But then I reconsidered. I decided Arihiro was understandably shaken up after his ocular transformation. He likely just needed time to adjust. I decided to give him that time. I made a little improvised bed for him in his closet: complete with pillows, sheets and a blanket. Then I grabbed the roll of duct tape we’d used to hold the area rug down. I bound his wrists and ankles, then gagged him with underwear. I applied duct tape over the underwear to hold it in place.
It felt good to be god.
Then I dragged his naked, passed-out ass into the closet. Closed it. There wasn’t a lock on the door, so I started to look around for things in our room that I could use to barricade him in. I could push the desk over. But ultimately, that wouldn’t hold him. I could even put our little mini-fridge on top of the desk to give it extra weight, but I doubted that would do the trick.
Barricading, it seemed, wouldn’t work. Then I remembered my time at Restful Meadows. They only locked the real psychos up in seclusion. The rest of us were imprisoned by the sheer power of sedation. They used pills to keep us in line. In the first week of my Psychology 101 class, Dr. Hopkins mentioned that, during the course of the semester, we would be discussing ethical issues like the use of “chemical straitjackets.” I suspected he was referring to the use of sedation to control people.
So I decide to give Arihiro some of my pills. (Specifically, Stelazines). They would keep him sleepy enough so he wouldn’t resist his captivity, and I seemed to be doing just fine since I’d cut back on them a few weeks ago—so it wasn’t like I would be missing them. I needed to study, and the Stelazines always knocked me on my ass by seven thirty. (That’s why I cut back; the coursework may have been easy, but not so easy I could do it while tranquilized.)
To be on the safe side, I gave Arihiro twice the number of pills I was supposed to take each day after supper. Between that and the added sedation caused from coming down from whatever drug he was smoking with the whore, he would probably be asleep for the whole day. Maybe even two days. Perfect. I needed time to think without worrying about him escaping. I had to plan my next steps for converting him to my reality. I also needed to draw a picture of my dear, cyclopean Hop-frog and write a letter to the hierophant to inform him of my progress. The lobby of our post office was open all night and only a five-minute walk from the dorm, so I left Arihiro asleep in the closet while I made a quick trip. But before doing any of that, I gave the area rug a good scrubbing with Woolite.
* * *
Since the population of New Harmony is fewer than a thousand people, you’d think everyone would be in everyone else’s business. You’d think the lady at the post office would try to strike up a conversation with me about just what sort of mail was so urgent I needed to open it right then and there. You’d think the Methodists would knock on my door and ask me why I didn’t go to the Methodist church and the Baptists would knock on my door and ask me if I was saved. But that wasn’t the kind of a small town New Harmony was.
People in New Harmony knew I was a defrocked minister, for example, and they were okay with it. There was a fifteen-foot wooden cross still on my property, down by the pond. Along the roadside, there was a fifteen-foot-tall sign listing the Ten Commandments. (Both were left behind by the previous owner, an enthusiastic Pentecostal who thought they would serve as fine tools for evangelism—even though I could count the number of cars passing the property each day on one hand). Whenever anyone asked me when I was going to repaint the Ten Commandments (which had started to fade and peel), I admitted I was a heretic who just hadn’t gotten up the gumption to take down the Christian decorations. I was just too damned busy to attend to aesthetic matters. I’d keep them up there, but I wasn’t about to spend time maintaining them.
The town nonetheless welcomed me into its bosom. No one attempted to proselytize me into a more conventional path. Even the townsfolk who were skeptical of my multiple paranormal investigations seemed to be supportive of my right to undertake them. You typically don’t find that in small-town Indiana.
But New Harmony was a town with a history, you see. A spiritual history. A history of attracting people who had a different way of seeing gods. That’s why I moved here. That must’ve been why John the Baptist had showed up here, too.
Back in the early 1800s, two different groups tried to recreate Eden here. The Harmonists were German pietists; which is just a way of saying they were Christians, albeit atypical. There’s some evidence they practiced alchemy and were influenced by theosophy. They formed a little commune here and managed to stay put for about ten years, before selling everything off to a rich communist named Robert Owen, who wanted to make it into a secular Eden. That adventure only lasted two years. Even with all his money, he couldn’t make it work. Score that one a victory for the Harmonists, I think. Ten years to two. A blowout.
The Harmonists built a labyrinth here in New Harmony, constructing the “walls” of the winding path out of bushes, vines, and flowering plants. It’s so weird to see such a thing displayed so prominently in this otherwise-prosaic little town. It always struck me as the kind of thing you were more likely to run into at a New Age retreat center. But, like I said, the Harmonists had this open-minded side. They built the labyrinth as a way of fostering quiet contemplation.
Technically, there’s a difference between a labyrinth and a maze. A maze is designed to fool you with false hope; a maze intentionally tries to tempt you into taking paths that go nowhere. In a labyrinth, there’s only one possible way to travel through. There is no deception involved. Just a twisting, turning path (the traversal through which, some might say, facilitates a spiritual epiphany).
The Harmonists built a tiny log cabin in the middle of their labyrinth, to serve as a place for contemplation after one found his way to the center. After the Harmonists left, the whole setup lay neglected and was eventually swallowed back up into the wild. Back in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the town began to recognize the value of its heritage and built a reconstruction of the old labyrinth. Kept it up nicely ever since.
I spent a lot of time there. In the labyrinth, I mean. Sometimes I brought the new god’s letters there to reread them in a setting with greater spiritual import than that of the post office. It was quiet and cool as I wandered along the winding path. Hedges reined me in on either side and I simply had to follow along wherever the path took me.
That’s how it was with the new god, as well. I had to simply follow this road (this experience, I mean) wherever it took me. I gave the new god a task—to create a man only using His mind. And yet, the new god told me in His letter that He had used raw materials besides His mind. He’d used the ground to make His man.
Not only that, but I specifically assigned Him the job of creating a man. Not a thing.
Forgive me if this sounds blasphemous, but I deeply regretted that the new god abandoned my instructions so readily (in the very first task, no less). I remembered the words of John the Baptist. He’d warned me that if a future god tried to proceed through the Sevenfold Path too quickly, He might become a demon rather than a god.
And, if I may be so bold as to offer an opinion, the new god’s first act of creation appeared...with all due reverence...rushed. He drew a picture of the beast, just sitting there in His dorm room at the college, and it looked like nothing so much as perversion incarnate. Based on the drawing the new god provided, it was an animate ball, with a single eye in the middle and a gaping mouth ready to devour whoever stumbled onto it. It was like something straight out of a painting by a certain H. Bosch. Only the new god lacked the skill of Bosch (who managed to imbue his work with almost equal parts beauty and hideousness).
In His letter, He boasted of the fact that He deprived the thing of consciousness. And, I suppose, if one is going to spend one’s time creating monsters, it is preferable for them to remain ignorant of their monstrosity. But a sense of unease washed over me—the new god had an agenda, His own way of doing things. I needed to put Him on a tighter leash, it seemed. I cons
idered requesting that He kill the creature He’d brought into existence and start over. But I decided first to seek the counsel of John the Baptist, and he cautioned against it.
Let this record reflect that I used powdered chalk to draw a circle in the ground outside my farmhouse, and in that sacred circle I kindled a sacred fire and performed a ritual (sacrificing the rotting, slaughterhouse-discarded heads of seven chickens in the pyre). The nearest neighbor was a mile and a half down the road. No need to worry about people snooping in and disturbing things. Taking the sacred drugs, I summoned the head of John the Baptist. It appeared to me in midst of the fire, but—like Moses’s burning bush—was not consumed.
“You should mind your place,” the disembodied head mumbled, in Aramaic. “You talk about this beast the new god created as if it were a living obscenity, simply because his appearance makes you quake. Did it never occur to you that the Holy Seraphim and Cherubim might also make you tremble with revulsion? They are, after all, a flutter of burning wings, intermingled with the faces of the lion, the eagle, the ox, and the man. And yet they circle the very throne of heaven, chanting to the reigning god the words of worship: ‘Holy, holy, holy.’ Mark my words, hierophant, this new god you serve may very well be leading all creation astray into a parade of degeneracy, but it is also possible that He is elevating creation to new heights. It is your role to convince Him of the authenticity of His path and assign Him the tasks required to bring His godhood to fruition, but it is not your role to approve His completion of them. Remember, as hierophant you are not fit to touch the new god’s sandals.”
A great pall of guilt fell over me. I had let this become my story. I had indulged my ego. I sat beside the fire and watched it gradually succumb to the encroachment of night. The head of John the Baptist first flickered in and out of existence like the flames surrounding it, and then faded away completely. Afterwards, I mortified my flesh, flogging the ego out of myself with forty lashes. I wept, not so much as a result of the pain as a result of the guilt. I had second-guessed the new god. I felt wholly undeserving of the task ahead of me. I resolved to never doubt the rightness of the new god’s decisions ever again. I was to convince Him that He was god and I was to tell Him the tasks involved. That was all.
In spite of my distress and bruised back, I slept peacefully and dreamlessly. I did not awake until noontime, and had my flabby belly not started to gurgle, I would have likely slept several more hours. When I awoke, I did not bother with any of the ordinary rituals of hygiene. I did not fret about bathing or brushing my teeth. I committed myself immediately to my epistolary task. I grabbed my calligraphy pen and began the letter.
As always, I started with seven holy words.
YOU MUST SICKEN, THEN CURE, YOUR CREATURE
I went on to explain these were the second and third steps in the Sevenfold Path to Godhood. The creation and disbursement of plagues, while perhaps an unwelcome task, helped bring balance and range to a divinity’s repertoire. Plagues also served a practical purpose of regulating the population. Moreover, they—perhaps more than any other tool of divine intervention—got the attention of creations who might otherwise fail in their duties to worship. “For example,” I wrote, “just look at AIDS. The old god created the disease and made it so vexing for the scientists to combat that the people had no recourse but to look beyond humanity’s meager resources and cower before their creator. If You are to become the new god, You must master this skill. If it pleases You, I would like to have You send me either a photograph or a drawing of Your creation after it was infected with Your newly created disease. Also, if You would be so kind, please send me a record of the signs and symptoms of this disease. Then, I would like You to document Your efforts to heal the creature. As I understand it, You attend undergraduate studies. Do You have access to a video camera from the college library? If so, make a video of the creature as it is being healed. This will serve as testimony You have completed this third task.”
* * *
The day after I gave Arihiro new eyes, I cut all of my classes. I had more important responsibilities than placating professors. Arihiro was in the midst of a transformation from being part of the old god’s reality to mine. I went to the cafeteria that morning (letting Hop-frog ride along in my backpack—I kept it unzipped a little so my creation could get enough air). I smuggled a packet of yogurt out of there for Arihiro to eat. When I came back to the dorm room, I let Hop-frog out. It seemed content to roll around mindlessly on the floor while I tended to business.
When I opened the closet door, Arihiro lurched backwards, deeper into the dark recesses of the closet. (Why did he flinch away from the open door? Were his new eyes beginning to work? Perhaps that explained his reaction. Perhaps his new eyes were beginning to heal, but were still quite sensitive to light.)
So benevolent and devoted was I, as his new god, that I took off his gag, endured his groans and his drool, and spoon-fed him. I noticed the pungent scent of urine. The poor bastard had wet himself. I grabbed one of the pitchers he sometimes used to drink beer out of and offered it to him as a piss pot, but he shook his head no whenever I mentioned it.
After that ordeal, I gave him two more Stelazine just to get him back to sleep and keep him asleep. Then I put his underwear gag back in and wrapped a fresh swath of duct tape over his mouth. I sat there with him, in silence, until I was sure he’d stay sedated while my reality began to take hold inside of him.
This was my real education. And, for this brief period of my own transformation from young man to young god, the hierophant was the only professor whose lessons I needed to heed.
The letters from the hierophant—those very same letters that had so annoyed me just a few weeks ago—were now indispensable guides to my destiny. I knew it would take at least two days for my latest epistle to reach the hierophant, and I knew it would take at least two days for his return correspondence, but that didn’t stop me from obsessing about him.
All of his letters had been signed, simply, “The Hierophant.” I could tell from the context of his language just what this meant. A “hierophant,” I reasoned, was some sort of servant to a god. But I wanted more information. So, when I felt satisfied that Arihiro would stay passed out for a while, I shut him back up in his new home in the closet and I went to the library.
From the day I’d arrived at St. Edward’s College, I’d felt most comfortable in the library—a three-story, sprawling building marked by the sort of goofy, impractical architecture so popular in the late ’60s and early ’70s. While I wasn’t fond of the architecture, per se, I did enjoy the labyrinthine corridors it facilitated. Any good library should have pockets of isolation—oases of silence and scholarship where someone could tune out from human contact and experience a pure communion with books. The St. Edward’s College library was just so constructed. One needed only take a quick jaunt down one of the twisting, turning hallways to arrive at a room or an alcove one had never even noticed before.
I walked up toward the card catalog and pulled out the drawer for “Hi-Hy.” My fingers flipped through musty-smelling cards bearing details about books on hierarchy, hieroglyphics, and Wild Bill Hickok. But no books in which “hierophant” showed up as a subject or in the title. So I decided to check the Encyclopedia Britannica. The college had tall, black-bound volumes in this series, and I withdrew the appropriate one from the shelf and found, therein, a brief article on hierophants that would have to suffice.
The Britannica article said the hierophant was a certain kind of tarot card in the so-called “Major Arcana.” The article displayed a copy of a typical illustration for the card, and the figure shown looked like nothing so much as the pope.
This aspect of the word had no interest to me. I had no need of fortune-telling devices. I would, in very short order, become the author of fortune itself.
I was more taken with the second use of the word. In ancient Greek times, “hierophant” was the title of the chief priest presiding over a series of rituals call
ed the Eleusinian Mysteries. I replaced this volume on the shelf and retrieved the appropriate Britannica volume for “El.” The article on the Eleusinian Mysteries mentioned that their purpose was, to some degree, shrouded in the mists of “hoary antiquity” and secrecy. But there were educated guesses. One professor had put together a theory that the rituals had been designed to help a man transcend his humanity and become like unto a god. Obviously, the ritual was fraudulent. (Multitudes had participated in the Mysteries, and not all of them had become gods.) There were only a handful of true hierophants in human history. The hierophants of the Mysteries were cheap imitations—charlatans trying to absorb some of the power of true hierophants by use of the title.
But my research wasn’t completely in vain. I’d gained an appreciation for just how old a word “hierophant” was. Perhaps more than three thousand years old. Was the hierophant that old? Older? Or was he merely making modern use of an ancient term, adapting it to fit the times? These questions whet my appetite for the day when I might be finally able to meet my teacher, in the flesh, rather than simply receive letters from him.
I grabbed some pocket change and made a few copies of the encyclopedia article on the Mysteries. I reread the article two or three times while walking from the library back to the dorm. Hierophant. God. Worshippers. Who would have thought such magick could take place against the humble backdrop of the cinderblock walls of Winchester Hall?
I opened the heavy, squeaking, metal door to the dorm and took a whiff of the body odor, pot scent, and humidity that mingled in the stairwell. This wasn’t air fit for a god. At some point, a change of scenery would, perhaps, be necessary. Perhaps even inevitable. It was quite obvious I wouldn’t linger here at St. Edward’s after my apotheosis into godhood. For the first time in a long time, I thought about my parents. What would they make of all this? Would they find their own place in a pantheon of saints—as those who helped bring me into the world so I could transform it? Or, misunderstanding all the work I had ahead of me, would they fight against it (and, in the process, come to earn a place in infamy)?
I Am the New God Page 4