by Jarett Kobek
Jacob got to work.
And he involved Anthony.
Jacob returned to Generation Records in search of more Norwegian Black Metal.
The early Internet had recommended several bands.
One name in particular kept popping up: Burzum.
Burzum was a one-man outfit.
Burzum’s one man was Varg Vikernes.
In 1995 AD, while Fern was in New York City and worried about the effects of her magic on Anthony’s health, she had spent a great deal of time listening to Burzum.
Anthony called it research.
But the truth was that he really liked Burzum.
And so did Fern.
Years after Anthony’s death, Fern had ended up at a waterfront penthouse party in the Karşıyaka district of İzmir, Turkey.
The party was full of soft Turkish college boys who hadn’t yet done their mandatory military service.
Or had parents rich enough, and well connected enough, to buy their sons out of mandatory military service.
On the penthouse’s television, a pirated download was playing.
The pirated download was an iterative copy of the 2008 AD documentary film Until the Light Takes Us.
Until the Light Takes Us was about Norwegian Black Metal, and it had been named after the English translation of a Burzum album.
The Burzum album was called Hvis lyset tar oss.
It had been released in 1994 AD.
The party wasn’t much more than soft Turkish boys giggling as they looked at pornographic videos on each other’s smartphones.
So Fern had no real choice.
She watched Until the Light Takes Us.
It all came back.
Anthony in 1995 AD.
New York City.
Black Metal.
And as she watched Until the Light Takes Us, Fern saw the story of Varg Vikernes.
How he’d come from Bergen, how he’d gotten involved with the Oslo Black Metal scene based out of the record store Helvete, how he’d dedicated himself and his music to a racist doctrine of vaguely Satanic neo-paganism, how he’d started burning down old wooden churches as a protest of the Semitic Christian invasion of Norway, how he’d murdered Euronymous, who was the owner of Helvete and founding member of the band Mayhem, and how Euronymous himself was no piece of work, having stumbled upon the corpse of Mayhem’s lead vocalist after Mayhem’s lead vocalist had blown his head open with a shotgun, and how Euronymous photographed the body and later made necklaces from the body’s skull fragments.
Varg Vikernes was the star of Until the Light Takes Us, unfathom-ably pompous, unchallenged, serving out his sentence for the murder of Euronymous, spouting neo-Nazi Norsk ideology from within prison walls, adopting the same insufferable persona that he’d developed for the Norwegian press of the early 1990s AD.
As she watched, Fern remembered how Burzum had soothed Anthony in his creeping pain.
She remembered Anthony telling her that Varg Vikernes was the key to the whole Norwegian Black Metal scene: he had released his own albums as Burzum, but he’d also played bass on Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and written the lyrics to one side of Transilvanian Hunger.
And yet Varg Vikernes was a total fucking idiot.
He was just a crap Nazi with an Odin fetish.
And after being released from prison, he’d done the same thing as every crackpot with his glory days behind him: he’d started a YouTube channel.
But the albums that he’d recorded before prison?
Absolutely fucking brilliant.
So when the fractured astral projection of HRH confronted Fern with his inquiry about Varg Vikernes, Fern could answer his question.
Ever since that penthouse party in Karşıyaka, she’d been wondering how Varg Vikernes’s brief period of aesthetic genius could emerge from the body of an idiot.
“It’s my guess,” said Fern to the astral projection of HRH, “that generating art, and experiencing it, has no connection to the possession of intelligence. There have been millennia of humans writing words and making music and printing posters that insult politicians. Nothing has changed. Still you wallow in your filth. Still you elevate pigs above you. Only a fool would seek intellect amongst human aestheticians. Better if you look for inspiration amongst your plumbers.”
“Madame,” said HRH, “when next I relieve the vital center, with your words alone shall I shake, rattle, and roll.”
HRH felt his spirit begin to return to his body.
“Yet my short time is not up! As you have expressed some interest in America, may I repay your kindness? Do you wish to know the secret of this great depraved land?”
“Amuse me, mortal,” said Fern.
“America is a land in which one can be employed by Boeing or Lockheed Martin or General Dynamics,” said HRH, “and in that employment be hired and paid for only one purpose. The sales and development of weaponry dedicated to the eradication of Muslim flesh. The more Mohammedians that one kills, the greater the rewards. Endless wealth! A rise in society! Invitations to the best galas! Come and find me in the golden hour of cocktail reception at the Saudi embassy. The drinks are, alas, without alcohol, but I am waiting and watching for you.”
The astral projection of HRH began to shimmer.
“Pray, madame, do not think that the blessed war industry would exclude you on the basis of your fairer sex. Four of the five major American defense contractors are headed by women CEOs resolute in their dedication to massacre. When America bathes in the splattered excreta of Musulmans, the country is nothing but liberté, égalité, and sororité. Yes, madame, you also could build those bombs and you too could work towards the complete obliteration of the Saracens. Not one eyebrow raised! The world will be yours! I myself have had the pleasure of a healthy conversation with Marillyn Hewson following her triumphant acceptance of an Edison Achievement Award. She was touched to the core when informed that both my father and myself are shareholders who follow her good works. Extinguish enough lives and they will reward you with a profile piece in the Style section of the New York Times. Beau Brummell for the Blackwater generation! The pantsuits and pumps that power the putrefaction parade!”
The astral projection of HRH started to disappear.
“I take my leave,” said HRH. “I must make quickest haste! America will not scold or shame you for the mass manufacture of weapons with no possible function other than wholesale slaughter. Feel free to murder tens of thousands. Carte blanche! More filthy lucre for The Conqueror!”
HRH disappeared.
His voice came in a final paragraph:
“Yet if you wish to maintain your position as a resoundingly fêted killer of the distant peasantry, then there is one mistake that you must never make. Never consume Zolpidem and power up your smartphone. For if you do, madame, perhaps you will discover the truest meaning of in vino veritas. What if, in your drugged haze, you log on to Twitter and refer to your victims with an unfortunate slur? The social and corporate structure of America longs for tsunamis of Mohammedian blood. Yet the human resources department will have zero tolerance for the scourge of online Islamophobia. Kill them all, O my elfen dearest, but never call them Ragheads! In America, the entire society will scrape and bow before your bloody conquest. But no one will ever thank you for your honesty.”
The author, age 7, with his father
Jarett Kobek is a Turkish-American writer living in California. His novella ATTA, a psychedelic biography of the 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, was an unexplained bestseller in parts of Canada. His novel I Hate the Internet was a bestseller everywhere, doing especially well in Serbia. His follow-up novel, The Future Won’t Be Long, wasn’t a bestseller anywhere but did receive a shortlisting for the Literary Reveiw’s 2017 Bad Sex in Fiction Award and was published in the United States by a company that printed propaganda for Nazi Germany. So there’s always hope.
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