The wave of love and fascination with the house continued. Articles followed videos followed poems. Before long, the legend of Bellevue House had inspired so many opinions, ideas, and pledges of devotion or disdain that the physical fact of it became of less and less concern.
So it was almost anticlimactic when, three months after the election that had brought Tyson Webb to power in a landslide victory over the incumbent Jim Staughton, a wrecking ball took the first chunk out of the eastern wing. Within three days, a pack of bulldozers had destroyed Bellevue House, leaving only a deep hole in the earth and a fug of carbon and sulphur hovering above it like a shit-specked poison mushroom cap.
Bellevue House — the first one — was gone.
A week later, construction began.
10. Yesterday, I stepped on a mouse chewing on a pizza box in the corner, ground it into a slurry of bone and pink guts, an ambiguous blotch with few hints of the animal’s natural shape. Mice, when you crush them, die.
With roaches, you can’t always be sure.
It’s hard to be sure of anything, these days, unless you have the courage of faith. I’ve come to see this apartment, shithole that it is, as a hall of government of a different kind. I am its lone councillor, its arbiter and whip. I drink cold vodka and listen for the heartbeat in my chest. I wonder how deep into me the roach has already burrowed.
If life can be transformed so utterly, without one’s control, is it not inevitable that a new idea of the world will follow?
When the Bellevue House Cultural Learning Pavilion opened that spring, crowds came out in record numbers.
In every superficial detail, the Pavilion was identical to its predecessor. It had the same L-shaped floor plan, same white stucco walls and terracotta roofs, same pillars and shutters painted dark hunter green, same sunburst of colour on the golden front steps. But now, where the Visitor Centre had been, there was a bulletproof ticket kiosk, manned by a clerk dressed in black fatigues, a heart-of-plague badge on his shoulder, collecting the entry fee of $39.95. This admission entitled you to walk through the fabled gates and through the woods, to emerge in view of the new, historic replica complex erected in the exact spot on which Bellevue House — the first one — had stood. Outside the front doors, a plaque explained the significance of the site. How the original had been built in 1840, by a merchant named Charles Hales. How it was one of the first examples of the Italian Villa style in Canada. How it had briefly housed the first prime minister of Canada. And how, now, thanks to Mayor Tyson Webb’s Heritage Revitalization Committee, and in partnership with Utheca, a development firm from Calgary, the site had undergone a complete and total restoration program, which, at minimal expense and maximum benefit to the taxpayer, would allow for the next chapter of its history to unfold, as a lynchpin of waterfront beautification, a centre for the university’s New Lenses research program, and an educational museum and theme park for public enjoyment and civic pride.
On opening day, the crowd was thick, agitated, and damp. It was near the back of the line that I saw the two women again, the ones who’d answered the question: What does Bellevue House mean to you? This time, they both had on matching yellow kerchiefs, to go with the twinned looks of rapture on their faces. There was a strange energy in their posture, as though they’d been filled with some volatile fuel. Both of them were craning their necks and almost twitching, eyes beaming wide and fevered toward the ticket kiosk up ahead.
Seeing them made my blood pound in my temples. I had an irresistible urge to talk to these women, to ask them why they were here, what they hoped to attain. To warn them. Elbowing through the crowd, I made my way over to them.
“Hey,” I said. “You two.”
They turned to me with looks of bliss on their faces, foreheads beaded with sweat.
“I saw you on TV one night,” I said. “When this all started.”
“Isn’t it beautiful?” the white woman said, her eyes focused on something far away. “I’m so happy. So happy for this house.” All of her rage had evaporated into stunned bliss.
“What happened?” I said to the other woman, the one named Mary. “Before, you hated this place.” I knew; she knew. The question was futile, already answered. She smiled at me, wide and full of joy.
“We’re all its children now,” she said. “Aren’t we?”
I wanted to argue with her, to slap her awake; but the crowd had taken on its own life, everyone pushed in directions we couldn’t control, and the two women drifted away from me, eyes fixed once again on the barbed spire of the Pavilion.
That was enough to convince me for good. I clenched my jaw and dug my nails into my palms and walked away from Bellevue House as fast as I could, pushing through the crowds that were advancing on the gates, thinking through how every good thing in my life had been twisted away from me like limbs wrenched from a butchered carcass. The public abandoning me, then the people I loved. Tyson Webb reared up in my brain, and I saw a cold black mandible jammed into his spine, making him into a puppet of an insectoid hunger too loathsome to comprehend.
I got away, but my escape from the Pavilion was bittersweet. In that moment, I realized that to halt the infection — to stop the creature for good — I’d have to walk into its mouth.
11. Everyone knows the rest. Tyson Webb’s memoir has sold close to a million copies worldwide, the public swallowing every lie like a handful of butter-slicked popcorn. The seven-figure movie deal was inevitable, with Webb on board as an executive producer, bringing financing from the CBC, the City of Kingston, the Province of Alberta, and Sons of Khepri, Inc. The film premiered at Cannes, to much critical acclaim. By last month, when the Academy Awards were telecast, the fictional Tyson Webb, as played by Leo DiCaprio, was already more recognizable than the real man.
When Webb went up to accept his Best Picture statue, he gave a long and impassioned speech about the need to embrace change and new ways of thinking, and flashed a Canadian flag, which drew cheers and applause. A few fashion columnists remarked on his unusual brooch, a vaguely arthropod symbol one might mistake for a heart. But Hollywood expects flamboyance. In the end, the film took eleven statues and claimed its place in the canon of great political dramas.
I keep very little now. The couch where I sleep. A small table for my laptop. The rifle and rounds. The vest and its payload. I watch the movie again and again and again, and brood on the rhythm in my chest. I curse and condemn the ancient foulness that gestates beneath the pavilion, waiting for its Sons to summon it fully across the dimensional veil, and commit myself to Nssu-Gh’ahnb’s extermination.
It’s time for my version of the story. I understand that it’s impossible to exhume one definitive truth from the tangle of shadows. In speaking out, I’d be called insane. But I’ve felt the roach’s karma, its oily cilia brushing the back of my neck. The dirt stench of its insect’s blood. Its fetid heartbeat taking over my own. I’ve known and shared secrets with the vile disciples who feed it with the bodies and souls of those living under their dark dominion. We are all its children now. So where does paranoia end and the Pavilion begin? How deep are the cracks in the surfaces we think are solid? Sometimes even I have trouble separating the truth from what happened in the movie.
I imagine a news anchor throwing to a clip from the film — Tim Gant, the pathetic character with the greasy hair and the mewling voice. I imagine footage of charred wood and contorted metal and brick turned to dust, a black mist dissipating over the rubble. I try to imagine my face hovering like a moon above the chaos. But I see only his face — the man from the screen, the man who was never me, until he was.
The creature might not let me get through the doors. It might smell the cleansing whisper of explosives, the sour milk stench of my fear. Even if I do get inside, hidden in the crowd, the pest will still be invisible. Still behind. I won’t be able to see it, to know where to point my gun, or where to stand when I push the button.
But I will feel the plague-heart’s pulse. I will know t
he roach is there. And I will get as close as I can. As close as I can.
Inquisition (Extended Mix)
From the opening notes, he recognizes the tune.
It takes a few seconds to build. Low, droning synth, like a muezzin murmuring prayer. A percussive, bullet-spray rasp. Growling guitar, the grinding of tanks on bones.
At about thirty seconds, the beat kicks in.
The door creaks open. He hears bootsteps through the burlap. The hood is ripped off and he is slapped across the face, a dark sting, a ringing light. Curses barked into his ear. He is the worst of insects. Fucking dirty traitor. Slapped again. Slapped again.
The world spins. The guard, task accomplished but never complete, tugs the hood down over his face, the rough material scraping his skin, ripping hairs from his matted beard. Again he is shrouded, suspended in brown blindness. He hears bootsteps leaving. The door slams closed.
This is routine.
He sags, trying to go to the silent place. Pinpricks sizzle on his eyelids, a frenzied mosh. His weight tugs against the ropes chafing his wrists. He tastes blood in his mouth, wiggles a loose molar with his tongue. He’s given them no names, condemned no brother — not out of any loyalty so much as a final desire to tie off the violence at himself. Absorb all of the punishment that his bones and muscle can bear.
In assent with his wish, they turn up the volume.
The song is Skinny Puppy, “Inquisition.” Off the Last Rights album. But not, exactly. An extended mix, from a bonus seven-inch single. It differs considerably from the original: the intro is drawn out, there’s more space between the beats. A long break in the middle where the words give way to synth babble, minimalist claustrophobia — the music left hanging, flailing in the void, no structure to anchor its relentless rhythms.
The album version is more concise. More staccato. In truth, he thinks, it would make better torture music.
He braces for the vocal. Ogre, groaning:
“Bla-tant-ant-ant . . . Man-ner-er-er . . .”
Things could have been different, if only he’d hidden the records better.
He remembers buying the first one.
Back then he was just Amir. He’d gone to Marché du Disque on Mont-Royal in search of Nirvana albums. He was combing the racks, cautiously fingering a Ministry CD, when the clerk, a scrawny white guy with thick-rimmed glasses, came over and gave him a look: I see potential here.
“Try this,” he said, handing over the plastic jewel case locked in an anti-theft sleeve, a nightmare wrapped in cellophane and stickered at $15.99. The effect was instant: that terrifying circus on the cover, temples and mausoleums, death’s heads and gargoyles, toxic yellow mountains in the background, the whole mad landscape overlaid with unhinged spider script — SkiNNy PUppy. Everything about it designed to make you squirm.
He thought back to the day at school the week before. He’d been walking down the hall of Académie de Roberval, thinking about the Habs game that night. Unprepared to see the word gouged into his locker with a pen knife — RAGhead. He felt it like a gut-punch. When he turned around, the kids were standing there. Older by a year. Arms crossed, leaning against the wall, glowering.
“Better watch out,” said one with a squared-off bowl cut. “Open season on camel jockeys.” He tossed a scrap of yellow ribbon that flitted down to rest at Amir’s feet.
He’d wanted, so badly, to rage back. Ram his fist into the metal of his locker until it buckled and the slur on it became unreadable. Ram his fist into bowl cut’s jaw until his teeth shattered. Instead, he went outside, shivering in the autumn cold. Saw the mouse dart out from a hole behind the door, scurry out into the light and freeze, its tiny nose twitching like a nubbin of black rice. It was a reflex more than anything — a place to throw his force, the heaving in him. He reached out and brought down his big black boot, grinding with a twist, feeling the mouse’s bone structure collapse.
Later, cleaning the fur and blood off his sole, he’d felt sick to his stomach about it all. How much it mattered. How little.
How common it was, to kill something.
“You’re gonna love it,” the clerk said, grinning down at Amir as he gaped at the Skinny Puppy CD. “Trust me.”
He knew, as he bought the record, what his father would think. Trash. Western garbage. Relished the blasphemy. Walked out feeling righteous and brave, in possession of a new stake in himself. On his way out the door, he spied the poster tacked to a corkboard by the exit: SKINNY PUPPY. Live at Le Spectrum, in just over a month’s time. Laughed to himself. Who would he go with? His elation wavered and he breathed in to try and hang on to it.
Before going home, he wrapped the disc in his sweatshirt and stuffed it into the back pocket of his knapsack. He knew he’d need a good hiding place. If he hid it outside — in a bag under the steps in the apartment courtyard, say — he could pick it up on his way to school, listen to it on his scuffed Discman. But what if someone found it? What if it froze, got brittle, cracked? Besides, he wanted it within reach. To be able to take it out at night, plug in his headphones when he was supposed to be asleep, internalizing the music’s fractured cadences.
In the end, he stuffed it in the back of his desk drawer under a sheaf of blank paper. Why would his father look there? He, who rarely looked at Amir at all these days except to scowl?
That night, after dinner, Amir sat at his desk, staring through his homework, feeling the energy of the record pulse up through the wood, the weird gravitational pull of its abominations. Knowing the music would always be part of him, now.
The floor shakes. Bass hammers his chest, buzzes in his cracked molars. He tries to spit, finds his mouth sawdust-dry.
They hit the strobe.
Light jitters through the burlap, pinging his retinas. It takes a huge effort to squeeze his eyes shut. A hot stink wheezes up from his mouth, sulphur and charred meat. He feels a familiar liquefying in the stomach.
Raking his ears, Ogre’s dirty pig-sex growl: “Bonding ce-ment no long-er holds-olds-olds . . .”
Acid heat runs down his leg like a thin snake. He inhales the sickly-sweet smell of his own waste. Feels a rattling in his cheekbones — something shattered. Retches. Twitches. Hang, hang; his eyes droop. Synths echo with the blood bubbling in his nose. The drums kick in again, the snare smacking wetly into his gut like a giant tongue.
The extended mix is track two on the Inquisition EP. Preceded by the radio edit and followed by “Lahuman8” and “Mirror Saw (Dub Mix)”. The Last Rights–era material cemented Skinny Puppy’s reputation as an uncompromising force for sonic brutality, while putting a new spin on its sound. The album even had a ballad, “Killing Game.”
The information floats up from a dark place inside him, dislodged from forgotten fissures in his muscle, the cobwebbed cleft of his brain where all the minutiae of his old life still moulders, despite efforts at cleansing. Some things you cannot leave behind.
Here, in this place, everything about his background makes it worse for him. Mother of Chechen descent, raised in a Paris banlieue. Father an Algiers man named Muhammed. And him? That’s the greatest joke of all: in here, the nationality that would usually save him — his Canadian passport, blood of the West, his home and native land — is the wellspring of his deepest curse. Turncoat. Betrayer. Defecator on flags. Enemy Combatant.
Ogre.
“ . . . wicked resenting never faces itself . . .”
He feels an urge prodding his chest like an anxious worm. Quells it with a swallow of dust. The music warps, begins to lose shape, liquefying everything, crawling between his different selves like veins of living dirt.
They turn up the volume.
He became a collector.
It was true: the records were dark things. Drug addiction. Murder. Chemical warfare. Environmental ruin. Titles weird and askew, daring you to react: Too Dark Park. VIVIsectVI. Cleanse Fold and Manipulate. Rabies. Bites. Last Rights.
Over a month, he bought them all, moving on to EPs and single
s once he’d exhausted the full-lengths, filling his desk drawer with a sizable chunk of the Skinny Puppy catalogue. By the time he got the Inquisition EP, the clerk at Marché du Disque knew him by name and they were sharing brief chats about best albums, favourite cuts. It was a dream for Amir — real talk. There was no one at school like this.
He knew he had to find a way to go the concert. Felt the pull of obsession, the desperate urge to dissolve into a crowd of people who wouldn’t look at him and instantly see some video game Arab brandishing an AK. To be among others who’d had their lockers defaced. To see Ogre up close, wallow in the scouring force of his guttural rage.
He concocted a plan. He told his mother he wanted to go to a friend’s house. For once, it was lucky she knew so little of his life. It didn’t occur to her to ask, What friend? He knew she’d take the request to his father, begging the way she sometimes did — pleading, Give him a chance. He trusted she could convince his father, find a crack in his carbide shell, touch some hidden soft place in a soul that couldn’t conceive of love in a city that was no home but was simply the least dangerous, the least cruel of all the places he’d landed. His father — not hardline in any particular way. Not especially religious. Just restless. Displaced. Angry.
It took two weeks of closed-door discussions. Amir listened from his own bedroom, one headphone on, pumping tinny beats into his ear to dull the sound of his father’s yelling, the other ear free to hear well in advance if they were coming to his room, so he could quickly shove the Discman back into his crowded drawer. The CDs took up most of the space now. He’d need a new hiding place soon. But he kept putting it off, telling himself there was nothing to worry about. Secretly relishing his guilt. Edgy, anxious, he waited for his mother to come with the verdict.
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