She laughed and laughed . . . Laughed—her she-wolf howl of fire laugh. Her joy dripping with The Truth . . . Arianne stares at the unwilling, pleading Don’t . . .
A question from the thing with the one way ticket exhaled before dying, “Fucked-up-Bitch—You tryin’ ta-be some masked superhero?”
“I wear No Mask.”
She stands unwavering over the dead death dealer, exalting in the fire, listening to the soft curves of the flames. They quiet her tears. The cold wind at her shoulder slithers away from the fire’s unnatural nimbus.
. . . A body spilled on the hard ground, a body with a face of fire. And Arianne and her knife above it. The hollow-pointed assessment of a fresh-on-the-streets, young cop brought to bear. He’d seen ski masks and do-rags as Wild West bandit masks and stocking masks, but this flat, bone-white mask without a mouth was like staring at a wraith. He scanned the empty face—couldn’t make out the eyes, locked on the hand and the bloody knife. Notes the curve of breast and hips.
A woman? “Drop the knife and step away from the body.’
No response to the hard instruction. She does not turn away from the song the flame whispers. She can smell yellow flowers chilled in The Final.
“Do it NOW.”
She turns to face him.
Re-accessing, head-to-toe. His emotions play on his face. “I’m not playing here. Drop the knife.”
Under her mask she was smiling. The beacon of The King shone in her heart. He would not let her be taken down by a man. Arianne takes a step toward him. And another . . . Raises her knife.
She’s got to be crazy. Or stoned—FUCK. Wired—damned near scared shitless. The fact of the blood-steel threat not hesitating. Advancing. “Stop!”
Too close now.
Fuck.
Two shots explode—Strike, expand—shred within. She goes down.
Kneeling over Arianne’s dead body. No pulse . . . His breathing slows.
More than curious he slowly removes her mask.
No make-up or eyebrows.
No mouth.
No nose.
Not a scar or a blemish. Utterly smooth this surface, pale yellow and devoid of any human information, expressionless and lifeless as are her eyes—Sclera, iris, and pupil, completely yellow. No white, no black, nothing in the solid field of yellow to measure the laws of nature by.
He puts a finger on her check. It feels soft, but not like skin—
He runs his fingers slowly across her forehead, across both cheeks. Not human skin . . . Remembers the lustrous whisperings his fiancé’s silk blouse unlocked in his fingertips the first night he caressed her.
“What the Holy fuck?” He will not surrender to the inhumanness of the blank face and crosses himself.
~*~
In far
Cold Carcosa
The King sheds no tear.
The face of another jewel,
Needing repair, ventures near . . .
(for S. T. Joshi)
Epilogue For Two Voices
A grey shore. The gnawing murmurs of small waves. A rock as weathered as the throne some miles away.
Dusk gleams.
Thale sits upon a rock as grey as the mists of the lake. His hands are
open as if he has let questions fly from them. He closes his eyes as his
right hand begins to reach toward Carcosa, toward Camilla, but he
lets it fall away.
Enter a masked stranger who stands at Thale’s left shoulder.
The Masked Stranger: Struggle not, Thale. The moon and the suns have set.
Thale: (Thale slowly turns a ring resting in the palm of his hand. He looks
at it as if it might speak to him.) For . . . ever?—Are there no more
openings in the forest of time? No space in the undergrowth? I
remember a bird whispering in the olive tree, the aroma of a
harvest . . . I walked winding passages to ivory sheets as glorious
as sunlit clouds. After, I stood at a window where sunset spoke . . .
Why must dusk come like a blade to dismiss—
The Masked Stranger: Weary poet, must even the stars and the banquet of the spider be
explained?
Thale: Have I no time? (Thale slides the ring into a pocket.)
The Masked Stranger: To waste here like blind hands scraping night’s stone hymn?
Thale: (He turns and looks upon the featureless ivory mask.) To settle the
errors of day . . . (Thale looks down at his hand. His thumb gently
rubs a fingertip.) I remember the whisper of a petticoat on my
fingertips . . . There was no frost then.
The Masked Stranger: (The Masked Stranger has not moved. Not even the scalloped
tatters of his pallid robe flutter.) I will not discuss your
sensibilities, or innocence, or your sister’s lovers. The wings of the
End are in view, there is no time for portraits of being.
Thale: Who are you, sir? Are you a poet who knows the all the orbits of
of the heart?
The Masked Stranger: I am not a chapel. Nor am I the spade. I am merely the ferryman.
(He looks away from Thale to the lake. The still surface holds no
reflection of sun, moon, or stars. A small boat slowly glides to
shore. It comes to rest before them.) Nothingness is unnamable . . .
And immortal. (Thale opens his mouth, but all his hours, beggars,
cannot even whisper.) Come now. (But neither moves.) Vision and
festivals are over. Nights of flowers and reason are letters memory
has forgotten.
Thale: Forgotten? (Thale places his hands upon his knees. He turns to the
Masked Stranger, but does not look upon the ivory mask. He
nudges a dull pebble forward a few inches with the toe of his boot
until it rests in the shadow of a large, dark rock.) Over comes and
all is forgotten? True, I was only sitting, waiting, perhaps longer
than was necessary, but doing was to come. Even the reed rests
between breaths of the raw wind . . . Sorrow finds a home among
the blue flowers of laughter, then dear light arrives and sorrow
moves on to the yellow flowers. I was merely waiting for the light
to return . . . It can return? Can it not bloom again in this country?
(Thale looks directly at the mask.) Is there to be no more light?
Can the wheels that move the clock hands turn no longer?
The Masked Stranger: Leave your line of questions for other pockets. Movement is
speechless and still . . . Come, the meadow of Eternity blooms
upon the lake. There sits the boat of wintertime. (The arm of the
Masked Stranger resembles a weathered fingerpost. His narrow
finger etches a somber line colder than death toward the prow of
the small boat.)
Thale: Do the empty rooms of autumn need my soul to fill their gloomy
silence? I am leafless, little more than a drifting grain. (His hands
flutter.) Is there not some wilder bird of radiant silver with feathers
woven of honey-kissed psalms and constellations of moon wine
to—
The Masked Stranger: Enough, Child.
Thale: (His tone more than a question.) Time? I will cast aside uncertain
and all my stony islands of sand. (His hand, palm up, reaching.)
Turn oblivion and I will flash. I could be a cistern of well, a flock
overrun with the bonfire verses of dawn—
The Masked Stranger: Off we go. Let your baggage of everyday rest in the ashes of that
time. Yesterday is a tired stone that will not. (Thale stands,
shoulders slumped. He looks like a scarecrow beaten by wind &
rain & a hundred bitter seasons. With firm, even strides the
Masked S
tranger walks to the waiting boat. He steps aboard and
beckons to Thale. Thale looks back to Cassilda’s keep.)
Thale: (In a slow whisper.) Good-bye, Day. (The wind rises and turns him
to the field of parting. In the thickening fog the Masked Stranger
holds a lantern filled with winter.)
Yvrain’s “Black Dancers”
They, the Fellowship of the Yellow Sign, attuned to their darker temperaments and the tenor of the elegantly-inscribed invitations sent by Doctor Archer—oddly not present for the festivities, had painted red rings of rouge around their eyes—bizarrely-tinted their cheeks in vivid yellow and mournful blue; and in the candle and gaslight glow, as the blue-gray tendrils of cigar and cigarette smoke reached out like marsh fogs, the court of refined revelers seemed more things cloaked in pallid convictions, than merely several of New York Society’s affluent brought together to view Boris Yvrain’s new work.
Gathered around it—some less than arm’s length from direct physical contact, a heathenish circle of worshippers, lacking only the outward activity of deliriums whirling, they stared, each more a thing of statuary than the marble piece Yvrain had recently brought to life.
Earlier, before the black shroud of velvet was lifted, they had amused themselves most carefully; politely-disciplined laughter flowed between sips of wine and cognac as they appeared to dally light-heartedly in the gaudy Madison Avenue apartment. Voices now quieted, though their strong features, unmasked at its unveiling, spoke of concealed passions roused, disdain, and fearful hostility.
Dare I touch it, each silently asked. But no hand or step moved toward it. And none dared back away; their own agitated longings forbade it. Black as any darkly-stained mahogany carving from Africa, Yvrain’s The Black Dance of Xandres and Sianith held the nine collected more tightly than any desperate mother’s hand.
Had the often volatile and always vehement, inventive genius abandoned discipline and reason to release this bold structure which more than suggested secrets better left unspoken? Had he, riveted by confounding visions whilst enjoined in rites base and unspeakable, formed relationships with spirits of the dead to unearth this grievous fusion of male and female copulating? The viewers had not answers; they were merely witnesses to the strange exhibition, caught in its world of feral festivals.
The male form, Xandres, a gaunt death-demon in a devil’s mask celebrating its mastery of fertile soil channeled, rode the robust clinging thighs of Sianith—wanton as any poetic drama illuminated in a vision. His head was thrown back, his savage eyes, laughing a volcanic outburst. And Sianith responded in kind—Her head was thrown back, her full lips an abyss opened to discharge a moan pitched as sharply as any desperate scream.
It, He—Xandres—that cruel king of darkness, had great wings and six curved horns and three grotesque tails (each whipping like lashes at her raised buttocks), and skin, folded and frayed like a tattered robe. His pocked and hideously-studded member was as a three-headed viper, the thick middle head—an oppressive terror unendurable, penetrating the lamprey-flower of Sianith’s charnel-ripened womanhood, the other two heads, hungry mouths stretched wide, harshly-clamped to the barbed-tips of her scaly breasts, which she offered—taloned fingers thrusting the blistered globes forward—as if for nursing.
And she—Sianith—the tiger of starless night hunting, the poisonous womb of death, absorbing his unfurled eel-meat, was as brilliant and harrowing as any pandemonium of unspeakable torture.
All the things of night flowed from it; every requiem poured out like tears, every twilight now dead in time, every frailty, every subtle mediation explored, yet forgotten, every rape and crime and depravation committed, as the echoes and ripples of decay hatched from the rat holes of nothingness—and sharpening, washed over each elder. Yet it drew the ring of observers—jovial grins cast aside. It spurred wild charges of desire within, as each empty soul—polluted, willingly impregnated—fixed upon it, watching its ruthless dance.
Yvrain’s vengeance was thrust full upon their greedy thievery—with lies and mere pennies they swindled his works from him, preyed upon his desperate circumstance. But no more! He would no longer be a slave, a mere footstool, for he had found the Yellow Sign and struck a bargain with the emissary of the Tattered King. Now it was his turn to be lord. From the Black Dancers, scorn and loathing, the blood of Yvrain’s payment, poured.
. . . vibrating with raucous screech and distant twitter the flutter of madness’ black wings roared in the silent room; bare feet padded worn, dry earth, and the heartbeat of the drum, full of fever, raced. And as vulgar beasts they turned upon one another. Hands, now blunt, clawed paws, the males tore at the delicate fabrics covering the females, cuffing the other males aside to be at the pale flesh exposed. Tattered silks and woolens lay like dead things on the carpet. Blood flowed as the five males battled over the four women—the bald, spectacled banker, a corpulent obscenity of flesh—tangibly delighted, writhed upon the tiniest woman, her rose nipple, meat in his great slashing mouth; the beak-nosed composer gleaming, his voice a bell of intoxication as he sodomized the shipping magnate’s fleshy wife. The women—vampires, demons, jackals, witches, moaned as they were assaulted, the men—vampires, demons, jackals, monsters, barked. And growled.
The orgy of raw wantonness became murder. Bejeweled fingers clawed eyes from their sockets, bellies and faces became works of art torn from the walls of Hell. The shipping magnate’s hard ardor, slipping from the intimate folds of the composer’s mistress, found its way into the mouth of the petite blond. Her polite white teeth rejected the savagery with vicious scarlet. Cigars burned cheeks and carpet and tender once hidden places. A pocket knife came out, flashed, and began painting in wide strokes splashed in screams . . . fingers curled . . . faces, breath lost from them, turned cold and ugly . . . neckties became nooses, gags, bonds . . . bear-jaw hands were clamped to throats as teeth and muscle sacrificed all to obscene invitations . . . In the blind hour of the wind that burns, hair was ripped out in chunks . . . Every carnal décor of Hell was sampled as the very air turned sour . . .
On the drunken-voiced revelers howled. And one by one, each—tethered by compulsion, exhausted by their exertions in blood and madness, was taken into night, while perched upon the summit of the Greek column of bone-white marble the luminous, laughing Black Dancers twisted in their dynamic ritual.
~*~
The heavy folds of black velvet curtains parted. Unmasked, the darkness that is Doctor Archer and Boris Yvrain enter the room . . . The skeletal hand of Doctor Archer comes to rest upon the artist’s shoulder.
“Well, Boris, it is just as I foretold.” The doctor lit a cigarette and watched tongues of aromatic smoke leap from light’s gaze to shade deep. “Is it not?”
“Indeed. The Truth has been revealed.”
“Now, about your next work—”
The Songs Cassilda Shall Sing, Where Flap the Tatters of the King
For SusanM, worthyWorthy,
C’cyss-kohe/COFFEEghost/beelzeBOB/Saletti,
ANKh-S, Carlos OM, Th-ill,
ST.eve----s . . .
& all those HOWL(ers)
& Our Lyricist and his r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
“All the Stars Are Dead Now”, © 1994 David Tibet/Current 93,
Ourobouros Music
Used by kind permission of David Tibet
Susan left her small-minded town for that Anotherwhere. In Anotherwhere there was motion and . . . escaped, kindred spirits. Beyond the Mom, apple pie, and Superman affectation of the rusty actors in their endless cycles, there were things she wanted to see, and things she wanted to hear, and say, and—more than anything—DO. She wanted to find The Underground. The one Alternative Press and Pluto’s Orchard and Catharsis Magazine raved about, the one college radio, ever exploring new vibrations, sent out like Plutonian ragas. Many was the night she dreamed of being part of that flourishing culture where everynight was an October midnight, and a component of the post-industria
l nation, who, painted like exquisite corpses, danced like pale-skinned iron birds running from rust.
Born, certainly not asked—sometimes goddamnpositive, not even wanted—she needed to be away from Stale St. Endless Domination with its whitewash of clean and safety. She wanted her passions to soar on the forbidden wings of soft midnight. Wanted to own the firmament. Susan ached to break free and find one revelation—even a tiny one. She was suffocating and wanted her due.
~*~
Friday afternoon on the chessboard, every elaboration splashing. Distortions, fabulous disappointment, demented tactics or predatory intentions angling, all-too-public executions blasting like car horns, anything you could name elbowed its way along the avenues. And she, in midnight-black and full of imaginings, moved through the patterns of the city.
Susan—NOW/in this new city with a new life/LILY—hit the concrete citywalks on a cold day. She carried a few fears, $723—her fortune, her Ouija board, and her fragility wrapped in a black on black aesthetic. Inside her knapsack lay her blood-red pens and journals of poetry—black shadowy weaves of heartbreak and gloom. Past the hustling pimps and social throw-aways swarming the bus station, and past the bad karma of the human condition tossed like damaged goods into moldering doorways. Past subway maps and flyers for Jesus and extremes rattlin’ to take it apart and barstool saints in conversations of one and acres of redundant and magazine stories come to life and the numb of shrill SALE assertions in windows. And on every corner, either available or ducking the wind, greed and hope considering career alternatives. Lily moved through the ruins. She knew the street address of Café Morphine.
On the bustling auto-da-fé with 100 taxis barreling to the next traffic-crush and the squads of lemmings being herded to whoknowswhere?, big, dark innocent eyes fed her mind with the huge of it. It loomed; gray, brutal vibes, overpowering. Its buildings were as intense as the sculptures of a hurtful hallucination. An ill-junkyard perhaps, openly mocking one’s self-assurance, but this was IT. Here you could let your emotions escape your skin, you could create a dance with your pain.
The King in Yellow Tales: Volume 1 Page 14