the thing until it disappeared down some nondescript alleyway. Would they really find it?
“There.” The blaze managed, Trisha planted hands upon her hips and pursed her lips to blow aside a lock of hair. As it moved, her expression flipped into a smile she allotted between her guests. “Aren’t you glad we have such a strict noise policy?”
“Thank you for your help,” Dominia finally remembered to say. The woman, a twinkle in her eye, doffed her cap.
“If I can give some friendly advice: guilt and sex never mix.” As the General blushed, the porter laughed, and even Gethsemane smiled. “Neither do feelings of hopelessness and sex. Sex should be fun!”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind.” At Dominia’s visible embarrassment, Trisha laughed.
“She’s very shy for a military lady, isn’t she.”
“Very,” agreed Gethsemane, who looked quite attractive draped nude upon the unsinged side of the bed. “And loyal as any. I hope you are not hurt, General, that our activities were meant to summon the thing; and I hope you are not hurt for the sake of your wife.”
“Oh, now, there’s no shame in fun! I’m sure Cassandra would know that.” The name twisted Dominia’s stomach as it came unexpectedly from the mouth of Trisha, this woman who the General had only met an hour or so before. “This is a different sort of thing, after all. Spiritual, for one.”
“Our love was spiritual,” said defensive Dominia. Gently, the porter laugh
ed, glanced at her watch, then strode over to peek down the hall.
“Of course. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” Satisfied the way was empty, she leaned back into the room and, causing another, different flutter in Dominia’s stomach, locked the door. “But there’s spiritual love between two people; then, there’s…well. Something else. Something just as deep, in the opposite direction. Honest, naked physicality”—the first few buttons of her top opened at the slight touch of her hand—“can be as deep a route to the divine as any profound, self-sacrificing love.”
Dominia opened her mouth to object but found that she could not, because she had never opened her mind to the notion before. For no real reason, she remembered Cicero’s stupidest catchphrase: “If one opens one’s mind too wide, people will throw garbage into it.” Maybe that was because Cicero couldn’t distinguish garbage from jewelry. As the porter crossed the room to kiss the Bearer of that goddess both her new friends served, Dominia found her own line between trash and gems perfectly clear.
IX
The Orbit of 0
There was no more thinking of Cassandra that night, except in narrow corridors of thought between starbursts. Yes: beautiful, carefree fireworks. Dominia didn’t know how close she felt to any divinity, but there did seem something liberating in renewed ability to surrender to someone who had nothing to do with Cassandra. Gethsemane alone had not allowed this surrender, and the General had resisted Miki’s playful come-ons due to the seriousness of her quest. But, perhaps because the horror had (for now) been purged, she nearly floated above the ruined bed. The nymph dozed at the foot, curled like a cat, to make room for the porter. Body contorted around the burned spot, Trisha dreamily traced the lines of the General’s palm.
“Is this place heaven?” Dominia asked, and her lucid bedfellow chuckled.
“I suppose it might be for some, but there are more heavenly places than this. It is a fine place, though.”
“Where do souls fly on death, if not the event horizon of the black hole?”
“Oh, it depends. Some go in the direction of earthly Jerusalem, but as its substance in the Void—its interference pattern, if you’d like. Valentinian likes his movie theater metaphors, but I prefer holograms, because it’s more accurate. That’s what the Lady, the black hole at the end of time, is doing to us. Projecting us back to the beginning of time—creating time. Within the Ergosphere is the interference pattern of reality. Therefore, the interference pattern of Jerusalem is the same as physical Jerusalem, and the souls sense it. Much confusion has been caused by ignorance. Exoteric teachings of any church, taken without thought for the true profundity of the encoded metaphors, pose danger to the soul and cannot free it from the hologram. Whether they’re part of the projected image, or the interference pattern, if they cannot rise above it and reenter it willingly, it’s all the same. Mecca has the same problem, as does any holy city… Irreligious souls—the souls of materialists who don’t believe in anything, for instance—tend to float around, waste away, if they haven’t developed their own frame of reference to get themselves someplace like this. Some never even became conscious enough to experience death, and these don’t even notice they’ve died…they generally don’t have souls, though, except in some cases.”
“What do you mean, they don’t have souls?”
“Just that. The soul is a product of sentient consciousness mated with the ego, the sense of self, whatever you want to call it. If somebody only has an ego and never achieves this consciousness, they’re in something of a pickle. One can’t exactly sail the seas without some vessel. Even a barrel will do in a pinch. The blood of Lazarus is physiologically triggering the production of a soul through manipulation of the genome; in fact, a theory I developed before I hosted the Lady—never published, understand—was that the successful development of an individual’s soul could be indicated based on the associated genetic markers triggered by the process, but you understand why it would be hard to convince the materialist scientist crowd to see the pattern if they don’t believe in souls. Goodness knows I used to be one, myself!”
She could relate. Did Cassandra have a soul? The General had long since taken the nonexistence of souls for granted, but now she was bothered. “What about reincarnation?”
“I suppose that exists, but not in the way you mean it.” As she spoke, she pressed her lips to the General’s knuckles, then rose to re-dress. Dominia pursed her lips.
“You mean it in the sense of living the same life, over and over again.”
“Until you become conscious, yes. Trying to escape that hologram, aren’t we, dear.”
“Doesn’t that seem torturous?”
“That’s what the Bible means when it talks about hell, or what the Buddhists call saṃsāra. Only the material world that your Father grossly claims to be his is so full of pointless death, pain, and boring restrictions on metaphysical truths. Real hell is being stuck living in his cycles forever without ever becoming conscious enough to pull yourself out.” She bent to reclaim her abandoned undies, and Dominia struggled to focus on the conversation. “But even that isn’t so bad…after all, you used to be one of the unconscious horde”—she slid the panties over those creamy thighs while the General sighed—“and you don’t remember it, do you?”
“No, but it’s frightening. So nihilistic. The idea that I’ll experience it again.”
“If you’re actually conscious, you’ll never have to.” The porter crept around the room while engaging in her reverse striptease, her words a murmur. “I understand why death seems frightening—I felt much the same—but these days, I understand it better. It’s not as bad as we all make it out to be; I mean, it’s not as if they don’t still exist, those members of the soulless dead.”
“Where are they, then? If without a soul they drown—I guess, are the black grounds of the Ergosphere—then how could they be saved?”
“What do I look like,” asked Trisha, buttoning her blouse, “the Lady?”
“But I thought—”
A sharp knock rapped upon the door. Annoyed (but, due to her career, used to being interrupted after, or even during, intimate moments), the General draped a blanket over stirring Gethsemane, then retrieved her shirt and pants. “Just a moment,” Trisha called, one lascivious eye upon Dominia.
When it was appropriate, the demi-dog came trotting in upon the porter’s say. “Didn’t mean to interrupt your sleepover, ladies.” Typical that Valentinian’s first sentence to her in what felt like too long should have been a half-assed apology. “Refreshed?”
Behind the bed, Dominia zipped her leather jacket. “I could have used some time to rest.”
“There’s time to rest when you’re dead, as my grandmother always said.” Valentinian turned to Trisha with a lecherous quirk to his smile—wasn’t she supposed to have been his mother? A long time ago, Dominia supposed. He was a martyr, after all; the Lamb and El Sacerdote, lest she forget, had once been brothers. A few hundred years passing by changes your mind, and breeding is never a concern; what was some extra friendliness among flesh-eating relatives, then? So most rationalized, but Dominia stubbornly maintained that, rather than some bizarre sign of superiority, incest was gross even in cases of adoption. Maybe she just felt that way because she hated her Family, or because the Hierophant was aggressively asexual and hammered the point that all sex was ultimately the same fruitless time waster among his violent people. Therefore, she had to take the opposite stance by drawing a line somewhere, and she wasn’t alone, because about 40 percent of martyrs in any given poll of the populace stood right there with her.
That didn’t stop Valentinian, though. For once ignoring her thoughts, he dug out his smokes and waggled a brow. “You want a cigarette, Trish?”
“Oh, no, darling.” She laughed and patted his chest, sliding past him in a weird way that gave Dominia the creeps. “You know I quit smoking.”
“I still have questions for you,” the General called after her. The porter paused to lis
ten. “Is it true you were Valentinian’s mother?”
“Once, the first time, a long time ago. But he’s a self-made man, now. I don’t think we’d be passing any DNA tests on the subject.”
“Sorry, babe. Lots of mutations, traveling through all those dimensions and all those worlds. Not to mention all those animals!”
Dominia laughed at him, but kept pressing. “What about the McLintocks? What do you have to do with them?”
With a giggling glance at her watch, stylishly positioned to face her inner wrist, the porter adjusted her hat. “You’ll have to address that to Mrs. McLintock.” A sassy wiggle in her hips, Trisha strolled from sight, and the magician watched her go before turning his arched brow to Dominia.
“A-plus, am I right?”
“Please.” The General pinched the bridge of her nose, her eye squeezing shut. “I’m sure you’ve, like…transcended mortal values, or something, because you’ve spent so much time in either the—Ergosphere, or the bodies of animals, but…you’ve got to know how creepy you are.”
“Ah, things are different here. The information is organized differently. Didn’t Gethsemane tell you that? Hey, kiddo.” He acknowledged the sleepy nymph, who lifted her head to force open heavy eyelids. “Thanks for collecting her.”
“It is my honor, sire.” That head lowered back and disappeared beneath the blanket. “The General is a hero.”
“She sure is.”
“Well, she feels like a fool.” Arms crossed, Dominia glanced over her shoulder at the shattered panes. A breeze trickled in to sweeten the room and prove that not even a broken window was an objectively unpleasant experience here. “I’m sorry I wandered off into the dark like that. I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” The magus crossed to examine the frame. “The night had to pass somehow.”
“You might have warned me, though.” The annoyed General accepted one of the cigarettes he withdrew; after considering she might be smoking his thoughts, she let him light it, anyway. “I was worried I’d never see you again. That I’d never see me again.”