After the Ice Storm
I always knew, right from the start, that I would complete my journey down to the bottom, that I would end my days as a cannibal. It was only a matter of time.
This is not a valid confession since there is no one left to take it. All the padres are ashes now. No, it is a testament to life, what little remains of it. A clock, eternally ticking backwards, salt ashes and foul flesh to sustain my unrighteous existence, and a zombified cat asleep on my lap. Yes, this is all if one ignores the memories that emerge, sharp as glass shards, between the outbursts of bitter laughter and the sooty tears of this senile man.
How I stumbled through the aeons with my eyes shut. For all my borrowed time, I had closed my mind to this strange premonition of what fate had in store for me. What cannibalism? You may ask. Oh, you see, that was the question. Would I be dragooned into tasting human flesh and try it, just once, out of pure curiosity? Would I degenerate further, morally, and become a serial killer who ritually cut a piece of flesh as a trophy from each of my victims? Being of a moderate, reasonable nature, I assumed that I would cross that ultimate line on a limited number of occasions. I could never, even in my wildest dreams, have imagined that I would become what I am today. To put it simply: I have to be the most extreme corpse muncher in the history of humankind.
If the thought of cannibalism fills you with disgust, let me assure you that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as well. This is how far I have fallen. I, a gourmet of international reputation, an esteemed collector of the rarest of wines, who used to scare the truffle oil out of master chefs with my sophisticated palate. I, who once shared my elegant life wisdom with my firstborn idiot son in these legendary words: “You can eat anything to keep yourself alive, but do not, for that reason, settle for mediocracy. Live well, eat well, and on your way out, spit on the waiter.”
Alas, here I sit in solitude, with black sweat dripping from my face, tearing the flesh of corpses into strips and trimming their intestines into bite-sized chunks. I have been forever reduced to gnawing on the sordid remains of my fellow humans, like some sooty scavenger. Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, we dig dig dig dig dig dig up, everyone who’s left…
Oh well, what matters it? These are the pitiful lamentations of a rotting old man stuck in a pile of dusty videotapes and tangled cassette tapes, dreaming of days gone by. On my lap, a cat, a placenta. I juggle them restlessly, the cat, the placenta, the placenta, the cat. I throw the air-dried placenta, thin as a pizza bottom, up in the air, watching it wobble like a bent Frisbee. Bloom strikes after it with her thin, well-sharpened claws, and they tear holes in the silence. They tear up long, elliptic rifts in the radioactive dust that fills our gloomy rooms.
A Man of Taste and Refinement
I admit it: I was an egoist, a grim reaper of dreams and dreamers. I parasitised like our kind does, on the artists and the art they gave birth to in their sweat and labour. It’s who we are and always will be, we libertines, we skimmers, dealers in dust, scribblers trapped in mediocracy and senility. The tiger still has its stripes, even if they are covered in cakes of carbon.
But then my Lord came and took me for a walk on the wild side… We strangled life in its flowering and let the ashes dull all the senses, layer upon layer. I sowed death around me, and I saw that the only thing death gives birth to is more death. What can I add? Enough now! Some memories weigh so heavily that I can taste blood when trying to revive them. No, let silence reign. Silence… So wonderful…
There is a background sound that disturbs me. A thin, annoying thread of life that cuts into my meditation. The stubborn cat is licking her fur incessantly, her tongue dry as sandpaper from the ashes. Stop licking yourself, cat bastard. You will never be clean. I will never be a Buddha. We have to stop struggling, poor little cat… We must give up all earthly desires. That’s the only way out.
Cannibals Like Me
One acquaintance, a well-known cannibal whose name I shall not mention, explained to me that it was like joining an exclusive club, but let me assure you, to appease the shadows of my executioners, I do not find any particular pleasure in eating human flesh, neither as a ritual nor as a culinary arrangement. In principle, I have no objection to a well-motivated, refined murder. Death can be an inevitable and satisfying outcome of a rendezvous. Dare I say even aesthetically pleasing? But to afterwards eat the victim seems petty, not to say childish and downright distasteful. My current eating habits are based solely on the necessities of nature. Here, in the age of ash and ice, there is simply no other meat to be had, apart from a few cans of Spam and beef stew, both of which require too much effort to dig up.
Alas, we take what we can find on the surface. In my case, it’s dead ladies. The cooking methods are few and prosaic. The entrails are prepared, trimmed and graved in salt, sugar and spices immediately after thawing the corpse. The rest is seasoned, hung up and dried for cosy nibbling during the endless atomic nights. It’s a protein-rich but deadly boring diet.
What bothers me is not the moral consequences of our cannibal orgies. It’s the lack of the good things in life: fresh asparagus, butter, thick cream, herbs and blue cheese. If you must eat things of questionable quality, like freeze-dried human remains, you should at least prepare them with classic French cooking techniques. I could insert recipes from my glory days in Paris, but God knows this is not a cookbook. Just reading about haute cuisine makes me cry these days. Oh, foie gras on toast, oh Lobster Thermidor, oh Tournedos Rossini, oh simple fish and chips with remoulade from a greasy food truck on a drunk, windy Friday night a hundred years ago.
A Pantry Full of Carcasses
We have passed the end of days, and the tyranny of time is over. The ash heaps may crumble, but the corpses still litter the streets. They don’t even rot. It seems to be a new law of nature that nothing moves forward anymore. Chronos, Kairos, Aion, you lose. He beat you, he who was my Lord.
I have stacked my cellar with the carcasses of those I judge as deceased by so-called natural causes. The delicacy in my hands comes from such a body, a cowardly pregnant woman who hid in the cellar after the disaster. She was healthy but had probably starved to death, so her flesh was a little dry. On the other hand, there are plenty of obese people who can provide lard to stuff the meat with. Strange how they are everywhere on the surface. Survival of the fattest proved the plump reality in the cold of nuclear winter.
We have feasted on this young woman several times. First, the tender, sweet meat of the fetus, then her own flesh and finally, the nutritious uterine cake, air-dried on the clothesline. This is one of our few pleasures, Bloom’s and mine: feeding time. Watching the cat struggle to snatch those treats from me… I never thought I could get so Goddamn sentimental, but that’s what decades of utter loneliness in a dead soot desert does, even to an emotionally numb human armadillo.
Eventually, I will let the cat have it. Let the cat eat. Let it enjoy life as long as the bloody creature can stand on her own three legs. The supply of the frozen dead is endless after the ice storm. There are piles of corpses to choose from, but most contain Midas’ entrails. Some crackles and sparks will fly when you cut them open; that’s how radioactive they are, I swear to God. Bloom eats them with pleasure; the simple little creature isn’t picky, and her zombie hunger is insatiable. I can only sit and watch while the radiation rises in her body. The hairs at the edge of her ears and her whiskers turn black and curl inwards. I rarely let her out nowadays, afraid she won’t find her way back. She’s my only company, the only living thing I’ve known, who knows for how long.
My pleasures are so few that I can count them on the remaining fingers that have not withered away in necrosis and been lost forever. But she is all I have. My contacts with other living beings, as well as my sensual experiences, are non-existent unless you count jerking off in front of a cat as an emotional exchange.
Still, life is good in some ways. I no longer have to deal with the others, the striving, demanding and bewitching members of humankind. Who could stand life on Earth when it existed? I’m alone now, more alone than anyone has ever been. I’m the last of all. Not even he visits me anymore, but what could I expect from such a treacherous Master?
He Who Was My Lord
We had our moments, he and I. Our cosy little tête-à-têtes, our pyjama parties in the courtyard of Hell. I sat there half-naked all through the night and listened to his music. His wonderful, silvery music, so different from all earthly sounds. It brought me to tears with its beauty and filled my stomach with bile out of pure envy. I knew it completely outshone anything creatures like me could ever dream up. What were our mortal arts compared to these divine harmonies? All the while, he sat next to me with his hand on my thigh, explaining his compositions, bar by bar, until suddenly, he had lured me over the threshold into his dream world, the sticky web of his warped visions.
In this moment of confession, let me make one more. I see the truth every morning as I look out over the remnants of the greatest, most developed, and most inflated civilisation of all time: I did it. I am an antichrist squared, and I took part in the making of this wasteland. How can I possibly deny it? No. I confess. I confess, even if I said that I would not.
Who cares? It’s all dead now. The globe. The hollow globe. The silence is overwhelming, and it reigns supreme, apart from Bloom’s monotonous dissecting and licking.
Millennium Square
The clock on the campanile in the middle of Millennium Square continues to run on its everlasting batteries, but something happened to it during the big bang, and since then, it has been ticking backwards. We have now regressed to the year eighteen hundred and eighty-three, not an unpleasant date at all, I must say. It brings alive memories of my glory days, wasted on the brink of decadence. This was hundreds of years before H’rmgedden, as my dearest and most loyal manservant Carstairs once named the event: the day when the lizard destroyer walked its flaming Golgatha. How he feared that word, and I used to laugh heartily at the poor old creature in his darkest moments of regret.
“When comes it, M’lord? The H’rmgedden? Is it time?
“No, you old swine. We are still on top of the world, right where we belong.”
Ah, Carstairs. A finer gentleman’s gentleman never existed. He was a scoundrel, but I loved him like a master loves his ruttish dogs. Those were the days…
I must get a grip. To think that I would miss the company of Car’s, that incorrigible, foxy, uncultured old warthog, but yes. Yes, I do. Since H’rmgedden, I have encountered very few living beings, except Earth’s future rulers, the constantly mutating wingless insects, and my cats, every generation more inbred, misshapen and mentally twisted. Bloom is, by the way, the last in line. All the others died barren. When she’s gone, only I remain of the mammals. So I strive for nirvana, and despite that, it happens more and more often that I long to return to the kingdom of old. Yes, in weakness, I long for life. I was someone else then, something else. But it is all in vain. The kingdom is a desert, where the spectres of my dreams fly with the whirlwinds deep into the cactus groves.
How did it start, the H’rmgedden? It has all the characteristics of a mere nightmare, and yet, I was there, and I was alive. It was pure madness, it was hell on earth, and it hit back at me in ways I could never have foreseen. God, please forgive me, if you are still there. To bring on the end of days and flush life down the toilet… What were we thinking?
His True Colours
I try to slip back into the moment the prophecy is fulfilled, for I know I must go there. When I close my eyes, I can almost see it! He returns, through the chimney, crawling out of the fireplace to spit out his message. Yes! He has finally arrived to round up his beloved Armageddon blackface sheep. I try to run in a panic because I know, but the golden harpoon through the thigh nails me to the floor. His breath cauterises the wound, and he slurps the blood until it stops dripping.
He tells me he has a message to deliver, and I am his witness. His stutter has gotten worse, and the voice of hatred is thick in his throat, suffocating him, his false and sarcastic dignity dripping with newly painted, still sticky Judas blood, “Th-th-th-the time has come!”
The yellow, hollow-eyed devil grabs my beard and pulls me close. He penetrates my ear with his forked tongue. It zigzags through my brainwaves, buzzing like a bee. He pulls out and shouts into my bleeding ear, listing my earthly failures in a flash,
“B-B-B-Boy wonder! Why the hell are you still sitting around in a pile of mould? Didn’t you hear my bell, ding dong? You ought to be out and about! The fruits of our labour are ripe. Time for you to reap and saw, mein kleine Schwarze. Here are the coordinates, you tight-ass twink! Be there or be square.”
He holds up his hairy palm, and in it, a sheet of gold with a sacred number materialises out of thin air, he forces it in under my eyelids, the sheet turns to dust as he rubs it into my corneas, then into the skin of my chest and it burns, I try to scratch myself, but he won’t let me, he pulls out my fingernails with his telekinetic power, the bright red blood sails on the wind in long, fluttering strands from my fingertips as my nails hit the wall like a volley of gunfire, he laughs impatiently at me as I howl in pain and then he renders me weightless, he turns me upside down in the air, he forces me to hang there like a spiders prey while he whispers incantations in a long-forgotten language. My brain is on fire, and the red blood cells are clustering under the skin, spreading rosefever as my voice becomes a hoarse and constricted whimper.
He nibbles on my neck and whispers into my ear.
“Oh, don’t worry, darling. I’ll give you a nice nail job later. It’s free if you have a coupon.”
“Time! Let me have some more time,” I plead.
“You may not! For the time is now. Keep your eyes open as it happens. And you are alive. For the first time, you are alive. It will be beautiful. You’re going to love it, love it, love it. Be sure to have a pile of clean tissues in your pocket. You’ll need them. Three seconds of my show, and you’ll spurt into your mouth. That’s how good it’ll be, you naughty b-b-b-bugger.”
I beg for respite, mercy, or at least some dignity.
“Then give me a horse, Lord. Let me be your knight!”
His breath carries carbon black smoke and a thick redneck dialect.
“Hell No! You read the roadmap like the Devil reads the Bible! Horses are for the saints. We may use them on occasion, but only to lubricate teenage pussy. So sayeth the L-L-L-Lord, Jesus Christ. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and start walking, hickey boy.”
He pats me playfully on the cheek.
“The matter with you? We are trying to have fun here! Don’t be such a gloomy bird. This is only the beginning. Show some pioneering spirit! Herd mentality! Or you will ask me far worse, yes, you will beg me to let you die, at any cost, before this is over. Be sure of that, bitch.”
He laughs disarmingly. Then he pulls a long, hooked, ornate stick out of thin air, strikes a pretentious pose with his feet crossed and blows into it. Out comes a muffled, sheep-like sound.
“Fuck me. That is embarrassing. Wrong day to practice the crumhorn, I guess. Oh well, see you later, alligator! 11.59. Everything will fucking die! But we gather afterwards, and then, there will be cake. On me!”
My head is burning with fever, and I have satanic gold poisoning. I’m rambling like mad, my mind out of control.
“At least let the cat live. It has nine souls. It is holy to me. Save me a tiny fraction of life.”
“Very well, darling. You have my unholy word. I will not exterminate your faggot cat. You may force its tiny sphincter over your acidy cockhead and thus enjoy your last seconds of human filth”.
He snaps his fingers, and music starts to play. He pulls his sunglasses down to cover his pitch-black eye sockets and glides into the crowd, trying to blend in, hovering, weightless, like a shadow, two inches above the ground.
I sit in the middle of the waterfall of satanic music and listen. It is soothing, like opium. The silvery violins are building a slender tower towards the grey skies. The loops rise like children’s fingers, drawn out to the thinness of sewing threads, eager to reach the heavens, the light, the last sliver of holiness before they stagnate into graceful branches. Of course, still so wonderful. The fireplace has started to spew embers that fall over the edge, but it does not burn me. It’s from another world, the underworld. It approaches like a rift underneath the floor, a ravine, which slowly cracks open the continental block from east to west. I can see the sacred mark. It is inside of me, on the insides of my eyelids, written in gold and blood. I am becoming immune to fire, and I am his. A song is vibrating in my chest. It’s turning into a roar. And I’m alive.
Ashes in My Mouth
It was all a dream, a reprise of past events. I wake up in the morning with my mouth full of soot. My drool has painted my pillow with roses of charcoal. I spit resignedly on the floor. Yet another night when the atmosphere used my mouth for an ashtray.
Such a beautiful Sunday morning. Let’s go hiking, Bloom. Out for a walk in the black Winterland. Me and cat. I struggle to keep my balance, stumbling through the ash heaps like a limping halfwit. The necrosis has cost me half a heel. The black rain has eaten through everything now. It has coloured me, inside out, my sperm as black as liquorice topping.
I remember the days when my blood was still red. Enemies at the gates, a mighty sword blow that chopped off an arm, me putting my lips to the blood fountain and sucking up its sweetness, what a thrill! So far from the sepia-brown slush that worms its way through my clogged arteries now. Dear Lord, let me taste fresh red blood once more. And I am alive.
I’m reminiscing again, I know. But you see, I have the right. I was there, and I saw it all happen, how the angel of vengeance rose like an air traffic control tower against the red sky, the lanterns blinking on its head. The noise made, melted brains. I close my eyes hard, trying to shake off the vision. Melted brains…
The woman from days past is wandering freely. Her shadow moves straight through me; she walks over the burned fields. Nothing can stop her now, dead, alive, alive, dead, we share the same ash heap. There is almost nothing left of us two. What’s left of life is but a dream, and like all dreams, it will be stomped into the ground until it’s six feet under. I can no longer touch her. She no longer knows me, but I hope she is not in pain, that the pain can no longer reach her, wherever she may be. The others may deserve it, but she, she is… She is… is… my dementia is accelerating. It is the radiation that rots my brain, not the memories, the only one. She is… the only one.
I have wandered off too far from my solitary tower. I stop, swaying, to haul out my scaly wiener. My piss is carbon black. It flows from the bladder like a salt liquorice lace. It makes me laugh. What am I doing out here? It’s all over. The hour has passed. The postman has walked his last round. I must return to my dingy rooms, my prison, my mausoleum.
Alas, I spend another evening at home with a demented cat on my lap, us sharing some fat lady’s cirrhotic liver. I wind up my old gramophone, and Caruso is sobbing all over “Vesti La Giubba”. We’re sitting in the window niche. Outside time moves backwards tenaciously. Below me, across the floor tiles, it floats, the black asphalt river of my tears.
image sources
- Bloom: fagend.xyz | All Rights Reserved
- Midas Corona: MIDAS CIGARS RD, via Wikimedia Commons | CC BY-SA 4.0 International
- Millennial Square: fagend.xyz | All Rights Reserved
- My Beautiful Ghost: fagend.xyz | All Rights Reserved
- Funnel Grammophone: fagend.xyz | All Rights Reserved
- Gold Eyes: fagend.xyz | All Rights Reserved