EPILOGUE – LAST CHAPTER – ULTRAVIOLENCE

 

‘For the gate that leads to damnation is wide, the way is easy, and many are those who choose to enter it’. - Matthew 7:13

'Shut the fuck up', Confucius

EPILOGUE – LAST CHAPTER – ULTRAVIOLENCE

It was all black. Then faint pulsations in its penumbra, as my eyes slowly adjusted to the light that somehow felt opaque.

This is going to be a hoot! The first thought that gripped me. As specks of tattered consciousness slowly drifted back in. Then Alice spoke to me, ‘You up? Open your eyes. We got stuff to do.'

My mind was blank. Someone had vacuumed it out in one swoop. Then the jackhammer in my brain went off. Its aperiodic rhythm rumbled. My tongue felt toxic, like a few drops of acid scorching its way in. My mouth was parched. I tried rolling my tongue around. That was like scraping around a razor inside. Felt like I was in the foggy dreams of a vengeful god.

My eyes were eyeing, my mind was minding, my muscles were muscling, my corpuscles were corpusculating, my vitals were unvitalizing, and a dead feeling abiding.

'What do you do with wretched feelings?', I asked Alice.

'Doesn't matter. From the looks of where you're headed', she replied in my head. 'Whole lotta wretchedness ahead.'

I was moving, my vision hazy, my mind dazed, my focus absconding. I was in my apartment. Someone dragging me by my leg. A mighty odd feeling, what with my perspective right there on the floor. Claustrophobic too, so up close. Like a mattress forcibly stuffed in a dryer and dragged along. But the most obnoxious thing was the gross invasion of my personal space and property, like a mechanical infection without prelude. My zip tied hands and feet made it worse. If he had just wanted me dead, I guess I would already be in hell. So something's gonna transpire. That's all I could think. Think of. Think about.

The return to reality was wildly obfuscating. Disorienting and disconcerting as the doomy dope of hell. Like dreaming, but not quite, and waking up, but not quite. With a bad hangover from some dark soma. Smelling the stale acrid breath of the exasperated earth's wearied exhalation through a toxic veil. But the light through my tiny aperture still impinged my eyes. Like a half lit electric billboard suddenly looming out by the side of a moonless highway far on the outskirts of a dying town.

I tried to recall a very weird, intensely vivid, dream I seemed to had having, but could only remember the non-weird parts. Felt dejected, like dreams were worthless. At least for today's nocturnal theater.

The best I could do is scour the dreaming abstract, rather than the dream, shut my mind's eyes to its walls of neon magic that bleed unholy promises. Maybe to find an outline that I could convince myself is still clean, which I could make my cradle, my forests and my valleys. My vow to keep free of all historic filth. Where I could hang my talismans, my sigils and my dream-catchers. To ward off all the unjust and the merciless, and the asuras that follow their trail.

'What the hell you talking about?', Alice asked.

'You won't get it', I replied.

'Try me', she responded.

'Well', I said. 'You won't get it, because I don't get it'.

'That makes sense', she remarked. 'I was expecting something more stupid'.

I kept my eyes closed, feigning unconsciousness. The subterfuge made me more miserable.

The music was still playing. Bernstein's rendition of Four Seasons was still swirling around the whole space. Within my mind, and without. Inside of time. Outside of the void.

By then, too many extraneous thoughts had started assaulting my brain. I listened to the music to try drown them out. Mellow out my mercurial nerves. A few deep breaths. My mind settled on the last thing I remembered – entering my apartment, flipping the main switch that turned on the lights and music, taking a swig of water from the bottle on my kitchen table, scouring the fridge, pouring and serving myself one on the rocks, starting to feel a little dizzy, going upstairs to my bedroom, my mind progressively getting more befuddled, sitting by the window and smoking, felling pukey, but not throwing up. My head went up and down and around, until a blow to the back of it knocked me out. Something, somewhere had been spiked.

Coming about, I felt a little invigorated and impatient, like about to catch a bloody train at the station that's about to arrive any bloody second, because it's already running too bloody late.

I looked up. Big ass guy. Middle aged. Slim frame. But his considerable height and baggy suit made him look big, brooding, baleful. He was dressed in black, always black. Features sharp but ugly, a rare combination. Not particularly menacing. Only long years had left their wispy talon lines on his face. His skin was shiny, but slightly wrinkled. Hair slick black. No strand of gray in there. But his shoes were an abomination. Primal crocodile leather.

'He's the pomp, romp, and stomp kind of guy', Alice deduced.

'Yeah, I get that,' I replied.

Grabbing both my legs, he was pulling me down the stairs. At least that part was more entertaining than just lying down semi-conscious. My head bumped on every step. Sometimes with a dull thud. Sometimes with a bone crunching snap. After the fifth or sixth step, blood. Tiny streams of warmth dripping out from the back of my head. But that somehow slightly mitigated the effect of the pulsating jackhammer. Still rattling inside. Still making it difficult to think straight.

We landed at the bottom of the stairs with a final big thump. He pulled me to my drawing room. Laid me down by the wall. Right then, loud savage screechings. My African Parrot went hyper hysteric. Soon as she laid eyes on the less than usual proceedings. From her cage hanging from the ceiling. I usually let her out when I get home. Hadn’t gotten to it yet today.

The discount store hulk turned around. Looked at the large bird. Its violent brushing against its cage, feathers flying out. He hurtled towards her.

Went over to the window nearest to the cage. Slid the curtains and opened it. Then went to the cage, pulled open the gate, turned the opening towards the window and shook the cage. Shooing loudly with his mouth. The bird left the cage. But instead of escaping through the window, settled herself on the mantelpiece. He charged at her. Making wild noises. Gesticulating chaotically. Like a shriveled up gorilla itching from a thousand ticks.

The bird flew off the mantle. This time, perching herself on a lamp shade high up in the wall. Still shrieking sharply. Short bursts that sounded awfully like ‘Screwwu Youu’.

I asked Alice, ‘Why does the infernal bird not leave?’.

I mean....I had tried to set her free so many times. Left all the windows open for days. Threw water on her. Bathed her in thick clouds of vaping smoke. No joy.

‘Maybe she’s procrastinating’, she replied.

‘Procrastinating to be free?’, I asked drearily.

'Like an old convict then' she said. 'The cold world outside is no longer home'.

By then, the guy had had enough. Gave up trying to force her out. Started to walk away. Right then, the bird broke out into a deranged, other-worldly laugh. Really bloody shrill. And loud, absolutely to the power loud. So blaring and piercing, and sudden, the guy actually got jumped. Like a deadly bug had just crawled up his arse. He flinched hard, fell down and landed on his knees. But got back up swiftly and composed himself. Walking away with as much of a nonchalant swagger as he could muster.

I lay there, watching him. Watching with almost imperceptible, barely opened eyes. But it was getting more and more difficult trying to keep the eye lids from fluttering.

He came back to the center of the room. Shrugged like he was bored. Then launched into the next phase of his ritual.

The guy worked methodically. Pulled all the furniture and lined it up against the wall. Rolled up the rug carpet and propped it against the corner. He took his time, with the glibness of an artist.

As soon as he picked up the rug, a lizard jumped and landed on his sleeve. He jerked his arm sharply and it landed on the floor with an onomatopoeic slap and scurried away. Fellow looked like he was having a really bad day. He searched the room and linen to account for any other nonhuman or inhuman surprises. The corridor that led out from the room was long, disappearing into the void of darkness. He kept watching it for a while. Looking for the shadow people to come for us.

Felt like we were two souls doomed to disagreeable domains of delusion. Might hear the echo of footsteps themselves sounding lost, if we strained our ears enough.

Then the man walked over to the fireplace. Took a few logs of the chopped firewood kept by its side. Arranged it meticulously in the pit. Poured some of the fuel from the canister on it. Lit it up. The wood crackled, spewing embers that circled it. Then burst into a flame.

Alice said, all laconic like, 'I'm guessing he's not here for housekeeping. Is he?'.

The primate came back to the center of the room. Stood there for a moment. Looked around. Admiring or analyzing his work so far, I didn’t know which.

'Or maybe he's taking a break', Alice conjectured. 'A slacker thug. God bless him'.

I lay silently, watching the square guy. His whole assiduous routine like some kind of a pre-battle ritual he has indulged in a hundred times.

As if this whole bloody shit, the insidious rite, would somehow be less gratifying and meaningful without it.

I said to Alice, 'All this going on, but doesn't the guy look kindda bored to you?'

'Bored or not, once he gets started on you, trust me, he'll be anything but bored. No alignment of the stars will ever change that,' she said, in her superusual, monodronic, ultracynical, singletone. 'Ego and boredom are that only things mankind is left with, apart from perpetual greed of course. They log in to earn and spend, they log out to spend and consume. Then they market all the pain and make it into an opioid of obscure degeneration.'

'What the hell are we talking about here?', I asked.

'I have no fucking clue', said she.

Large black duffel bag kept on the side of the floor. Guy went over and squatted by it. Opened it up.

Out came the usual clichéd crap. Carefully folded up large plastic sheets, rubber gloves, rubber apron. And a transparent box of multicolored vials and syringes.

‘Youzaa', said Alice. 'This is beyond bonkers! What's in the vials?’

'You know the prescript', I told her. ‘Like....Umm....All to make me talk. Some kind of neuro-infllamator to induce pain, ungodly amounts of pain. Epinephrine like to jolt me back if I pass out. Sodium thiopental like shit for the truth serum.’

'Any of that gives you a trip?', she asked. 'I mean....If you are going out....might as well go out peaceful....you know. And peace is a rare currency'.

'Don't know about peace', I replied. 'But I am alright now, before that blessed bastard starts polishing the pain in.'

'Well...', I continued, but she cut me short.

'Some wanker is going through a lot of determined trouble to get some answers', she interjected. Everyone, male, female, child or senile was a wanker to her.

'Any idea what this is about?', she asked.

'Diddly-squat', I told her. Never missed an opportunity to use that word.

'Truth serum, eh?’ Alice said, all amused, ‘And then you'll sing. Like a lust crazed canary, in the dead of the the night, in the grips of acute nymphomania, scorching loins seeking a mate to consummate, and consume the carnal consecrated conspiracy.'

'Like a lust crazed canary in the dead of the the night, in the grips of acute nymphomaniacal heat, seeking a mate to consummate, and consume the carnal consecrated conspiracy', I repeated, at a much slower tempo, trying to remember verbatim. Seemed like an awful lot of words bathed in tedious convolution to me. Although Alice might have said it in jest, I felt that she was purposefully trying to aggravate me.

'But all this is like two decades old', I told her. 'No one does this shit anymore. The signal to noise ratio is low. Like woefully bloody low'.

‘You are so full of yourself', Alice said.

She had another epiphany or something. Added, 'Every person, no matter how vile, has to believe that there's something worse than him, ain't it?'

'Nopes', I told her, 'Pure, industrial, unrepentant, evil exists everywhere.'

I brought my attention back to the mothman. He carefully laid out the plastic sheets in the center of the room. Fetched two dining chairs and placed them on the sheet. Facing each other. He then came back to where I was lying. Semi lifted me up by my shoulders from behind. Dragged me on to the plastic. And slouched me down on one of the chairs. I was still feeling too groggy and disorientated to fully assess the situation, let alone act on it.

He came and stood in front. Towering over me. He looked down. His face had a blank expression that was peculiarly inverted. Like he was used to being inconvenienced. Comfortable in uncomfortable situations made his blood flow. But time was quickly leaving him and his conveniences behind.

He glared down at me. I saw his eyes, blank and frozen. But they also had a barely perceptible glimmer in them.

The blessed bastard then bent halfway. His face right in front of mine. From the smallest aperture that my eyelids could manage, I saw his dead, shark eyes light up, like a coin being flipped. As all his self-doubt dissolved into a vicious, viscous slurry of liquid menace. Must be because he sensed that I might be somewhat conscious.

Beast clenched his fist tightly. Primed himself up. Then, without warning, he sprang up in a snap. Like a hamster jolted nasty with a cattle-prod. Landed a huge uppercut on my jaw. I toppled backwards with the chair. Hit my head on the floor. More blood flowed out into the already clotting mass from before. My eyes were wide open now. The light turned from opaque to liquid.

Again my perspective was down on the floor. Felt like the day was trying hard to get me used to it. It was miserable to be inconvenienced. All this adrenaline, but that thought suddenly felt really sleepy. It was weird, the thought felt sleepy, not me. And the thought also felt too worn out. And the long drawn out ceremony wasn't helping.

The beast bent down, hands on his bent knees, and looked at me with a questionable, quirky and cocky expression. As if I was supposed to offer some remark, repartee, at least a few good old raw expletives.

I didn't fell like saying anything.

The gorilla looked at me, toppled on the floor, stuck to the chair, and said, 'You okay?, giving me a big crooked slimy grin that was outright gross, without even trying to appear concerned. He was chewing on some kind of Khat or something, and his black drool fell in spurts all over the place. I felt like puking acid on his gator shoes.

He knew what I was thinking, and spitting out intentionally this time, he said, 'You are lucky. I had a bit of a pyromanic phase some while ago, before this'.

'Ya. I feel lucky', I said plainly.

Burly and surly. Bad poetry he was. Bad code.

'Everything is', Alice said in her infinite cynicism.

'At least he's not pretentious', she added.

A little struggle, the guy managed to pull the chair back up. Me on it. He pondered a while, wondering whether to go, for like another iteration of the blow.

Chose the verbal route instead.

Another crooked smile, and he said, 'Sorry. All this could have been avoided. But unfortunately I forgot my dyslexia pills. I....well....tend to act out when that happens.'

His voice was flat, not hoarse or emphatic as I had expected.

I couldn’t figure out which scenario would've bode better for us. Being swallowed whole by a whale and eating my way out seemed more enticing than his drawn out peaceful torture with his dyslexia pills.

'The wanker is a moron,' Alice said. 'A bloody bastion of blatant bullshit.'

'There are no pills for dyslexia'. She, at least, was emphatic.

'Really?', I grunted.

The guy looked at me and asked, 'What?'.

'What?', I said.

He kept looking at me. I averted my eyes. He let out a snort of laughter.

My matted hair, caked with blood, dry and wet. Felt like dead grasshoppers sticking to each other in a bloody field of locusts and pesticides.

'How do I turn the music off?', the cultural connoisseur asked.

'Or, you could just let it play', I said to him.

His forehead crumpled, then settled back, and he nodded the one at me.

He then asked me, 'Who's Alice? Like......Wife, girlfriend, mother?', pointing to the urn of ashes on the mantle piece. It had the name engraved on it in small lettering. Sharp eyes, the ugly dude had. But he didn't know that it didn't actually have any ashes. It was purely symbolic.

'It's the parrot's name', I said. That part was true. We both looked at the stupid bird still perched in its place.

'But the bird is here, like .... Alive, ya?', he asked, with a surprisingly straight face.

'Ya, it's from the future, ….the urn', I replied business like.

The non-answer didn't infuriate or even rattle him a little. Not what I'd expected.

Riling people up! Best way to make them lose control, make a mistake. Wasn't quite working here though.

Rather, he went all space science.

Said, 'That makes the bird, from the past, no future...umm...no, past....or.....', and then he faded out.

'Okay', he then said after a while. Shook his head and looked to the floor. As if trying to figure out if everything was dead simple or infinitely convoluted.

Vivaldi's Winter played on. Perfect cosmic background score of desiccated damnation. Almost illogically profound, chemically visceral, physically forbidding. Mind mashing. Emotion thrashing. Spirit trashing. Soul crushing. Hope crashing. Like a frozen lasso tugging and pulling people from their hearth. Till the howling snow covers everything, before settling into the eerie silence of desolation again. Vivaldi had died piss poor, but that figures. Ecstasy of such sublime grim could only originate in a soul wretched as hell. 'Manifest destiny', some say, but I don't get it.

Guy went over by the fireplace again. By now it had a roaring fire going. He picked up the prodding iron kept beside the pit. Swirled and twirled it. Like an extraterrestrial trying out his first earthly object. He then shoved it into the flames. Left it there. I couldn’t help but think that I was about to be manifest destined to be acquainted with it. Up close. Pretty soon.

Guy walked over to the duffel bag again. Squatted by it. Fished out what I imagined was the last item. A large rolled up, worn out rubber mat. He put it on the chair facing me and rolled it open. Inside were glistening steel paraphernalia. Exquisite tools of elegant torture. Neatly laid out. Looking clean and new, almost like polished silverware. Didn't have a smell though. I'd thought there would be some kind of musty smell when he rolled it open, seeing the condition of the mat.

'Nice' Alice remarked. 'I would love to have one.'

'And do what?', I asked, 'Dissect cockroaches?'

'I learn the unnamed arts', she said cinematically.

'There is no such thing', I said.

'You have no imagination', she declared.

Now lookie here', I told her. 'If there was imagination in yours, it wouldn't be unnamed, now would it?'

''That's the imagination', she declared emphatically.

It was exhausting talking to her.

I looked at the mat again. Perfect reflecting surfaces they also were. And, from the angle he was standing, I saw some twenty heads of the guy in them. Some slenderman like, on concave surfaces. Some bloated as hell, on convex surfaces. Some small. Some big. Some obscure. Some hideous. All repulsive. A hydra with so many heads that it's nauseating just to look at them all.

He came to me and gave me the first jab of something from a syringe.

Dreariness. Confusion. Impatience. All of those were gnarling me. But inexplicably, unexpectedly, astoundingly, all those feelings petrified and crumpled into dust. Like, suddenly, all my dread depleted in one go.

Then I realized why. He had given me the happy stuff.

I said to him, 'You don't partake? Like, we could both get happy and watch some tele, order some takeout, you know'.

'I would've gotten married if that's what I wanted', he said.

'What would be so bad about getting married?', I asked.

'What would be so good about it?', he said.

I would have been at least a little terrified by now, but happy that the dab had made me, there was something else that sublimated any formal fear.

The swirling vortex of bad entropy was already mad dogging me. And I was already half way to hell. But the devil told me that I wouldn't reach all the way down. At least not today. Simply because of inelegance. The beleaguered fellow's fly was open, and honest to devil, there was a fly buzzing and flying around it.

'I was enjoying myself all this while', Alice said, 'but things are getting too gross'.

Suddenly it felt like everything was melting, around its own solid core.

'Well', I told Alice, 'This dab is something'.

Guy went back to the bag again.

Alice said, 'I'm bloody curious to see what else is required that's not already here. I genuinely hope it's something really fun and exotic'.

'Fun?' I asked. 'You need to get your blood-work done'.

'As long as it flows', she said.

'Anyways, where was I?', she went.

'Ya, something really novel', she went on. 'Something state-of-the-art and shit. Like an awesomely engineered guillotine designed to be knocked down to fit inside a bag. I mean.......you know?......so long as we are speculating'.

But we never got to find out what the last object was. Guy changed his mind. Some relay switched its parity in there. Never reached into the bag. Left us to our own conjectures, caprices, and curiousness.

Alice said, crestfallen, 'Maybe he was just looking for his copy of Asshole Monthly'.

A momentary silence.

There was something slowly stirring, churning, deep below the waters of my placid surface. Felt like it would reach the surface and then burst into the room, but then the room and its objects started changing colors.

Then Alice said, 'Bro, your habitat should have proper appurtenances for Black Swan events like this...like, you know? Weapons hidden strategically, like in the movies'.

'Appurtenances? Black Swan?', I said. 'Now's the time to be a professor of strategy and literature?'

'What's this thing about people and time?', Alice sighed. 'This later, that then. It stupefies me. What's wrong with now?'

'You ever heard the term – A time and a place?', I asked her.

'That would work only if time is linear', she said. 'But it isn't.'

There was no way I was going to indulge her further.

'But I do have appurtenances', I told her.

The guy's back was turned on me. I reached into my boots. Thick, plush boots. Made a stellar job of keeping the knife hidden there inconspicuous. I pulled it out. It was an expensive one. A Microtech Halo that Sam had gifted me years back. It was one fine blade.

The brute hadn’t done me much of a frisking. I sliced into the zip-ties, on both my hands and legs. Cut them just enough for me to tear through with a snap. I waited. Weapon concealed in my grip as best as I could manage.

‘He won’t know what hit him’, I said to Alice.

‘That’s what happened to you in the first place, you dimwit, duffer, doofus,' she said.

'He drugged and sucker punched me', I protested.

She said, 'That's like a fat kid saying he couldn't pass because things were out of syllabus'.

'Why does the kid have to be fat?', I asked.

'I like fat kids', Alice replied. 'Poor tubs of lard are constantly bullied'.

The homicidal majesty turned around. Looked at me a little dubiously. Furtively surveyed the room once again. Eyes darting all around. But his eyes had a peculiar ability that I hadn’t seen before. Or even knew was possible. Each of his eye balls independently looked at different directions, dimensions, denominations. Like some lizards have. Cold blooded that he was.

But his restlessness was rubbing off on me too.

‘You looking for a soda or something?’, I called out to him.

Guy didn’t react to it at first.

Then the scruffy bloke came and stood right in front of me again. He closed his eyes. The lines on his face grew more intense and foreboding. He opened them. Took a couple of steps back and forth. Stomping the ground that he had just conquered, primate like.

'A soda would be good', he then said.

Before I could engage with him further to process the situation, he walked away. Went over to the fridge. Ignored the soda. Pulled out a tub of ice cream. Carefully placed it on the slab. Then fidgeted around for a spoon.

He looked at me and said, 'On the second day of being a recruit, my commander ordered me to drive with him. In the middle of the night. To the middle of nowhere'. He started telling me a story. I listened.

The quite talented storyteller spoke on, but there was something in his voice that always made it feel like he was talking to himself.

'There were six soldiers in the truck bed. For almost two hours, me and another callow recruit dug a hole. About 15'x12'. The commander then made a call. A dilapidated refrigerated ice cream van rumbled in slowly. Back parked at the edge of the hole. The rear door opened up. First the sickening smell. Then a sluice of dark vile liquid poured out of the van. Water mixed with human juices. Bile, sweat, blood, and the epithelial rot.'

'Inside were the bodies of two women and two men, and about an year old boy. Civilians. Co-lateral damage that the system wanted to hide.'

'And then the shelling started. Mortars blasting all around. The soldiers kept getting berserker. In their minds, manners, movements. Ordered us two to bury them as fast as possible. One moron even kept his rifle trained on us. I picked the baby up, but got a strange perception. Kind of like a mild sensation that the infant might still be alive. I put him on a slab. We buried the men on one side of the grave and the women on the other side, and covered it up. Putting a lot of chlorine, lye and bleach all over them that ice cream truck already had. The shelling went on. And the soldiers kept getting frantic and paranoid, constantly prodding us on. Our minds went blank. The only thing that was left was survival wreaking havoc, bouncing around in our cavernous skull'.

'Then they started their vehicle, and we made a run for it. Lest they left us behind'.

'In all that mad rigmarole and manic mayhem, we forgot about the infant boy. We reached camp before dawn. I went back on my bike and reached the spot. It was still quite dark. By my bike's light I saw about three or four dogs feasting on several severed parts of him'.

He looked up at the ceiling. Gave a long sigh. Then said, 'Ya! That’s why I can't have ice cream anymore.' He kept saying all this while digging into the ice cream tub in front of him like a shameless sodomite of a slob.

The overdressed swine came over to me, ice cream tub in hand. He stood, staring at me continuously with squinted eyes over the tub while spoon after spoon glugged down his throat.

He looked like he was trying hard to feel the rush of towering over someone. But his brooding nature, barely composed restlessness, dismayed expression, they were all over the place. Betrayed the fact that he wasn't quite getting the rush. Only savouring the dessert was all he was capable of at one time.

The guy then blinked his eyes. Extended his neck out, squinted, and looked into mine, with eyes that went pretty quickly from passive, to pensive, to piercing. His forehead crumpled in bored anxiety and worldly irritations. He kept that pose for almost another minute, continuing to stare intently at me. Made things terribly awkward. His crocodile grin, his crocodile shoes, his acid breath, his vinegar eyes, they were all way too close for comfort.

My focus averted and returned back to him several times. His never wavered. The slightly forward, perfectly still posture, in his tall lanky frame, made him look like a spear headed for me that got frozen midway. Or more like a troll petrified to stone by the sun.

But his facial expressions were in constant flux.

I saw him. He was getting rapidly intoxicated by his dawning sense of control. And the power to unleash it on me at his whim. The look on anyone who knows he has a noose around the other guy's neck. It was the look of a slightly veiled threat. A sharp sense of invincibility. And a subdued, but critical anxiety, to nail something or someone. Just to wield the hammer. Just to experience the furiously flowing fantastic feeling of wielding the hammer.

In his case though, there also was an almost imperceptible smirk that perpetually assaulted his already hideous face.

The power went out, the generators kicked in. The music stopped. It wasn't connected to the backup line.

This sudden alteration in the environment led to the last spoonful of ice cream to roll down his suit and land on crotch of his pants, settling there, and some getting inside. Even I felt a little sorry for the guy.

I looked for the fly that was buzzing around there earlier, but couldn't find it.

Then the silence erupted. It shrouded everything. But it wasn’t a sharp and incisive silence. It was a wet and sloppy one. We were all stuck to the position we were in. The silence prevailed for a few moments. I got bored. Looked at Alice. Whistled her the intro riff to a track by the German industrial metal band. Which, for some reason, was her favourite. But they did actually have some pretty groovy riffs that were refreshingly simple.

Immediately, she flew into her loud, eldritch screechings again. Mimicking the tune, but at a much higher pitch. Unearthly like. Flowing across some uncanny valley.

'Shut the fuck up', the guy screamed. Reaching the highest decibel level he could manage. It had a reverse effect.

Alice's pitch and intensity both increased drastically. And a little while later, she quieted down a little, But kept making dramatic, spasmodic noises. Taunting the guy.

He furiously tried to get the ice cream off of his crotch. But it came across as a terribly homoerotic rage at the edge of castration.

He stopped, composed himself, and then the knucklehead stared into my eyes again. I genuinely wished he would stop doing that. Finally, his face broke out into the same ugly grin again. But this time ice cream drooling from his teeth.

He said to me, 'You are a wise guy, aren't you?'.

'What's that?', I asked.

Guy didn't reply immediately. He paused, like for dramatic effect. Paced the width of the room like a hypnotized rat on acid. He was the very embodiment of crackhead energy, tweaking constantly, rocking back and forth. He was definitely jacked on something, I could tell.

He then remarked, 'I like wise ass guys, they break differently. Each one with his unique idiosyncrasy, tactics, and mind games. But that's what makes it, err....fun!....Yes'.

'Yes, yes....fun', he repeated, like getting lost within a loop of his own words. He then resumed his oscillating routine.

He stopped again. Laughed loudly. But more like snorted. Deep, heavy and shrill all at once, and grotesque.

'He's definitely juiced up', Alice said. 'And his pendulating behaviour is permeating him psychosomatically'.

I looked at the guy. Then my eyes rested back on the few glistening drops of red on my jacket.

I called out to the pendulating bloke, 'Don't you just hate the feeling....you know? When uninvited guests try to kill you in your own house without introducing themselves?'

Saying that, somehow, kind of depleted my energy. Any more vitriolic sarcasm felt....like....so shallow and tedious. I didn’t know why.

But the resonance was doing its invisible magic and I found myself getting kind of a fidgety leg syndrome, in time with Alice's noises, and his gait.

He replied in question, 'What does that say about you?'

'Than, umm', I said, 'that most of the time I don't know what the hell is going on?'

He didn't say anything to that then.

Seeing and sensing the coming storm, I said, 'Man, you should lighten up'.

A momentary silence. Then he said chuckled and said, 'I am all light? Lightened up. Cool cat.'

'Cool cat?', Alice said. 'No one has said that shit in like seventy years!'

'I'm sure you are', I said to him, but it inexplicably made him more restless.

He looked to the ceiling and said, as if to himself, 'There is no 'What the hell is going on'. There is only hell going on'.

It was real surreal to hear him speak like that. Felt like I was in a bad dream sequence inside of a gonzo novel.

Alice said to me, 'When people say stuff like that, it makes me want to share....like....you know?.... talk about my feelings and shit, stretched out in a goofy comfy couch'.

A small high stool that stood in a corner caught his eye. The not white collar guy went over to it. On it was a single image of my deity on a frame. He took out a few incense sticks from the pack kept beside. Lit them up. He held the sticks in his hand. No air of urgency ruffling his pace. He circled them around the image. Bowed his head. Closed his eyes. Seemed to offer a silent prayer.

I didn’t expect that. The parody, if it was one, was so extreme, I couldn’t reliably distinguish it from the real deal.

Then the disappointment looked at me kind of disappointed, his ugly grin in place, and made a motion as if he was going to knock everything off the stool. But he stuck the incense sticks into the stand, got up, and walked back.

'What the hell was that?', Alice exclaimed.

Acting like my strings of consciousness were losing their vibration, I mumbled something under my breath. The 'cool cat' came back to me. Asked, ‘What?’. I uttered something almost inaudible again. Guy brought his ear just next to my mouth.

‘Now!’ Alice screamed in my head.

The survival instinct that creation imbues us with, makes wolves chew their paws off to escape a trap. The same primal instinct had supercharged every muscle in my body. Unfortunately, I got to chew on something that’s not me.

I sunk my teeth into his neck. With all my might. Then, with a smooth, seamless motion, I plunged the knife into his gut. All the way to the hilt.

I had no intention of biting the flesh off of his neck. But the speed and intensity with which he recoiled did it for me. Left me in the gross situation of his ripped off flesh and tissue in my mouth.

It took him a few long seconds to really comprehend what had just happened. Then staggered back a few steps, letting out loud groans. Reeling like his bowels were boiling. His face contorted. But seemed more with surprise and weird astonishment, than fear or pain, or loathing or anger. He knocked down the chair with the rubber mat behind him. The laid out tools went crashing down. His legs became spaghetti. He crumbled onto the floor.

But big fellow had stamina and resilience. I had barely managed to pull myself up from my chair, when I saw him trying to shake off the daze. He groveled around, looking to push himself off the floor like a springboard.

I should have knocked the knucklehead out while he was down. But my calculations had been off. I could free my legs. But hadn’t cut the zip-ties on my wrists enough. Couldn't detach them in one snap. So I found myself desperately and fervently trying to break free my hands. Before the bulldozer in front of me sloughed my way again.

Guy was up on his feet before I could break my restraints. One hand on the hilt of the blade, he reached into his pocket with the other. Pulled out his handkerchief. It was a satin one with, presumably his initials, embroidered in silk thread. Pristine, shiny, horrid, appalling.

'Look at this wanker!', Alice said. 'Who carries a thing like that? It's like medieval punk mafia high priest'.

Dull, pale blue, disagreeable colour of the satin. Triggered the defective, synaesthetic part of my brain. Left me with a chemical taste of rotten blue exploding in my mouth.

'Unsubtle is so unsettling', Alice went.

'And just for the crime of silk over satin alone, he will end up with.....umm....having silkworms lay eggs in his ears. That's my curse', she concluded.

’Your curse?', I asked. Sometimes she could be rib tinglingly ghoulish. Even while being perpetually pale and cynical.

'Yeah', said Alice. 'I'll dedicate my time to making ill omens that would register on his Richter scale when they land.'

'Can we at least get to know what's going on before all that,' I asked Alice, and then she said, 'by all means'.

Handkerchief out, guy clasped it on his neck, clutching it over his bitten wound. He then pulled the knife out. Thick spurts of blood sprayed out. A lava fountain swirling red. Spouting continuous streams of darkening liquid. Most likely, his celiac artery had been nicked. The knife had had kept the gap plugged.

He then crashed into my book-shelf, spraying a thousand red droplets on it. Books and notebooks came flying out, and all got sprayed with drops of red.

He dropped on his knees, holding his handkerchief on his neck and slowly trudged along on all fours.

Alice said,' He looks like like a dog with a feline hanging on to its neck for dear life while he's desperately trying to straddle a donkey.'

The amount of blood was staggering. So staggering, it shook something loose in his head. He looked at all that blood. Looked at me. Got up, and then came at me with a hell-shattering, malevolent scream. Shrieking like a hyena being sodomized.

He lunged at me with the knife, aiming for my heart. All I could do was spit out the bloody mass in my mouth and raise my arms as a shield. The blade went clean through my right palm, the momentum breaking the zip-tie around my wrists. It plunged into my shoulder. Pinning my hand to it. He desperately tried to pull it out for a second attack. Couldn’t. Deep into my collar bone the knife had lodged. Wouldn’t budge.

‘Nicely done, you nitwit, num-nut, nincompoop’, Alice said, in her monotone.

It was all so messy. Like really maxed out, to the power messy.

The brute and me stood facing. Looking at each other furtively. Taking stock. Anticipating moves. A short lull. An inaudible ballad of dueling cowboys. But I didn’t quite feel like a cowboy. I felt like I was in an unannounced unprepared audition for a cowboy role in a C-movie. Brief moment of pin drop silence. Suddenly violenced by a loud, space shattering, high-pitched burst. Cursed goddamn parrot had started shrieking again. This time at a super-parrot volume. The piercing, abrasive sound made us both cringe. We both looked at her. She fluttered her wings a few times and changed tune. This time in a sharp voice that also bled with some heavy overtones. Almost baritone like. Screaming, ‘Ahyouu! Ahyouu! Ahyouu!’. The battle between 300 Spartans and King Xerxes was her favorite movie.

We got our eyes back to each other from the bird. Another long stare. This time, the look on the poor dude was kind of empty confusion, rather than any tumid animosity.

My only recourse - depend on my other arm. Wouldn’t amount to much though, it being my non-dominant hand and all.

I slowly took a few steps back. Reached the fireplace. Bent down a little. With my left hand, reached back and rummaged for the prodding iron that I knew was in there. Kept my eyes on my adversary. The flames seared my hand. A shrill groan escaped my mouth.

‘Don’t squeal like a swine being gutted’, Alice said.

The squarehead realized what I was going for. Wasted no time. Charged at me. Just time enough, for me to find the metal stake, grasp it and swing it half a circle. It neatly sliced the side of his stomach. It was a massive blow. His balance turned turtles. He went down hard and rolled a distance. I let go of the rod. Couldn't hold on to the scorching metal with my now burnt left hand.

Shock-wave from the attack had rippled through me too. The jolt from the maneuver unpinned the blade from my shoulder. Was still stuck through my palm though.

‘Pull it out!’ Alice exclaimed. Easier said.

I gave it a go. Tried to to pry the knife out. No joy. The partially molten, excoriated skin of my left palm was slippery. It was too agonizing to get a firm grip.

‘This guy is done', Alice said.

We looked down at the fallen killer sprawled out on the floor.

Calm as I wanted to be, tried to be, I was in the inescapable throes of violent upheaval. Didn’t know what to do. How to find release.

Only my tiny lizard brain, on an overdose of cortisol, adrenaline and dopamine, was active. Pure instinct. Raw, unfiltered emotion.

'Go on, put him out of his misery', Alice prodded me on, 'When the dogs of war are in your head, you'll have to find a target.'

The guy was moaning and slithering. Slaked and slathered in his own crimson. The pool of blood was large. Flowing and spreading. Congealing and coagulating. More effusing from his stomach. Soon looked like half of his blood had been lost. The draining blood had also drained most of his energy. Dissolving in it his ordinary sense of life.

Didn’t look like he had it in him to get up. He lay there. He grimaced and groaned. Squirming like a giant radioactive worm.

I knelt over his chest, him prostrate on the floor. Asked, ‘Who the fuck are you?'.

Guy didn’t utter a word at first. Only his face contorted into a fiendish smirk. This pushed my buttons further. And I desperately wanted to unleash the wounded beast in me. Only the flimsiest thread of self-restraint held me back.

Suddenly his face became soft. So soft, it defied belief. 'I want to go home', he then said, two parallel tears streaking down. But the guy was already reptilian. So those may well be well deployed crocodile tears.

'Is crocodile a reptile?', Alice asked.

'I have no idea', I replied. 'But it's quite a relevant question now!'

'See', she pointed. 'There you go again. Time!'

'Because time is always the enemy', I said.

'At least not for me', she uttered, with a wee bit of glee. Only occasionally did her spurts of emotion rise like tiny spikes over her pathologically psychotic baseline.

But my instincts were correct. The guy did turn out to be more sly than I had accounted for. He was the one who had been feigning now. Some time, during all of this, he had discreetly managed to grab a scalpel from the floor. During the fight. From the leather wrap's tumbled spill. Guy had it hidden away under his body.

Mustering the last remnants of spirit still left in him, he took the scalpel out. In a quick, unobtrusive move, still lying down, he swung it at me. His final stand. But the glint off the blade had luckily caught my eye. I pivoted back. The scalpel only managing to scratch my chin a deep one. Only later did I realize how much luck mattered in these situations.

The power switched back to primary. The music was audible again. Caught the guy off guard. I’m as much of a martial artist as a neanderthal playing ninja. But luck, instinct, reflex, and some more luck, found me. Found me use his own momentum against him. Catching the arm, completing the arc, driving the scalpel into his shoulder. A move that would have pleased any Aikido master.

Along with the scalpel, the knife already stuck through my palm pierced him too. The two blades, my hand, and his shoulder, erupted in a burst of glorious red. Like a gratuitous, Dionysian orgy in blood, as Summer Presto came to a thunderous conclusion.

I pulled my hand away. The knife through my palm ejected from his shoulder. The scalpel remained stuck in there.

Too much goddamn blood! Had turned the pale canvas of my living room from Pollock to Rothko. It scattered all thoughts. Aggravated all emotions. Dispensed all reason, distorted space and time. Short circuited all wiring.

With the blade penetrating, sticking out of his shoulder now, instead of mine, I wondered whether the universe has more a sense of ignoble irony, or horrendous humour. Or if they were the same.

A solemn pause. Alice whispered, ‘Wow! That was like…..well...., biblical!’.

'It was mad', I told Alice.

'Ya. Maybe a little', she said.

'No', I said. 'I mean mutually assured destruction'.

'Okay', she replied in her same monotone.

By now, I had mellowed down a little, after the initial frenzy. Didn’t want to kill in cold blood.

'What say you?', I asked Alice.

'Oh! The gleaming drops of red!', she said. 'That's all I can look at. That's all I can think of. Why is it much more red than any I've ever seen on canvas or celluloid?'

Bach came next on the playlist. Violin Partita in D Minor. The saddest of all keys. `

Poignant but spirited. Resigned but hopeful. Traumatic but solacing. All that shit. All at the same time. The notes started with a monochromatic feeling. But it mutated and sublimated in different hues. Undefined cravings of every colour scorching its way out of the tapestry of shining black. Only to be stranded alone. In the dismal dark. A foggy and forlorn darkness that prowls on the outskirts of the soul till it finds a way in. In different orbits. But the notes had their own planetary center. No matter how much or how far the notes strayed, it would always stay in its. Like unrest and cure at the same time. Like being home and far from it at the same time.

The tone, the tempo, the timbre of so many notes etched, eroded, and re-etched into the mind, soul, spirit and space. The notes floating, settling briefly, only to be blown away by the slightest breath. But there is some anti-luminescence in there too. And the more empty your heart is, the more you find it. Even as time immolates and space folds itself around the subtlest scratching of the strings. Sending your soul crashing and crushing into a wall of despair screaming silence. A long descent into dissent, which then the slow rising note itself tries to quell. A perfect precise painstaking portrait, but never an academic treatise. Here the gargoyles listened with the angels and the mortals. As the music flowed and spread out, it was like the consummate embrace of the Om and the ominous.

Like the ghost notes of Gregorian chants on a foundation of a banshee's screaming curse. Rising like molten lava from the core of the earth itself. Harmonizing vulnerability with blistered musical notes. Even as the agitated but solemn vibrations of the threads diffused into the nebulous of the ether. Pleading the last case for humanity to succumb to something better, before the scorching chaos of crumbling civilizations in decay, far beyond the point of resurrection, arrives with its sedate black eyes of nihil that obliterates everything that is worthwhile.

But then, right at the edge, the anguish dissipated. Decimated into an ether inside of that ether. The vibrations together made themselves their own eternal abode. Dying, dissolving, disappearing into it. Words and thoughts left behind. The music gradually fading away. I thought that this exact sonic performance, and every other, would forever be alive. To be heard again. Long from now. By those who have learned to read the ether.

Every violent or subtle quivering of the bow created sheets of frozen sound that cascaded and bled into each other. Before shattering and falling apart all around. And then the music built itself again. Each note slightly dissonant from the next. But together forming a plumage that drew all the right notes in under its canopy, that conflated into a fall of discordant shadows.

Things created in blood, no matter how short their lifespan in the universe is, resonates the most through the ages. Like it's a subatomic law or something.

A solo violin. A spartan approach. The music's unembellished. So kind of unblemished too. Austere. Like life in its unadorned state. The bare futility, the human condition, the bleeding of the soul. That eats itself. Till only the head remains. And then the cosmos births the body again. And the serpentine circle continues. While the celestial fabric of freedom and escape is bent and shaped by the heavenly and the diabolical. Dancing and diving in the dust till eternity. It's a pilgrimage. A dirge that deluges every levee of the soul. Till the waters sweep you away. Crashing you into mountains which are Gods themselves. And then the Gods rupture. Leaving the mountains empty. Wanting. Wailing. And waiting for the wailing of the green forest spirits to sheath the naked mountains again.

Alice said, 'Music is one of the few places where sadness can exist without bitterness'. Like she had another fucking epiphany or something.

The music had patched my frayed nerves somewhat. Further pacifying the rage that had almost split me apart.

I rolled off the guy. Sat leaning against the wall. Both of us battered and bleeding out. Ravaged by fragility of fermented fate and curious circumstances. All the unfortunate chances and devious turns that had led to this moment.

Now that my baser instincts had been somewhat assuaged, I felt a little sympathetic towards the degenerate.

‘What happens now, man?’ I asked him. Still trying to elicit a response that could grant me an opportunity to figure out what the hell was going on.

The guy stopped writhing and groaning. His focus now back on me. Both ends of his lips pursed upwards just the slightest bit. Like he was about to say something. But remained locked and trembling, as if stifling a scream. Like he arrested himself from inadvertently giving away what he wasn’t supposed to. Though, at this stage of affairs, for what possible reason I couldn’t fathom.

A moment later, with some effort, he spoke. Slow and low, ‘They are coming’.

‘Who's coming?’, I asked. With a tone somewhere between vehement and pleading.

'Those who never smile. Those who never forget. Those who never hold back. Those who only regret when they have to stop'.

I had no idea what the dude was mumbling, and asked, 'What the hell you talking about?'. He didn't reply.

A moment of silence. He then laughed loudly, sardonically, bitterly, acrimoniously. All of that was in his one big laugh. Like the immutable wisdom of the aurora had sparked his brain that no one's coming for him. As if he finally understood the cosmic joke, the heartbeats and the soul bleats of a of the soul crushing frugality of a caprine life.

With some effort, he picked himself up to a sitting posture. He then uttered hoarse incomprehensible grunts. Rocking slightly, while hunched like a scornful simian.

He sighed heavily. Shook his head violently as if the bones in his neck had transmuted into cartilage. He then kind of wizened out. Leaving me to my own thoughts and devices.

We waited in silence. Other than occasional groans of mutual agony. But his breath grew more and more feeble. The air grew strangely sad, slow, smothering, yet somehow serene.

I asked, 'You there?'

‘Hmm’ was all he said.

I wanted to keep him talking. So I asked him, 'Are you O+ve?'

'What? You have blood bags in your freezer?', he asked, with his trademark crooked smile.

I raised my eyebrows and looked straight at him.

Guy refrained from grabbing that thread further. Broaching any more blood and death ensembles etched in the air and skies, shrines and tombs, stones and canvas. Instead he asked, ‘What is the music that is the playing?’

‘It is Bach’, I replied.

‘Bach!’, he repeated, as if the name pleased him.

'This is some sublime shit', he said, eyes closed, moving his head to the trailing, enrapturing, enveloping notes.

He then opened his eyes, looked at me and said. Like revealing a secret, 'But the subversive sun's coming up'.

'What the hell is he talking about?', Alice asked.

'Maybe a concussion', she herself replied. 'Like rewired neurons. Misfiring synapses. Thermionic porridge of cerebral matter and vibrations now churned into a cold incomprehensible sludge.'

The fellow was so far gone, it somehow made me bitter and sad. So sad that it lulled me into a short sad sleep. And I dozed off for a few minutes. Behind my REM eyes, dreams unfolded their veneer on a canvas of doom. I saw a massive field inside a stadium. Huge excavating metallic beasts were scooping out the earth all over the place. The grinding machinery, their crashes, bumps and rakes seemed to be chanting their own mechanical anthem with a blood-metal aura. The machines left. Leaving behind a huge gaping pit. Then the people came, sinners and saints, thieves and peasants, presidents and poets, soldiers and singers, monks and mendicants, princes and paupers, the vile and the vilified, the famous and the frauds, the apothecaries and the atheists, the believers and the barbarians. They were all carrying their music. Not only their instruments, like pianos, guitars, drums, cello, violins, flutes and even hurdy-gurdies. But also Tapes, CDs, Cassettes, Vinyl, Recorders, Music Players, Boomboxes, Mechanical Jukeboxes, Digital Consoles,....hell even their car radios. They all dumped their stuff into the abyss. Then took their seats, filling the stadium. From the depths of the pit the music emanated. And it played on. Music. The language.

Some screamed. Some danced. Some gyrated. Some played air instruments. Some sang along. Some moved obscenely. Some slowly. Some mimed conducting a phantom symphony. Some banged their heads to the metal. Some closed their eyes and seemed to lose themselves in classical realms. The younger ones played their air guitars and air drums.

But a few scattered clusters of people sat in blasé. Scorned the proceedings. They sat perfectly stationary. Like the terracotta army of sandstone, but sitting.

Suddenly Nietzsche materialized centre stage. The stadium erupted. And amidst all the cheering and the booing, it reached a crescendo enough to rupture the ear drums of adult virgins. Wearing black and red, Friedrich, he looked like the Anti-Christ himself.

"Those who are dancing were thought to be insane by those who couldn't hear the music'. He spoke the one statement and dematerialized.

Then the clusters dissipated and everyone joined in the mad revelry.

The music played on, and on, and on, till all that was ever created was exhausted.

And then the music stopped. And a dark living, flowing silence engulfed every nook and cranny of the stadium. And the psyche of the people who were witness to a legacy. The folks rose and left the arena. And then the phantoms came, wearing tattered cloaks of dust and ashes, a garland of human bones, sandstorms in their wake. To bury everything as deep as they could. Erase any and all clues to the existence of such a location.

The last music had been played. And nothing ever will play again.

I jolted awake from the grim dream. Trying to recall where my foggy mind had trailed off. Then the sloppy, wet, blood feeling reminded me instantly whence and where I was.

I saw the guy still swaying slowly, meandering his head in an elongated oblong orbit to the music. To me it looked like his whole hardened skull was somehow malleable, and parts of it came out in blobs that rejoined his head again. He looked at me and said, 'Bach is the real tits'.

I wanted to say something smart or funny, but instead felt jaded and indolent. Then followed the doleful damnedest depletion of my mind, body, spirit, soul, motivation. Aching to make a clean sweep of every blooming spirit. It took a while for humanity to flow through my veins again.

Guy said to me, 'Next on menu for me, if I get out, would be to hear more shit like Bach'.

'There's classical music, eh' , I told him. 'But there is no shit like Bach. Other than Bach himself'.'

A couple of minutes of silence followed.

Then the guy said, 'And if I don’t make it today, this music would be the best soundtrack for my demise. In here. In this final hospice. Couldn't have asked for a better requiem.'

Alice asserted, 'Savages. They always become philosophers in the face of impending demise'.

'I guess I should thank you', the guy said. 'I can't recall the last time I thanked someone'.

'What for?', I asked. Couldn't imagine what a guy dying by my hand could be thankful for. But he didn't reply.

‘You'll make it,’ I tried to affirm. Trying to lend his dissipating willpower a crutch. 'Then you can go back to making better life decisions'.

'That's not gonna happen', he said. 'Once you are in, you are never out.'

Trying to keep the withering middle-aged giant more in conscious conversation, I had to become loquacious. Something that’s never been in my arsenal. I said to him, 'Bach once improvised a six part Fugue. The mental prowess, let alone the creative sublimity, required to improvise a six-part fugue, is supposed to be like....umm....akin to the playing of sixty simultaneous games of chess, while blindfolded, at a professional match. And like winning them all!’.

‘That's pure fucking holy blessed bloody genius', I added.

The guy didn’t respond. So I checked, 'Are you there?’ He gave a monosyllabic acknowledgment of ‘Yeah’.

I looked at the guy for more of a response. His eyes were open. But the rising and falling of his chest, was barely perceptible.

I felt a seed of remorse trying to plant itself in my mind.

'Maybe I should have cauterized his wound or something?', I said to Alice.

'Remorse!', Alice responded. 'We don't do remorse'.

'We don't?', I asked.

'Nopes', she said. 'We are not all people.'

'And', then, she continued. 'Remorse is for the dead'. Remorse throws you in the quicksand, and then you don’t know what’s worse. A drowning body. A sinking mind. Or a stinking despair. The burden of remorse is damnation of the soul itself. It carves into you a million holes. You try to run. But find no way back home. Try to stitch yourself up. But you know that you'll never be whole'.

Insolent poetry again from Alice. She was definitely stoned even in the afterlife.

'You practice that shit in front of a mirror?', I asked.

'Your mind. My mirror. Wisdom's reflection. Life's revelation', she said calmly.

'Sorry I asked', I said.

The guy had been struggling for breath. Groaning. Gasping. Sitting on the floor. For long. As I watched on, suddenly his demeanor took a completely different turn. He lay back down. With eyes more vacant than glass beads, he stared up at the ceiling. Continued to keep staring at it. His body transfixed. His disposition still. No more jerky movements or moans. It was like the Athanor painting hanging in my office, the body fusing into the cosmos.

With a blank face, devoid of any recognizable trait, he started talking. A low, monotonic drone.

But what he spouted was another bout of the three most eloquent languages - absolute gibberish, pure gobbledygook, and serrated nonsense. Couldn't make head or tail of it.

Alice said, 'Maybe the lizard man's communicating with his lizard brethren in their mother-ship.

'Hokum? That's all we get?', Alice added, annoyed, as the guy started talking more slowly. Which was sorry, spity, sloppy and solemnly slurry shity. 'That's all it is. Fucking exasperating. At least people leaving their mortal shell should say something witty, philosophical, profound, terrifyingly, or at least cringy. And, like you said. impending deaths make philosophers out of us all.'

'I didn't say that, you did', I told her.

'Did I', all she said.

She continued, 'But not this guy here. His mind's a goner.'

Guy started talking in such a hoarse whisper, I had to really strain my tympanic membrane, to glean his undulating, unintonated, slurred speech, without having to bring my own neck close to his mouth. Lying there, still, as if in the deathly silence of an unexcavated tomb, he went on. Like 'Now I understand', he kept repeating'. Cryptic sayings read from etched hieroglyphics. Like mummies chanting messages channeled from the other side. Right from the dark depths of their sun-blind sarcophagus.

Alice said, 'Little disconcerting to hear the ramblings of a mind lost on the outskirts of a Gothic nightmare. Under falling skies. Under crumbling lies. Under bruised, bellowing minds. Under blighted, blasted life.'

Almost an apparition, the guy went on. In a trance like semiconscious state. Each sentence a little softer than the previous one. A mix of the ordinary and the entirely flagrant. Mindbogglingly bizarre. Hearing him talk like this into the small hours of the decimating, dissipating night.

I sat there listening. Brain trying hard to follow every rippling wave of his madness, diving to the depths to find sense or substance. But always coming up short sighted. Bare handed. Behooved yet blinded.

Then the guy looked at me and said, 'What will you do now?'

I didn't know what to say. Had no idea.

The rising and falling notes of the violin ran rings around the guy's low, sustained voice. Like a serpent, twirling a corrosive bar of rusted metal. It was music that tugged at our heartstrings. Even though I was dead sure that, between the both of us, we only had half an heart.

It was easy to dismiss it all as the mind’s imaginary meanderings on losing its grip. Detaching its tether to the rational brainwaves. Creating phantasms to deal with the trauma. Igniting his fucked up fecund mind again. Which otherwise would most likely have only plagiarized thoughts, efficient clockwork maneuvers, and weariness. His face and confidence had taken a turn and he seemed to be ecstatic by the realization that unsavory, sundry misdeeds, were all that his life had amounted to.

Although his mind was probably bereft of any logically coherent remnants at this stage, he continued talking. Seemed like he was trying to get as many of his words, sounds and syllables out. Before something took his eloquence away, prematurely, permanently.

His hoarse barrage of n-dimensional sounds, like some screwed up Tibetan war horn,

'Does Tibet have a war horn?', Alice asked.

'You get the idea, so cut it out', I told her.

I looked at him to realize that no breath was escaping his body.

The floor started feeling much colder than before. My body felt like it was going into mortis. Last track over, the music died. I sat there. Draped under several layers of silent, invisible, indomitable shadows. Shadows that were trying to pull me down to where the darkness is ablaze. Nothing else to do, or rather, nothing else I could do. Other than to wait for fate to reveal its next hand.

I dozed off again, or I was hallucinating, I couldn't tell. I saw many versions of myself, a number of me, kneeling in a line, and I myself was the executioner in a white robe about to go to work.

Then I jolted back to reality again, only to keep on thinking, ''What do you do with wretched feelings?'

'You bury them or you spread them around', said Alice. 'What else can you do?'.