The Cannibal Within (7 page)

The bedroom was dark, but I could discern some detail. In the center of the room—in the midst of peeling wallpaper, falling plaster, an ugly insectivorous plant—I could see occult paraphernalia.

Especially prominent was an obscene illustration with sinister supernatural significance. It was a picture of Death— depicted as a circumcised Asiatic—and he had a colossal night crawler—a kind of repulsive ‘conqueror worm’— rising lewdly from his groin. Two kneeling women—both aroused and developed—were greedily kissing the hideous worm.

Directly beneath the illustration, a large triangle was inscribed on an old table. The gutted remains of a neutered puppy— the animal had a plastic bag on its head and a stake through its heart—were positioned inside the triangle.

These words of Georges Bataille were inscribed along the outer edges of the triangle: ‘SACREDNESS MISUNDERSTOOD IS READILY IDENTIFIED WITH EVIL.’

Occult Pictures And Moldy Books
When I reached the parlor—which was furnished like a small library—I found another bizarre illustration on the wall. This one was a crude painting of Adam and Eve—both dressed in animal skins—and they were fleeing from the Garden of Eden.
Some overripe fruit—rotten and soft—was crushed under Eve’s foot. Identified as the forbidden food of knowledge, the fruit bore teeth marks.

‘I think I understand,’ I muttered. ‘Eden was a cage, and Adam and Eve were pets.’

To the right of the illustration—adjacent to a bell and black candle—was a cherry wood bookcase. The shelves were crowded with dozens of moldy books, but one work in particular caught my attention. Oddly bound, it was a manuscript entitled ‘The Evil Down Below.’

I picked up the manuscript and opened it at random. Underneath a quotation from the
Gospel of John
—the mysterious work in which Jesus never tells a parable or performs an exorcism—were some provocative words:

‘Everything known about the master species—their origin, their culture, their subterranean world, and their hellish city—is written here. Handwritten in English on parchment made from human skin, on the ‘night of crystal’ in 1938. Long live Azazel!’

Azazel—I remember reading in the
Book of Enoch
—was punished for revealing secrets. Intrigued, I decided to steal the book.

A Vision Of Beauty And Ugliness
There was also a basket of dirty clothing on the floor, and I quickly dressed myself. For nearly half my life at that point, I had lived in nakedness.
As I put the clothing on my body, I experienced strange hallucinations. In my mind, I imagined I heard a little girl’s voice. The voice was pure, clear, tender.

I turned quickly, and for a moment I thought I saw a bashful child. Dimpled and pink—charming with her faun-like face—she had a pre-pubescent body with small feet.

The child smiled—a quiet and virginal smile—and then she seemed to disappear. In her place, I saw an anorectic teenage girl.

Emaciated and skeletal—thin, sickly, tubercular—the teenage girl had the boyish breasts of an angel. Oddly, her expression seemed both playful and cruel.

‘Unlike all wild animals,’ whispered the girl, ‘human females bleed when deflowered.’

The girl laughed—a strange, sardonic laugh—and then she also seemed to disappear. In her place, I saw the reality of my own reflection in a cracked obsidian mirror.

I had never been a beautiful creature, but now I was forced to see what I had become. Looking back at me in the mirror was the hideous caricature of a human being.

Although under fifty years of age, I was a bald, virtually toothless crone with the hanging dugs of an old woman. Disfigured and mutilated by technology and pregnancy, I had lost my innocence and my youth.

‘Did you know,’ whispered a voice, ‘that the sexual act destroys beauty? A poet said that.’
For a moment—just a moment—I cried. What I have been, I thought, I can no longer be.

Some Leviathan Metaphors
I felt something hairy, damp, and dirty moving between my legs, and the sensation made me leap with terror. Fortunately, however, it was only the diseased cat of the old woman.

Focusing my resolve, I dried my tears and continued my quest. Moving deliberately toward the front door, my path took me past a weirdly patriotic shrine.

Decorated in red, white, and blue—in occultism, these colors symbolize war, cowardice, and death respectively—the shrine contained three plastic statues. Each statue—each political icon—depicted an individual American ‘founding father.’

I recognized Washington, Franklin, and Hamilton, but they had blood on their hands and homicidal sneers on their faces. Dressed in powdered wigs, makeup, and satin pants, they looked like transvestite devils.

In the service of sinister goals, I thought, the monsters must sabotage our history.

Adjacent to the statues were two black and white photographs. In the photographs, there were thousands of slogan-shouting serfs worshipping two great beasts.

One of the beasts—dedicated to violence and slavery—was emblazoned with a black swastika. Infected with a disease— one that poisoned and starved the mind—he was destined to die young and blind.

The other beast—dedicated to a fat and sleek lie—was emblazoned with thirteen stripes and dozens of pentagrams. Curiously, he was squatting on a mass of clotted filth.

Directly beneath the photographs—resting on an altar-like table covered in hemp cloth—was an antique gun. Covered with cobwebs and unclean fingerprints, it was a nineteenthcentury brass derringer.

The weapon of a rebel—the symbols of treason and crime decorated the barrel—the gun was loaded with a diamondtipped, armor-piercing shell. Stained brownish-red, the bullet was covered with a thin layer of salt.

Curiously, these cryptic words were inscribed on the stock of the weapon: ‘When Dirt And Scabs Are Washed Away, Sometimes This Causes Blood.’

I took the weapon and the ammunition.

What I Found In The Sun
I opened the front door with some difficulty—turning the corroded brass handle required both hands—and I walked outside. Initially, I was overwhelmed by the blaze of daylight and fresh air—I felt pain in my eyes and lungs—and I was reminded of the trauma a baby must experience when she first enters the world. In spite of the pain, however, I was free.

Never again, I thought, will I be enclosed or dominated.

It was early morning, and the sunrise, which was blood-red, was an omen. I thought about the crimes of violence that had liberated me, and I remembered the words of Krishna in the
Bhagavad Gita
: ‘all undertakings are surrounded by evil, as fire is surrounded by smoke.’

As I looked at the sunrise, I noticed some green shoots arising from dead and decomposing vegetation at my feet. It was then that I understood a great mystery.

New life, I thought, emerges from death. And to increase life, we must increase death.
I reached down and picked some wild flowers. Since flowers are the genitals of plants, they have always fascinated me. These are the symbols of love, I thought. When I was a child, my heart once opened like a flower.
I thought about Maddalena and I was sad. Without her, I knew I would always be alone.

Killing Innocence
Turning on to gravel path—a path that bisected a plot of poisonous weeds—I walked over to a small pond.

A young swan—graceful and white—was cavorting in the water. Her life, I thought, was a comedy of innocence. I seized the swan with both hands. As the animal struggled vainly in my firm embrace, I felt like a masterful lover.

In Buddhism, I thought, to eat an animal is not a crime. The sin is with the killer.
I smiled—my first smile in years—and I twisted off the swan’s head with my bare hands. A disciplined act of ferocity, I showed no cruelty.

As I tasted the blood-stained meat—still warm with life—I remembered more ancient words.
According to the Hindu
Vedas
, I thought, everything is food for what is higher.

After eating my victim—I lingered over the fleshy parts—I knelt down to wash my face in the pond. As I saw my own reflection—this time in the sunlight—a horrible realization filled my mind.

My destiny is to be a fugitive, I thought. Fantastically changed by my experiences, I can never rejoin the human race.

‘People would not understand,’ I whispered. ‘Doubting my story, they will put me in a madhouse or a circus.’

Another Strange Dream: Death, Sperm, And Gods
Exhausted by my experiences, I must have blacked out. Once again, I had the oddest of dreams. It was both beautiful and terrifying.

In the dream, I awakened to find myself in northern Egypt. I was in a fabled city, the place where the head of the great Osiris was buried.

‘Hail Osiris!’ shouted a voice. ‘Thou art older, better, truer!’ The dismembered bodies of Palestinian gods—their faces frozen in the dry orgasm of death—were scattered everywhere. Obviously the victims of violence—the gods had been stabbed, strangled, burned—the remains were already beginning to decompose in the desert sun.

Two dogs, the symbols of loyalty, were guarding the divine cadavers. Meanwhile, flesh flies were busily laying their eggs in noses, mouths, and ears of the corpses. Already, some of the eggs had produced maggots.

I diverted my eyes from the scene of death—far from the city—and I saw the plushly female breasts of Mother Nature. Young and fresh and beautiful beyond imagination, around her there were no plants without flowers or trees without fruit.

Amun-Ra—the creator god of the Egyptians—was standing above the open thighs of Mother Nature. Muscular and bronzed—with beautiful tattoos on his sunburnt flesh— Amun-Ra had a great phallus which stretched across the void of space.

With North African lewdness, Amun-Ra began to masturbate. A peevish god named Iavoth wanted to stop him—in magic, Iavoth was the demon of spurious guilt—but Iavoth failed in his efforts. Sterile and anaemic, Iavoth was too weak and too dead to prevail.

Now I understand, I thought in the dream. In the dead soil of my soul, I understood the truth.

Rubbing his blood-swollen organ—shamelessly seething with life—Amun-Ra ejaculated into the darkness. His vehement discharge—his eruption of white and sticky sperm—squirted against the black skin of the sky goddess.

The origin of all things, the semen of god became the Milky Way.

Chapter IV The Question Of Madness

‘Every thought, however swiftly suppressed, has its effect on the mind.’

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) ‘In short, the nature of the hallucinations of Jesus, as they are described in the orthodox Gospels, permits us to conclude that the founder of the Christian religion was afflicted with religious paranoia.’

Charles Binet-Sangle (1868-1941)

My Time In A Homeless Shelter
When I eventually regained consciousness, I found myself in some sort of ‘Homeless Shelter.’ Thankfully, I remained in the human world.

Dressed in cotton pajamas—sitting in a red arm-chair—I still possessed the manuscript, but my weapon was gone. If the monsters find me here, I thought, I will fight. I will use fists, feet, and teeth.
Exhausted, I tried to fall back into sleep, but it was impossible. The smell of sickness—the stench of sweat and medicine— kept me awake.

My Contact With Insane People
Vagrants and human oddities—the excrements of society— were everywhere in the shelter. Judging from their inexplicable outbursts, most of them were obviously and utterly insane.

An effeminate boy—a strange creature with a male physique and female body language—was a special nuisance. Claiming he was the reincarnation of Pope Julius III—a homosexual pope—the boy kept touching himself in a quasi-masturbatory fashion.

‘Behold the miracle!’ he exclaimed, as he indecently exposed himself. ‘Hardened by desire, behold the resurrection of the flesh!’

Next to him was a fresh-faced girl named Lyssa. She claimed to be a rape victim, but I noticed evidence of masturbation on her pajama bottoms.

‘Seduction is worse than rape,’ Lyssa mumbled over and over again. ‘Seduction corrupts the mind—rape merely pollutes the body....’

On the far side of the room was an old man who believed he was a prophet. A religious fanatic—he had not washed since his baptism—the old man claimed that self-induced head injuries gave him mystical experiences.

‘Jesus—the Judaic avatar—is coming back,’ he declared. ‘After killing all the sinners in an apocalyptic `final solution,’ he will herd the faithful into a totalitarian paradise. His reign—a kind of `Christian Reich’—will last one thousand years.’

The old man laughed—he was clearly looking forward to eschatological collapse—and then he slammed his head against the floor.

‘Heaven will be perfect bliss,’ he continued. ‘A splendid utopia, it will be a place without crime and without choices.’

What The Psychiatrist Said To Me
An arrogant man—apparently some sort of mental health worker—took an interest in me. An ugly individual—he was short, squat, and blond—he had flaccid lips and rotting teeth.