Red prepared for another night of forbidden pleasures. It seemed he could never get enough of the Pretty ones, the soft skinned, doe-eyed Pretty ones. It was a habit he couldn’t shake off, an itch that never ceased to itch, even after you’ve scratched the skin away. It was a part of him, they were all a part of him now; he would never be alone.
The dying sun waned in the horizon, leaving the sky in flames. There was a certain tragic feeling in that, something that made Red feel melancholic. He got up an put on his overcoat and gloves. In his left pocket were still some sweets… he always carried some with him. In the inside pocket was a pen-knife. On the other pocket, some condoms and tissue paper. He was ready for another night on the town.
But of late, he was getting tired of the Pretty ones. Tired of the same old boring routine, of the narrow escapes, the weird looks he got on the street. Tired of the fear in the Pretty ones eyes, of the way their little clammy hands clawed at his face in the dark, of the breathy voices, of the miserable measure of pleasure he got from their puny bodies.
He was getting tired of his life.
He needed something else. Something that would quench his desire for increasingly larger intervals, something that he could do to feel better without the danger of getting caught in a dark alley with blood under his fingernails and mud on his shoes. The lithium wasn’t working anymore. He was finding it harder and harder to keep his appointments with Dr. Channard, and on the streets it was too expensive to afford on his miserable welfare cheques. Red was suddenly feeling sick to his stomach about the idea of going out. But of course he did. How could he not?
He had been keeping an eye out for a new neighbourhood; it was far. After two buses and one subway ride, he was there. And playing in one of the gardens was a Pretty one. Red had no idea of its name, but he guessed his face spelled out Peter. He looked like a Peter. And the Pretty one played on, indifferent to the man on the other side of the street. It was night, but still before dinner time. He probably lived in one of the nearby houses; the same facade repeated over and over for the extension of the street. Soon the Mother would be out looking or this Pretty one. Too bad.

Red returned home late. His finger was wrapped in a handkerchief, still bleeding. Sweat pored from his forehead, and soaked his eyebrows. His heart thundered on, a lunatic trapped in his chest. The room reeled around him. He needed something to balance him off. Red took out the lithium from the medicine cabinet and downed some pills. He hardly remembered the exact dosage, but it didn’t matter. One day he would down every one, and to hell with it. To hell with the pain in his liver, to hell with his migraines, to hell with his spinal hernias. And to hell with the Pretty ones.
It had turned on him, this one. It had bitten him so savagely in his right thumb that he let him slip. Even when he chased him, he couldn’t behave up to the task. He was getting fat, Red was; he was getting too dull to focus on the hunt. After a few seconds of chasing this particular Pretty one, he slipped and fell down on an alley filled with restaurant garbage. After that, he knew it was over. The Pretty one’s screams would call out for undesired attention and he had to disappear quickly. He was lucky.
Next time, maybe next time, his luck would run out for good.

He felt a shudder of pleasure at the thought, and was surprised. He saw himself in a chair waiting for an injection, and felt the heat rise on him, like a warm blanket. He imagined how it would be to breathe in the toxic fumes while looking into the eyes of all the Pretty one’s relatives, and could feel it like a punch to the gut. The unmistakable pleasure of dread.
Red attended to his wound. It was deep, a semi-circular gash on the ball of his thumb, which repeated symmetrically on the back of his hand. The bloody handkerchief fell to the ground. He cleaned it up an bandaged it as neatly as he could. It eventually stopped bleeding, but he could still feel his hand throbbing away, in the dark, long after he’d turned off the lights.
He could not sleep. The routine had been broken, and no compensation given. The precarious balance of his mania was tilted, and demanded something else. But there would be nothing more to be had until the next day. The pills would have to do for now. He passed out with a metallic taste in his mouth, the taste of his own blood, as he kissed his sore thumb, lost in agitated, dreamless sleep.
The next day, he felt worse. He could barely move his wounded thumb, and the disorientation still hadn’t gone away. He woke up with the idea that someone was knocking on the door of his seedy apartment, someone come to drag him into jail, to be punished for the secret thing he’d done. Oh, Red knew the difference between Right and Wrong; he just couldn’t remember the time when he’d stopped caring about it. He felt a knot in his throat, a knot that refused to be swallowed no matter how hard he tried. There were words trapped inside it, a confession perhaps. Instead, all he could mumble in the solitude of his room was:
All I wanted was to be like the Pretty ones.
That was the feeling he’d been bottling up for so long. That was the reason why he chased them day after day, night after night, fantasizing, planning waiting. The reason why he wanted to touch them, smell them, caress them, eat them up whole if he could. Instead he had to content himself on the little strips of flesh in his refrigerator. Small pieces, mind you; pieces so small that the Pretty ones wouldn’t miss anymore. He always cut them gently, even when they were already motionless. He feared they might wake up suddenly. That the open eyes might still blink in amazement at the knife. Red got up and picked his breakfast from the refrigerator. He always ate it raw. Seasoning would only spoil its flavour.
As he ate in the kitchen, he let out small whimpers of pain every time he opened and closed his wounded hand, and suddenly felt very sorry for himself.

Red stumbled out of his house and covered his eyes against the noon sun. He went to the park, as usual, for his share of Beauty. There was a merry-go-round there, a sand-box, a playpen. On the way he bought a large newspaper, without caring for the front page. But something was different today. He felt awkward, much more than usual; it seemed like every one of the faces he passed by looked at him accusingly. Every one of the passers-by turned his head to watch him, dozens of pairs of eyes, all looking straight at him, staring, accusing, reproving.
Red’s brow wrinkled. He searched for his sunglasses, but had forgotten them at home. His gloves felt too hot, his hands were clammy inside. The sun beat upon him mercilessly, an avenging eye, all-seing. It too looked down on him, it too screamed silently the word that was going through Red’s mind: monster.
He felt like a man trapped in his own body. He stopped, unable to take another step. He slumped into a bench and looked at the ground, breathing quickly, trying to stifle the panic.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a shadow. It was a Pretty one. In fact, a group of Pretty ones. They were looking at him too, but his eyes Red could stand; such pretty long eyelashes. But these Pretty ones were too serious. One of them, he looked like a Jimmy, or maybe a Mark. He pointed at him. Stranger, he said. They all said. Strange, Stranger!
No doubt their family had told them to behave like that, because of so many Pretty ones disappearing of late. But Red didn’t realise that at once. All he could do was get and run. Run, run until he returned home.

His appetite was suddenly overwhelming; He ransacked his reserves on the refrigerator, hoping that a binge might release him of the black feeling inside. He gnawed at the strips, careless of his bloody bandaged hand, of the people outside, of the world. The world was dripping from his chin, filling his nostrils with its perfume. The world was in his mouth, in his belly. The kitchen was a space, hidden from all reality, his haven, his refuge. He was feeling wise again, with his bloody lips and hand. He licked his fingers, his hand; he ripped his bandages, maddened by desire. He put his mouth to the same spot the Pretty one had bitten him and put his mouth to it as well, kissing it, licking it. The world reeled with pain. He could feel the blood beating in his eardrums, and another sound seemingly from far, far away, a long low moan. A sound such as a horn would sound if played inside a mountain. Red was lost in his reverie, unable to come down for a second. The sound in his head was deafening now; he gasped for breath, he choked on a few bits of flesh and stumbled on the kitchen floor, defeated.

The light on the ceiling kept him company for a long time, spinning and spinning in his eyes. He felt cold on the greasy tiled floor, but couldn’t summon enough willpower to get up. The cacophony had ceased. He now felt numb. In front of him, the open refrigerator door poured even more cold into the room, along with the smell of spoiling flesh and fruit. Then Red saw it. The Pretty one at the door. The horrible Pretty one. He blinked once, twice. He stupidly reached his arm towards it, trying to see if it was real. The creature kicked his fingers away and smiled.
You… summoned us. Your intensity has reached out to us and we have come. This world’s pleasures,…they wane for you, do they not?
Red was still baffled with disbelief. The creature’s body was a collection of scars, some healed, but mostly not. His skin displayed a kind of blue discoloration, as if suffering from cyanosis. His puny body was also the thinnest thing he had ever laid eyes on. Covered only by a form of leather apron, he toyed with a pen-knife. Red’s pen-knife, probably taken from the overcoat discarded in a hurry on the living-room floor. Its short-trimmed raven’s wing hair was bobbed into a small knot on the top of its head. But the eyes, they were the most frightening part of the creature standing over Red. They were brightless, those eyes; and as black as midnight. Without eyebrows or eyelashes, they betrayed no expression or emotion. They gazed upon Red intently, as if examining a lying child for signs that he might cry at any minute.
Of course Red had been delusional before. Especially when high on Dr. Channard’s medications. But this… oh, this was new. Despite’s Red wish to start sobbing, he managed to sit up slowly and answer back:
I have felt like I have no hope of another tomorrow. All my pleasures have lost their meaning. Will you help me?
The creature answered back, flicking its black tongue over metal teeth:
We have in store new pleasures for you, new awakenings. We have come to show you a new art, a new experience. Will you partake of this our offer to you?

Red hesitated; all he wanted was to be able to abandon himself to a higher power, to obey, to discard all thoughts and desires in exchange for guidance. He wished slavery, so that his desires became inconsequential, meaningless, redundant. Now this delusion promised it again, and Red feared that as soon as he embraced it, he would wake in the greasy tiles, alone again.
The Shape asked again:
Will you partake of them of your own free will?
There was suddenly a hint of impatience in its voice. Red voiced his doubts.
Am I dreaming?
You have been dreaming your life away. This will be an awakening to end all your dreamless nights. After today, you will have no need of prophylactics, no more guilt, no more pointing fingers, no more hunger.
Red stood up.
I am yours, he sighed.
You always were, smiled back the creature. Shall we begin, then?

It was a rude awakening. Red could not have foreseen how rude. But a necessary one, at that. First he tried screaming, then begging, finally bartering. Nothing worked against the implements at work on him, skilfully dissecting every sinew, every nerve. They were undoing his old self, and remaking him again to the image of his dreams. He realised it now. Even when they tore him apart with hook and chain, they were only releasing the knots he’d had swallowed over the years, opening those areas of himself that he was too ashamed of, but that now were so lit up by feeling that he couldn’t bear the thought of losing them.
Finally, he let himself go. Along with his blood went all his memories, his anguishes, his hopes, however slim. He welcomed the void. Along with it came a new freshness to his tissues, a new blood: the bluish ichor that was the blood his new Lord.
He got up. The name Red meant nohing to him now; it was a fading memory of someone long lost and forgotten. A new aurora, forever frozen met his eyes. Ahead, the labyrinth stretched far away, as far as its inhabitants were willing to walk it. Gothic arches and bridges intercrossed and led to paths spent by thousands and thousands of bare feet. Up above, Leviathan ruled supreme, an icon of Symmetry and Order.
The puny one with the apron approached him. In silence, they met and in the fading memory of his old self, the newborn Gash seemed to remember those slender traces, that puny frame from some moment forever lost in time. But the feeling quickly faded.
They had their orders now, and pretty soon more would be willing to join their ranks. There was a war to be fought, tools to be sharpened. Soon, another monster, another supplicant, another crying woman would send its despair, its hunger, its desire over the Schism. It was merely a matter of time.

Meanwhile, the world of Flesh droned on, oblivious and lost in its own pleasures, taking tomorrow for granted, like sheep on their way to the slaughterhouse.

26.03.2004
13:51