Narcisa

by Jonathan Shaw

  “Forget it! Is no true, Ignácio! Don’ you never trust these fock up programing! Delete!! Doioioiiinnggg! She only do it all for teach it to you about de human reality so you can survive in de e’stupid earth programa, got it?”

  What the fuck? Dolores! My mother’s name! Am I hallucinating? No! I just heard her say it! But how the fuck did she just say my mother’s name? How could she know? I’ve never talked about my . . . Where’s all this crazy shit coming from?

  “ . . . An’ what’s about these other lady, you auntie, de Tia Silvia, cigana cartomante, hein, de one who can e’say de future, who give it to you these apartamento? Why you think is it de purpose for these thing, hein? Maybe is just de big coincidencia, hein? Hah! Or maybe is for make some kinda new e’sperimentations, de laboratorio for de big e’speculation, de esoteric crack e’smoke debate? Hah! Wrong again! Delete! Next? Doioioiiinnggg!”

  What? Tia Silvia? Cigana cartomante . . . gypsy fortune-teller . . . I heard it . . . She just said that! How? Shit! What the fuck?

  I sat in horrified fascination, watching her lips move, thinking, wondering.

  How the hell did she know my mother’s name? And Tia Silvia? How? And Narcisa never called me Ignácio before! How did she even know my name? I never told her! What the fuck’s going on here? Maybe Doc was right! Maybe she really does channel spirits of the dead!

  She kept going. “Better you run away from de Narcisa an’ save you own self soon! Go to de road home, hein? Lungo drom! Hah! Next? After you go, Narcisa finish with all de focking earth peoples. What kinda work she gonna do here, hein, Ignácio? Research de future of e’stupid humanity, hein? Research, research an’ make more de e’speculations? Forget it! She really don’ wan’ nothing more in these planet! Nada! Gotta go. Thank you come again!”

  As I sat staring at her, I could feel the presence of the occult closing in around us in sinister shadows of doom. Gooseflesh spread across my back in a cold wave of apprehension as she droned on in that eerie little childlike voice.

  “ . . . We would really like it if they can convince de Narcisa to find de practice or profession, whatever, something to use for de life in these place. But here in these earth we never encounter it yet de one individual who got de sufficient intelligencia for show de Narcisa how de creative act in you material reality can be relevant in our philosophy. Nothing is de only thing what make any sense for de Narcisa, Ignácio, got it? Nada! An’ so de Narcisa she like to do it only de most intolerable an’ repugnant thing! You know why? Is for e’stimulate only de hate in de other peoples, so maybe they can feel it their own true nature as de beast, Ignácio! So now she finish her job here! Pronto! Okey? She can go home now? Work finish? Okey! Gotta go! Delete? Thank you come again! Next? Delete! Doioioiiinnggg!”

  I’d been thinking about Doc all week, ever since Narcisa’s paranoid fit over having supposedly seen him at the beach. Even though she’d claimed no recollection of it later, I’d been haunted lately by his claims that Narcisa was a psychic channel for weird otherworldly beings.

  Suddenly it all seemed plausible . . . Jesus! Maybe the old clown was right about her!

  “Don’ worry, Ignácio.” The entity interrupted my musings, digging Narcisa’s fingernail into her forehead till it bled. “Narcisa, she only de crianca! Only just a child. So now we gonna have a good little bate-boca here, an’ we gonna talk just us two together, without she here for make no more interferences . . .”

  Saying nothing, I sat watching Narcisa’s face, like some horrible slow-motion disaster unfolding. Whoever, whatever it was kept talking, telling me strange, oddly familiar things. Things from the World Unknown. Spine-shivering, esoteric, enigmatic things I couldn’t understand, but only feel, a deep sensation of knowing in the pit of my gut . . . Jesus Christ! There’s really some kinda alien spirits with us here!

  As if reading my mind, she smiled and went on. “ . . . Wha’ happen to you? You think is only you an’ de Narcisa all alone in these little earth play drama, hein, Ignácio? No-oo focking way! Is many de other ones together with you all de time here!”

  My eyes widened. Whatever was talking through Narcisa noticed.

  “You feel frighten of these other ones? Por que? Is no necessary you got de fear, Ignácio. Just think! It would be so lonely here, so boring without all these e’spirit company together with you. You can even die from so much bore! Que tedio, hahaha! But is really no so much de bad thing, mano, is only de true nature of these little earth game you playing here. E’same like de chess game, got it? So now is you turn to move, Ignácio!”

  Narcisa continued talking. And the whole time she rattled on, I found myself shifting in and out of this surreal, hypnotic, trancelike state. All of a sudden, I had the most powerful sense of déjà vu in my life; like in a dream, but much more real—as if that weird inner knowing was reminding me that I’d already been here and lived this whole experience before. It was like a movie I’d already seen and knew the ending to, but had somehow forgotten, the way you misplace a set of keys.

  Maybe it’s just the sleep deprivation . . . I wondered.

  Narcisa’s finger pointed at me as the entity fixed me with that faraway look, grinning. “Hah! You de pretty tough little gypsy warrior, hein, little Ignácio? Um ciganinho guerreiro, hein? Yeh! You really de goo-ood adversary, hahahahaa!!”

  It kept staring at me. Caught in that dark alien gaze, I felt my blood freezing over again.

  Then, all of a sudden, Narcisa was back. She stood up and began spinning around the room like a frantic, lopsided human top, singing this odd little song she seemed to be receiving as she went along, composing, grabbing the words from the air.

  A sorrowful little lament of her earthly exile, homesick for Alpha Centauri.

  “Da da da . . . Can you show me—where de exit—on these e’sheet world—cuz I tire tire tire—of de human being . . .”

  After a while, she began slowing down again, running out of gas. Then she collapsed in the corner like a fallen puppet. Leaving her lying there, I crawled up to the loft bed and passed out.

  What else could I do? Weirdness was in the air.

  62. THE WHORE OF BABYLON

  “AND I SAW THE WOMAN DRUNKEN WITH THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS, AND WITH THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS OF JESUS: AND WHEN I SAW HER, I WONDERED WITH GREAT ADMIRATION.”

  —Revelation 17:6

  At the tail end of the next weeklong mission without food or sleep, Narcisa finally crashed. After only a couple of hours, though, she rose up again, wild-eyed and furious.

  I was still fast asleep as she sprang to life, bleating like a goat.

  “Pizza!”

  “Wha . . . ?” I jerked into consciousness, unsure if I’d dreamed the word.

  “Coca-Cola!”

  Shaking the veil of slumber from my shoulders like a thick layer of dust, I attempted to take it in stride.

  “Good morning, baby . . .” I called out from the loft.

  “Shut de fock up, Cigano! Pizza! Coca-Cola! Chocolate!”

  I rolled over in bed, putting a pillow over my head, a weak shield against the coming avalanche of whining demands.

  “Pizza, coca cola, chocolate! I wan’ chocolate, Cigano!! Go go go . . .”

  I groaned and buried my face in the pillows, but her voice was a bleating goat tone, vibrating like a hammer gong in my eardrums . . . Go! Go! Go!!

  The more I tried to ignore her, the louder the awful spew of rapacious orders rose in volume, a relentless buzz saw cutting through the fuzzy mist of my sleepy brain; a greedy, godless mantra of bottomless Want.

  Go go go go go go go go!!

  Pizza-Coca-Cola-chocolate-pizza-Coca-Cola-chocolate-pizza!!

  “Shit . . .” Muttering under my breath, stumbled down from the loft.

  Fumbling around in the dark kitchen, I searched for something to feed her, anything to shut her up. Before I knew it, I was running back and forth like a harried waiter at lunch hour . . . No other way to shut up this bleating Goat of Mendes! Lucifer! Me
phistopheles! Satan! No way out! Addiction! Want! Need! I must serve all of its insane needs and demands!

  Finally, I staggered over and sat beside her on the sofa, holding my head in my hands like a rotting cantaloupe, listening to the sounds of munching, crunching and slurping as she tore through leftovers; a plague of hungry termites, undermining the weak foundation of my sanity.

  Nychata nychata nychata nychata . . .

  Suddenly, the monotonous noises were punctuated by breaking glass.

  Clang-caarasssh!

  “Oops! Porra!” she yelped, startling me out of my stupor.

  Wide awake again, I hurried back into the kitchen for a towel to throw onto the creeping black lagoon of Coca-Cola spreading across the floor like a toxic oil slick . . . Back and forth. Go! Floor. Go! Sink. Go! Water. Drip drip drip . . . Crunch crunch, slurp, smack smack, slurp.

  Nychata nychata nychata nychata.

  I am so so fucking tired!

  Plopping down beside her again, I fell over sideways, lying across the sofa at a cramped, crooked, awkward angle, trying to rest somehow. Uncomfortable and weary, I began thinking of ways to get rid of her, wondering if I would ever sleep again. After a while, I began to doze. Just as I was losing consciousness, I felt a shadow creeping across my face, like some dark, ancient Curse. Opening my eyes, I saw Narcisa there, hovering over me, lurking like a black flapping vulture.

  Oh God! What now?

  “Wake up, Cigano!”

  “Huh? Wha? Whassup?”

  “I am . . . how do you e’say it, I am . . . horny.”

  “What!?!”

  “I am horny, bro. Horny! Get up an’ give it to me, Cigano, go go!”

  Her eyes were drilling into my soul, bugging out like a crazed wild lemur. With Herculean effort, I raised my eyelids like a pair of rusty little umbrellas creaking open.

  Narcisa’s face bored down on me with those 100-watt bulging bughouse eyes of doom, breathing in my face. “I mean it . . .”

  “You just want some money to go cop, Narcisa.”

  “No! I mean, yes, I wan’ de money, always I wan’ money. But I feeling like I wan’ it de fock now too. Serio, Cigano, I wan’ it, go! I wan’ these crazy gyp-say dick! Wan’ it now, give it to me, go, go!”

  “Well . . .” I sat up, smiling. “I guess I oughta make th’ most of it while yer in th’ mood or whatever . . .”

  “Sim sim, Cigano, I got it de mood! An’ now you gonna get it for free today, no charge now, only for these one e’special time. Hah! Is better you take it when you got it for free, yeaa-asss! These is de rare occasion . . .”

  And so it was. In more ways than one. Because, for once, I didn’t even want sex.

  Shit! There it is again! Narcisa’s perfect timing.

  I didn’t want anything; nothing more than to roll over on the sofa and go back to sleep. But I sensed this was like one of those lightning-bolt One-Time-Only Clearance Sales.

  Everything must go! Go go go! Even if you didn’t want anything, need anything, you just gotta buy it anyway! Because if you don’t get it right now, you just might regret not having bought that cheap pair of pliers, that Garden Weasel, or that big package of tube socks. Fuck!

  Sleep deprivation was taking its toll.

  I looked at Narcisa again.

  Then I saw it. A startling vision: The Goat of Mendes, standing like an old-time carnival barker beside a gigantic pink gate of throbbing vaginal flesh.

  A big, bloody red banner fluttered above its head:

  LIQUIDAÇÃO!! OFERTA ESPECIAL!! GOING OUT DE BUSINESS!! HALF PRICE POO’SY CLEARANCE SALE!! BUY IT NOW, PAY IT LATER! GO GO GO!!

  What the fuck? Hallucinating again! Oh God!

  Still, I couldn’t refuse.

  “Arggh, why not? Jesus! What a fucking racket!” I muttered as I grabbed that perky young ass and jumped inside.

  It started up again while I was fucking her.

  Narcisa began speaking slowly, deliberately, at first. Then, as the fuck-thrusts picked up speed, so did her bizarre, hallucinatory alien dialogue.

  As was common practice when having sex, she was talking about one of her favorite topics again. Young girls.

  “You gotta enjoy de pretty little flowers when is e’still blooming, bro . . .” She winked and yawned at the same time.

  Narcisa always had her own odd way of seeing things—and she was the only person I’d ever known who could actually swagger while lying down, even with a rock-hard cock pumping like a steam engine piston between her legs.

  “ . . . Cuz is too much very soon de young geer-ool gonna be old an’ dry up an’ wilted, an’ then she go all soft, like de old flower, soft an’ wither out, got it? Fock! These de way de focking God create it de woman race, hein, Cigano? Putz! Only for, how do you e’say it, for be de vaso, de vessel for de new life? Only for e’stupid baby making? Afffff! Is too bad luck for de female especie, hein? These e’sheet a terrible karma for de human e’spirit!”

  I finished up and pulled out. Getting comfortable, I lay back beside her on the sofa, panting like a happy old dog, listening as she ranted away, oblivious to my presence.

  I watched her in wonder, as her beautiful, innocent-looking, baby-faced lips moved like some weird extraterrestrial butterfly, flittering between expressions of soulful anguish and a bitter disdain beyond her short years of earthly hardship.

  “How de fock can de womans ever be contente, hein?”

  I looked at her and shrugged.

  She spat on the floor. “How to be authentic when you gotta live de life these way, with big e’stupid e’smile like focking cow, hein?”

  I shrugged again, waiting for her to go on.

  Narcisa grew quiet. She sat across the sofa from me, staring off into space.

  Silence.

  Then, without warning, she raised her head and brayed like an imperious donkey.

  “I am de Whoore of Babylon!”

  Hello! I gawked at her as if she’d just sprouted another head.

  She spat again, hissing like a cobra snake. “Ya-asss! I am de ‘hedonista,’ de ‘lesbian,’ de ‘pedophile,’ an’ I am proud for be these way! Hah! Is my little desperation cry to de passion! My big fock-you fart in de face of these e’stupid politico society of mans! These sociedade hipocricia. I e’say fock you mother to all e’stupid man law an’ social rule, got it?”

  I got it. Sort of. I raised my eyebrows and stared at her as her frantic words began picking up speed, like a barrage of incoming missiles.

  “You know I like it de very young girl! These what I like, Cigano! E porque não, hein? Narcisa just de e’same like de mans these way, hein? Only one thing different: I would never hurt any geer-ool! Nunca! No like de mans! Hah! These pervert society law, she got nothing to do with de nature law, de God law, got it? Is so, so-oo e’stupid! Hah! Ridiculo! Listen to me, Cigano! If these Macho Man God he wan’ for de womans only make de sexo on e’stupid ‘legal’-age eighteen-year-old, why it is you think he create de womans for make de baby from age twelve an’ thirteen year old, hein? Too young? Why? You think maybe these Macho Man God make de mistake? Some little miscalulations? ‘Oops! Sorry, try again,’ hein? Hah! So e’stupid, so anti-nature these hypocrite rules de e’stupid mans make up! E’stupid monkey face ignorant mind-control clone peoples regulation!”

  I blinked as her voice rattled on like some crazed, unstoppable hell-train.

  “Maybe you can e’splain it for me, please, Mister e’stupid Man-lawmaker politico, what it is de young pretty pink gee-rol with she new fresh menstruation power poo’sy suppose to do with it, these beautiful young thing now, hein? Maybe she suppose only to sit on these holy bloody power sexo de God give to her, hein? Only sit on de young poo’sy for next five or six year time, an’ wait till these she come to be ‘legal age’? How to do, hein? Why, hein?”

  I looked on as her face turned red with screaming rage.

  “Okey, I gonna e’say it to you why, Cigano! Is only for create de focking frustration! Conspir’cy
to castrate an’ kee-eel de e’sacred sex power! Aaarrrggghh! Gotta wait! Fear! Ashame! Frustration! Guilty feeling! Fock! All de peoples gotta wait an’ wait until de e’stupid cow-peoples e’society e’say, ‘Okey, now is acceptable for de young geer-ool holy social position!’ What de focking position, hein? Doggie e’style? Wooo wooooo! Hah! Leg open! Marry woman! De legal whoore! Open leg dog fock social position, hah! Porra! De man law e’say only she suppose to e’stay sitting an’ wait wait wait for de pederastical ass-fock homosexual pervert Je-sooz church preacher to e’say her, ‘Okey, now is okey for you make de sign of de Cross on de holy piss water Je-sooz church altar! Poo’sy approval! Legal whoore!’ Haa-aah! An’ only then she can open it up de leg for de first time an’ give it up she holy Christianical poo’sy! But is gotta be for only de one man! De sanctify legal husband man! Hah! E’stupid! Bo-oring! Fock that, Cigano! Is no good for me these e’sheet life, no for even one day for de Narcisa! No-oo way! Nunca! Fock you! I never gonna do what they telling me! Fock that! Never, got it? Ne-ver! First I gonna dead, got it!?”

  I guessed I sort of got it. Death Before Dishes. Something like that.

  Finally, Narcisa began to slow down again, like a windup doll running out of momentum. She lowered her voice to an intense little whisper and kept staring at me with those big, intense, bulging eyes.

  “Now I gonna e’say it to you de real secret thing, Cigano, but is for you never e’say it to no one else, got it?”

  She stopped. I kept quiet and waited. After a long, suspenseful pause, she took a deep breath and exhaled.

  “Okey, so you listen careful now, bro. The thing like these: you got de real peoples on these planet who are de real human being. These are de one who eat only when hungry an’ go to e’sleep when they tire. But most de one they call de ‘human’ here no so e’smart! That is de clones peoples, Cigano! They all gotta eat de lunch at midday cuz these de ‘lunchtime.’ An’ they go an’ brush de tooths an’ go to work all de e’same time too, got it? But is no cuz they wan’ do it these way, but cuz of de programa, what de Shadow Peoples e’say they gotta do. Is for de training . . . Brainwash program, got it, Cigano?”