“The question is too big,” the grinning twin tried to answer. “You cannot capture chaos with an answer,” he continued. “The realization of this leads to freedom.”
Special Agent J. J. Speed wasn’t listening. Think goddamnit check your premises yes this is definitely a hallucination can’t be happening I’m done for I’ve lost my edge where’s my toothpick goddamn cat litter why is he grinning it smells like manure I didn’t know you could hallucinate odors that’s interesting I could try to shoot him the silencer is awesome and no one would hear but that’s me no it’s not but what if it is and the Great White Spot is a wormhole and this is a time warp paradox double fucking paradox how can I tell maybe I could just shoot the mule and see what happens that’ll tell me at least something okay then that’s the plan. Special Agent J. J. Speed lifted his Luger and blandly fired two shots point-blank between the front legs of the donkey. Cool sound like a muffled laser gun gotta love that but nothing happened except a ricochet off the brick wall beyond okay so it’s definitely a hallucination maybe I should just ignore it and continue as planned the world hangs in the balance it’s up to me gotta save the day it all comes down to this think goddamnit Billy Pronto madman unleashing transcendental chaos walk away.
“I have no material existence on this plane of existence,” his grinning twin offered. “Nor does my steed.”
Special Agent J. J. Speed scowled, again wondering how he could smell an animal that had no material existence, but then he happened to glimpse a sprig of mistletoe twisted into the mule’s bridle and all else was forgotten. He gasped at its unprecedented beauty, his gaze mesmerizing into the depths of its eternity. Abandoning his theory that this was all a hallucination, he reached out for the mistletoe as he rudely demanded, “Hey what is that?”
“Don’t touch it!” his grinning twin warned, guiding his steed a few steps backward. But Special Agent J. J. Speed was not dissuaded, and lunging forward managed to touch something that allegedly had no material existence. He succeeded in plucking one of the white berries, crushing it in his grasp as it dissolved into effervescence between his fingertips.
His grinning twin seemed to materialize a broadsword out of nowhere, the tip of which he tapped very deliberately upon the pavement, simultaneously yelling, “Whoa now!”
Thence ensued a silence so deep that Special Agent J. J. Speed counted at least nine resounding now!s echoing into taunting whispers off the alley walls. Eyes widening with each repercussion, Special Agent J. J. Speed watched in perplexity as his grinning twin dismounted and leveled his sword at him. “It is unwise to touch the mistletoe,” his grinning twin assessed him, measuring his sword upon him. “Especially for one such as you. You are not even a worthy challenger. Your heart is corrupted by fear and contempt.”
“Why do you look like me?” Special Agent J. J. Speed demanded. “And why are you running around naked?”
“Do not confuse my presence with the persona you project upon me. What you see is a hallucination, a projection of the freedom from which you flee.”
“Who are you?”
“I do not pretend to know who I am.”
Forgetting everything but his lust for the mistletoe, Special Agent J. J. Speed leveled his Luger at his grinning twin. “Tell me your name or I’ll shoot you in the fucking face, how about that, smiley?”
This threat did not seem to faze his grinning twin in the least, who went right on smiling as if he were Jesus Christ savoring a raspberry plucked from his crown of thorns. “I dream of love as tyrants shoot my head,” he said, and no sooner had he spoken these words than the flat end of the broadsword slapped the pistol out of Special Agent J. J. Speed’s grip, fiercely smarting the back of his hand as the blade rang from the impact.
“Ah fuck!” Special Agent J. J. Speed yelled, gripping the throb of his hand. “I thought you said you have no material existence!”
“We are no longer on your plane,” his grinning twin explained as a dozen or so hilariating gnomes suddenly scampered between them, fetching the Luger and tossing it about as they whooped away.
Special Agent J.J. Speed was incredulous at this disruption. “What the hell was that?”
His grinning twin shrugged apologetic. “Gnomes,” he answered, as if that sufficed as an explanation.
“Gnomes?” he repeated. “Gnomes? Why are there goddamn gnomes running around?”
“It is their way. They are mostly harmless, nothing more than manifestations of the collective human imagination, really, though they have a wicked sense of irony about them. They keep things on track.”
“On track? What the hell are you talking about? What is all this?”
“You are in the moment of Truth,” his grinning twin answered. “There really is no time like the present. Right here and right now.”
“What does that mean?”
His grinning twin raised his sword again. “Unfortunately for you, it means it is time for you to die.”
112 AT A DINKY, DUMPY, hole-in-the-wall computer repair shop just around the corner, a lonesome man was dropping off his brand-new laptop. His hard drive had crashed and failed to reboot, and he was hoping they could somehow re-cover his lost data. He was three hours later than his appointment, but he had awoken that morning with his stomach tied in inexplicable knots, and so had puttered and slumped around his hotel room all morning. This was the soonest he’d been able to make it out and about. Chatting amiably with the receptionist, he looked up as the door jingled open, only to find his estranged girlfriend standing there in her ARGUE NAKED T-shirt, holding her laptop as if it were a sick puppy. Having neither seen nor spoken to her in weeks, he found eye contact an unbearable agony and looked immediately away. Wanting to regard the encounter, however, he glanced again at her, gesturing toward his laptop as he muttered idiotically, “My hard drive crapped out.”
“Yeah,” she smiled helplessly. “Mine too.” As the flash of her hopeful smile stretched her sad eyes, he wanted to bolt out the door, but paperwork prevented his immediate exit. “Do you have some time now?” she asked, and he nodded. “Do you want to go somewhere and talk?”
“Yeah.” He nodded nervously as he signed whatever form. “Sure. Yes. Okay. I’ll, uh, I’ll just wait outside.”
Out on the sidewalk, his prickling astonishment at the synchronicity of this unlikely encounter with his ex-lover was matched by his curiosity at a crowd of people nearby, enthusiastically digging through a small pile of clothing on the sidewalk, holding up various articles for size and such. When she exited the store after a few minutes, her attention was immediately drawn to the ruckus as well. A coffee mug seemed to be the source of this excitement as it was passed around and examined by each person in turn.
“What’s going on?” she asked, as a man in the crowd lifted the mug high above his head in some kind of victorious exaltation.
“I have no idea,” he answered, grateful for the distraction from the obvious conversation, and at that very moment a concussive air wave seemed to descend from everywhere at once. Cars dented, roofs caved in, windshields cracked, trash cans tumbled, car alarms panicked, pedestrians and bicycles somersaulted every which way down the sidewalk, and the intrepid coffee mug finally shattered into midair smithereens some forty feet away. As for our estranged couple, she suddenly found herself lying on top of him ten feet from where they’d been standing, and if there had been any wind there was no trace of it now.
“Oh my God,” he gasped, jarred by the discontinuity of the collision and reduced to his truth. “I’m so sorry I ever hurt you.”
“I’m so sorry I ever hurt you,” she cried, breaking into tears at the sight of his mortal brow, trickling a trail of blood like tears from a broken heart.
And they kissed.
113 THE TRUTH OF Elizabeth’s rebuke slapped Diablo into quietude. But he held her gaze, impressed by her confidence in her own vulnerability. “Talking away,” he repeated at last, nodding. “Indeed, I chatter to fill the void and assuage my own discomfor
t. I talk it but don’t walk it, at least until I encountered you today. You have no idea how much anxiety you have liberated me from. I’d tell you about it but I’m certain that would defeat the purpose.”
“Quit trying to be so incredible,” Elizabeth said. “Let’s walk it.”
“What do you want to walk about?”
“You said once that life is a lucid dream.”
Diablo nodded. “That sounds like something I might probably say.”
“You did. So if life is a lucid dream . . . ”
It is.
“Right. So since life is a lucid dream, and since dreams are symbolic, then what is this lucid life-dream symbolizing right now?”
“What,” Diablo replied. “With nakedness? Haven’t we already covered that?”
“That’s just it,” she replied. “You’ve covered it. Covered it with a lot of masturbatory yap.”
Diablo nodded. “Ah, but it’s so easy to succumb to the temptations of masturbation when this universe is engaged in such a sensual striptease of revelation, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Quit quipping.” Elizabeth smiled in spite, of herself. “Walk your talk.”
Diablo looked away and shifted uncomfortably. “You’re suggesting that there is some inevitable symbol here that cannot be avoided?”
“It seems apparent.”
“So what is this inevitable symbol?”
Elizabeth gazed at him. “Why haven’t you looked at my body?”
Diablo met her gaze momentarily and immediately looked away. “Maybe I’m gallant,” he said. “Have you looked at my body?”
“I’m looking at your body right now. And no, you’re not being gallant, you’re being cowardly.”
Diablo looked back to find that, indeed, she was surveying his form. “Maybe I’m gay,” he said.
“A gay man wouldn’t be afraid to look at me.”
“Touché,” Diablo conceded her point. “I am neither gallant nor gay,” Diablo prattled. “But I’m not so straight that I won’t sit next to a male friend in a movie theater. Have you seen those schmos in their ball caps sitting in every other seat, terrified that sharing an armrest is the first tender touch on the road to swish and faggotry? So pathetic.”
“Look at me,” Elizabeth invited.
“Why?” Diablo returned.
“Because that is what the moment demands. Anything less would be a denial of the impulse that you seem so intent upon awakening.” Diablo waffled in reply, and Elizabeth continued. “I think you’re afraid to look at me because you fear the defenselessness of intimacy. You know you’ll lose control of the encounter, you sense you’ll become vulnerable, and you are afraid to be completely naked. Perhaps you are not nine kinds of naked, after all, Mister Mastermind.”
Diablo grinned and became suddenly comfortable. “You know,” he said. “There are nine circles in Dante’s Inferno, and the lowest circle is the frozen lake of lovelessness.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth replied patiently. “I know you know a lot of interesting things, but if you want to know the love you presume to promote, you have to step out of that last circle of the inferno, that last part of yourself that thinks you must protect yourself, that fears you cannot trust in complete vulnerability.” She paused and shifted her tone. “I mean, I’m only holding you to your own words here. You said that love is indestructible and requires absolutely no protection. As it turns out, you have been saying exactly what you yourself needed to hear.” Diablo nodded, and Elizabeth continued. “There is nothing to fear here. If you are truly open to love, it is impossible for anyone to do or say anything that will hurt you, for in that case you would immediately forgive them their failings. So answer me, are you merely a cowardly Moses, pointing the way toward the Promised Land but poisoned by doubt and so unable to cross the River Jordan?”
Diablo was silent a long while as shades of sadness and sorrow drew his face. Elizabeth straightened her back and involuntarily shuddered, immediately opening into a profound loving-kindness and marveling at the absence of her own albatross armor of deceit. Watching him struggle to release into trust, she admired everything about him, his ambition, his vision, his erudition, his enthusiasm, yet she knew as well as she knew her own failings that none of it would amount to a hill of horseshit if he couldn’t take his own best advice and walk away from those parts of himself that prevented the fullest expression of his spirit. She may not have known this yesterday, but for whatever reason she knew it now, and now is the only moment that ever matters, and she was not going to let her godfather get involved without getting evolved. After all, what does it profit a man if he saves the world but fails to save his own soul?
“Screw the world,” she said, startling him aware. “Save your self.”
114 SPECIAL AGENT J. J. Speed ran.
Deprived of his Luger and relishing neither the notion of being slain by broadsword nor even the idea of scuffling with a naked and unreasonably cheerful version of himself, Special Agent J. J. Speed sprinted off in the direction of the cavorting gnomes. Due to the unnatural stillness of his urban surroundings, the act of his running seemed to be a tremendous event. Actually, as he discovered when he reached the end of the alley, it was in fact the only event.
Jogging to a halt, Special Agent J. J. Speed looked in horrified amazement at the frozen landscape of humanity in which he found himself. Cars, bicycles, pedestrians, even the gaggle of onlookers were freeze-framed into place, one of them victoriously lifting the empty mug salvaged from the pile of laundry as if it were the Olympic torch. “What?” Special Agent J. J. Speed sounded his voice, but his only answer was the mule’s gallump toward him, his grinning twin once again astride.
As in a dream that preposterizes existence while nonetheless demanding one’s full attention, Special Agent J. J. Speed realized his imminent danger and instinctively flung the only object he had resembling a weapon—the Day-Glo orange Frisbee—and took off running again. This strike was profoundly ineffective, sailing high over his grinning twin before skidding onto the landing outside of m2 headquarters, but Special Agent J. J. Speed did not linger to observe. Desperately seeking another weapon, he ran toward the gaggle of onlookers and seized the empty coffee mug from the grasp of the frozen mannequin’s hand, knocking several others over in his haste. Turning, he hurled it at his grinning twin, who succeeded in shattering it in midair with a slash of his broadsword. Impressed and terrified, Special Agent J. J. Speed sprinted down the sidewalk, grabbing every de-animated pedestrian and bicyclist and throwing them down behind him as obstacles. It worked, initially, as his grinning twin took great care not to trample any of the human statues, though he soon enough left the sidewalk for the street, hoofing over the roofs of cars, cracking windshields and generally trashing their finish in the process.
Just as Special Agent J. J. Speed was gathering his wits enough to begin to wonder just what the hell was happening, he stumbled over an unseen something and sprawled headlong onto the sidewalk. Bruised and scraped all over, he looked up to find a gnome grinning psychotically at him, dutifully dusting Special Agent J. J. Speed’s pants. “Be thee ware, weary wanderer,” the gnome chuckled, swiping the side of his nose and pointing at him, “and touch not the bough of mistletoe.” Then, with a tut-tutting wag of his finger, the gnome was gone.
115 “SOMETHING IN YOUR eyes reminds me of myself,” Elizabeth observed of Diablo, who had finally ceased avoiding her eye contact, though still he would not venture below her neckline. “You have a ferocious wariness against impostors.” She went on, gazing deeper into his green irises, noting the corona of orange flaring from behind the eclipse of his pupils. “You hide your eyes behind a wall of flame, searching the eyes outside for authenticity but ready to trigger daggers at the first sign of bluff.” She reached out and touched his naked knee, electrifying his body. “Know this now, Mister Mastermind: No matter what happens ever, you are absolutely and always safe.”
Diablo drew a tremendous breath as his grief deliquesced
into grace. Blinking into the clarity that she was offering, he exhaled and his eyes opened wide at the tornado goddess he had belittled as his climatological godchild. For the first time, he allowed himself to look fully upon the bathycolpian body of Elizabeth, her presence flowing into his naked eyes like the land of milk and honey, soothing all sadness with the memory of the mother from whom we all sprang.
Feeling this unspoken honorific, Elizabeth’s heart effortlessly dropped countless thousands of ogre’s ogles and the guardedness they had produced within her. For the first time in her recollection, she was not mortified of her own body, and the spirit that animated her body desired this man who had seen her for the embodied goddess she had always known herself to be rather than the busty slut fucktoy so many others projected her to be. Placing both of her hands upon his knees, Elizabeth hoisted herself forward, stopping within kissing distance of his lips, closing her eyes and sharing in his breath.
“I prefer to taste a person’s spirit before I taste their flesh,” Diablo murmured against her aura.
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