“LEGS”
“Son, do you see the hair on my thighs?”
The man said that he did.
“Find the hair that puckers around my hole and moisten it with the tip of your tongue.” Red pulled the man’s hair until his head was between his legs. “Get under there and do your service to your father.”
The man searched through the endless blood-matted hair. He was sure that he found a bit of wet flesh (that did not belong to the demon) lingering among the copious volumes of strands. He found the leaking hole and lovingly daubed it with his tongue. In this warm nest, he lingered for a billion times.
“My son, take this pus cup I present to you and drink it.”
The man took the cup and drank the hot contents in one gulp. He licked his lips.
“My son,” Red said with love quivering in his voice, “approach me.”
The man drew near to his father.
“You will now become a part of me for exactly one million generations.” Red drew the man to his muscled chest, and continued to pull him closer. The man cracked and flattened until he was the thickness of paper. He faded as he was absorbed into the demon’s body.
“Now… we will tour the park.”
The narrative must repeat itself concerning dialogue. No such thing happens at all. In a body that far outstrips human abilities, vocalization is unnecessary. The hundreds of things the body can communicate by the merest movement are astounding.
The only thing that can be done is scream (the base unit of existence). And since no one can die or grow older, it is the Eternal Base Unit. The demon could not express itself in an elegant manner, for such things require reflection and ruminating over matters, and no such thing can occur here. It is only my own narrative device. The thoughts are just there, hanging in space like raw wounds — pay attention or not; they will occur as he proclaimed them. Nothing can prevent this torment from one so high on the Order’s ladder. (And unless I am very much mistaken, my copyist, you must continue to write this until it is finished, bastardly task that it may be![2])
“We cannot proceed past the limits of my park. You must always remember this. I am the prince of this park.”
The man and demon (who were now one) came to a tree where two men writhed as one.
“See this, my son, and know what this scene is.”
The man looked out of the demon’s eyes. He saw a man bent over at the waist due to the weight on his back. A full-grown man was welded to him, joined back-to-stomach, and he was always in the penetration position. He never stopped pounding him from behind.
“In life, my son,” Red said, “the man had an uncanny fear of being raped.” The demon looked at the man lovingly and they both wept at the idea of anyone fearing such loving attention. Great red teardrops fell on the man’s uplifted face as he gazed adoringly at his father’s caring visage. “But, as usual, he was only remembering his future. For here it is the only thing that he will ever experience. It is the only place he has ever been.”
When the man looked again from the demon’s eyes, he saw the man beneath the tree, the one being pounded from behind. The eyes of this one were registering unnamable terror, and after seeing the man inside the demon, they widened further.
The thought splattered like acid in the man’s decaying brain. “Others see my humiliation, and they are much entertained!”
“Yes,” thought the man, his anger burning equally hot, “unless you are me in a thousand generations.”
“We are all one, my son,” the demon said. “When you learn that secret, thankfully, your threshold of pain will be awarded an increase of three greatness levels. Then, the Eternal Baptism will be yours: for your scream will widen and your skull will crack — and that is the baptism known as ‘The Mark of His Father.’
“My son, I must show you another dream. Even though you are deep inside me, I will lean over this precipice and you tell me what you see.”
When Red leaned over the edge, the son saw a barrel at the bottom. But what was most interesting about it was that it was not still…
“Inside the barrel is what looks like molasses or oil. I can barely see something brown and wet, churning and churning; never stopping.”
“See this woman being lowered into the barrel by a long chain, connected to a hook that is buried deep in her neck? Yes, above us. Well, let me tell you about a dream she has over and over in this place. Every few [times] here, she is pulled out and then she is lowered again to suffer [many million infinities]. When she is not in the barrel, she has a very foolish dream. Would you like me to tell you so you can laugh and laugh many times?”
“Yes, oh Father, I would love it.”
“Well, look in this churning barrel and despair, because when she has a respite from it, and she is burning in this fire, she dreams of another world, quite limp and unconscious; I assure you. A hideous world, but not as hideous as this world, of course. She dreams she is a young girl and has a child thing and puts it in a garbage dumpster, and that is the end of that. But sadly, in that world, the child thing was not alone, for the dumpster had a few permanent residents. Big, juicy rats. The mother did not know this, for she had left there, and went to meet a boyfriend, and they had a wonderful lunch at a restaurant. She did not know. She could not hear the screams, or know the terror of that baby as it was bitten to death and devoured by those sharp teeth. But now she continues to dream the same dream. Now do you know what churns in the barrel? That it is not molasses or oil, but the oily pelts of hundreds of rats as they gnaw and chew her repeatedly. How horrible it must be for her.”
And, indeed, they laughed for a few lifetimes at the sight of her, as she was lowered into the barrel, red spit slinging hungrily, and snapping white bone shined and churned and disappeared beneath the surface.
“Now this clearly is a breach of protocol!” a young female student stood and cried, giving no one else an opportunity to speak.
“Why is that?” he said simply, knowing full well what she was going to complain about. He had heard this before.
Her face was crimson. “Abortion is absolutely legal in our State. You are breaching protocol and common sense by condemning it!”
“If you had been listening, Student, you might have noticed that this was a live birth the dear woman trashed, not an abortion. I think maybe you can put away your Lectro-Current magazine and listen more closely next time, especially since you pretend to know so much.”
“I can see why so many people despise you.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
This concept of the book being dictated is also explained in the appendix.