by David Pugh
‘Is it not true that he gave you a sense of completeness?’ was he deliberately trying to use biblical language?
‘Did you not feel a glow of recognition when first you did meet?’ I asked him to knock off the King James stuff, this was no time for jokiness.
‘You two instantly bonded, didn’t you? That was because you both realised that you had found your other half, your missing self, all the other lacked. You knew if you could be one person, you’d be an exceptional human being, a model for all, intelligence and strength.’
I had to stop Issa, ‘Remus is a hedonist and philanderer, he lives life for the pleasure of the moment with no thought to a Final Judgement!’
‘And do you not do the same, my son?’ I guessed old habits die hard.
‘You are different to Remus in so much that you understand that the Earthly pleasures are an agent provocateur, a chemical trigger to enlightenment. In crude terms, “Sex and drugs and Rock’n’Roll are all your brain and body needs!” Ian Dury knew how to live; he just couldn’t find the balance, you could probably blame that on the polio. The shaman has always known the truth, that God is a hedonist who gets high on playing tricks on humankind. Isn’t this what I have been doing to you? You connected with Jagannath, as did I, because you saw him as the God of Hedonism; I too saw my African roots inside that wood, not some reincarnation of Krishna. Jagannath is the beginning of it all, a creation of African licentiousness and a protector from the dark things in the jungle. Remus Jallow really is a shaman and despite your doubts; he has the healing knowledge of all of Africa in his brain and in his blood. You are only just learning, as you turn sixty, that there is no shame in having sexual relationships, no guilt as long as you do not mistreat your partner in Holy Congress. You treat the women you have bought with respect, thanking them for the honour of their evening, giving them more money than they asked.’
‘Look, I want to talk about sex and the Church,’ I urged Issa to oblige me.
‘Shit on the Church!’ a bit strong for Issa, I thought.
‘The Church is a construct of the State, whichever state; the true church is within you, as you know. You know what is wrong and you know what is right, and that’s not easy for most people, they are prone to fooling themselves. For the majority the Church is an extension of the community, you may not be gregarious but most people are because they are afraid to walk alone. You are happy with the company of your quiet friend, and he has taught you many things about yourself, you never needed the babble of others. Now your quiet friend has been made flesh, I am before you! Look deep into my face, Jeffrey, who do you see? Look beyond the dark skin and black hair, do you recognise the face that you have only seen in reverse, while looking in the mirror?’
I felt sick, a tingling rose through my body, goose bumps were electrifying me. I had seen him twice before, once while recovering from a near-death experience. I had come close to dying while working in London, just after my student days, my American employers were literally working me to death, for the honour of the title of creative director, more truthfully company artist, photographer set designer and sign writer. I was losing blood iron from a stomach ulcer and unknowingly within days of dying, lying on a bed, pissing into a plastic bottle with the TV left on, while Sylvia was at work, and drifting in and out of consciousness, I closed my eyes a moment and opened them to see my body from the ceiling. I was looking down on the gaunt white face of this Issa and knew I was dying. In panic I fought against death by reciting a mantra over and over, a powerful mantra popular in the early Seventies. I shall whisper it to you but use it wisely.
‘Great Lash Maybelline, puts lashes in the thick of things.’
Embracing the power of a television commercial I returned to my body and with a power from I know not where, got out of bed. I dressed, walked a half mile to the hospital, where I shocked the consultant.
‘Good God, how are you standing up, you’ve exhausted nearly all of your haemoglobin!’
Six or seven months later, recovering on sickness benefit in a rented studio in Swansea, I walked down to the sea one stormy afternoon. I was grateful that I had recovered, still with stomach pain but glad to be alive, feeling the light rain and surf on my face. There was only one other figure on the beach, a young man wearing a similar long coat that I used to have and with long hair like mine. I approached him to make conversation, as I neared he turned and smiled with this Issa’s face, paler and healthier but recognisably my own. I reeled a moment, blinked and he was gone.
‘I never went away; I have always been with you, now and at the hour of your body’s death,’ Issa intoned, ‘did the mantra surprised you?’
‘I’ll never forget it,’ I smiled in gratitude, ‘I guessed later that it was the same rhythm as some healing mantra, the repeating of it returned me to the living world and a chance to be reborn, that I never took advantage of.’
‘Until now,’ Issa smiled, ‘you now know that it is never too late.’
Chapter 60: Distant Drums
Molefi’s Diary, Bakau, The Gambia
The weeks had passed very quickly, I had more or less moved in with Madam Sylvia but was nowhere closer to finding where she was hiding Bob’s gris-gris. Bob was due back from the UK in about a week, so there would be some sort of a showdown, and I had no idea whose side I was on. I was missing my work, the thrill of hunting down a quarry, baiting a trap and then administrating the coup-de-grace. Most people would consider me psychotic but death has been my life for fourteen odd years, it’s my trade; I work in a human slaughterhouse but my abattoir covers the whole world. Human compassion seems to have died in me, washed out with too much wine and Coke.
I do find myself caring for this woman, I admire the way she is standing up to a man possibly more evil than me. I use the term evil loosely, I don’t believe that it exists; we are all coins with two sides, one shiny, one dark. Funnily enough, I had a conversation about this subject with that wandering husband of hers, back in the days we first met in the Gaborone Hotel. He asked me if I had considered if I had been possessed by an evil spirit that day in Mogadishu, the day that changed my life. He speculated that because of my tiredness, the stress, I had opened a portal inside myself that allowed a demon in. I said that was bollocks, three guys were pissing me off in a big way, so I killed them. If I accepted Dharma’s theory, then that demon was still living inside me, he or it is not. I am a rational being, I have little more respect for human life than I do for a mosquito’s but unlike Bob Jatta, I respect people. I happen to believe that no one has any special right to life, we Africans are mostly born by accident and die from other accidents, some of which I arrange. However, I don’t enjoy seeing people being hurt and I see no dichotomy in my thinking.
Bouba Dibba and his soldier brother Amdou visited us at the 4H; I talk as if I have shares in the place. They were seething, Amdou’s body was latticed with battle scars from twenty odd years of fighting in the Casamance and like me in Somalia, today they were glowing white.
‘Have you heard what that bastard Bob has done to our brother, Sherif?’ he asked through gritted teeth.
‘No, old chap, was it on the World Service?’ I suggested.
Bouba looked stern, ‘This is no day for your English public school jokes, Molefi, our brother’s life is ruined.’
‘They have smashed his soolde!’ Amdou snarled.
‘My God!’ I replied nursing my soldier, ‘You mean it can never stand to attention again?’
‘It’s worse than that, he can’t even piss through it,’ Bouba added, ‘the hospital is going to have to cut it off and make him pee like a girl.’
‘Big Size couldn’t live with that,’ Sylvia had joined the conversation, ‘he’ll probably kill himself first.’
‘That is what I am worried about,’ Bouba replied, ‘Bob has to be stopped; you are already at war with him, let us join together and finish him.’
‘I’m not sure WE are at war with him,’ I replied, Sylvia was staring me down
.
‘Molefi, it’s time you took a stand, I’ll pay you to come on board with us and help end this once and for all,’ she offered.
‘I feel like Clint Eastwood in Fist Full of Dollars, you know both sides think he is working for them,’ I said.
‘Well, who are you for, Tswana?’ Amdou produced a snub nose Colt, ‘If you are one of his then you can die right now!’
‘You can’t expect me to join you at gunpoint, it wouldn’t make sense,’ I informed him, ‘if I said I was with you now, I could change sides if it comes to a shoot-out.’
‘It’s best I stand aside and let your two sides fight it out.’
‘Molefi, I’d like you standing with me on this and for what it’s worth I trust you,’ Sylvia smiled, ‘but I have an alternate solution, let us go visit Bob’s mother.’
Chapter 61: Mother Should Know
The Testament of Aboboulaye, Abibatu’s Palace, Brufut, The Gambia
I am fresh off the plane; I’m visiting my mother in the executive house that I bought her. I am relaxing in a tub, in the master bathroom, and in she bursts; this woman has never given me any privacy.
‘Aboboulaye, where is your gris-gris?’ a look of horror on her face.
I make up a story on the spot, I tell her that I have met a nice well-educated Jola girl in London and have tied my Gregory around her waist, to keep her faithful to me while I am back in The Gambia.
‘I am not sure you should have done that,’ she looks suspiciously at me, ‘it is very unlucky to take off your juju.’
She seems reassured and sits on the floor next to my bath.
‘You have a very manly body, Aboboulaye,’ she smiles adoringly.
‘Except for my penis, it is like a little boy’s!’
‘That is nonsense, it is very cute,’ she flicks it, ‘so much nicer than that monster your father had, it got him into all kinds of trouble.’
She starts rubbing my cock, ‘Always chasing women with it, I am glad you are not like that.’
‘What choice do I have, if I show this to a woman she laughs,’ talking about my embarrassment gets me a little hard.
‘How am I going to make a baby with my new girlfriend?’ thinking I might fox her.
‘What nonsense, stand up in the water and I shall show you,’ she orders.
I am very unsure of what is happening, my mother has always played with my cock and I must admit I enjoy it.
‘Let Mama see how big she can get it.’
She takes my hardening manhood in her mouth and works it like she has before. I should be very disgusted if I was a normal man, but she is very good at this and the shame of it does get me very hard.
‘My, look how it is growing, it must be three inches long,’ she pauses in triumph.
‘Yes, but how will I make a baby on my wedding night?’ I challenge her.
‘Like this, sweet boy!’
What happens next almost shocks me, she keeps working it with her mouth and she really is damn good. The feeling of humiliation is intense; I imagine all those fat cats who hate me so much watching. I have so much hold over them, I know their dark secrets, if this came out it would ruin me; many have called me a motherfucker, they do not know how close they are to the truth.
She pauses, ‘Now watch what will happen next.’
‘Just finish me, Ma, I’m nearly there!’ I fucking want this!
In seconds I cum, she usually swallows but this time she shows me the sperm on her tongue. She raises her skirt to show me her cunt; I have seen it so many times, as a boy she made me pleasure her with my tongue. This time though, she blows me away, spitting my sperm onto the tips of her fingers, she inserts them deep into her vagina and works it in.
‘This is how you can get your lady pregnant, my boy,’ she is getting aroused and is soon writhing on the floor, wild in orgasm.
My prick stays rock hard, my god I think I do want to fuck her; I’ve never done that before. This is so wrong, it is delicious, she is far too old to get pregnant but the line of taboo we are crossing is giving me a supreme high. It is too much for me, I am out of the water and over her body, two of my fingers join hers and I work her g-spot, for an old lady she is gushing. She has no clitoris; it was cut when she was small, so her vaginal walls make up for the loss of sensitivity that she would have felt there.
Ma is thrashing about like a demon, ‘Do it!’ she demands.
I slip my penis into the hell cat she has become, she is no longer my mother, she is a succubus, the embodiment of Eve, the temptress. What happens now amazes me, she is a big woman down there but I feel her vagina close around me, holding me tight. I have heard that the vagina can adapt to fit any penis size but this has never happened to me. The few paid women I have tried couldn’t do this for me, I was in and out very quickly, spilling my seed. If any of them laughed, I put a knife to their cunt and promised that I’d make their opening much wider if they ever spoke of it. From the hatred and murder I showed in my eyes, they knew I would do as I promised. I convinced them that I had an animal spirit inside me who could follow their every move; they believed me because I believe it myself. I have seen this black hyena, always in the corner of my eye, and through the use of various psychoactive drugs, I have been able to project myself into its foul body. I have sent it roaming the streets, looking for innocent attractive women and ravaging them. I have tasted their fear, as vividly as I smell the beast’s rank breath. I have felt its teeth tear at flimsy silk underwear, tasted cunt tensing in fear and finally forced the long, dark cock inside them. Now, my mother’s cunt is making me feel as big as the black beast, I cum and cum inside her.
‘Well then,’ she lays back in exhaustion, ‘that is how you really can make a baby!’
What I don’t tell her is that if there was a child born of this demonic union between the hyena and my mother, the world would regret it forever.
Chapter 62: Necessary Evil?
Jeffrey’s Journal, Puri, India
Issa and I returned to the Santana Bar, now that I had seen him in a different light the waiters’ reactions had changed.
The doorman greeted us with, ‘I see you have your younger brother with you tonight, the similarity is striking.’
The gyrating girl screens were positioned around our table, and our conversation continued in relative privacy.
‘Issa, does evil exist?’ the big question I’d been wanting an answer to all my life.
‘If you mean, is there a Devil? Then the answer is no!’ a good beginning, I thought.
‘As you’ll have guessed this is a big subject but the simple answer is yes, Evil exists but it is created by us. You note I include myself in this and even my pure spiritual counterpart unintentionally endorsed it, that is to say, he didn’t really get his peace-loving message over. Believe me WE were all shocked by the death of Ananias and Sapphira, which was an evil thing, the Holy Spirit really fucked up there. It wasn’t solely Peter to blame, the power of leading the apostles went to his head. Peter was feeling really, really bad about lying that he didn’t know the Messiah, so became overzealous. Peter was heading up the hippie commune, who could loosely be called the First Church, with Peter the Osho type figurehead. This guy from Cyprus who sold a piece of land and donated the proceedings to the Church but never claimed it was all he had. Ananias and Sapphira were inspired to sell’all they had’ but like anyone with any sense, they didn’t donate it all to the cult and kept some money back, in case things went tits up. Peter guessed they were lying to Him, he had a good idea of what the couple were worth and plainly they hadn’t handed it all over. We were always a bit unsure of Peter, nonetheless he’d been granted the status of a Chosen One; remember, the Holy Spirit had entered all the remaining disciples. We gave them too much power too soon, they hadn’t been tested enough. They had no clue about how to correctly use of this tremendous energy; we should never have given them so much power in one huge dose. The Holy Spirit is a bad name for it; they had been given Cosmic Power, which
contains both Light and Dark. Peter took it on himself to zap Ananias and laughed while he did it, he then blasted Sapphira because she backed her husband’s story. It was a simple white lie; we knew Peter had blown it.
*‘“And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”* That day he let loose the fucking hellfire and that was an evil thing to do!’
I was about to interrupt but Issa stopped me.
’I know what you are going to ask, does Hell exist? Jeffrey, you’ve had some bad times, deep depression and that my friend is the Hell that stalks humankind. You know what it is? It’s that nothingness that existed before the universe was born, the natural state of all things and the end of everything, just as it was also the beginning. Ongoing cycles of Cosmic Life and Death are what so many see as repetitive pointlessness, how many people have said to themselves, “What’s the point?” The point is that we cannot allow this state of primal entropy to destroy the cosmic life cycle and bring into being the state of Entropya, the Universe of Indulgence, which exists solely for self-gratification. There are people out there who would like see this new universe come about, harnessing the power of this Entropya to their own advantage and glorification, making them the New Gods.
’What you must understand is that this primal nothingness had a name and has been given a thousand names since humankind was first created, that name is what most people call God. The Hindus have known that the Brahman has always existed; they acknowledge him as the Ultimate Reality, that which has always been and always will be, the intelligent Void at the beginning of our universe, but he is also the Ultimate Darkness. Out of this darkness came creativity, the supreme reason for humankind’s existence. The Brahman, the Darkness Child, had no clay to play and model with, so the child created Man as its plaything. In the boundless time that the child had dwelled in, it saw cosmic dust had gathered, little particles that had been created in its abstract brain, tiny little powerhouses, which mortals can still see today, which in their naïvety they call stars and planets. These appear huge to the dwellers on this planet but to the Brahman just stardust. The Brahman knew that if it would continue existing in endless night, its brain would deteriorate into a sort of senile dementia and it would become a child again and create a playground for its own self-indulgence, this is Entropya. Thus, the Brahman saw the need to create something beautiful and out of the dust ultimate man and ultimate woman were formed, the creative force of all existence. The Brahman manipulated the cosmic dust and modelled a supreme man and woman and saw they were beautiful and so created a garden for them to grow in, giving them a way of reproducing themselves, not just through the act of sexual love but it gave them the power to duplicate themselves, giving them the same gift it had used to create the world. Through deep meditation the Brahman showed them how to look at themselves and recreate their own being in a more advanced and beautiful form, in those days humans were as gods. A part of the Brahman became jealous of the new creatures; they had sex, something it had not experienced. This dark Brahman wished to return to its simple state of self-gratification and decided that it would love to play with the beautiful new creatures. This dark side of the Brahman used its newly discovered creative process to bring about a monstrous, debauched twin and from that day its sole purpose for being became wantonness and moral turpitude, dooming all humankind into an eternal debasement of a beautiful plan. As a result of this division of the Primal Being, the Void became unstable and humankind temporally lost their god powers, becoming the mere mortals you dwell amongst.