“Baba-booey!” he shrieks, “Baba-booey! Baba-booey! Baba-booey!”
Thank God for Saturdays.
Sunday, I’m busy all day with the human sacrifices.
The Negatives II: Qabal
1. Qabal
Below the middle stations of the red cross painted on his forehead, his lunatic eyes gazed out over the packed pews, sizing up the sheep he’d lead to pasture. Wild, thick blonde hair stuck out in all directions from his scalp, long split-ends hanging over his pasty, made-up face, but he made no attempt to brush them from his vision. A crimson robe adorned him, and he wore a tall, spade-shaped hat with a golden cross attached to its front. He claimed to be thirty-three, but had the wisdom of a man twice his age, and the cunning of a youth half - hardened not by disappointment, yet sharpened by success. He was Pope Simon, the first.
“Are we shaped by our desires, or are our desires the culminations of our shaping? The two ends of the answer are inextricable - a paradox resolving itself!” he yelled to the sheep. “And yet the answer is clear! There is no great argument, no falsehood which can stand against this testament: we are bound to reaction, slaves to impulse, and yet complicit still - as willing masochists!”
Erik Silas knew that he was spouting non-sense. He popped his neck, and the LSD crystal at the base of his skull crackled, releasing a small dose of dream into his senses. The speaker’s nature was clearer to him after these long weeks – the Pope acted as an absurdist, dressing like a lunatic for his own amusement, standing on a pulpit carved of melted plastic. Ridiculous symbols adorned his face, revealing to Erik the man’s true philosophy - he was Qabalist, shameless to his feat. But the flock to which he preached knew of no such thing - they were bound by his inexplicable magic.
“God has called us all to His duty, and though it seems sometimes as though we are taken to dark places in His service, and called even to question His authority, that ultimately it is our own fate to fall back to His loving guidance.” He liked to hear himself talk, and to see the faces of the sheep gazing up at him, smiling, stupid, awed; worshiping. “I have been selected as His arbiter, and have yet to steer you wrong. We shall fight against the Muslim Satanists and take back America for God’s chosen ones. We shall once more make this nation a Catholic nation!”
Cheers of “AMEN!” and “HALLELUJAH!” erupted. Erik tried to fade into the noise. Pope Simon’s eyes suddenly darted to where he was sitting in the back row. He called Erik out by name, and the noise suddenly ceased. “Erik Silas!” He suddenly felt hundreds of eyes magnetized to him. “Have you come to the light, my brother?” Erik stared, saying nothing, a spectacle. After a brief moment of silence, Simon went on. “You have been amongst us for twenty-seven days now! And yet still you are unsure of our righteousness?”
Erik tried to think of best way to respond. He didn’t want to upset the psychopath - the only reason they’d let him stay this long was because Simon knew that he was responsible for the recent terror attack in New Mecca, the Islamic-American Empire’s capital, and thus his chosen Gomorrah, as well as three other nuclear attacks against major IAE cities. But Erik was running out of good will and unless he repented soon, he might have more than the Mujahedeen to worry about.
“I don’t question your righteousness,” Erik lied, “it is my own that I know to be absent.” That much was true, at least. The sheep all stared; he felt their willpower trying to tear into his flesh. He could see the red cross upon the Pope’s forehead melting into his mascara under the heat of the spotlight. Finally he broke the silence.
“Very well, my brother,” The Pope replied. “We shall pray for you further yet.”
“Thank you,” Erik answered, relieved.
The eyes of the sheep reverted to their glorious leader. He pranced and prattled on, misquoting scripture from a beaten up Bible. From above them, a wooden Jesus stared down at Erik, a crown of thorns upon his wooden head. Erik looked up into his splintered sockets, feeling the dream flow through his bloodstream. The suffering had rotted out of Christ’s eyes, but his lips still spoke: through them, he begged the sheep below to forsake him, to let him rest in peace. They couldn’t hear, or didn’t listen.
2. Simon
“Did you like my speech?” Pope Simon questioned Erik from across the table, his made-up face smudged from the heat of the spotlights that had illuminated him upon his melted plastic pedestal. Red, white, black and gold grease-paint smeared his visage, the symbols scrawled at the start of his speech now faint outlines, absorbed in his putty-colored flesh, white from powder. His smile suggested an interest more than friendly in Erik, almost a fascination.
“Lovely,” Erik lied.
The Pope continued to stare at him, silent. He waited for the shoe to drop. “Why don’t you be honest with me?” Simon continued, still smiling. “I know that you’re not here because you believe in the non-sense that I’m peddling. Nor are you ever likely to.”
Erik said nothing for a moment, thinking. Although he had not expected Simon to be so up-front, he was not exactly shocked that he was. Nothing shocked him anymore.
“Then why do you think I’m here?”
The Pope stood up, walked behind him and put his hands upon Erik’s shoulders. Erik wanted to brush them off, but considered whether or not that would be the most strategic maneuver at the moment. He decided against it.
“Why, that is simple - because you’re safe here.” The Pope let go of his shoulders, leaned down near his face, looking into Erik’s eyes with his own. He could see the madness spinning around the lunatic’s pupils, his emerald irises twin galaxies of disorder, painted with black specks of familiar chaos. “And you’re smarter than the others,” he added, “the sheep.”
“Not hard to be, considering what you’re doing to them.”
“My, that’s daring,” Simon replied. “For a man who dosed all of New Mecca with LSD, and nuked Tijuana, Santa Fe and Las Vegas, I had thought I would be in understanding company. I’ve been observing you, waiting for you to do something. I thought at first you would attack me, but that doesn’t seem to be your modus operandi.”
Erik suspected that Simon was using that phrase to test his knowledge. His patience was wearing thin. “I don’t have a mode of operation,” he snapped at Simon. “And you don’t know a damned thing about me.”
“Often, Mr. Silas, it is easier for others to know us truly than it is for us to know ourselves.”
“In some cases, yes,” Erik replied. “But not in all.”
“Such as yours?” Simon answered back smartly.
“Since we are being frank,” Erik started, making no effort to hide his impatient tone, “I find the notion that a man who paints symbols on his face could know anything about why I operate the way I do to be rather audacious.”
Simon laughed at him. “And why do you think I paint these symbols on my face? Why do you think I use the cross, and speak of Jesus, and call myself Pope?”
“There are many reasons for every detail,” Erik responded. “That’s the beauty of life. But a few of them, I’m fairly sure of. Firstly, you do it because you believe it gives you some sort of mystical power over the sheep.”
“Not mystical,” he interrupts, “merely logical.”
“Secondly, you do it as a mockery. I pegged you for an absurdist earlier. I’ve suspected since the first week I was here, but it’s hard to tell with demagogues. It usually ends up that they believe most of their own garbage.”
“Rest assured, Mr. Silas, I believe none of my own garbage. I promise. Do you know any third reason as to why I adorn myself this way?”
“For the very reason it works; you confuse people like me. You figure the smart ones will have a hunch, but they won’t know for sure. Often times, one cannot separate a lunatic from liar... of course, not always.” Erik smiled at Simon predatorily.
“We’re not so different,” Simon replied. “I wasn’t sure how intelligent you were until recently; I thought perhaps I could break you. If I didn’t f
ind you interesting, I would have already had you killed.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Erik said.
“Needless to say, I have no one with whom to speak with regarding the things I find to be most poignant about existence.”
“And what makes you think I’d care to hear those things?” Erik replied. If Simon thought he was the listening type, he’d had him pegged wrong.
“Well, for one, I could have your throat slit within seconds. I just have to scream for my security to enter the room. Two, you might find our conversations more fascinating than you are willing to initially admit as time goes on.”
“Our conversations about what?”
“About what else, my friend?” Simon asked, grinning like Loki. “Chaos!” He waited, as if gauging Erik’s obedience to his freely exhibited authority, before asking a question intended to evince a sensitive recollection on the part of his captive audience. “Why don’t you tell me what you remember of New Mecca, before the cleansing - during the… brief period of insanity? The few hours after you dosed the water supply with LSD?” The question failed to evoke any emotion from Erik whatsoever. He merely continued to smile at his prey, not intending to answer.
Simon waited, until finally deciding to break the silence. “Do you believe that I would be any less brutal to you than the IAE, should you fail to appease my curiosity?” He was trying to sound threatening, though Erik wasn’t frightened in the least.
“No,” Erik replied, continuing to smile. “It’s just that I’ve surpassed the fear of pain. It ceases to have an effect on me. I hope that doesn’t cause for a less interesting conversation.”
“It does, sadly. But that’s alright. Whether or not I believe you’re telling the truth about your likely reaction to torture, you will suffer it regardless - should you fail to appease my curiosity, that is. Please - speak magnanimously and uninhibited.”
“Once again,” Erik repeated, “the fear of pain does not exist within me. You will have to give me an incentive. That’s a language in which I do commerce.”
Simon stared at him, as if contemplating, before finally speaking up. “Suppose I do,” he said. “Could our arrangement benefit both of us in the long-term?”
“That depends,” Erik answered, “on what our arrangement is.”
The Pope laughed. “What I mean to say is, can I expect that whatever arrangement we may come to - partnership, perhaps - will exist into the foreseeable future? Can I count on you as an ally, should the occasion arise?”
“There is an old maxim,” Erik replied. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“What about the IAE - would you consider them to be your enemy?”
“Undoubtedly,” Erik said.
“Then would that make us friends?” asked Simon.
“That depends. Will you make me an offer?”
He throws an unexpected question at Erik. “Are you a man who believes himself to be above lies?”
“I don’t know how to answer that question,” Erik said. “I lied to you when I said I could find no fault with your virtue earlier.”
Simon laughed, amused. “Not that sort of lie - lies of a greater sort. Are you above telling them? What if lying of this particular sort brings you to achieve whatever purposes you desire? You and I know that there is no God sitting by telling us to do right and to love one another. That non-sense is for the sheep. We’re put here to take power. That’s why we’re different from the lower types, you and I - we do things that others don’t have the guts to do. Things they want to do, but can’t. People like us exist for a reason, whether your love of discord will allow you to admit it or not. There is an abundance of power, and minds like ours are meant to make use of it.”
“That’s Qabalist non-sense,” Erik snapped at him. “You’ve been brain-washed.”
“But you know it’s true, your actions exhibit such a belief, whether your mouth does or not.”
“Don’t presume to speak for me,” Erik interrupted, annoyed. “You know nothing about me, and you fully misunderstand my purpose.”
“Misunderstand it?” Simon laughed. “How could I misunderstand it? Perhaps you don’t understand yourself at all. Perhaps you need another like you to show you his reflection: me. The world is changing again, Mr. Silas. The Muslims will soon fall. There will be many looking to take their place - you’ve seen the cults all over this country, I’m sure.”
“And you’re just another cult-runner,” Erik snapped at him; “a Qabalist exploiter, maybe not a slaver like most of your kind, but just as awful. You’ve come to Texas territory to collect some sheep. Don’t aspire to delusions of grandeur. This continent is bloated with followers, they exist in droves, and they‘ll believe anything you tell them to believe. Especially here out west. Any half-way educated egomaniac can take control of a few hundred as you‘ve done.”
Simon frowned, never blinking while his eyes shot needles into Erik. “You mistake my nature entirely,” he answered. “Your own arrogance betrays your flaws. You fail to see that I am your equal, and not your inferior - and that is a kindness I am not willing to grant to most - none else, in fact. In pretending superiority, you reveal a weakness, and also trespass on a nerve.” His tone was serious, threatening. “Will you lie, Mr. Silas?”
“No,” Erik answered. “Not for your kind.”
“My kind?”
“Qabalists,” sneered Erik.
Simon huffed, growing impatient. “Regardless, I didn’t ask what kind you would lie for,” he snapped, “only whether you would or not. Are you capable of lying for your own ends? Are you that kind of man, or are you another?”
“There’s only one kind of man,” Erik responded. “That’s the kind that I am.”
“You speak in riddles. Is it to try my patience? Or perhaps you’re testing me in the same way that I’m testing you with the previous query. So by your reaction, I will take it to mean thus: rather than answer a question, you will be evasive, either to invoke mystery - your own arcane power, since you are so quick to attack mine - or because you are lying to me.”
“Perhaps I enjoy watching someone who desires control fail to take it.”
“In this area, we are similar,” he answered. “Although you would deny that it is control you seek, would you not?”
“I seek to create chaos; to break order where it exists. You seek control for the satiation of your own ego.”
“So then, you seek to give chaos control - and yourself, its arbiter, control by extension? Yes?”
Erik said nothing, waiting for the mad Pope to continue.
“It is a strange religion, but still a religion; and perhaps your chaos is simply another form of order; or perhaps chaos and order are inseparable, as mulch and plant are. An order will rise up out of chaos, and ultimately return back to it, as nature intends.”
“You preach the resurrection of a dead man to complete idiots,” Erik chided.
“Have we not established that I am an out and out liar?”
“That much is clear. As for your whimsy on entropy, if order returns to chaos naturally, then consider me nature’s re-possessor.”
“Please!” Simon exclaimed, excited. “Repossess the atoms of those Muslim parasites; send them back to the dirt they crawled out of. I’m waiting for you.”
“I find your operation no less parasitic,” Erik said. “You’re another sort of reality-fascist.”
“And you’re no better!” Simon shouted, suddenly furious. “That’s my entire point! You’re a hypocrite! You just pray to a different God! You’ve murdered more people than I have, or that likely any individual person in the IAE ever has. They make group decisions, the weight of their massacres fall to bear on many shoulders. But not you! By your hand, there are thousands dead - hundreds of thousands in nuclear strikes. And all of those people living in New Mecca - over a million - all massacred because they drank of your poison six months ago, at your direct order! You may not have killed them, but the IAE did to clean up your
mess! You are responsible for that holocaust, you! So don’t you go putting yourself above me!”
He was right, Erik knew - but that was beside the point. It didn’t change his motivation in the slightest - to destroy remained his only impulse. Perhaps his recent willingness to view things from a larger perspective, and the following drive to be more cautious in regard to his continued existence, had caused him to make certain compromises which exacerbated his contrary beliefs and behaviors. The Pope waited for him to say something to that effect. He was disappointed.
“Have you nothing to say for yourself?” Simon questioned. “No answer to my rebuke? No excuse for your hypocrisy?”
“I’m beyond excuse,” Erik replied. “Will you kill me now?”
Simon stared for a moment, pondering.
“No, not tonight, I think; perhaps tomorrow.” He stood up, keeping focused upon the object of his strange fascination. “There’s more I wish to discuss with you when I have tempered my passions. But for the evening, I think I shall retire.”
3. Shiloh
A mutated buzzard sat atop a sign, situated above the first O in “SALOON.” The Alamo city sky was alit with an eerie glow after sunset, a pale, sickly green evening descending. Some called the glow a message from God. Erik suspected that it likely had to do with the irradiated nuclear reactor that stood in the distance, smoking to this very day from its initial meltdown over two-hundred years ago. Many of the locals stared up at its mirage, prospectors for the most part.
He sat on the patio of the hotel in which he had been staying for free by the order of Pope Simon, who from day one had seemed to afford him every luxury. He was suspicious then, and for good reason, it seemed to him now. The wooden surface of the porch was flecked with the mud that ran through the Alamo streets, and the place was more camp than city. The structures were cheap wooden houses, and commerce seemed fairly unregulated. It was a far cry from the advanced Muslim cities in the east, and a sense of wilderness seemed to devour the place. Erik stood up and walked to the saloon, staring at the buzzard all the while. Pope Simon, as a Qabalist, would have believed this to be an omen. Erik believed in nothing of the sort.
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