In the mists of the Shower Block stood column upon column of men in the roiling, clouded light. The nozzles rained down a warm gush beneath which the inmates scrubbed slowly at their hardened bodies with bars of chalky soap. All eyes were cast downward toward the drains, the steaming water spiraling into darkness. Not a word was spoken. Only the pattering of water on chipped tile filled the swirling fog.

"Shit!" Jorge jumped back from the nozzle.

"What’s your fucking problem?" Paco asked with the tilt of his head.

Jorge put his hand under the stream. "Damn water’s cold, man."

"Is that why you have such a small pecker?" someone shouted down the line.

"Why the fuck you looking?" Jorge yelled back.

"He’s trying to separate the men from the boys."

"I’ll give him something to separate," Jorge growled.

“Hey, I don’t want your ass,” the anonymous inmate tossed back through the fog. “Mexican gives me the runs...in the other direction!” Laughter echoed off the grimy walls.

“Fucking assholes,” Jorge muttered. He turned to Paco. "Hey, hombre, this shit’s cold. Any way I can use yours?"

"This is not the place for pick-up lines." Paco continued scrubbing at his chest ignoring Jorge’s shivering.

The pipes audibly groaned. A knocking sound rattled behind the tiled walls followed by a metallic grinding. The nozzles’ watery arcs lost pressure and limply sputtered to a lukewarm gurgle. Heads rose as the fog dissipated.

“Are you kidding me?” One of the inmates reached up to shake the nozzle. “I get three showers a week and wouldn’t you know-” A shot of frigid water caught him full in the face. He instinctively recoiled, his foot catching a slick puddle. He lost his balance and fell down hard on the floor with a slap. The con grunted in pain.

“You dumb mutha fucker.” Whoever said it had captured the thought of everyone in the block. Some chuckled at the con’s obvious suffering, while others focused on the impotent nozzles.

Suddenly, one by one each nozzle gave off a pitched whine before spitting icy jets that cut like shards to the bone forcing the inmates to retreat towards the center of the room out of their range.

"What the fuck? They forget to pay the bill?" Jorge asked.

"They’d forget us if they could," Paco sagely replied.

“Where the fuck is da heat?”

“God damn cheap bastards.”

One of the cons jumped. “Hey stop touching me, man. I’m not that cold.”

“Give it time, baby.”

The complaining grew, their shouts returning to them ten-fold from the walls surrounding them; the place reverberated with their rage. Their anger ramped up and intensified as they fought to stay warm, huddled against the cold.

The door to the showers opened. Officer Harris peered inside with a frown. "Alright, what the fuck is your problem?"

"No hot water, bitch. That’s the problem," one of the inmates cried out, his arms wrapped tightly around his body.

"You better check that attitude," Harris warned, reaching for his nightstick. "You show respect."

"We’re freezing here, man," Jorge complained.

"It’s better than you deserve," Harris spat back. "You don’t like it. Tough shit. You can stay dirty for all I care. Not like it’d be a change for you. Now either finish up or get the fuck out!"

The inmates trembled, some turning purple, yet they ignored the growing numbness, staring defiantly at the guard.

“Did you fucking hear me?” Harris took a step forward, the nightstick now in his hand.

"There a problem in there?" Gene called through the door.

Harris turned his back on the inmates to call back to Gene. "No problem in here, right?" He looked back at the quaking figures.

"No," Paco replied. "No problem at all."

"Good." Harris stepped back out slamming the door behind him.

"Shit," one of the inmates muttered, teeth chattering.

Paco left the group and started for the wall toward the hanging towels.

"Where you going?" Jorge asked.

"I’m going to dry off."

***

The tenebrous dark was taking shape. Down in the bowels of the prison it was most palpable. There was a charge in the air, a pulse in the stone. In the flickering light reality fluidly shifted. And that light, flashing immaterial ochre that painted chipped granite in momentary splashes, was growing weaker. At the core of this change, beneath that faltering glow Luke sat like a storyteller; legs crossed with a story of woe in his lap.

“There is an irony to life,” Deom stated while scanning the case file. “Without death, the journey has no meaning.”

“Death gives life meaning,” Herbert scornfully murmured.

“It gives purpose to life. If something were limitless how would you measure it?” Luke looked up. “Our mortal eyes shape our views of life, yet how maddeningly we chaff against the laws of our own make. It is the greatest irony we all ignore as we clutch so desperately at the dream of immortality, blindly traveling a path of ruin toward that mirage of the everlasting."

“But the ancients, they understood. Their myths are rich in irony. Borne of a time when all was nasty, brutish, and short. When the past was worth forgetting and the future was not assured. They found solace and wisdom in tales, universal stories that summed up the rich tragedy that is Existence. Take Atlas who sought to upset the order only to be made its central pillar. Upon his traitorous shoulders heaven rests; an axis around which all stars revolves.”

Herbert could sympathize with the fallen titan. The weight of unseen burdens was taking its crushing toll upon him. Slumped exhaustedly in his chair, his heavy half-opened eyes glazed and bloodshot, Herbert glared contemptuously at Luke through the bars. Loathsome fuck, he thought to himself, absently rubbing the stubble of his raw, gaunt cheeks with the back of his trembling hand. “You think yourself Atlas?”

“I think myself Prometheus. I think myself Samael.” Luke leaned forward. “And what do you think?”

If it wasn’t for the money, I wouldn’t be here. Herbert’s lip curled. What about my life? Everything is coming apart and I have to suffer this man. Let everything just slip through my fingers. Is this truly worth it? How am I going to make it?

His emotions roiling within him, Herbert’s rage flared hotter when confronted with Luke’s serenity. "What is it with you and these damn files?" Herbert blurted out hoping to ruffle the man.

"To remember," Luke calmly replied.

"Why? To wank?"

"No. To see them as they were. Not as they are."

"And what are they?" Herbert caustically probed.

"Haunting memories. Tragic stories." Luke gingerly closed the file and laid it next to him, stroking the cover with gentle care. "Sleepless nights?"

Herbert turned away. "Fuck you care."

"What do you do when you can’t sleep?" The question sounded almost heartfelt.

"I go mad," Herbert told himself. "That’s what I do."

"Do you not wander and explore?"

“Through the desert?” Herbert asked incredulously. “You’re out of your damn mind.”

“I miss my wanderings.” Luke sighed with melancholy. “The destination was never important, only the journey. Only what turned up along the way.”

Frustrated, Herbert banged the table with his fist. "What does this-?"

"There is something magical about the infinite," Luke continued, lost in a somber reverie. "Take the night sky. A realm of eternity, wild and untamed where possibility is never marred by the impossible. Far from this flawed reality. Other worlds. Better worlds." Luke nodded, closing his eyes. "And in the void…Those celestial bodies, all so temptingly close. As if you could just reach out and touch them." His arm stretched to the ceiling reaching futilely for something invisible in the air, flaring particles of dust passing through his fingers. "But as close as everything seems, there is always that distance. That insurmountable distance." He brought his hand close to his breast and opened it to reveal an empty palm. "And that precious light, like dreams, is but a lie.

"Stars," Luke conceded, "are not even truly there, save the sun, the oppressive sun. Stars are nothing more than finite light, traveling through the darkness, circling oblivion. And the freedom of heaven…has been imprisoned by laws of man’s own making. Life, tainted, yet how the stars blindingly dazzle while they burn.

"It was the void that eventually stirred me from my torpor, awakened me to the fearful realization that reality is an illusion; Existence but a dream. In that void, a question arose. At first cold and theoretical, it soon turned feverish and obsessive. What was the purpose of all this?"

“There is no purpose,” Herbert retorted. “We live, we die, we turn to shit and the world keeps dizzily spinning.”

"You do not question?" Luke queried in pity.

"No."

"So when we die?"

"There is nothing."

The hint of a smile teased at the corner of Luke’s mouth. "Where you see nothing, I see possibility." He pulled his legs to his chest, hugging his thighs, and rested his head on his knees. "Have you ever heard of Zermelo?" Herbert’s puzzled expression was the only answer Luke needed. "Perhaps not. ’I am not part of you, yet I am, and you are not part of me, yet you are.’ We are divided, yet united."

"Your father was right. You do think too damn much," Herbert tossed off, exasperated.

Luke shot up to his feet, his body painfully rigid, the tendons in his neck tight to the point of snapping. "I saw but did not see," he rasped, "For all are blind. Blinded by the light. Duplicitous light.

"Stars." Luke pointed in accusation to the ceiling. "They are nothing more than an ancient light, something borne across millennia of something long since dead. The light is a lie. But it is also a sign. The greats, Maxwell…he revealed the truth to me. In his theoretical musings, he questioned." The last sentence was akin to a slur.

"There is a duality to light," Luke continued, swaying slightly, hands before him, fingers writhing. "There is the visible spectrum that illuminates our universe, ever rushing blithely forward from one point to another. But that is but a fraction of the whole. There is the other wave, an unseen wave in the universal fluid, only glimpsed in mathematical theory. Dark energy. A light that travels…backwards, like the mythical tachyon. Past us to times claimed long lost with visions of what is to be.

"Light is ever moving around us," Luke spun madly, "defying our foolish notions of existence and possibility. Past us. Ahead of us. Through us." Luke stopped on his heels abruptly, arms outstretched, an eyebrow arched mischievously. "Guiding us."

Pacing the cell, Luke gesticulated wildly. "My notions of space-time were shattered. For a time I was lost. My reason was sundered. Order…cast down. Einstein a fallen prophet. That something could violate that sacrosanct law…Time was a lie, Existence non-existent. There were no boundaries and I found myself lost in that abyss. So I yearned, yearned to understand. How did light do this?

"Light is a wave, that is a fact. But what is waving?" Luke approached the bars, gripping them with white knuckles. "They are ripples in the fifth dimension."

Mind swimming, Herbert held his pounding head. "Now you’re losing me."

"Most people understand reality to a crude degree. Four dimensional thinking. Height, width, depth, time. It is sensible. That is how the human mind evolved, because that is how the particles of our reality exist. But there are more than four dimensions. Dimensions few can understand and visualize, but they are there. Eleven dimensions in all. And there are things in those dimensions that would drive you mad.

"So what is light? It is the motion of particles, either forward or backward in space-time. So if light were capable of traveling backward, then particles must travel backwards in space-time, creating anti-particles or anti-matter; reversed space-time, the antithesis to our reality. The…mirror-image. Thus anti-matter is not some alien substance; it is our universe moving in retrograde. The other side. So if anti-matter is but matter moving backwards in time, then a single particle can coexist with itself. Where one would see two, positive and negative, there really is but one particle."

"Then why isn’t the universe half matter, half anti-matter?"

"Because unlike the waning light, dimming the further time progresses, anti-matter’s power is ever growing, waxing to our waning, exponential in potential, rushing faster and faster back to the source at a clip that allows us only a fateful glimpse. It is a quickening of sorts. Few times does anti-matter dawdle, and that is by choice." Luke’s eyes surveyed the darkness after that last statement.

"To take it further," Deom continued, "What if all particles were merely a single particle zigzagging back and forth through space-time from beginning to end; life to death, death to life? That the myriad particles, atoms, and matter that we see are really nothing more than a single particle coexisting with itself."

"What are you saying?" Herbert’s question was given with trepidation.

"There is no we. There is only I."

The very thought filled Herbert with revulsion. A connection to Deom? "I don’t believe that. That’s crazy. That’s just nuts."

"Why?" Luke pressed, the words rushing like a torrent from his frothing mouth. "Because of your blind faith in individuality? Because you only believe in what you can perceive? I have learnt that all perception is paradoxical.” The thrust of his argument was almost accusatory. “We all view Existence differently therefore there can be no true Existence. It is but a false creation, built by us. A dream within a dream. And while we all agree that there is a reality, we do not share a reality. We are separate, yet we need not be. Our souls yearn to be whole because, at our core, we realize we are one, each of us but a part of a single being’s journey, a piece of the Universal Mind. A musing across space-time. But we need something to end the illusion, to strip us of our delusional individuality, and lead us all back to genesis on a final journey. That is the final equation, that which can bring all together, a unifying equation that negates all else. An end to this illusion of separation. And I have only just begun to solve it,” Luke stated with great emphasis, jabbing at his stack of notebooks.

"Time is a circle, the end and beginning joining together to form a ring. All things are conceived in duality, creation and destruction. As surely as this blessed particle created all things, it will destroy all things, taking back the substance it granted. It is destined. It is preordained. And we are nothing more than shells harboring twilight.

"You may not want to believe, but in my studies I have found this to be a truth. This sole particle that gives shape to all things is all things, passing from life to death to life. What we perceive as death is nothing more than the reversing of the journey, a return once more to the source. Each journey an evolution, every pass a revolution. Crudely put, it is God."

"God is a particle?"

"God is everything," Luke gushed with the fervor of a proselytizer. "The macroverse is his consciousness where things appear solid, are predictable, reasonable. The microverse is his subconscious where everything is possible, fluid, and surreal. I know this to be true because He revealed it to me."

"He?"

Luke hesitated. "After mother died, I would drive. Every night, just drive towards the horizon. Looking for something, yet I knew not what. Always searching. But it was there, just beyond seeing, pulling at me. I had to get away.

"One night I found myself on this lonely stretch of road. There wasn’t a light to be seen. Not a star on the horizon. Not even a horizon. Just that slim stretch of asphalt leading off into the void. And I followed it.

“I saw it ahead. The gleam was so bright, this shining orb that split into twin eyes that stared right through me. Mesmerized, they drew me into them.” Luke gasped. “I stepped on the accelerator and veered into that yawning radiance. The impact was sudden and rough. My consciousness shattered. Darkness took me as I plunged into the sky. And where I fell…" Luke shivered.

"How do I describe that oppressive realm? Entropy, it is entropy. A place without light or substance or reason. Where memory is all you have and yet readily slips through your fingers. But in the void you are not alone. Oh no." Luke shuddered, gritting his teeth. "They tear at you, those vague ashen abominations of lost life, hungering for your light. Spiritual cannibals.

"And when my hope ebbed and I was ready to surrender to bleak nothingness, He came. A figure. A black figure, an ebony dragon: great and fearsome charging forth from an effulgent tunnel. Mazdhā. He drove them back and carried me away from the depths of the abyss. In the safety of his bosom, we fled entropy, fled tomorrow, to the beginning; prior to inner and outer worlds, prior to space and time, prior to Existence itself where peace is not yet disturbed! There, He spoke to me revealing the nature of all things. And finally I understood."

A stark cold bit deeply into Herbert’s flesh, icy venom flooding his veins. “Who…is he?”

Luke’s eyes shined, tears streaming down his face. “He is God."

***

"You can’t go in there." Herbert brusquely pushed past the secretary, wrenching the knob and shoving the door open.

Warden Joubert glanced up from his desk, phone to ear, clearly annoyed at his unannounced visitor. "I’ll have to call you back." Joubert put the receiver down, his full attention aimed at Herbert.

The secretary appeared in the doorway. “Mr. Kraft, I told you-“

Joubert waved her out of the room. The secretary sniffed before leaving the two alone, closing the door behind her. Once she was gone, Joubert offered Herbert a seat. "May I help you?"

"What the hell is Deom doing here?" Herbert demanded. "The man is clearly insane."

"Really?" Joubert feigned mock sincerity. "And you wonder why we keep him down there."

"He needs help."

"I’m not quite sure what sort of help you are implying, but he is clearly getting all he deserves in my opinion."

"Well then your opinion isn’t worth shit."

Joubert’s smug grin fell. "I’d watch my tongue if I were you, Mr. Kraft. I’ve got enough on my plate as is."

"If you’re not going to give him the help he needs," Herbert warned, "I’ll find someone who will. If anything, this place probably needs a thorough investigation to discover what other problems occur under your watch."

Joubert rose from his chair threateningly. "Do you really think anyone cares about these bastards? They’re mine. My boys." The warden thumbed himself in the chest. "I have to deal with them on a daily basis. Struggle to keep them in these walls with me as ironic as that sounds. Yes, I do things you might find repugnant, make reprehensible choices, but these aren’t men." He shook his head. "What I do I do because I have to. You can’t do this job unless you’re willing to get your hands dirty. You’ve got to lower yourself to their level. They don’t understand love and kind words. They’re not human. They’re animals. They only understand brute force. So I beat them down. I break them. I deprive them of their ’freedoms’ so that the rest of us can have our civil, ordered lives. Just because you don’t have the stomach for it, don’t you bust in here and judge me, you fuck. You don’t have that right.

“And as for that suffering soul you care so much about down in the pit, maybe you should ask him what his people are up to.”

“His people?”

“That cult of his. They’ve been stirring things up since you got here. I even think they’re sabotaging the facilities. The question is why. The only thing I’m sure of is Deom is behind it. They don’t do anything without a word from him.”

"If he is such a problem, then send him elsewhere."

"Where?" Joubert mordantly asked. "To a hospital to get better? Do you think that’s possible? And if it were, do you really think America would even want him back on the streets after he’d been ‘cured?’ The world doesn’t care about him. They only care about what he’s done, and he’s done enough to qualify for lifetime residency down there in the pits of Hell."

Joubert leaned forward on his desk, the wood groaning. "My bosses don’t want him out. It would cause quite a problem politically, and they value their positions in life. They want to stick him in a hole and forget about him. Let him be a symbol, the beast they saved their constituency from. That’s why I put him with the niggers when he first came to me, to break him. And we saw how that turned out.

“The hard truth is he’s staying here, regardless of what your liberal faggot ass conscience moans for."

"So you’re just going to leave him down there?"

"Until God himself takes him off my hands," Joubert devoutly stated.

***

"The guy is weird, Geoff," Herbert told his agent over his cell, striding back and forth in his motel room. "Deom is fucking weird."

"We all have our quirks."

"Except his are psychotic."

"Wonderfully so."

Herbert sighed. "I just feel wrong exploiting this. I simply want to be done with it."

"Some of Deom’s insanity must be rubbing off on you. If nothing else, you cannot afford to throw this away."

"Giving voice to something this twisted-"

“Is what you’re best at.”

“Not anymore.”

“People don’t want to be inspired. They want degradation, if only because that is the single thing men comprehend. And that’s what you give them: their id fleshed. Someone they can admire as well as despise. The crowds are populated with hypocrites, worshiping those they jealously despise. So what is so wrong with capitalizing on their warped yearnings? Your work strikes at the core of civilization, the rational as well as the savage. You are an artist. You create legends."

"I raise demons. That’s what I do."

"Listen to me Herbie, Luke wants to be heard. The world wants his words. If you will not serve as his voice, someone else will. Accept it. Be the guy smart enough to profit from inevitability."

"I just can’t think straight," Herbert admitted, tiredly rubbing his forehead with the palm of his hand.

"Is it a problem concerning money? I can cover your expenses until the book is done."

"It’s this past week…I just need to get out of here. Go home and settle things. Focus on my life for a change."

"There’s nothing you can do to change things back here. The divorce isn’t reversible. Steph is long gone. And your debts are beyond payable. You come back and the creditors will devour you.

"You gotta focus, Herbie. This book is your salvation. Deom is your salvation. And the rewards…Shape it however you want, but don’t quit."

"Sometimes I wish I could just quit," Herbert said before putting the phone down cutting his line to the living world.

Resting on the edge of his bed lost in a daze, the lit fringe of the closed curtains darkened as day succumbed to night. Everything was dissolving. Old memories, lost hopes, and unbidden pain arose and consumed him. As creeping hopelessness gradually overtook him, he bitterly cursed his life.

"Nothing but shells harboring twilight," Herbert repeated, licking his chapped lips and tasting iron. God, how he yearned for a stiff drink. Anything to slow his thoughts, halt that inevitable march down into the depths. A heady haze. Incomprehensible peace. To forget himself…

Reluctantly, Herbert pulled his laptop out and turned it on. Several hours passed in futility, every paragraph wiped away in frustration. The structure was wrong. The phrasing not quite right. Mediocre drivel. He chastised himself again and again, suffering to type something coherent. He couldn’t do it. The words just wouldn’t come. His talent had deserted him, if it had been there to begin with. Worthless: That word haunted him. The worst word anyone could experience. If he couldn’t perform, what value was left to his life? Mockingly, the cursor winked at him repeatedly on that blank screen.

Aggravated by his lack of progress, Herbert turned toward the tower of case files stacked on the dresser across the room. His eyes narrowed to slits as muffled whispers seeped from the folders.

“Fuck you,” Herbert spat through grit teeth. “You would judge me? Wallow in your graves where you belong. You’re dead!”

The whispers only increased fueling his rage.

Herbert came off the bed and advanced toward the dresser, his hands balling into fists. With a swipe, he knocked the pile over scattering the files across the stained carpet. Their photos stared up at him in lifeless accusation. Huffing, unable to suffer their company, he trudged into the bathroom.

Gripping the sink, peering into the mirror, he beheld the ruin he’d become. Hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, skin lined, sagging, and eclipsed in parts by gray stubble. Expressionless. A worn out mask. That’s all he saw. Nothing but a worn out mask concealing a fading soul that he had come to hate passionately.

Herbert twisted the faucet on and ran his numb hands beneath the hot water. The steam caressed his face as blessed warmth flowed across his palms, over boney knuckles, streaking down bared wrists, eating into the chill that plagued him.

A light breeze swept the trance away. Overhead, the bulb’s glow flickered with a chinking sound. Herbert looked up. With a pop the bulb burst showering sparks and shards forcing him to cover his head as darkness washed over the room.

"Cheap fucking slum," Herbert muttered in the pallid moonlight.

Reaching his hands back into the sink, he discovered the running water had gone cold. Without hesitation, he cupped the frigid water and brought it to his face to starkly wash away the exhaustion that scorched his eyes. Closing them, he felt the fatigue smoldering beneath his lids.

"Will this ever end?" he asked the quiet.

Stealing a deep breath, exhaling somberly, he opened his eyes to find his reflection leaning forward glowering at him inhumanly. Its eyes horridly rolled back, mouth gaping broadly until the skin split and its jaw came unhinged. From that craven maw heaved a guttural howl.

Herbert quaked in terror and gave, his knees buckling. Falling to the floor, his head smacked the grimy linoleum knocking the world askew. Disoriented, reaching for anything solid to steady himself, something grabbed his wrist.

It yanked with a ferocity that nearly dislocated his arm, the thing pulling him across the bathroom floor into the bedroom on his belly. It dropped him beside the bed. Before he could stand invisible assailants commenced kicking him from all directions. The shots caught him hard in the kidneys making him ball up. He winced at the blows to his back and went limp following a stomp to the side of the head. Growls and squeals emanated from the walls. Herbert was rolled onto his back and slapped across the face hard enough to break his nose. Blood flooded his mouth and coursed down his throat. Coughing crimson, vision swimming, something screamed in his ear.

“Please,” he sputtered in supplication. The bedlam abruptly ceased. For several seconds stillness reigned.

Then Herbert felt his pants being unbuckled. He tried to fight the thing off only to take a blow to the chin followed by a backhanded slap that came close to taking his head off. Battered and nigh unconscious, Herbert offered no resistance as his pants slid down.

Out of the inky blackness a vile, cadaverous succubus mounted him. Clad in shredded rags, the rotten abomination leered lasciviously down at him with gouged hollows, black ichor oozing from empty sockets. Her once golden hair was now rusty brown, smeared in dried blood and her flesh hung in strips.

Holding him down, she shrieked in his face, her fetid breath roiling his gut. Herbert struggled for air, tiny pin pricks of light dancing in the blackness. Cramps cruelly pulled his muscles taut, the rigor hardening his flesh.

Icy fingers fondled his inner thigh, tickling the skin as they traced their way upward. Revulsion overwhelmed him as he felt his cock stiffen in her grasp. The cunt’s breathing was ragged as she jerked him off, her mewling choking out like a heated death rattle.

"Stop. Stop," he pleaded, unable to push her away.

The bitch stroked him gently, teasing him; making him want her despite himself. Herbert’s heart pounded with reckless fervor against his ribs, fear and anticipation rushing through him; the rational submitting to the morbid. All he could do was react, react to her.

Pressing her putrid face next to his, her swollen purple tongue slid into his mouth that she might taste his final breath. He pleaded internally for deliverance when he felt her other hand at his rectum. Piercing his asshole with three fingers, Herbert could feel her within him, the cold invading him as he came. The violation poisoned his soul.

Next Chapter: Vijñāna