3891 words (15 minute read)

Ouroboros

Whomp. Whomp.

They were closing in on him.

Whomp. Whomp.

Personal demons, their bleak faces surrounding him, even when he closed his eyes.

Whomp. Whomp.

Herbert felt trapped. No escape. No control. Everything was coming apart. He had nothing left, nothing but dire thoughts and sinister urges that drove him to lash out. He just wanted to tear the walls down. Tear the whole damn structure down on his very head.

In the dark, he viciously punched the rutted wall of his motel room, left then right. Whomp. Whomp. His hands, once numb, ached. Whomp. Whomp. He repeatedly battered the stained plaster in frustration, pitting it until he finally put a fist through its sloughing skin. Sharp pain radiated up his shattered hand through his arm, the shock paralyzing him. Morbidly he examined his broken hand. Even in the gloom, it was apparent his knuckles were fractured beneath the swollen, purple mounds.

Herbert stood topless in the cold, pallid skin grimly glistening with sweat. His ribs pressed harshly against his taut flesh with each heaving breath, an undulating wave of bone and meat, crisscrossed with jagged marks where he had dug his nails in and lacerated himself.

Relishing the pain, he started pounding away at the wall again, splitting his knuckles and painting the gaudy wallpaper with his blood. His attention concentrated inward, he failed to hear the knocking at the door followed by the lock turning.

"What are you doing?" the motel manager blurted, gaping in horror at the sight before him.

"Improving your fucking décor." Herbert brought a hard right into the wall with a sickening slap.

"I knew you were trouble. The late hours. The strange smells. The noises. And Reeza’s missing. After I saw her with you. Yeah, I saw you two."

"You spying on me, pervert?" Herbert tossed over his bare shoulder.

"I’m about to do more than that. I’m calling the cops."

“Fuck you will,” Herbert growled, spinning towards him.

“Now calm down-”

“Think you can threaten me?” Herbert took a step towards the piggish bastard. His muscles tensed noticeably.

The manager defensively put his hands up in front of him, retreating towards daylight. "I didn’t mean nothin’-"

Herbert cut the manager off, grabbing him by the shirt and pulling him back into the room, then slamming the door shut.

***

"You have gotten a taste for it now, have you not?"

Herbert could only brood in his chair, wringing his hands, unable to meet those unblinking eyes of Luke’s.

"It is driving you mad, the guilt. Why?" The question was all the more revolting due to its heartfelt tone. "You think life is special? There is nothing special about life. Nothing objective. Nothing true. Nothing of weight. All existence as it pertains to man is subjective and thus has no value save what we ascribe to it. It is that very lack of value that condemns life. Fuck, feed, die. Fuck, feed, die. That cruel cycle, that unending cycle which renders all creation an Ouroboros; existing only to consume ourselves. A cycle of corruption, illusions, of maddening futility. It must end. The cycle must end.”

“And what would you replace it with?” Herbert challenged, stirred from his torpor. “Spiritual death?”

Luke tilted his head and sighed, arms through and wrapped around the bars of his cell. “I have tried to make you understand for you must now more than ever. That is the only reason I have spoken to you for I have seen the part you have as yet to play. And…because we are kindred. They haunt you like they do me. But do not fear them. Do not mourn them. Embrace them. Accept death.

"You morbidly dwell on your past. You should not for new beginnings wait. Do not turn your back on them. Regret is nothing more than a cancer. It eats away at us. Weakens us. Causes mortal doubt. Accept that your actions were in good faith. Give even your worst acts meaning. Follow that path, even blindly, regardless of where it leads. Submit to the innate for only in the deepest recesses of your soul will you truly discover what destiny has in store for you. The subconscious is a well of echoes that must be heard."

"Submit?" That wretched word was anathema to what Herbert felt. "Submit to these dark thoughts? To this…destructive drive? Where is the humanity in that?"

"Mankind is but shadow and dust. It is the divine spark within us that matters and murder is nothing more than the benevolent act of freeing God. Would you rather dwell eternally in this?" Luke gestured to the bleak cells surrounding them. "This life is a prison! Cannot you see? This is why I act! My actions ripple out further than these mere murders. They are seismic change threatening the fractured foundations of civilization. And that is to be lauded. We shall tear down humanity’s blasphemous work geared toward unattainable immortality and uplift all souls. Liberation from the flesh. From instinctual drives, from spiritual separation, from madness itself.

“All reality, all Creation is nothing more than eternal recurrence,” Luke railed, the words spewing in an uncontrolled torrent of venomous bile. “Repeated patterns, repeated cycles, a downward spiral that never truly progresses but instead drags us down by its cursed gravity. There is no reason to this reality, yet our eyes blind us, our flesh lies to us. Our hearts urge us to find meaning in this meaningless construct. We believe we are marching forward, feel that we must foster creation, seek out reason and expand. Multiply. But to what? To the horizon? To the unreachable? It is all a hollow lie! Living again and again in ignorance, learning nothing, these particles of existence always reconfiguring, searching for that perfect form, that ever unrealized flicker of enlightenment. But life is imperfect, crafted to fail, unworthy to house that divine spark and it can only dim in our decaying bosom. It is a crude, abominable thing that seeks to mimic the divine but never will attain it.

“It is this repetition, this soulless repetition that leaves us puppets to patterns without any true choice or purpose, save to fulfill ill-conceived destiny. It is the great man who can see through this, refuse his place, fashion a cavity, that initial necessary void from which entropy may arise and false order fall.

“That is why men flocked to me. Scholars and artists who had sought reason all their lives. And I liberated them, revealing the comforting revelation of nothingness. Does it not strip the weight from your own heart to know that nothing matters? You cling so desperately to that burden that is your humanity, but what has it brought you? Only suffering and pain. Why feel when all you sense is agony?

“Why do you think man kills? It is not to feel like God or to conquer death, nor to sate some selfish, depraved urge. It is anger, divine rage at life. It is innate frustration with the construct of existence. And do not doubt that every man would kill if one could, the fear of this blanketing flesh smothering such desires. Yet that blessed numbness that murder gives, that intimacy with the void; the denial of one’s humanity. It is irresistible, a force so magnetic it cannot be denied.

“You have felt it yourself, that destructive urge we each inherit. Is it wrong that you derive such pleasure from giving in to it? Is not pleasure a sign that you are doing something true to yourself?”

“It is evil!” Herbert fiercely retorted, desperately trying to prevent his humanity from receding.

Luke clicked his teeth together, his cheek spasming. “This belief in good and evil is a calamitous error, our ascribing of life’s values to something beyond life. One more step in trying to instill order based on limited perspective, to find our place, or rather, to create one.

“My first murders were…selfish. Then they became habitual. But then I questioned. Why did I do this? Why did I need this? I looked into my victims’ eyes as they passed and saw me there. Saw my mother there. The patterns became clear. Each of us suffering, living the same life. Never questioning. Yet death…that brought questions.

“We each think ourselves islands, but we are not. We are mere reflections of one another upon the ocean of space-time, the only difference being perspective, dimensions. And it is this faith in individual perspective that fosters divisions where they should not exist. Where you see life as precious, I see it as ruinous. I do not fear nor blindly accept to quell this doubt in my heart. No, I have abandoned the herd, surrendered my place in Creation. In that, I have found purpose. I prefer to be a destructive force, excising and annihilating insidious ‘truths’ from the body of existence that chaos may be reclaimed; chaos from which true creativity is born.

“So, over time the killing became more deliberate, premeditated. I saw the ripples they caused communities spreading ever further out. Came to see the interconnectedness. So my methods evolved. I did my best to multiply the effects of my actions. I drew others to me. Created a legion of sole purpose, united by wrath. We instigated plots moving from mere murder to sprees, targeting and razing selectively. And yet it was not enough. The foundations of society were too strong, people’s faith in community too sure. No, we had to move beyond the mere act of killing. We had to become revolutionary. We had to stir doubt in man’s belief in man. Attack the construct itself removing all barriers so that nothing could stop man’s inhumanity to man.

“That is why I struck at Hong Kong. That was the symbol I had forever been searching for. That was my masterpiece. The instability I initiated…” A low cackle gravelly tumbled from Deom’s mouth.

“The WTO conference. MC6.”

“Yes,” Luke hissed. “An important moment, following Doha, when the nations of the world supposedly cast aside their earthly greed and sought to dismantle barriers set against growth. Such flowery words, speaking of upraising the dregs of the third world by trade and aid, of bringing all humanity together in economic prosperity, increased interconnectedness. Fairness. Hope.” Luke spit that last out with disgust.

“It took weeks of planning, stockpiling of supplies; scouring the plans of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, inserting moles. The danger we put ourselves in…But it had to be done. Luckily, we had unwitting allies.

“Protestors helped to distract police outside the convention center, peacefully chanting about the threat of globalization for their own petty reasons, seeking to artificially preserve their sovereignty over their own shit lands; screaming of the ills of no boundaries, of unfair competition, of foreign threats. But we could not count on them alone. We needed further distractions. So I had men board various subway trains throughout the city, each carrying several packets of liquid sarin wrapped in newspapers. When they reached their appointed spots, the packets were dropped and punctured. It didn’t take long for the liquid to evaporate filling the air. Oh the turmoil it caused, effectively shutting down the rail network, bringing the city to a halt and further straining police and emergency forces.

“It proved easy infiltrating the convention center itself. We brought in our ‘supplies’ via the loading dock. Bribed officials readily let us pass with our cargo. We quickly made our way to the security center as well as to the maintenance and environmental control areas. Once these were under our control the signal was given. Several car bombs were detonated ensuring that the sole road leading into the center was blocked.

“A panic started among the protestors, which was further stoked by several well-placed suicide bombers whose sacrifice induced mass panic. As the police struggled to regain control over the surging horde, we pressed forward inside.

“With control secured over the environmental and maintenance areas, we then released sarin gas and liquid through the plumbing and ventilation systems. Not enough to kill everyone. No, there was no way we could transport that large a supply; just enough to terrorize, to incite alarm and horror. To send the rabble running. Announcements were made from the security center informing those within the building of what was happening, urging them to flee the property, while counter reports were given to WTO agents warning them to protect the diplomats by locking them down inside the conference hall. The confusion was enough that no one was sure what to do. And, in my own defense, more died by trampling than did by gas.

“With the stage set, my brethren and I then made our way toward the WTO conference itself. Security had effectively protected them from the worst, doing exactly as was planned keeping the diplomats herded in one single area. But we had something special in store. We took the guards by surprise with smoke and concussion grenades. I buried my knife hilt deep into a fair share of would be heroes.

“And then we entered the conference hall, all those world leaders staring at us in stark terror when we emerged from the smoke; these representatives of every nation of Earth. How the rage consumed my reason upon seeing them. They outnumbered us yet stood frozen by fear, sheep before the wolves. I ordered my men in with the drums, meeting little resistance. Those few who did challenge us were made examples of. Once everything was in place, we sealed the doors behind us and I remotely detonated the drums. Through the crack in the door the blinding flash was visible, our own Big Bang. White phosphorus flooded the air, consuming the hope of innumerable states. I can still hear the screams,” Luke rasped with cruel satisfaction, a shudder running through his emaciated body.

“We escaped by sea afterwards. Officials didn’t discover what had happened until hours after we had gone. And the shockwaves from this international incident. Hundreds dead. Hong Kong paralyzed. China shamed. The beginning of a worldwide economic depression. The end of negotiations, and with them, hope for the third world leading to increased oppression and war, the solidifying of barriers. And my face finally revealed.

“They came after me, the world with all its resources. There were other attacks, even more brazen than Hong Kong. And when I finally surrendered myself to the authorities…the pleasure I took extolling my acts abroad. China wanted me extradited. Europe, too. But America selfishly kept me for my earlier, petty crimes. Schisms emerged between former allies. Further distrust sowed.”

“And for all your glory,” Herbert stated with a scowl, “here you are.”

“Yes,” Luke meekly conceded. “Here I am.” He made his way over to his stack of notebooks, gingerly scanning through them before extracting one. He turned and tossed it through the bars at Herbert, the notebook slapping upon the granite floor. Herbert cautiously picked it up.

“What is this?” Herbert asked, holding the notebook at arm’s length.

“What you came here for, your life’s work.”

***

Posted in front of the mammoth window in his office, Joubert scrutinized the convicts below, his reflection towering over them. Stillness had settled over the yard. A threatening stillness. The cons hung in quiet groups, lingering idly around the weight benches and loitering on the blacktop of the basketball courts. Congregating. Whispering to one another. “You’re planning something,” Joubert muttered at the still figures. “What the fuck are you planning?”

There was a knock on the door behind him. "Come," Joubert absently commanded, his attention still cast downward. He heard the door open and close behind him.

"Sir?"

"Yes, Officer Dames?"

"I have the status report you wanted on the facility."

Joubert turned to look at his chief. "Enlighten me."

"We’ve done an estimate on the fridges. Even if we had the money, they wouldn’t be fully functional for at least two weeks. On top of that, all the food stored inside them has gone rotten."

"Have you removed it?"

Dames hesitated. "The rotten food, sir?"

"What were we just talking about?"

"Forgive me, sir. I haven’t been getting much sleep."

"Well, that’s on your time. This is mine."

"Yes sir. We’ve gotten rid of as much of the spoiled provisions as we could."

Joubert leaned forward placing his knuckles on his desk. "What does that mean?"

Dames squirmed. "Sir, some of the cons aren’t enjoying the rationing-"

"So? So what? What does that have to do with rotten food?"

"Some of the inmates in the kitchens have been smuggling rotten food."

Joubert’s lip curled. "You’re kidding me."

"There have been a few cases of food poisoning."

Joubert’s eyes narrowed. "How many is ’a few?’"

"Three dozen, sir," Dames reported.

"Three dozen!" Joubert shouted, pounding his desk angrily. "Why wasn’t I informed?"

"We didn’t think-"

"That’s quite right. You didn’t think!" Joubert fought to keep himself from grabbing the phone and caving in the side of Dames’ skull. Exasperated, he asked, "How many fatalities?"

Dames looked down at the clipboard in his hands.

"You do have that information I hope."

"Three, sir."

"Three. Are you sure?" The warden’s tone was contemptuous.

"Well-"

“Jesus!” Joubert cursed. “Just because they’re animals doesn’t mean we’re allowed to treat them like it. At least not openly. Am I clear?”

"Yes, sir."

Joubert pinched the bridge of his nose at the first signs of an emerging migraine. "What else?"

"The ventilation system is still offline."

Joubert shook his head. "What’s the problem with it?"

"We don’t know, sir."

"That’s it? You don’t know."

Dames swallowed. "We’ve had experts down here-"

"Doesn’t sound like it," Joubert curtly interrupted. "‘I don’t know.’ You actually paid them for that professional opinion? How would you like it if I shoved your ass in the vents to find the problem?"

Dames scribbled a note to himself. "I’ll get some men on it."

"You better believe you will," Joubert fumed. He pulled his leather chair out and fell into its comforting grip. "Tell me about the plumbing." Dames ruffled the papers on his board. "Don’t tell me you don’t know about that either."

"We’ve contacted numerous plumbers. But, uh, sir-"

"Yes?"

"They said it’ll cost round about thirty thousand."

"What?" Joubert came unglued. "My budget can’t cover that!"

"Well, sir, that’s the best estimate I could find."

"Then maybe you should go down there," Joubert thumbed over his shoulder at the window, "and find someone with experience. I’m sure there is at least one bastard con down there in the yard with experience involving toilets. After all, they are all pieces of shit."

"If you say so, sir."

"What measures have you taken to prevent outbreaks?"

"Sir?"

"The toilets." Dames continued to stare blankly at the warden. "You do realize raw sewage makes you ill, don’t you? Cholera ring a bell?" Before Dames could answer, Joubert asked the question that was nipping at the back of his head. "Exactly where are they shitting anyway with the toilets offline?"

"We gave them buckets, sir."

"One per cell?"

"Yes, sir."

"How often do you empty them?"

"Once every twelve hours, sir."

"Better make that six."

"Yes, sir."

"I see you have a surgical mask." Joubert pointed at the oral cover hanging around Dames’ neck. "Why?"

"The smell in the cell blocks is terrible, sir. We’ve taken to wearing them." Joubert nodded. "Would you like me to put in an order for the inmates?"

"For masks?"

"Yes sir."

"What the hell for?"

"Well, I thought-"

“Don’t think! I lose more respect for you with each word you sputter. Thank God your vocabulary is small!”

Dames mouthed a silent retort.

"The boiler?" Dames just stood there in front of Joubert. "The boiler!"

"Yes, sir." Dames glanced at his notes, hands shaking. "We need a new one."

"Really? Then why don’t you go get one then?" Dames pulled out a pen and started to write something. "I wasn’t serious you fucking moron."

"Oh. Sorry sir."

"Jesus," Joubert breathed. "Let them shower in the cold. Not like it matters anyway. Oh, wait. The plumbing. God damnit."

"Would you like an update on the prisoners’ morale, sir?"

"You actually ask them how they feel about this place?"

Dames shrugged. "It’s just general observations, sir."

"I can do that from up here, thank you very much." Despite the subtle cue to leave, Joubert noticed that Dames lingered. "Is there something else you needed?"

"I need you to sign off on something?"

"What?" the warden wearily asked.

"Just a form allowing for overtime."

"Why would I need to do that? Haven’t you enough guards?"

"We’ve had a few...resignations."

"Then why can’t you simply shrink the shift staffs until we hire more men?"

"We’re already running skeleton shifts. We can barely keep up as it is."

Joubert shook his head. "Give me the paper." Dames stutter-stepped to the desk to submit his clipboard. Joubert scribbled his signature onto the allotted line and shoved it back towards Dames.

"Thank you, sir."

"Is that all?"

"Well, sir-"

"What now? For fuck’s sake, what now!"

"There have been some reported electrical problems."

"This place is just falling apart around me," Joubert lamented. Surrendering, he simply said, "Have someone check it out."

"Yes, sir."

Dames about-faced and made for the door. "And try not to get electrocuted!" Joubert shouted at Dames’ back. The door slammed behind the chief correctional officer as the warden put his head in his hands. "Jesus."

***

Herbert sifted through the drawers of the dresser yanking out his clothes and carrying them in clumps and tossing them haphazardly into the suitcase on the bed. It was time to pack up and move on, but a part of him didn’t want to leave. To face the world again…

"Relieved?" Geoff asked through Herbert’s headset, dragging him from his thoughts.

"Not really." Herbert attempted to smooth out the mess in his suitcase. "It all feels unfinished somehow."

"Maybe you didn’t find what you were looking for," Geoff offered.

Herbert glanced over at Luke’s notebook lying on the bed. "Maybe."

"Maybe it was never there."

"Yeah, well, life is full of maybes," Herbert replied, snatching the notebook and putting it in his suitcase.

“That’s what dramatic license is for, Herbie. So how long before I see a manuscript?”

“I have some follow-up interviews to do.”

“With who?”

"Lennartz." Herbert glanced over at the motel manager’s dead body wrapped in bloodied sheets. "I need some clarification.”

Next Chapter: Khôra