Unger House Radicals

by Chris Kelso

  - If you had any idea… - Swarthy begins but cuts himself off to compose his heavy breathing.

  - Any idea about what?

  - I was there, with Otto Spengler all those years ago. I was the dark drive that sent him out with murder in mind, the sick perversion that fuelled his lust for children… but I was also the children he took. I was their eyes and their bodies. I was the fear that crawled beneath their supple flesh. Our grandfather was born in South Carolina and migrated to Stephen Austin's settlement in Texas. The women in our family were tomahawked and scalped—raids always yielded fresh scalps.

  - What the fuck are you talking about Brandon?

  - Do NOT call me Brandon!

  - Ok… what would you like me to call you?

  - Call me Heinz.

  - Why?

  - Because that’s my fucking name you little Untermenschen pip-squeak cunt!

  - Since when?

  - Since now!

  Vince gets up cradling his cheek. He almost doesn’t recognise the man before him.

  - Ok... well, in a month’s time who’ll you be, I’d like to keep up?

  - One month is a short time span, a fraction of a single person's life—barely a second in the life of a whole people.

  Vince goes and squats by the fire, confused and still a little tired from the drive. It is obvious that his lover has grown tired of his serial killer persona. He had composed his aria with aplomb, but he is not a killer anymore. He is not a lover of death. Vincent tries to see the funny side of this new character—even if he is currently holding an orange on his head because he believes the Vitamin C will be absorbed by his brain via diffusion.

  - So where is Janice? Is Heinz going to be able to execute this girl?

  - Of course he fucking is! But I won’t enjoy it, not one bit.

  - You know, Brandon didn’t enjoy killing all that much either. You really ought to develop these characters a bit better if you’re to convince your audience…

  Vince looks at Heinz’s red, boiling face. The orange is clutched and oozing over his fingers.

  - I’m sorry Brand… Heinz. Where is Janice?

  Heinz gestures to the bedroom. Vincent sees her legs poking out, jordache jeans and underwear peeled to her ankles. A sickening wave of jealousy passes through Vincent.

  *

  Vince hovers the camera over Janice’s retrained body, zooming in and out, over and over again. He figures an aspect of Ultra-realism could be repetition—to help build rhythm and motif, something that might construct meaning within their film. Heinz takes a zippo lighter from the back pocket of the girl’s jeans, thumbs the flint wheel until the ignition spark reflects in her terrified stare.

  - You’re part of something really important here you know?

  - What’s the matter with you?

  - I suffer from Angst, Ennui, or Weltschmerz.

  The girl cannot scream, her throat is swollen and tense from relentless sobbing. Her eyes are perpetually wet and brimming at the troughs. A naked Heinz enters the room with a small bowie knife. He squeezes his grip around the finger grooves and grins like a maniac. Vincent has to stop himself from focusing the camera on his lover’s genitals—which swings in a long pendulum of flesh even when in a flaccid state. Heinz also has a scar running along his abdomen, as if he's recently been gutted then sewn back up. His body is an intricate tapestry of morbid artwork. He has a tattoo of a Calaveras on his left triceps, a Calacas on his right shoulder. Vince notices the wheel on Swarthy’s inner high which he said shows the perpetual cycle of death and rebirth according to samsara. This struck Vincent as odd since Swarthy claims to hate Buddhism and pacifistic Asian philosophies. The biggest mistake anyone could ever make is trying to understand a man like Swarthy.

  Heinz goes up to Janice. He hooks his arm around her head and grabs hold of the underside of her jaw. She squirms at first but relents. Heinz is too strong. A swollen bicep puts pressure on the girl’s windpipe. She starts to cough. With the free hand he starts gnawing away at the flesh around her neck until Janice starts making hideous gargling noises. He slashes across the larynx, penetrates the internal jugular vein. Initially, blood comes out in sporadic squirts the colour of Siberian Dogwood but once he’s cut right across her throat, and the head falls flaccidly backwards onto Heinz’s chest, the deluge begins. He tugs at the skull until Janice’s sinew stretches and snaps from the rest of her body. Vincent’s mouth fills up with vomit. He tries to swallow it but this only makes him projectile over the floor. Heinz faces the camera, addresses the audience. Vince senses this is a man of indulgence and diatribe.

  - It’s done. It is naturally not decisive what attitude, if any, foreign peoples take toward our works of culture, for we have no doubt that cultural creative work, since it is the most sensitive expression of a talent conditioned by blood, cannot be understood, far less appreciated, by individuals or races who are not of the same or related blood. Therefore we do not trouble in any way to make German art and culture suit the tastes of international Jewry...

  Surfs of nausea are surging through Vincent’s body making his ribs ache. There will be Menorah over Janice’s grave.

  - Did we get the shot? – Heinz asks, dropping Janice’s skull to the floor like it were a plastic prop that deserved not a moment’s consideration. Vince nods, unable to speak. A moment passes and Heinz turns away to vomit.

  *

  The two men drag Janice’s half-dissected body out the front porch and drop her on the wild lawn. She disappears beneath a sea of unploughed yellow strands and broom straw. The sky has a milky hue. Vince realises that he can no longer appreciate the beauty in anything except violence.

  Heinz says he is tired of Swarthy. Whenever he becomes tired of a persona or feels like it has outgrown its use, he has a unique technique of method acting he likes to call the ‘Theseus aesthetic’ in homage of the great ship and experimental paradox which had all its planks and parts changed throughout the centuries but, arguably, never ceased to be the same ship. Or did it? Heinz would strip away the previous identity completely in part one of the process (he referred to as ‘ontological softening’) and re-construct from scratch.

  - Within the span of seven years, every cell of your body will die and be replaced anyway – he’d say.

  Now he has finally accomplished the act that will gain him the recognition and acclaim he craves, he simply does not want to inhabit Brandon Swarthy’s body any longer. Vince tries not to let this ruffle his feathers. Swarthy is a man of fleeting fancies sometimes. It might very well be one of those things that comes and goes just as quickly.

  Heinz kneels down and removes a zippo lighter from the girl’s pocket. He thumbs the flint wheel until a spray of ignition sparks give way to a tiny, perfect flame. The fire reflects in his pupils like the last remaining ashes of Brandon Swarthy’s own soul. Vince notes that this pyrophilia or sensation seeking is a recurring trait in each of his personas—so this must be a genuine characteristic of the original man behind the masks. It warms Vince to think of this. He believes it’s because he truly knows Heinz and that only he could notice these similarities in his characters.

  - Why are you so into fire?

  - I don’t know. I don’t think about it.

  - Maybe it’s some archaic desire to gain power over nature.

  - That’s stupid.

  - Is it? Maybe it’s your fear of castration?

  Heinz gestures to the raggedy shank of his semi-erect penis.

  - I had a spell, back when I was Nathan Origen Simmons, when I used to mutilate my genitals. So it can’t be that, can it?

  To Vince it’s obvious Heinz craves some kind of social prestige.

  Is he necrophiliac too?

  Swarthy mentioned before that he briefly stopped killing a few years back when, after raping a homeless man’s corpse, he became impotent and contracted syphilis. He took to inserting specula into anuses or vaginas and widening them to extreme degree. This passed however and he returned to serial k
illing. Vince wisely decides to change the topic back to something they can both agree on—the bright future of Ultra-realism.

  - I can’t wait to show people our film. I expect it to be hugely divisive.

  - Obviously. The buildings which are arising in the Fourth Reich today will speak a language that endures, a language, above all, more compelling than the Yiddish babblings of the democratic, international judges of our culture. The language will be Ultra-violence. What the fingers of these poor wretches have penned or are penning the world will—perhaps unfortunately—forget, as it has forgotten so much else. But the gigantic works of the Fourth Reich are a token of its cultural renascence and shall one day belong to the inalienable cultural heritage of the Western world, just as the great cultural achievements of this world in the past belong to us today.

  Vince has no idea what Heinz is talking about.

  The Fourth Reich?

  A language of Ultra-violence?

  The moment crystallises in his head. Vincent will never forget this day or these pivotal seconds. He sees these words coming from Heinz’s mouth, executed with marital precision, but he knows they are not his own. He turns to Vince.

  - I am not who I claim to be. I am a bolt of lightning young Vincent.

  - A what?

  - My bolt of lightning struck the original Swarthy and simultaneously rearranged a group of molecules to take his exact form, complete with all his memories and habits. Same happened with Heinz. I think he’s some kind of Nazi occultist. In the past I have been many other things—Sonorans, Cherokee, Delaware Indians, French Canadians, Texans, Irishmen, a Negro and a full-blooded Comanche. I’ve kept smoke-dried scalps that I had absolutely no intention of ever cashing in. I wanted trophies of death even then.

  His new dedication to the doctrines of the occult is hardly surprising. Back when Heinz was Swarthy, he’d spoken often about his affinity with the mystical. But, of course, Heinz isn’t just a mystic anti-Semite, he now firmly believes himself to be the Anti-Christ. The final dynasty of the Teutonic race, ten times what Nimrod was to Babylon.

  - Let’s get some sleep – Vince suggests.

  *

  He never asks me anything about my past, he doesn’t care. In a way Heinz is beyond conceptual analysis. He would argue that he is merely the inheritor of an inverted spectrum. Heinz is like a consciousness that emerged from the non-equilibrium chaos of the universe, a world of thermodynamic liquid—but that would be giving him too much credit. That would imply he had the capacity to feel or to form emotional attachment. Heinz, or whatever his name is, is a zombie, or a philosophical one at least in terms of behaviour and the soul. When you poke him on the arm he feels no sensation but reacts like a normal human would. His palms are shingled, synthetic looking. In a sense he is a pure actor. His love is also simulated, I see that now. Heinz knows how to feel love no more than he knows how to feel the soft caress of mink or Egyptian cotton against his flesh. I suppose his performance mustn’t have been altogether convincing. I think it would upset him if I ever told him this, his confidence would shatter—such is the artist’s demeanour. When you spend a certain amount of time in Heinz’s company you see just how transparent his whole bullshit really is. I feel stupid for getting so caught up in it.

  He can identify goals and strive to accomplish them. Perhaps his zombification is more a case of being burnt out than an intrinsic flaw he was born with. I mean, who wouldn’t lose track of themselves living in a world like that? Maybe, he is more like a man-made experience machine, an observer. Swarthy is a brain in a vat of Malmsey wine that believes itself to be suffering through life. Whatever the explanation, it seems likely he isn’t human.

  My problem, perhaps everyone’s problem, is an epistemological one. No one can prove other minds exist, we know no one. It was naïve of me to think I could ever know anyone, never mind a robot like Brandon Swarthy. I hear The Residents playing somewhere out of shot.

  By a process of systematic doubt, I am able to determine that the only thing worth believing in is nothingness.

  *

  Heinz performs a Pagan rite. Candles flicker throughout the premises of Unger House. He has a rune symbol on his chest in the shape of Sun Whisk, the god of psychosis. Vince is kneeling behind him, half-heartedly humming to Heinz’s mantra.

  - It’s our job to purge ourselves of the racial elementals. Cleanse the soil with Janice’s Aryan blood and scatter it across the grounds of the 4th Reich. She’ll be my unholy bride…

  Vince opens his eyes, ceases his humming. His tongue is dry but his heart has to know…

  - You don’t love me anymore do you?

  Heinz turns around with a bewildered expression on his face, the ritual words muddled in his mouth.

  - What?

  - I said…you don’t love me anymore. Do you?

  - What’s love got to do with anything?

  Vince feels the nausea building in his gut. This man is practically unrecognisable. He hates this man. This man has killed his beloved Brandon. He can’t cry in front of this man.

  - I suppose, to someone like you, love has nothing to do with anything. I just thought I should hear you say it that’s all.

  Heinz snorts and goes back to his recital. He says he’s going to bring Janice back to life using an old Nazi occultist ritual. When the soul dies it leaves the inferior body behind—it would be a spiritual resurrection, not a physical one, Heinz says. He raises Janice’s severed head above his own, a tip of spinal cord dangling, and shouts – COME BACK! COME BACK! ALIVE! I’LL MAKE YOU ALIVE AGAIN!

  Vince goes red like a salmon about to spawn. He gets up off his knees. He is on the verge of tears, his belly is lurching and his frustration has grown to such an extent that he could not hope to conceal it.

  - I’ve had enough of this.

  - Now what’s wrong??

  - We came here to start a revolution, not fuck about with necromancy! We got what we came for, let’s just fucking go already! The sooner we get out of this place the sooner we can get back to the city and go our separate ways.

  - Oh, but young Vincent…no, no…you are so wrong. Maybe you got what you came for, but my priorities have changed. What better way to prove you deserve godlike status than resurrecting a soul you destroyed? I’m as committed to Ultra-violence as ever, but why stop at a simple motion picture? Why not start a religion?

  - Because I don’t want to start a fucking religion! – Vince heard his words linger atmospherically.

  - Well that’s too bad isn’t it, because you’re not going anywhere.

  *

  Dad, I know you can’t hear me, but I really need someone to talk to. I’m scared, not just for my own life now, but for what’ll happen to me when I die. I don’t want to go to hell dad, but that’s almost certainly where I’m headed…

  I know I’ve done some really stupid things in my short, thoughtless little life, things that’ve made you ashamed to call me a son, but this is by far the stupidest. Stupider than that time I spiked the eggnog with rum at Aunt Mildred and Uncle Ian’s centenary wedding reception. You should know, I haven’t tasted regret all that much, but man oh man am I sucking on a bitter pill right now.

  So, I met a man. He was ostensively charming, intelligent, courageous in a strange sort of way, and incredibly beautiful to look at. He seemed like a real radical thinker, just like me. Please don’t stop reading, you’re a smart enough man, you knew… you must have known all this time, right? It’s not such a big deal. If I do wind up in hell, trust me when I say it won’t have anything to do with the fact that I’m gay.

  It turns out that this man and I fell in love, or at least I fell in love with him—or the idea of him. We embarked on a sex and sugar fuelled road-trip to the depraved depths of our own effervescent insanity.

  You’ve always offered me guidance and tried to do right by me, don’t think I’m unappreciative of this. My running away with an older man isn’t some kind of effort to fill a gap you left in me. It never honestly
bothered me that you and auntie were uncultured, uncouth and fundamentally uneducated, but I think I suffered because I found it so hard to make any connections with other kids my own age. There was no one to relate to or to tell me I wasn’t a weirdo. I sort of fell by the wayside, I see that now.

  The man I left with is evil, pure and simple. I do not think he would repudiate these claims. My change of heart might seem rather sudden but he changed so quickly and so suddenly that no one could’ve foreseen the transformation. He wasn’t a radical, he was a duplicitous phony. He didn’t have the discipline or dedication he claimed to possess either. Turns out I’m not such a radical thinker myself. You can take the boy out of the countryside and all that…

  The things he and I have done are hideous. I would however draw your attention to the essay by Thomas DeQuincey on the aesthetic appreciation of murder—‘On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts’. It was required reading material around Swarthy and, believe it or not, is hugely convincing in many different ways. If I come back to New York I’ll be arrested the minute I hit the outskirts of Brooklyn. You would be so ashamed. This is my burden to bear. I mean, I didn’t give a shit when I packed up and left, why do I care so godamned much now? Why is my heart breaking because I feel like I let you and mother down? I suppose Auntie Mildred was right in a sense, I am a killer. I was born a killer, I’ll die a killer. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whenever I’d eat grapes she’d say I didn’t deserve to consume the blood of Christ.

  Truth is that Brandon Swarthy and I…

  … he and I, we….

  Killed a girl…

  More specifically, HE killed her while I videotaped it.

  I thought I’d be explaining my actions to the media. Less of a confession than this, of course. I didn’t think I’d have to go into hiding.

  - People have come far and wide to see the movie, and I’m not just talking about perverts and murderers here! We have state officials, police officers, doctors, all in attendance—I think they got a kick out of sitting in the actual location the film was shot too.

  I was delusional. Now I’m as good as dead.