Excerpt: Atrocious Eulogies

Chapter six
I have never liked the modest mausoleum of the family Abraxus. It is a stonish house, with its questionable gargoyles in a baroque palette of materials: granite, brass, limestone. The door is guarded by thorny shrubs and inadequate deities.
Thorns will not deter the devil from entering a mausoleum. The devil delights in bloodshed, even it be his own ichor. He will be scratched as he pass and be both delighted by the sight of his own blood, and spurred on to further and lower devilry.
Deities will not block the path of the devil. Gods look down on mortals and say: Well they deserve to be led astray; the devil is there to test them. Those who are led deserve not to sit with us, deities, who are immortal. Test not passed.
Spurred by thorns and ignored by deities, the devil arrives at the Abraxus mausoleum at midnight, which is his time. He tells the lock to open; it does. He beckons out the Abraxus dead with music blown on his pipes and fancy steps of his hoofed feet. The backward bending knees of the devil make him a master of the fancy dance. His hoofs beat a rhythm on the patio, tip tap tip.
The dead may have been virtuous in life but after dying they are compelled to wickedness by the sheer monotony of death. After a year of lying still, a person gobbles any opportunity for action, no matter if the action is raw or rotten.
So the Abraxus of an high and an old standing press open the lids of their sarcophagi. So the Abraxus of middle standing claw their way through the shallow skin of earth and floor tiles. So the Abraxus of little note force through the sealed jars that contain their ashes. All seek to join the devil's entertainment out of ennui. But the ashen cannot join, not as they are.
The ashes must become flesh. The devil has flesh, so he says, flesh that they can wear for the time of the entertainment. The ashen dead, ranked small by their own family, are flattered and accept. They put on the flesh that the devil provides. Here is their first evil. The devil has no flesh of his own. The flesh they wear has first to be stripped from the bodies of the innocent. It kills the innocent, of course.
Then all can caper and dance. The devil's hoofs beat on the paving, clip clop clip. He suck in the night and blows it out through his pipe.
“Louder pipe,” cry the dead. “Louder beats too.”
The devil plays and hoofs louder. He sucks in the moon now, and he stamps, bang bang bang.
“More pipe,” the dead demand. “Beats louder again and faster too.”
“Nay, this is a loud enough pipe,” says the devil. “Nix on louder beats, and nix on faster beats.”
“We demand,” shriek the dead. “Entertainment was your beckoning and entertained we insist on being.”
“Very well,” says the devil.
He sucks in the stars at last, and smashes his hoofs, crish crash crish. The paving splinters, cracks and then parts. The parting is a slit, then a gap, then a chasm. And at the floor of the chasm, Hell.
God appears.
“Devil,” He says. “Where are my stars? My moon? Where is night?”
“The dead demanded entertainment,” says the devil. “I consumed them in my pipe to fuel my muse and my music.”
“They must be returned to the sky,” says God.
“Then the souls of those who demanded their consumption?” says the devil. “Forfeit?”
“Aye forfeit,” says God. “Forfeit forever.”
So the devil breaks his pipe and the stars, moon and night return to the sky. So the devil walks backwards and back the way he came. Past the aloof deities, past the spurring thorns. So the chasm closes on the dead, holding them forever still, forever in Hell.
That is why thorns and deities are a poor choice of garden design for a mausoleum.

Chapter ten[Some adult content]
If you are hungry, I will give you my body to eat. I want all my skin to be kissed by your lips. I want all my flesh to be bitten by your teeth. I want all of me to be mingled into you. I want to feel myself completely inside your mouth. I want my hair to be drenched by the wetness of your salivation. I want to feel the friction of your tongue. I want to penetrate your gullet, your stomach, your intestine, your bowel.
If you are cold, I will set my heart on fire. I want to warm your hands by their closeness to me. I want you to curl around me. I want your skin to blister from my heat. I want you to stare into my depths and see the flickering images of my dreams. I want to burn away your clothing. You will be nude, surrounded by walls, floor and ceiling of ice yet kept warm by me. I want to be your comfort, and your doom. I want to destroy myself.
If you are in love with another, I will destroy them. I will murder them in front of you. I will murder their children in front of you. I will murder their parents in front of you. I will split your skull and pluck out the memories of them. I will tear away the skin of yours that has touched them. I will cook all their ribs, chops and offal in my hate and consume them. I will deface the gravestones of their ancestors. I will copulate with the devil to have their departed souls given to me and trapped in jars made from lapis lazuli. Nothing of them or your love for them shall remain in reality or in history.
If you do not wish to sleep, I will drive away the night. I will tear the moon from the sky. I will magnify the stars so that their light is as the sun. I will sound the bells of all churches so that the citizens wake. I shall poison all sleeping draughts with cocaine. I shall burn all the beds of all the houses so that no man and woman can sleep. I shall make coffee for the entire city.
I want to hear every sentence from your mouth. I want to hear every word from your mouth. I want to feel your every exhalation in my hair. I want to cover myself in the phlegm of all your coughs. I want your every inhalation to be laden with my scent. I want to keep your nose in my armpit and fill you with the smell of me. I want to hear every grunt, every tut, every other noise. I want to taste every lick. I want to dive into every yawn.
If you are wakeful, I will play a lullaby softly on my ribs. I will pluck all the geese, taking only the single softest down feather from each, to make a pillow. I will steal the silk from emperor of the world to make your pyjamas. I will bring a legion of sheep, and carve numbers into their sides that you may count them. I will exhaust you with my passion, even if my heart stops beating. I will warm a mug of milk and sugar in my entrails to reach the perfect body temperature.
Whatever object you want, you shall have. If you take fancy to a man's cravat, I will rip his head from his neck so that you may wear it. If you take fancy to a man's shoes, I shall smash his shins until he has no legs past the knee, and hence has no use for shoes. If you take fancy to a man's cane, I shall swallow it to my stomach and keep it inside until I can regurgitate it to your hand. If you take fancy to a jewel, I shall pluck it wherever it may be, even if it has been set as the eye of Jesus in a crucifix in a cathedral.
If you ask “Are you hungry?” I shall cut open my guts to show you my fullness or emptiness. If you say “We should sleep now”, I shall smash my head with a mallet to knock myself unconscious. If you say “This play is dull”, I shall leap to the stage and recite the complete works of Shakespeare. If you ask “What did you see today?” I shall snip out my eyeballs and give them to you.
If you say “I do not like that skirt”, or even if I sense a tickle of disapproval, I shall remove it immediately. If we are standing in the packed and popular lobby of a theatre, I shall still remove it straight away. Once removed, I shall tear it into pieces and submerge the pieces in a vat of acid with my bare hands. If you say “I do not like that ring”, I shall pull my finger away at the joint and crush the ring between my teeth. If it has a diamond, I shall champ until my jaw is broken.
I shall enter your nightmares and be your saviour. If you cannot run, I shall bear you on my shoulders. If a bear is slashing with its claws, I shall become a dragon and destroy it with fire. If you are naked and ashamed, I shall dress you in my clothes. If you are lost in a maze beneath the city, I shall slice my palm and enter the labyrinth myself. If I have bled to death when I reach you, you shall escape following the trail of my still-fresh blood.
If you sign a pact with the Devil, I shall cancel the contract with my own soul. If you are visited by a succubus, I shall seduce her. If you are cursed by a witch, I shall pick a hair from her head, rummage through her sewage for her fingernails, and tear a strip from her favourite robe to fashion a doll that sends the curse back.
When you write, I shall read. I shall spell words as you spell them, and change all the dictionaries if necessary. I shall order words in your grammar, and revise all the text books if necessary. When you play music, I shall dance. When we play chess, I shall checkmate you.
When you are sick, I shall take your sickness. If you break a leg, you shall have my leg. If you have boils, I shall suckle at them. If you suffer a headache, I shall trepan your skull and mine and join our heads together. If you have a cold, I shall suck the mucus from your nostrils until you can breathe easily. If you shake from the chills, I shall wrap you in me and shake from your electricity.
I shall be yours. I shall wear your ring. I shall take your name in law. I shall cut your name it into my cheek with a sharp knife. I shall hold a cotton yarn in a flame of beeswax until it chars black. Then I shall thread it into a needle and stitch your name into my thigh. I understand that the burnt pigment remains visible even after death. If the pigment is not visible in the dusk light of a bed chamber, I shall burn and stitch again and again until the tattoo is clear.
When you die, I shall die. It will not be necessary for me to suicide myself. I shall die on the same day as you, in the same hour, at the same second, in the same moment. Our lives are one. Without you, the world has no need of me. And I have no need of the world, unless it contain you.
We shall make children. They shall share some likenesses of each of us. Your chin and my eyes. Your nose and my ears. Your hair and my cheeks. Your height and my ankles. I envy them for they embody the combination of our bodies in such a degree that is beyond possible for us. Even though I press you into my mouth, even though I press you into my vagina, even though I press you into my anus, even though I entwine my legs around your hips, even though I wrap my arms around your back, even though I look at nothing but your eyes, even though I hear nothing but your cries of ecstasy, even though I say nothing but your name, yet we are not a unified body of us as our children shall be.
I shall bear your children. I want to grow part of you inside me. I shall never want to part with you, though, even if you kick me so hard I am bruised. I shall press you inside me. I shall ignore the midwife's cries. Our children must be cut from me. Our children must split a doorway between me. Our children must be dragged from me. The umbilical cord shall not be cut with the sharpest knife. The chord shall not yield to the surgeon's scalpel. Only when you bite it, shall I allow the separation.