DEMONIUM PEJORATIVE: SACRIFICE
‘’They tell us that God is dead - and now the Angka (the Party) will provide everything for us. Angka has identified and proclaimed the existence of a bad new disease, a memory sickness - like those that think too much about life…The enemy is inside us, nobody can be trusted’’. -THE KILLING FIELDS (1984)
LOCATION:Trappist 1e
YEAR: 3054 AD (1071 AWD)
DATE: August 2
Cora Leander, the only daughter of a Spaceborne shaman, had looked upon the Demonium Pejorative over and over again, and survived. Cora Leander, the Virgin-Harlot, revered and despised in equal measure (as those who straddle things sacred and profane always are), accidental courtesan to the dead, was learning to behave as a flesh-bound goddess should, susceptible as all women are to the subliminal demands of their fellows, kith and kin - and as all men are to that of their womenfolk. Cora did not ask to be spared by the Demonium Pejorative, nor had she seduced the Demon-god with her wiles or enticed the flower of the tribe’s youth to their own sacrifice by the promise of sensual delight. Nobody dared utter aloud, or even whisper, such heresies, yet the suggestion of such gross and impious evils seemed to follow Cora as a shadow would; and the shadows cast on Trappist were long and ever present.
Cora became the bride of a demon-god on a day when the signal relayed by orbital chronometer had failed, owing either to radiation interference or the frailties inherent to ancient technologies of a category never intended to endure much beyond the average human lifespan. Such days tended to inspire a whimsical, generally harmless, recklessness in the young as well as those more advanced in years who had never quite succeeded in caging baser passions. Cora had petulantly discarded her hourglass that day, after rendezvous with the stonecutter’s son, the purpose of their meeting being, nominally, a trek to the Tidal Demarcation perimeter.
The stonecutter’s son had taken her hand in his, as he had many times before. Cora felt a disturbance in the thick, still air -something massive yet impossibly agile had passed inches before them as a great shark passing through calm waters. In the next instance, Cora was covered in blood, her youthful suitor’s hand still in her own. She felt a heavy tug at her shoulder girdle, as the stonecutter’s son’s headless body tumbled towards the dark abyss beyond the Demarcation perimeter.
She stood frozen - not mired in paralysis by terror, but on grounds of an instinctive realization that to attempt escape would be futile to the point of imbecility. It stood before her as might a sentinel - glistening alloy incongruously caked in soil and blood in places. The Demon-god held the boy’s head between its titanium palms - delicately, as one might a holy relic. Her eyes became fixed on the green pinpoints, glowing like ball lightning, within the hollows of the accidentally contrived death mask. The otherworldly lights within the hollowed abyss swallowed up the world beneath her for those brief moments, never wavering even as the sickening crunch echoed in her ears as the demon-god crushed the hardened bone of the cranial shell so as to harvest the prized substance buried deep within the soft pulp of brain matter.
Cora did not know how long she remained transfixed by the light of the hollows in the demon’s face; it had perhaps been seconds, hours or the passing of a day’s worth of sand through a glass timing vessel. The Spaceborne taught their children to rebuke evil by refusing to look upon it - owing to the belief that, like survivors of a deluge, it fell upon them to forget what had so offended God as well as an understanding of the eyes as a gateway - through which the incorporeal essence of beings could travel and come to live within the mind and memory of the beholder. The girl felt her consciousness being invaded - something alien yet familiar, comforting yet painful was awakening dormant, epigenetically coded - yet long dormant - sensations within her cells.
Cora felt the deep musculature below her waist seize and cramp, then release in agonizingly pleasurable release - the shaman’s daughter discerned immediately, despite her intact maidenhead, that she was experiencing orgasm. Slowly, as the ecstatic terror abated, her mind-vision - the process whereby an entranced, Pineally-sensitive adept is able to see that which is extant only in the mind’s eye - focused into vivid clarity. The green pupils, originating as pinpoints suspended in the infinite void of the demon-god’s gaping eye sockets, then swelling to great spheroids of ball lightning, finally becoming so inconceivably massive so as to provoke a scream of terror from deep within Cora, rendered silent by the roaring white noise of 10,000 nuclear fires, each hotter than 10,000 Suns.
Gradually, incrementally, as all sound abated save that of the young girl’s rapid respiration, the ethereal light dimmed and reconstituted into phantom images. A face emerged where the demon-god’s death mask had been - a noble appearing, Oriental face. A visage that was subtly handsome, in a cruel, Asiatic way. Nevertheless, as Cora gazed into the blackness of the phantom’s eyes, the illusion shattered.
Her epigenetic memory was pouring forth from dormant cells and constellations of synapses, simultaneously incorporating what her waking consciousness perceived immediately before her, just beyond the darkness of the Demarcation Line. Deep within the recesses of the conscious, memorial record of a thousand lives and a thousand deaths, the voice of an ancient ancestor, one whom herself had been in life a veritable doppelganger of young Cora. Rebuking the Demonium Pejorative, declaring, ‘’You’ll never have me, Billy…’’
*PROLOGUE PART III*
‘’And Issac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said,
Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is
The lamb for a burnt offering?’’
-GENESIS 22:7
“Every man that ever lived craved perfect happiness, the detective poignantly reflected. But how can we have it when we know we’re going to die? Each joy was clouded by the knowledge it would end. And so nature had implanted in us a desire for something unattainable? No. It couldn’t be. It makes no sense. Every other striving implanted by nature had a corresponding object that wasn’t a phantom. Why this exception? the detective reasoned. It was nature making hunger when there wasn’t any food. We continue. We go on. Thus death proved life.”
- William Peter Blatty, LEGION
***
Location: Argyle Square (‘’Little Saigon’’), Chicago, Illinois
Year: 1982
Date: October 21
‘‘You’re really gonna put me out? Its really like that?’’ Billy affected incredulity when he was deeply hurt by the conduct of another. Those who knew him best easily discerned the fact, as Billy himself was well aware. The shame of it was nauseating, it felt like being naked in a public venue. When Billy felt ashamed, he felt homicidal, those who knew him best discerned this fact also, as Billy was well aware. This made them afraid, and made Billy feel powerful. ‘
‘What’s the cunt’s problem, anyway? Do I ever make her pay for the shots she helps herself to?’’
‘‘Don’t speak of her that way please, Billy. Not here’’, the older man retorted with a tone of resignation. His name was David Sorcerer, and he loved Bui Fang ‘‘Billy’’ Wong as an endlessly patient and nurturing Father loves an incorrigible Prodigal. Sorcerer spoke more softly then, with a tone of palpable sorrow.
‘‘Zonita saw you at ground level before you came up the stairs, Billy. She saw the…the state you were in’’.
‘‘The state I was in? You mean, she saw I was bleeding? I told you! I fuckin’ told you that them niggers, fuckin’ Moorish Saracens, Uptown set cut the shit outta me with a Balisong! They know I ride with the Rebel Lords! Fuckin’ Hell, the day your cunt wife saw me was the day after little Duck and the Polack were got! We don’t fight for that shit now, we’re gonna be chased the fuck out of Uptown and you ain’t gonna be spared neither, motherfucker!’’ Billy had lost control.
Withdrawal sickness and the maelstrom of emotion it tended to facilitate within him, coupled with the fact of the uniquely cutting, if puerile, hurt that he felt at the slightest indication that his surrogate Father was choosing the cheap affection of a woman - and a vile Puerto Rican cunt to boot, Billy silently fumed - was almost too much to bear. It required every bit of discipline Billy could muster to not reach into his pocket, retrieve his razor and slash Sorcerer’s face to pieces.
The older man looked upon Billy, with eyes that betrayed the sad wisdom of martyrs. Sorcerer appeared ancient - decades beyond his mere 44 years. It was as if Billy was capable of robbing the man of something - some component of his vitality - that not even the Vietnam War, where he’d humped the bush for two years as an infantryman, nor the Heroin habit, which he’d acquired as a permanent souvenir from his time in that green Hell, had not. Pain made Billy vindictive. Avenging the pain he felt, fueled by vindictiveness, made him feel powerful. Feeling powerful made him feel happy. Slowly killing Sorcerer - the one person Billy truly loved other than Anastasia - was almost as orgiastic in its catharsis as slamming heroin into his veins.
‘‘She knows the blood wasn’t your own, Billy.’’ The older man sat down as he said it, deliberately averting his gaze. Billy began massaging his temples, as he was prone to doing when on the cusp of full blown withdrawal.
‘‘Dream much, Billy? Have you seen it lately? Has it spoken yet? I mean, of course I…it speaks to you all the time. What I mean is has it uttered any -’’
‘‘Fuck you’’. Billy retorted. His tone was pitiable, tearful. Billy hated himself in these moments. And he hated Sorcerer for reducing him to such a state.
‘‘You’re aware, I’m sure - Christ, of course you’re aware. I’ve always felt like an intellectual child compared to you - that I’ve not utilized the Kraepelin technique, nor any…any other method in analyzing your dream states since our first sessions. Since you and your mother were referred by that Jesuit. She thought I was an exorcist, Billy. My God. My dear God’’.
‘‘Don’t make me…’’ Billy began, now composed, winning the skirmish, ever so briefly, against the agony of withdrawal.
‘‘Don’t make you kill me? I can’t make you do anything, Billy. And killing me won’t send the monster away. And it won’t bring your real Father back. He’s gone. His remains constitute part of that monumental temple of skulls, femurs, and rib cages that the Khmer Rouge built…are building! Rejoice Billy, that your own Father, your own sire gave his body to create the greatest monument of all time! A monument to the triumph of death over life. Death is the god of the 20th century!’’ Sorcerer was animated now. Dangerous. His eyes blazed with the rapture of a Shaman.
‘‘Please stop…please just - I…’’ Billy was losing all composure again. Sorcerer rose to his feet, with the cultivated, agile economy of movement of the infantryman he had once been. He took Billy’s head in his hands, firmly. Spat the words in the younger man’s face as a curse:
‘‘What does the dream-beast tell you, Billy! Say it! Before it cuts your black heart out, what does it say, Billy? What does it say? What does it say?’’
‘‘Death is god’’, Billy calmly retorted, having regained composure entirely. He watched the blood drain from the gaping wound he’d inflicted on the older man’s taut and muscled neck. Kissing him on the lips, as a gesture of final reverence, he repeated -
‘‘Death is god’’.
SORCERER
‘’The rice grain suffers under the blow of the pestle. But admire its whiteness once the order is over. So it is with men and the world we live in. To be a man, one must suffer the blows of misfortune’’. Ho Chi Minh
‘’All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice’’. - Joseph de Maistre
‘’The Executioner is not a soldier. Soldiery of the ancient function has nothing in common with the Executioner’s vocation. The Executioner is an initiate of the mysteries not merely of life and death but of the interstitial domains that reveal themselves to the sensitive mind behind the proverbial hatchet, within the ghostly cowl. The Executioner spends his brief life of flesh, bone, blood and respiration exclusively at the threshold of these unseen passageways - wielding sublime sovereignty over the living while stewarding the great Necropolis as Lord and Shepherd of the dead. The Executioner’s cloister, Temple and hermitage, is a doorway’’. - Collected Apocrypha of the SECE (date and authorship unknown).
‘’They do their best, they do what they can, they get them ready for Viet Nam, from Old Hanoi to East Berlin, COMMANDO involved again’’. - RAMONES
I.
LOCATION: Dong Ha, Quang Tri province, Republic of Vietnam
YEAR: 1972 AD
DATE: April 1st
Sorcerer looked over the ridgeline, towards the Demilitarized Zone; across which the 304th and the 308th PAVN infantry - supported by God knew how many tanks - had stormed in the hours previous. MAC-V had been shouting to deaf audiences, Cassandra-like, for months that the Communists had finally developed capabilities for combined arms offensive action beyond regimental level. The Department of Defense didn’t want to hear of such things - the Vietnam War had dragged on for far too long, and they were no longer interested. Strategic nuclear parity between the superpowers was imminent, and the business of planning for armageddon (and the ‘’deep parities’’ that nascent and marvelous technologies promised) beckoned. The President had every intention of resolving this savage little war, Sorcerer considered, but not of winning it.
The war had ceased to be ‘’little’’ to all but the rear echelon officers who poured over body count data as a corporate financial officer would review a balance ledger; and the men whose stock-in-trade was nuclear war and the, ever shrinking, fraternity to whom they were nominally accountable. Bemusedly, as thoughtful men always are in the shadow of the gallows, Sorcerer contemplated, ‘’They’re going to overrun Khe Sanh on their way to Hue, and the second wave is going to dig in deep in the A Shau Valley’’. All these points on the map, made familiar to the diligent American newswatcher by the breathless declarations of Kronkite and MacNamara’s endless presentations.
Every man gets what he wants, Sorcerer silently told himself. ‘’He’s trying to commit suicide in the way he knows will hurt me most!’’; that’s what Vanessa had told the parish Priest at St Viator’s. Vanessa was possessed of all the conventionally feminine vices, Sorcerer had remarked - more out of curious observation than as malicious rebuttal. This inspired a fresh bout of hysterics. She looked beautiful, even when indulging in such debased melodrama. A born actress. What had the Priest said?
‘’David, you’re 30 years old…and a psychologist to boot. Surely you recognize this is some sort of latent inability to manage a mature man’s responsibilities’’.
It was a curious thing, the Priest’s knee jerk analysis. It was obtuse and simpleminded yet not entirely incorrect. Yes, war was an escape of sorts but men seeking escape out of hedonistic impulse or fear run away from death; they don’t dash into the embrace of its black wings. Nor did he aim to stage an elaborate suicide, as his histrionic bride was fond of suggesting. Men who wish to make a spectacle of their own demise needn’t travel 12,000 miles from home to do so, nor do they covet the anonymous fate of being chopped to pieces by Kalashnikov rounds, or bleeding out after triggering a landmine on a jungle trail caked with animal detritus and shit. Sorcerer’s calling was to minister to men who existed on the periphery between life and death, between man and animal, between man and superman as Shaw had, in Sorcerer’s estimation, so brilliantly elucidated. This is how Sorcerer, four years previously, well beyond conscription age and apparently having taken leave of reason, had determined that he must at all costs insinuate himself into the Vietnam War.
There had been indications that Sorcerer was prone to drastic action in the service of principles, or perhaps more accurately, to capture experiences that would allow him, in his own estimation, the right to stand on principles. Had Vanessa been capable of real insight into human personalities in lieu of superficial, and at base self serving, empathy it would have arrived as no surprise when Sorcerer determined that - despite his age, marital status, the hard won respectability that his wife and peer group held in such covetous esteem - it was his destiny to meet the Peoples’ Army of Vietnam in combat.
Sorcerer gripped his M3 submachine gun tightly, fingering the trigger guard out of nervous habit. There was something incongruous about Sorcerer’s relationship to violence - to its instrumentalities. Once in action, he took to fevered urgency of battle like a bird dog - bred for the hunt. After action, he felt exhausted - cathartic, not infrequently, even close to God. In the hours, and minutes that seemed like hours, prior to making contact with the enemy however, he was unfailingly made nauseous by the sickly, dry mouthed anxiety that consumed him. In these moments, the M3 that had served him so well under fire - that he’d sought out and paid a small fortune to procure upon learning of a resourceful staff sergeant at Long Binh who maintained a lucrative trade in unusual weapons, PAVN war trophies and heroin - felt awkward in his hands.
As a clumsy savage might feel upon being handed an abacus. In these moments, there was nothing to do but wait, meditatively for the relief of battle - as a terminal patient would count down the moments until he was availed to rigidly scheduled narcotic relief. And like an addict, Sorcerer could no longer easily remember what life was like - what he was prior to Vietnam.
David Sorcerer’s life had revolved around Vietnam - the idea of it at least - for years. It dominated his conceptual horizon, and that of his colleagues at the University of Chicago, although for diametrically opposed reasons. Sorcerer had carried on in stoic silence - leading a life largely spent in the academic cloister of the University, but it was too comfortable. An assistant Professor of Psychology was not highly paid, but the existence it facilitated encouraged - even demanded - self indulgence. Coupled with the unintentionally wanton sensuality of his bride - Vanessa - it was too much for Sorcerer to bear. He’d grown incapable of living with himself - his life had become a monument to something he truly despised. A mean and primitive man would have likely taken to abusing his wife. A basically decent but less aware man would have probably resorted to the analgesic self destruction of dipsomania. As it was, Sorcerer was both decent and introvertedly self aware - and thus his singular mission had become to find his way into combat in the Republic of Vietnam, in the final years of the Saigon regime.
It had been the worst for Sorcerer’s father. The sad old man - old beyond his years; zealously, fervently old, Sorcerer had always viewed his father. The old man had never been young. He was somehow born old - will, passion, hatreds, loves crushed out of him at a tender age. Sorcerer had, out of curiosity, as a small boy fed a rat pup to a snapping turtle he had discovered on the bank of a northern brook of the Chicago River. He’d purchased the baby rodent at a pet store near the Old Orchard shopping center, then rode two buses to the brook. The turtle emerged moments after Sorcerer had excitedly scrambled down the muddy bank. Sorcerer assigned wisdom to the wrinkled reptile face, the way other young boys might confuse the passing glance of a girl as an erotic invitation to share in her body’s delights. Both cases involved initiation - or rather, a desperate longing for initiation.
Sorcerer held the rat to the turtle’s beaked proboscis like a sacrificial offering. The blind, pink rodent was soon crushed by the powerful maw of the ancient creature. The infant prey lingered for several minutes - its body intact yet entirely crushed. Sorcerer regretted the experiment he had devised immediately. The senseless destruction tore at him. In later years, as Sorcerer reached adolescence, he’d contemplate the baby rat when he looked upon his Father. His Father who had somehow had the vitality crushed out of him. His Father whose only capacity for non-affected, genuine feeling entailed a desperate resignation and bottomless sorrow.
His Father, who Sorcerer knew - despite the old man never having been unkind to him - could never forgive him for killing his own mother as she brought him into the world. When the old man looked upon Sorcerer, a Prodigal who was as violently impassioned as the old man was constitutionally defeated, knew that he saw not the flesh of his flesh and the blood of his blood. What he saw was a force that was everything he himself was not; that had arrived in the world screaming and tearing the body apart of the woman he loved.