What an asshole, I think to myself, but everyone else is eating it up. They hang on the giant’s every word, completely enraptured. It’s as if Jim Morrison has come back from the dead and is handing out hundred dollar bills.
Almost every community that I’ve joined has included a leader like Prognostrum, some self-important blowhard smitten with the sound of their own voice. They aren’t usually so tall, though. Settling into the chair immediately to my left, the man gives me one of his horrible lantern-jawed smiles. Somehow, I manage to grin back.
Then we are eating. There is no talking permitted in Prognostrum’s presence unless he specifically addresses you, and so our soundtrack is the sloppy wet sounds of communal masticating. Even the children remain silent, although some of them require spoon-feeding. The last child who’d spoken out in Prognostrum’s presence had been castrated and sent forevermore to Lodge Cherubic.
Silently, we pass the wooden bowls around the table, until everyone is reclining in their seats, with engorged stomachs protruding before them. After another tedious speech extolling the many virtues of love, we are allowed to file out of Dining Lodge one by one, kissing our leader’s palm as we pass into the night. Only the mothers remain now, hours of cleaning ahead of them.
5
Into the Lake
It is morning now, and I am alone. Sitting in the air-conditioned cab of our community’s John Deere tractor, I guide the large green vehicle across acres of cornfield. A chisel plough drags behind the tractor, aerating soil that still bears the residue of last season’s crops. Soon, new maize plants shall sprout from this fertile field, but I will not be here to see them. Even now, the door calls to me, its silent scream louder than the tractor’s comforting drone. I can feel it now, like a discarded body part broadcasting sensations to its erstwhile home.
Were I to flee the commune, the door would follow me to my next place of residence, sprouting from the floor like a rectangular tumor. It’s happened before, years ago, and ignoring the subterranean point of ingress will eventually cause me great physical discomfort, as if my skin has grown a couple of sizes too small.
Every time I lift that ever-shifting entrance up, I half expect to glimpse a giant inhuman oculus regarding me, a glittering orb belonging to the intelligence behind my travails. But it’s always the same concrete steps, leading to the same strange nightclub. Some of the club’s patrons know my name now, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.
* * *
I park the tractor within its open-sided shed, an eyesore constructed of splintering two-by-fours and a standing seam steel roof. I am sweating and smell like onions soaked in gasoline at this point, and so I travel to the lake just past our property’s northern edge.
Beyond the lake lies the forest, wherein our steady supply of venison is carved from still-breathing deers. Prognostrum claims that their fear and agony adds to the meat’s flavor, and I am hard-pressed to disagree. Still, it is tough to bear the animals’ plaintive wheezing and mournful looks as they bleed out.
Stepping onto the pebble-strewn shoreline, I see that I’m not alone. It’s just my luck that Lodge Cherubic’s occupants, a gallery of deformities and contaminated bloodlines, happen to be taking their bimonthly bath in the opaque water. They splash madly, some bearing cleft palates, some supported on crude wooden crutches. I see people constructed of little more than bones intermingling with folks bearing the signs of Prognostrum’s judgments. There are dwarves and conjoined triplets washing themselves alongside albinos and half people. Some sing, some scream, some furtively observe my approach. Stern-faced mothers line the lake’s amoeba-like perimeter, using cattle prods to usher stragglers into the water.
I enter fully clothed, wading until the water is up to my chest. I then submerge, and the plunge is instant therapy for my aching limbs. My bathing partners close upon me now, smiling through ruined faces, blinking glittering eyes devoid of sanity. Throwing my arms wide, I await their embrace.
6
Going Away
I am on the couch again, with Lament crouched beside me, flicking my forehead over and over. Her ruined face smiles, causing a line of drool to spill down her chin. Finding the girl pleasant company, I am saddened to think that she will soon pass into Lodge Cherubic’s mad confines. The TV is on, and I find my focus entering its idiot glow.
The screen displays an impending surgery, what appears to be an appendectomy. A surgeon peers at an unconscious patient, We’re Roy Street Coffee & Tea! protruding stomach has already been draped and prepared for some procedure. The surgeon is a study in green: a green gown over green scrubs, even a green hairnet. His gloves and mask are white, though. His protective goggles reflect LED lighting, masking his eyes. Underlings buzz about the man, similarly attired, but his posture and authoritative gesticulations make it clear that he’s in charge.
The camera angle shifts, and I witness a close-up of abdominal wall layers being pulled back. It is unsettling, to say the least. Then the camera pans up to the surgeon.
The man’s hairnet is hidden under a psychedelic top hat now, and a familiar purple overcoat envelops his gown. It turns out that the surgeon had been Professor Pandora all along!
Now the man’s assistants are setting buckets near the surgical bed, metal containers with snakes churning within them. I see asps, vipers and garter snakes twining around cobras, rattlesnakes and black mambas, an ever-evolving mosaic of multicolored scales.
One by one, Professor Pandora begins feeding serpents into the open abdomen. The patient, an overweight man with a wart-ravaged countenance, wakes up screaming. Having seen enough, I switch the television off.
Minutes later, there is a knock at the door. Before I can rise from the sofa, Prognostrum is stepping into the lodge, bending to make it under the lintel. Lament rushes to the man, and is swept up into a loose embrace. When Prognostrum’s skunk shuffles into the room, I find myself growing tense.
Time stretches before us as I wait for our leader to speak. Finally, he sets Lament down, and stretches one long forefinger toward the door in the floor.
“I understand that you will be leaving us soon,” he says.
“That’s right, sir. The door beckons, and another society awaits me.”
He scratches his immaculately shaved chin thoughtfully, his eyelids descending to the point where sleep seems imminent. “Well, I speak for the entire community when I say that we’ll be sorry to see you go. I can only hope that you carry forward the lessons that you’ve learned here, and that you share them with your new family.”
What lessons? I think to myself. Nodding humbly, I reply, “Of course I will. I will share your love with the world, and everywhere I go I shall preach the gospel of Prognostrum.” That ought to satisfy this egotistical prick.
The skunk is sniffing at my feet now, and I wonder if I’ve laid it on too thick. It wouldn’t do to make our leader feel patronized.
Collecting his pet, the giant exits the lodge. “Perhaps you’ll find your way back here someday,” he says in parting.
Minutes later, from their shared bedroom, I hear the amalgamated moans of Raul and Kenneth. That’s my cue to leave, and so I follow Prognostrum into the glaring sunlight. I have work to do, anyway.
It is hard to leave the door’s immediate proximity, and our increasing distance burns a hole into my spirit. Only one thing keeps me in the commune now: my date with the sisters, which will take place in just two days.
Today, however, I will be playing the role of farmhand. Technically, I should have gone to work at six A.M. with the rest of the men, but my impending departure has rendered me lazy.
Reluctantly, I make my way through the wheat fields, collecting grain left by the harvesters. Two other men, Ashram Mitchell and Michael Clark, join me in my gleaning duties, and we make desultory conversation as the afternoon crosses into evening.
* * *
As we prepare to knock off for the day, a mother rushes up with face aglow. Melissa Phelps, a wide-hipped woman
in the throes of menopause, grabs my arm, smiling broadly. Her odd visage exhibits too much character; it’s as if the woman’s facial structure includes a dozen extra bones.
“We’re having a party for you tonight,” she coos. “A going away party. No one ever leaves the community, so this is pretty darn exciting for us.”
“A party?” Ashram asks indignantly. “Did you clear it with Prognostrum?”
“Of course we did. It took a little convincing, but our leader is well aware of the role that celebrations play in fostering a communal spirit.”
I am somewhat shocked. While I’d been accepted into their group after a few tense months, I’d never considered that Prognostrum’s flock might actually mourn my departure. In previous communities, my partings had been met with everything from indifference to death threats. Once, I’d even had to fight off a Vaseline-coated great-grandmother to reach the doorway. But no one has ever thrown me a party.
I tell Melissa how honored I am, and she mentions that we’ll be gathering in the forest in a couple of hours, in the eerie clearing that lies at the heart of the woods. Then she skips off, her shredded hoopskirt flapping around her.
“I’ll catch you guys later,” I tell Michael and Ashram. They nod back at me.
After a quick stop at my soon-to-be ex-lodge, I make my way over to the lake. This time the waters are unoccupied, and I leisurely bathe under an indifferent sun.
Scrubbing myself with homemade soap, I notice a steady stream of people entering and exiting the woods. Some carry tables and chairs; others haul burlap sacks stuffed with unidentifiable contents. They are obviously setting up for my party, and their thoughtfulness humbles me. In fact, it makes me wish that I could fight the door’s influence and remain at the commune for another few years.
* * *
Standing in the clearing, I find myself hemmed in by alder and ash trees. There are plants everywhere: reeds, ferns, moss and weeds. A stream languidly flows beside me, and everywhere that I gaze, I see smiling faces.
Somehow, a flatbed trailer has been wheeled into the clearing. Before a collection of hand-carved chairs, it stands as a makeshift stage, with a stretch of carpet extending across its surface. The seats are quickly filling, as some kind of presentation looms imminent.
Around the clearing’s perimeter, a variety of culinary delicacies are exhibited upon unstable teak tables. Seeing large bowls of fried chicken, mutton, salad, peas and mashed potatoes set out, I fill my plate accordingly. Claiming a chair, I begin to dig in.
Plopping into the seat beside me, Starshine spears me with a beatific smile. Ariel, the nervous twelve-year-old boy who shares our lodge, grabs the seat on my opposite side, his plate a mountain of potato. With his dark hair and serious expression, Ariel sticks out from the rest of our community like a sore thumb. When he grows older, he’ll inevitably do something to piss off Prognostrum, and end up mutilated in Lodge Cherubic, but for now he has perfected the art of staying out of sight. Frankly, I’m surprised to see him at the gathering.
Mothers navigate through the chair aisles, handing out cups of sharp dark cider. I sip mine gratefully, dislodging a stray piece of sheep flesh from my throat.
When Prognostrum takes the stage, conversation withers. “Tonight is a desolate one, brethren,” he declares, “yet the occasion is also exultant. A member of our clan is departing, yet our principles will travel forth with him. We have provided our brother with world-changing tools, which he’ll soon apply to his next set of circumstances. So let us celebrate departing family. Let us celebrate ourselves. I love you all!”
This statement is met with uninhibited cheering, and Prognostrum bows before his many admirers. Tonight, he wears a laurel wreath, a Caesar-like crown that shades his sunken eyes. As he steps off the stage, his long golden robe trails behind him, the tail end of which his skunk rushes forward to gnaw.
What follows resembles a middle school talent show. It commences with two of Lodge Cherubic’s more docile inhabitants taking the stage to perform the most bizarre version of “Who’s on First?” that I’ve ever witnessed. When the bit devolves into a cross between dry humping and jujitsu, the two mutants are dragged off the platform and the show goes on.
Due to the door in the floor’s warped machinations, I once spent the better part of a summer living with a gang of web developers. Their key source of income had been a website devoted to corpse upskirts, a graphic showcase that managed to pull in nearly a million hits per week. With no exaggeration, I can say that half of the acts I now bear witness to disturb me more than that pack of basement dwellers ever had.
I see a child spitting baby teeth into another’s mouth, and then a mother juggling her son’s prostheses while yodeling in what sounds like Klingon. I see two decrepit old men participate in a three-round boxing tournament, barbwire wrapped tight around their palsied hands. I’ve known these people for over a third of a decade, yet their so-called talents still surprise and terrify me.
The exhibition trends normal for a while, as I witness an act from Macbeth followed by an acoustic rendition of “Free Bird.” And then Mark Henderson’s cat juggling attempt turns tragic, and the man ends up facedown in a pool of his own plasma.
While they drag Mark off the stage and mop his blood from the carpet, a hot air balloon flies above us, a rainbow-colored craft piloted by three naked mothers. Of its point of origin and final destination, I am entirely unaware, but I find myself yearning to be inside that flimsy wicker basket, viewing our surroundings with cloud companions.
When the sisters take the stage, I nearly spit out my mouthful of taters. Even without makeup, they are more radiant than I’ve ever seen them, and that’s saying a lot.
n satin gowns they stand before us, fourteen females connected by lengthy ropes of hair, soaking in our anticipation, smiling vaguely. As we gaze upon their gorgeousness, all conversation dies, until only the chirping tree crickets and the babbling stream are audible.
Accompanied by no music, the sisters begin to move. What begins as a simple line dance segues into a slow ballet. The sisters twirl about each other, entangling into a contracting circle, and then masterfully spin back to starting position. How they manage this delicate choreography without ending up as a knotted mess, I have no clue. I assume that this seemingly effortless series of steps is the result of months of practice, but I’ve rarely seen the sisters outside of their lodge.
After several minutes of intricate movement, the sisters bow before us, signaling an end to their silent dance. The subsequent standing ovation lasts longer than their act did, and I find myself frantically whistling, smacking my palms together again and again.
No one could possibly top that, I decide.
When Prognostrum takes the stage with Swedish bagpipes in hand moments later—I cringe. From past experience, I know that the giant’s clumsy melody will be as well-received as the sisters’ performance had been, although I suspect that a four-year-old could do better after a week’s worth of lessons.
Our leader begins playing, his recessed eyes closed in concentration. As his pursed lips exhale breath, a soft unfocused strain pours from the instrument.
Over the course of the hour-long recital, I finish my chicken and lamb. With no napkin proximate, I wipe grease onto my pant legs, my foot impatiently tapping the soil.
Suddenly, the piping ceases. The ground is rumbling now, shuddering as if Mother Earth is endeavoring to buck us from her surface. Gripping the arms of my chair, I grit my teeth, hearing exclamations from those assembled.
Prognostrum raises his arms to reassure us, only to voice an inarticulate yelp as the flatbed trailer disappears into the earth. Our makeshift stage has fallen into a freshly formed chasm, and with it our leader.
“Prognostrum!” the crowd cries en masse.
When the shaking dies down some minutes later, we form along the edges of the crevice, silently peering into an immeasurable abyss. Of the missing trailer and leader, nothing can be glimpsed. All around me, I
see shock-slackened faces. One vacant-eyed fellow repeats “no, no, no, no” ad nauseam.
“What will we do now?” Eileen moans, reflexively tearing gray hairs from her skull. “Who will lead us?” Her eyes turn toward mine for one horrible moment, but I can only shake my head negative. The door awaits me, after all. Soon, I shall shed this community like old snakeskin.
From within the rift, strange sounds begin drifting, like what a fish might utter, were it permitted to scream. Now we see animals ascending, expertly gouging handholds as they climb.
The creatures belong to an undiscovered genus, some underground species unfamiliar to the scientific community. They resemble a cross between a boar and a gorilla, with broad chests, stiff-bristled fur, and massive protruding tusks resting under sagittal crests. Lengthy, slim tails wag behind them, spastically swinging back and forth.
The beasts climb swifter than one would believe possible. They are crawling from the mouth of the chasm before the majority of us can even react. Knuckle-walking, these monsters advance upon us, eyes blood red above dripping cylindrical snouts.
“Get the sisters out of here!” shouts someone, possibly Mitch. But I cannot move; the grim spectacle has turned my legs into stone.
Prognostrum’s pet skunk is the first to fall before the boarillas. It disappears between one creature’s tusks, its leash slurped up like a spaghetti noodle. A flash of blood and fur, and then it’s following its master into oblivion.
I see Raul slapped to the ground by a particularly nasty boarilla, a slavering monstrosity with biceps larger than my head. As Kenneth struggles to free the man, another boarilla appears beside him. Soon, the two are screaming loud enough to wake a narcoleptic, being bludgeoned to death by their own torn off limbs.
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