by Lamb, Robert
And there, in the bed, lay the old revenant himself. To my relief, the book lay untouched beside him.
So I reached down and gripped it in both hands. Holding my breath, I lifted it up from sheets delicately, as if it were a landmine or some rare work of art. I watched his face the entire time, ready for those cold eyes to open at any moment.
But he didn't wake. I made it to the door and unlocked it without a sound. I slid out into the hallways and slowly closed the gap behind me.
The halls were empty, save one or two slaves who peered up at me with mutilated faces and hopeless eyes. All the soldiers seemed busy with their preparations, so I encountered no one as I made the stairwell and ascended the last 113 steps to the battlements above.
Dusk burned and dwindled on the horizon. Thick grey clouds blotted out the sky above with the ash of burning farms and cities.
I rushed to the stone angel and bowed before her. I lifted the book on high.
"I have it!" I rasped.
"Do you now, girl?" grated the reply.
Only it was not the voice of the angel.
This voice, unfortunately, I knew all too well.
I turned and there behind me stood Volas, stripped to the waist. His hard pictorial muscles still wept blood through a hundred different numerals, all from my morning's session with him.
He had a pistol holstered in his belt, but it was the weapon in his hand that drew my attention: a crude mace of wood and nails. The weapon was roughly the same size as Volas' foul member -- and just as bloody.
He smiled his awful grin and took a menacing step forward, his vile instrument readied. In my mind, a voice shouted, "run!" but a cold fist gripped my heart.
I couldn't move.
He took another step. I opened my mouth to speak and nothing came out.
And then he was standing over me, grabbing a handful of my hair and dragging me to my feet.
He raised the bloody mace high over his head.
I closed my eyes and turned my head, as if darkness would grant me refuge from the death blow -- but the death blow didn’t' come.
I felt a warm rainfall on my cheek.
Then a downpour.
The fist remained tight in my hair, but I felt the arm go slack. I opened my eyes and looked up through the rain of hot blood. Volas' weapon arm was gone -- blown off at the elbow.
The fist unclenched and I tumbled to the side.
A high-pitched snapping sound rang out and more blood splattered on the stones beside me, along with Volas' fragmented corpse.
Trembling, wet with the rapist's death, I looked up to see the stone angel looming over me -- and above it the faint movements of something titanic in the ashen clouds overhead.
An enemy airship above the cloud line.
A figure stepped from behind the statue, clad entirely in flat black armor. It gripped a long, fat-barreled gun in one hand and reached out to me with the other.
My fingers crept and found the blood-splattered book where it lay between us.
"Give me the ledger," she said in that same angelic voice I'd heard before.
"What will happen to us?"
"Give me the ledger and you'll live."
"Can you stop him?"
Silence, save the whirl of wind over the battlements. Save my own labored breathing and the beating of my heart.
"He is on the verge of something incredible," the angel said. "Something unprecedented."
I was unable to reply. The words froze in my throat.
"We want his solution," she said. "It will save the entire world."
I think I started laughing. I think I cried, right there as Volas' blood washed around my legs and stained the edges of that yellow ledger.
I lifted it up from the blood and screamed.
NOVEMBER 31: She kept her word. I'm still alive.
As I write this entry in my journal, the great and final computation commences in the throne room. I can hear the screams from here. I wonder what he sees in it. Perhaps his answer, but I'm doubtful.
The angel -- whatever her name truly is -- took the ledger from me on the battlements and handed it off to another enemy solider in black armor. A spy basket lowered from the cloud-cloaked airship and he climbed inside with the book. I stood there with the angel and watched as the airship reeled him home.
When he returned, they placed the book back in my hands and told me to return it to Marzell, along with tidings of peace.
What could I do but obey?
What have I ever done?
Two days have passed and the airship floats anchored to the battlements overhead. We have a dozen new slaves. Two new soldiers. My fingers tremble from all the work I've done preparing them.
There seems no end to this. The decimal point carries out to the limits of the horizon. I know he'll call me into the throne room any moment now and then I'll have to see what atrocity he's inflicted on the world. I'll have to look into the eyes of his victims, and then I'll add more numbers to their suffering.
There's one small consolation, however. A second bottle of brandy appeared in my room. It's already half gone. I guzzled it down last night as I gave myself this first and only tattoo.
It's needled into the flesh above my heart.
This soft and bleeding place between my breasts.
An eight resting on its side.
Crudely formed.
And infinite.
A Curious Void
I don't blame you this awkward silence, friend. There's no delicate way to ask me what you came to ask. No graceful segue to steer a conversation into those dark waters. But of course you haven't realized this yet. I bet you even think we'll get there organically.
"So hey, speaking of sexual mutilation…"
Yeah, it's not going to happen.
If you don't just blurt it out, you'll wait till it's too late. So by all means, build up your courage. Take another hit from the pipe. A guest in my house is a guest at my bong, right?
There you go. A generous inhalation of smoke always gives a man a moment to collect his thoughts. Pull out of the conversation, view it from the outside and refine strategy. It's what I miss most about cigarettes.
Just don't inhale too deep, trust me. My unfortunate condition requires a very mind-numbing blend of high-grade medicinal marijuana -- or so my psychiatrist tells me. Choke on this stuff and we'll be here all night. We'll just wind up baked in my living room, digging through this expanse of coffee table clutter for lost lighters. All the while, you'll gaze off into space like some Burning Man wanderer. And then how will you ever get your question out? How will you ever drown this fear?
Yes, it's that palpable. If I were a lion (ha!), I'd have already pounced.
So take it easy. I know you'd rather just talk shop about the flesh trade for another half hour and then get to your question.
There's an odd look in your eyes as you put lips to the mouthpiece. Do I look that strange to you? This bald, pale figure, equal parts ghoul and Adonis -- cast in the glare of an endless Fox News marathon. Perhaps you wonder if my condition altered my politics. Or do I find something morbidly amusing in this endless tickertape ejaculation of horror and celebrity idolatry?
Here's the truth of it: I love the media. I love it like a fat kid loves candy. And I'm sure that puzzles you somewhat, since most of what you know about my condition comes to you via their journalistic excess.
You came here to ask about the assault. You drove all the way out here on Friday night, no less, because you think knowledge will protect you or give you some edge that all the other victims lacked. Maybe you even think you'll solve the crime!
If so, keep sucking on that pipe.
But here's one more layer: I know that deep down it's not even about protecting your own skin. You want to know what it's like.
What's it like to wake up to the bludgeoning blows of a home invader? What's it like to feel bizarre hands on your body, stripping you bare? What's it like to have your manhood sliced from
you by some faceless monster in the night?
What's life like without a cock?
I know these are all difficult concepts for you to wrap your head around. See, I used to be just like you. My cock was the center of my being. It was the cornerstone of my identity.
Bear with me, friend, because I like to break this fact of life down into two core arguments.
First off, let's not deny it: The penis is the center of every male's life and every truly honest man will tell you the same. You can't begrudge him the fact -- no more than you can fault the rutting violence in his heart. Because deep down, he is nothing but a necessary mutation. He's an accident of evolution.
Give the bra burners their due, friend, because the XX chromosomes are where it's at. That's the species. That's the human race. XY is just an accident that helps spread the genetic diversity around. If you want to see the score, just look to the ants and the wasps. Their males exist to mate and then they have the decency to fucking perish.
Me and you? We're just drones that flew the hive's fuck chambers millions of years ago, back in some prior evolutionary form. Now we rule the roost. We run companies, buy cars, run for president, play video games, shoot guns, write books, cut albums and do just about anything else we goddamn want to.
But we never fully escape our dronehood. Hell, we build shrines to it. We make it a religion.
You see a pretty girl, you think about fucking her. You see an ugly one, all the same. Don't deny it. Every casual strokefest in the shower is an act of devotion, every carnal indulgence the fulfillment of divine mandate.
“I fuck therefore I am”. Famous quote. Look it up.
So has my condition made me an apostate to our faith? Not quite. Remember, those bizarre hands in the night didn’t take everything from me. "Porn star turned eunuch" works nicely in a headline but it's an inaccurate depiction.
Let's imagine I dropped my pants for you right now. Beneath the twisted scar of my penectomy, you'd find a fully functional set of balls. Yep, I still shave them. Old habits, right? And if you were to lean in close and I was to lift up this shorn clutch of masculine remnants, you'd notice a small hole just behind my scrotum.
There it is, right along the line of my scrotal raphe -- what you probably call the taint.
That little hole is the new opening for my urethra -- the terminus of a tiny length of surgically implanted tubing. I know it doesn't feel this way, but urination control doesn't reside in the penis. Why would it when the masculine form is just a design variant for reproduction? It's internal, friend. And that's why I don't have to lug around a catheter.
Theoretically, I can even ejaculate through that tiny hole. Does that surprise you? It shouldn't. After all, I still have erogenous zones. Most amazing of all, the scar tissue itself becomes a center of stimulation.
Curious, isn't it? In the absence of my biologic center, I become the scar.
I become the void.
Not that I've really explored it all that much. Masturbation doesn't really interest me these days and the last time I had sex was before the incident.
I don't think I'll ever forget my last sex partner’s face. Her name was Kristi.
But I was talking about cock worship, wasn't I?
As I said, all men center their lives on that oh-so-precious tube of meat. I won't attempt to shoehorn homosexuality into this philosophy of mine, but I do wonder if gay men are merely more honest about their phallic fixations.
Go ahead, by all means; take another hit off that bong.
We're unique cases, you and I. I mean hell; we built careers around our beautiful cocks, didn't we? Sure, my days as an adult actor ended over a year ago, but you're still all over the goddamn place. What is it, 15 films a year? Three shoots a week for whatever mega site's dealing out checks? That was pretty much my career too, while it lasted.
Just look at us. I could probably conjure up a rough headcount of the men I've slept with. I'm sure you could too. But the women? Forget it. Yeah, you thump your chest with rough estimations, but it would take some serious Internet research to pull off an accurate count, am I right?
All those faces, all those heaving bodies. It all runs together after a while. The industry chews up most of the girls pretty quickly. A few stick around just long enough to lose their minds, but the others flee back to as much of a normal life they can claim for themselves. Sometimes an ill-gotten child turns up years later to remind you what all that fucking really serves in the grand scheme of things.
But so it goes, right?
They might have been the starlets, but we were the cocks that drilled a thousand holes -- high priests of the XY, centers of adoration for whores and at-home viewers alike. We've all made jokes about how they should really write the checks out to our sex organs, and doesn't that one hit close to home?
So to answer your silent question, yes, my penectomy has forced quite a shift in my self-identity. I lost my biological and emotional mooring in pretty much the most traumatic way possible. I've spent a lot of time getting used to that. I ran from it at first, but in the end I confronted it. I used to overflow with self-hatred every time I saw a cable news channel and now I never turn the damn thing off.
I also smoke a lot of high-grade weed. My doctor is amazing. I breathe deep. I climb into the cloud and reassemble my place in the universe.
The fringe benefit is that I don't dream anymore. Yep, that nameless maniac out there in the night? The one who butchered 11 male porn stars and left 10 of them dead? He doesn't waltz the halls of my nightmares, friend.
Can you say the same?
But now you're coughing. Jesus, man, didn't I warn you about this weed? You'll be too stoned for follow-up questions at this rate. Here, drink from this thermos. It's herbal tea -- real health nut stuff.
I still take care of myself. I keep in shape. It's actually kind of liberating, you know, to build muscle mass for something beyond mere fucking.
There you go, drink up.
Perhaps I'm being presumptuous and drastically overestimating your intellect, but I assume your next question would have related to the phallic world we live in. Skyscrapers, towers, columns, obelisks -- everywhere you look there's another monument to the almighty cock, casting its swollen shadow across world.
The fact rarely registers in the sunlit waters of the human psyche -- you know, the place we spend most of our thinking. But if you were to dive down into the murky, neurological depths, you'd find a different score.
We've been driving home masculine superiority for thousands of years, ever since a few bloodthirsty drones wrested patriarchal powers from the rest of the species. But just as the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots, so too must the sorcery of our dominance.
That's no secret, friend. Feminists and anthropologists generally won't shut up about it. In ancient time, child sacrifice was the male priest's way of canceling out the female act of creation. And when that was done, our brutish ancestors set out to wage wars of rape across the landscape of a prehistoric world. We did it for resources, sure. We did it out of tribal intolerance. But we also did it to show those bitches that the Y chromosome alone ruled the Earth.
Just glance up at the Fox News that illuminates this room and you'll see that rape is still a tool of war in sub-Saharan Africa. It continues to enforce the Rule of Man in other corners of the world too, but we've come to depend on other instruments as well. We've crafted elegant religions around masculine deities. We've limited female purity to a very narrow set of parameters.
But then came the modern world. It's all different now. God is dead. His body rots in the noon sun of reason. Meanwhile, feminists continue to rebel against the patriarchy, claiming new victories every day.
But we continue to hold down the fortress and we protect our hallowed faith with the 20th century's most awesome weapon. So far the walls still hold.
Coughing a little, eh? Drink some more tea. I know its bitter, but it sooths to soul.
The Internet is the Culture. It's library and chamber pot, reliquary and rubbish heap. Welcome to the defaecareum! We pour our being into its immeasurable vastness and define our identity by the Godlike hypersigil that emerges. A billion billion images combine to form the reflection of whom and what we are.
Do you see where I'm going, friend? Do you see the role we've played in it all along?
I'm sure the wealth of feminist content on the Web is pretty fucking staggering. We celebrate their wisdom and beauty to an almost ridiculous degree. We decry their plight and tout their superiority. It's all out there on the web, a mere key stroke away like everything else.
But in retaliation, we've unleashed a near-unstoppable tide. We've saturated the culture with the coital image of the female spread eagle before our rutting, indomitable rule.
On screens around the world, they venerate the cock. They bow low before its power and grow weak against the ferocity of its physical ingress. The world watches and we fuck and mold them to our will.
How much simulated rape do you think exists out there in digital ether? How much poolside debasement played out by actors before a smut lord's camera? Like it or not, you're a soldier in the army of rape, friend. And so was I.
I'm sure you've grown tired of the words "media violence against women," but that too plays an essential role. Just think of horror movies as infantry support for the pornographic artillery. All those damsels in distress, all those screaming sexpots bloodied by some B-movie maniac's machete -- it's human sacrifice for a new age. It all drives home the point.
You've grown rather silent, friend. Is it starting to sink in? Because I remember the day it sank in for me.
Only my first and final sexual partners continue to resonate with me. The early one was unimportant -- just some fumbling tryst on a middle school bus.
But my final partner was an 18-year-old girl named Kristi Vargas, just some random blond at a FFM shoot. We did it gonzo. Full anal. A little choking and slapping. Just another day at the races.