《The Novel[ist] Dead》


 1. The Death of the Author

    Yasushi Kazuo knew it was all over when Hoshino-san didn¡¯t return his thirteenth call. Hoshino-san, over a beer or three or twenty, the exact amount was unimportant, had once explained to Kazuo the significance of this number.


    ¡°I love a novelist who is persistent,¡± he said, ¡°When a writer arrogantly demands my attention and time, that¡¯s when I think ¡®my goodness, maybe this one is good.¡¯ Petition outside my office, scream at me, drink me under the table if you have to, that¡¯s how important you believe your work is to the reader. But I also hate a writer who resorts to begging, Yasushi-sensei. It¡¯s a subtle and important distinction, and these days, I sense that from you. A writer begs in a particularly pathetic way when their best years are behind them, because their work has sunk into fatal mediocrity. They become unhinged. Unpublishable. Thirteen calls, sensei. If ever you call me thirteen times and I still have not answered, then you have become the kind of author in my eyes who begs, who has nothing left to offer this world.¡±


    Kazuo lived for almost forty years alone in a six tatami mat room in Hatagaya, two blocks from the Keiyo line, a convenient two stops away from Hoshino-san¡¯s office in Shinjuku. Every morning, he would leave out on his balcony bird feed for the fattened pigeons flocking upon telephone lines and then walk an hour to Yoyogi Park, where he spent his time writing his next manuscript beneath the zelkova tree closest to the shores of the lake. Younger writers preferred trendy American-styled coffee shops on Nishihara Street with beans imported from specialty farms in Guatemala, but Kazuo found his solace in the shadow of the graybark elms. After all, beneath their shade, Kazuo had written his debut novel, penned elegies for his deceased relatives, performed his first blood sacrifice, proposed to his wife, and received the phone call for his first and only literary award, an honorable mention and a respectable prize of five thousand yen.


    It was beneath those very zelkovas on a bitter winter night that Kazuo now dialed for Hoshino-san, his frail fingers shaking at the precipice of that thirteenth call. In his oversized army green coat and wool beret, Yasushi Kazuo appeared to some passersby less as an author and more like a frenzied detective or overseas spy desperate to report stolen national secrets to a foreign adversary. His wrinkled eyes, watering, prayed to the spirits dormant in the barren boughs above him that Hoshino-san would answer this time, that perhaps he had simply been enjoying a long bath, or was entertaining his three children, or playing pretend. Maybe Hoshino-san was hard at work fifteen minutes before midnight, hurling profanities at the other editors, declaring that Yasushi Kazuo¡¯s latest novel was a masterclass of science fantasy, that all the other duds, panned by critics for its excessive misanthropy, laughed at by readers young and old, who mocked, much to Kazuo¡¯s outrage, that he was a mere sellout deriving conventions from his superiors, served only as fuels to the spark that birthed this work worthy of greatness.


    ¡°This is,¡± clicked the phone on the other end.


    ¡°Hoshino-san!¡± Kazuo cried, ¡°My novel ¨C¡±


    ¡°Arukawa,¡± replied the voicemail, ¡°Please leave a message.¡±


    ¡°Hoshino-san, please, you must answer my calls. My novel, is it not wonderful like I told you at the izakaya here in Hatagaya? Does it not impress you with its vivid energy, does it not reveal the fetid sickness of this world? My goodness, I¡¯m begging aren¡¯t I, Hoshino-san, it¡¯s just like you warned me, isn¡¯t it? But surely you can understand why I¡¯m so frantic. This is truly my best work, it is a true depiction of the world. I¡¯m an exception that proves the rule, you must understand, Hoshino-san. I would never call you this many times if I wasn¡¯t certain. I am, of course, grateful for your patronage these years, the novels that never made a single yen for your serial, but surely you can spare some space, two or three pages in next month¡¯s serial. Just two pages is all I need, you¡¯ll see, the readers will flock to this one. Oh dear, I¡¯m begging again, aren¡¯t I, Hoshino-san? It must sound like I¡¯m mad, but it is not me that is mad but the world, the world that is mad and should not be as it is. You¡¯ll see Hoshino-san, I will show you. Just two pages, two pages is all I need.¡±


    The phone line died, and so did Kazuo¡¯s soul. His spirit drifted out of his body like wisps of incense and snagged and tore on gnarled mangled branches. He decided that he hated elm trees, that he hated Hoshino-san, that he hated himself now that he had become a meager beggar. All the zelkovas in Shibuya lost their luster and spirit.


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    The old man tread homeward, his feet dragging through mud and fresh splotches of snow. But now, hidden behind his paltry gait, an unsettling unnatural vigor crawled into Yasushi Kazuo¡¯s body. He slouched forth in anticipation like some creature from Bethlehem, right hand clenching the left shoulder, dry mouth hanging ajar just enough to reveal a wretched lopsided grin and ill-fitted dentures plastered with tartar. When he reached his apartment building, he trudged upstairs with heavy resolute steps. The light fixtures on the cement ceilings fluttered on and off. Between each flicker, like a stop motion animation, the old man¡¯s sharp untrimmed nails drew fresh bloody tracks down his arm. When the red streaks reached his wrists, Kazuo stopped at his front door and fumbled through his coat pocket for his keys.


    ¡°Two pages, two pages is all I¡¯ll need,¡± Kazuo repeated.


    When Kazuo walked in, he was met with a frigid breeze and the sound of loose paper waffling about. He had forgotten to shut his balcony door that morning. He sauntered across the room, listening to the blood dripping from his leaky faucet of a forearm onto dark shadowed manuscripts bundled across his tatami mats. Each drop tapped against his life¡¯s works at metronomic intervals, as if Kazuo played a conductor and his blood was the baton tapping the podium to ready the orchestra. Kazuo stepped onto the silent balcony, and he smiled. The pigeons he had fed this morning were still there.


    All of them lay skewered on the deck, trapped and pinned against each other by a monstrous metal contraption almost the length of the entire balcony. When enough pigeons had landed to feed on the food Kazuo laid out that morning, the steel-ridden jaws of the device had snapped close, compressing their fragile avian bones together like they were witches hewn by an iron maiden.


    Kazuo unlocked the device and began collecting the corpses, careful not to set his foot upon the weights that activated his trap. He began to hum a tune. Perhaps it was a local folk song from the underground jazz club here in Hatagaya or a classical sonata or even a pop track he might have overheard on the radio; the musical origins mattered less than the fact that the song was pleasant and spirited. It, above all other rhythmic or sonoric details, brimmed with optimistic beats and hopeful energy, hardly a melody to be sung by a decrepit ghost collecting the bodies of mutilated birds.


    Still, Kazuo continued to hum, and if anything, the dynamism and vitality of his private performance strengthened further. He returned to the room with his pigeons dangling by their feet. He tossed some of the corpses to disparate corners of his six tatami mat room, until each corner had been tainted by one of the bodies. He dropped a pigeon into the bathtub and toilet and his kitchen sink and the cabinet beneath the stove. He hung one upon a plastic coat rack and one above each blade of the ceiling fan, and he continued to lay them across his room until only one pigeon was left, and this special bird was given the discrete honor of laying upon Kazuo¡¯s kotatsu at the room¡¯s malicious center, malicious because had Yasushi Kazuo¡¯s neighbor stepped onto the balcony that unfortunate night with a cigarette dangling between her fingertips, she would have seen the foreboding vermillion lights emerging from within his apartment, and she would have witnessed the blood and smelled the stench of death, and she would have called the police station just a block down the road here in Hatagaya and the police would have rushed to the scene and arrested Yasushi Kazuo, and he would have died in a psychiatric institution as a mediocre author with an unremarkable award to his name, and so had all these events transpired in all the right ways, or perhaps had Hoshino-san simply picked up his phone, the end of the world could have been easily avoided.


    Instead, the tune Kazuo hummed changed into a cacophonic mess. Musical tonality transformed into dissonant garble as if the singer was choking on something that had appeared in his throat. Yasushi Kazuo slipped beneath his kotatsu like a child happy to find warmth in the depths of an unforgiving winter. He bowed before his makeshift altar with his pigeon sacrifices set at the intersection of the leylines in his room. The crimson lights which rose from their carcasses doused the room with its insidious glow, and the birds dissolved into acrid smoke.


    ¡°This world gets what it deserves, this world gets what it deserves,¡± said Kazuo with his hands folded together, ¡°It is not me that is mad, but the world, the world that has gone mad and turned its back on me, and so the world gets what it deserves.¡±


    The smoke and fumes reached the manuscripts shuffled upon the tatami floor. Every page began to burn, and the stories upon stories, some never before seen by this world, crumbled into cinders. The smoldering ash and the smoke and the lights floated into the air where they swirled and gained speed and thickened into a dense incomprehensible singularity above the old man, who had become deaf to all senses and could only feel the pulsing of his heart and the trembling expectation at what was about to come.


    ¡°And so the world gets what it deserves.¡±


    As the blood ritual¡¯s final flare consumed him and his kotatsu, Yasushi Kazuo¡¯s only regret was that he would not be here to write about it.

 2. On the Suffering of the World - I

    It began, as so many stories do, and as Yasushi Kazuo had intended, the following morning in Japan.


    ¡°Kei-kun? Does yours work?¡±


    The student seated at the back of the classroom, his pensive expression aimed towards the window, turned to glimpse at the high school girl waving her blank cell phone in his face. The depth of Nakamura Kei¡¯s disinterest in her question or concerns was unfathomable; he wanted nothing more than to continue staring outside at Sagami Bay, where the waters that morning glistened with greater intensity than Kei had ever seen. The sparkles upon the surface glimmered red as if the sands below had been littered with rubies.


    ¡°Asuka, did you forget to charge it again?¡± the boy asked.


    ¡°No! Kei-kun, I mean your Internet,¡± Asuka tapped her phone and showed Kei the empty bars on her home screen, ¡°Nobody can connect this morning. Someone on the radio said service is down in all of Kamakura. Show me your phone.¡±


    ¡°I forgot it at home,¡± Kei lied, ¡°Can¡¯t you live without your favorite boys¡¯ love web novel for just a day?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not just any day,¡± Asuka said, ¡°The last chapter ended on a cliffhanger. I need to know if Benji-sama is okay.¡±


    ¡°Well, I don¡¯t have my phone,¡± Kei shrugged, ¡°And homeroom¡¯s about to start.¡±


    Asuka sulked off to join the other students who continued to stare perplexed at their phones. No, Kei thought, just looking at them isn¡¯t going to turn the service back on. He wondered if maybe an earthquake had caused the loss of service. He recalled the Great Kanto Earthquake as well as the Heizen Gate Incident in the late 13th century, where after a major tremor, the regent of the Kamakura Shogunate slaughtered his subordinate Taira no Yoritsuna and some ninety or so of his followers.


    Meandering speculation of this nature was somewhat of a specialty for Nakamura Kei who, unknown to his less cultured classmates, moonlighted as the infamous web novel sensation Sakamoto Rei, author of the Unbound and IseLateral series, both tales of an aloof and mysterious high school boy who saves the world from a terrible evil. Of course, Kei was also intimately aware of the identity of Asuka¡¯s favorite boys¡¯ love novelist. They had once met at a convention, exchanged contact information, and Kei was seeing her later this afternoon at an ice cream shop to discuss their writing and other passions.


    This was his reward for living a dispassionate school life where most thought of him as some kind of serial loner. Kei didn¡¯t have any interest in his schoolmates who only cared about what was on TV last night or which clubs to join. That¡¯s why Kei always wrote his fantasy epics by inserting himself as the hero of every story and cast the rest of his classmates as sacrificial body bags. After all, only someone with his enigmatic brand of youthful intelligence could compel the forces of evil to retreat into the shadows.


    And that¡¯s why, while the rest of his classmates, and in fact the rest of Japan and perhaps the world struggled to understand why no one could access the internet on their phones or personal computers the morning after Yasushi Kazuo¡¯s disappearance, Nakamura Kei looked out over Sagami Bay, where the morning waves lapped against the beaches of the ancient capital and the first red-eyed machine waded onto its shores. Kamakura, home of the Great Buddha and Mt. Kamakura, whose fading glory was saved briefly by pedestrian tourists who sang the elegy of the city with grainy black and white photography and spirited donations to the Egara Tenjin Shrine, and now the second red-eyed machine made its way to the shores, followed by the seventh and then the thousandth.


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    Nakamura Kei watched as the coruscating rubies beneath the bay streamed onto the beach, each covered with an armored exoskeleton that shimmered like glowing prisms. The mechanisms were hoisted by an uneven number of metallic legs, which carried the horde faster than any car or high speed rail that Kei had ridden.


    Within seconds they had cleared themselves of the dunes. They bulldozed through the national highway as if they were stepping through sand castles. When a few of them reached the seaside park just above the beach, they stopped and flashed their eyes. Particle beams carved fresh fissures into the earth and the grassy lawn disappeared in a sea of fire. A deep unsettling rumble set off the city sirens.


    ¡°What was that?¡±


    Asuka and the other students finally saw what Kei had been watching and rushed to the windows. Fear shook their legs and drained their faces of color. Some screamed and fled from the room. The homeroom teacher, Mishima-sensei, yelled for everyone to rush to the gymnasium. Kei, however, watched with explicit anticipation as a lone straggler made for Kamakura Academy. Kei had risen from his seat, hands outstretched and glued to the windows. His teary eyes turned to the heavens with gratitude.


    ¡°Finally,¡± Kei said as the machine hit breakneck speeds, ¡°A worthy opponent.¡±


    Nakamura Kei unfurled his hands at the window, at the eyes that descended upon him with no hint of malice or acknowledgment. But Kei knew they would learn his name soon, and his name would strike fear into their metal hearts. Nakamura Kei could almost feel the flames brimming in his palms.


    ¡°Holy flar¡ª¡±


    The irreverent machines trampled police stations, fire departments, the Kaigan Bridge, men and women, flower shops, elementary and high schools like Kamakura Academy, children, shrines and temples and all other trivial things along the Nameri River. From east and west, the mechanical legions flooded Kamakura like a torrential squall, born from never before seen red gemstones at the bottom of the bay. Within a matter of minutes, Kamakura was a wasteland of rubble and broken dreams. But before the smoke from smoldering flames even reached the sky, the legion had already left, fanning about in all directions, with the bulk of the machines heading north, towards Tokyo.


    Yasushi Kazuo had often wondered what it would take to topple Tokyo. During the war, its paper cities had been reduced to cinders, but its people remained strong. During the occupation, the foreigners, naively believing that they had reconstructed Tokyo in their image, soon realized it was they who had become Japanese. Tokyo survived the treacheries of the imperial bloodline, the woes of a lost generation, multiple interpretations of Godzilla, and for decades, in the quiet suburb of Hatagaya, Tokyo had housed Kazuo and his fantastical dreams.


    But Kazuo also never forgot about the fates of Nara, Kyoto, Kamakura; these had all been the old capitals, and who was to say that Tokyo was to be the last? Why then, did Kazuo look to his left and to his right, to all the iterations of post-apocalyptic Japan crowded upon bookshelves, calling themselves Neo-Tokyo, Shin Tokyo, Tokyo 3.0. Why was it not in anyone¡¯s imagination that Sapporo or Nagasaki could assume the prestigious title of capital of Japan, that for all its brilliance, the luster of Tokyo should one day fail and the city should take its rightful place alongside its ancestral predecessors?


    It sickened him, the unoriginality and hubris of it all, so much so that he penned an elegy to the city of Tokyo, leveled by the horde of indiscriminate monsters now rampaging across Yokohama.


    From Kamakura they rose, the Federation of H, and all the technologies of the world stood helpless against the magnificence of the singularities that governed it. Tokyo was the symbol of this modern technology. Its blinding lights, the streets of Akihabara, the museums of Roppongi, Shinjuku and its claustrophobia, and so it was Tokyo that was especially helpless against the onslaught of these superior machines birthed from Kamakura. The old capital dragged Tokyo in all its technological splendor into the grave, and the world knew that Tokyo was finished.


    ???

 3. On the Suffering of the World - II

    The first wave of valkyries appeared in Croatia, above the coastal city of Split, though eye witness accounts would later verify that similar events transpired in Cluj Napoca to Budapest to Sarajevo to disparate cities and villages across Serbia and Montenegro.


    When Yasushi Kazuo visited Croatia years ago to meet an old emigre friend, he had met by chance a lovely family at one of the many old breweries in town. Their youngest daughter, bright and energetic, remarked that she adored cities like Tokyo and New York City.


    ¡°It¡¯s where dreams are made,¡± she had said.


    Kazuo disagreed in sinister silence.


    On any other day, the denizens of Split would have spent their time taking in the majestic views of the Adriatic, toasting German beers, devouring sausages, enjoying walks through narrow shaded streets lined with mossy cobblestone, and grazing in the parks near copper statues and anti-fascist memorials.


    But the armies of Queen Memoria were so numerous they blotted out the sun. The pegasi beat their feathered wings and wiped the sky clear of clouds. It was hard for those watching to describe the ornate wear of the queen¡¯s shadowed vanguard, who each carried the sigil of her royal majesty as well as their lances crafted in halls lying beneath frozen mountains and tundras.


    The Europeans and their weathered histories, however, were no strangers to armor-clad foreigners arriving from the distance, waving unfamiliar banners and hoisting weapons of war. Whether they were magical forces beyond their comprehension or not didn¡¯t matter. They didn¡¯t need to hear the horns of the valkyries or witness their winged steeds merging into battle formations to know to run for their lives.


    People stomped and tripped over each other and their beer mugs and sizzling sausages and overturned tables. Cars swerved and crashed against highway dividers trying to turn around and flee for Zagreb or maybe a secluded rural village. A few members of the police tried to maintain order while others raided the city armory for weapons and ammo.


    When the first valkyrie descended upon the city, the hooves of her steed froze the very ground it walked on, birthing rigid blocks of ice below the cement pavements and cobblestone tiles. The streets cracked and sank. The serrated icicles emerging from the depths pierced through metal and flesh, leaving vehicles and human bodies alike impaled at their prongs.


    Then the rest of the valkyries began to land. Glaciers burst from the earth like whales surfacing for a breath of air. People found themselves encased in frozen tombs. Statues of Queen Memoria toppled memorials of freedom fighters and ancient kings alike, while museums and shops were forcibly replaced by frigid fortifications and the foundations of her majesty¡¯s castle.


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    On Tomislava Street, named after the first king of Croatia, what remained of the military police formed their first and final barricade. They fired their crude submachine guns and semi-automatic pistols. These were trained soldiers, not feckless amateurs. They aimed for the unprotected faces of the valkyries or the unarmored wings of their pegasi steeds. Their ferrous rounds glanced off an unseen barrier in front of the valkyries¡¯ faces. The steeds, on the other hand, reeled and shrieked at the bullets shredding their wings. The police urged their comrades to keep up the pressure and waved for more civilians to make for safety.


    Yasushi Kazuo used to wonder what was the point of such hapless heroics. The police holding a meager street corridor while covering for civilians, it would never have made sense to Kazuo, who would have remembered that thousands of winged warriors were plunging from the skies, that the icy graves consuming Split from below approached with eager haste. Nothing awaited these men and women but failure and swift execution.


    When the slaughter ended and the shores of Split had been frozen over and covered with wintry ornaments, Kazuo¡¯s indefatigable queen descended and set foot upon her new empire. Above her, her glacial castle continued to grow into gray nebulous clouds.


    ¡°Sylvia,¡± said the queen.


    One of the warriors behind Memoria approached, her armor more decorated than the others. Sylvia kneeled and bowed before her majesty.


    ¡°Yes, my Queen,¡± she said.


    ¡°The air here smells foul,¡± the queen said.


    ¡°You¡¯ve always disliked the smell of the sea, your Highness,¡± said Sylvia.


    ¡°No. If only it were just the saltiness,¡± Memoria shook her head, ¡°Something else is amiss. Some darker force is at work here. Find out where we are.¡±


    ¡°Yes, my Queen.¡±


    Storm clouds converged on Croatia and a faint snow began to fall, dusting the battlements and ramparts of Queen Memoria¡¯s castle with crystals. Beneath the clouds, more of her Majesty¡¯s armies descended from the heavens. Queen Memoria smiled with soft elation and sauntered towards the castle gates. Each step embellished her grace and fortitude, just as Yasushi Kazuo had always envisioned. The magnificent splendor of darkness and shadow reflected in cold metallic armor. A banner was thrown over one of the towers. A silver goblet sat at the center of rich violet fabric, overflowing with red wine or blood, it was hard to say.


    When Queen Memoria of the Eternal Sunset, with a crown of violet and scarlet, walks upon this earth again, no royal will be her better. Her infamous ice castle will be born beneath her feet and its borders shall begin to spread anew. Her armies, led by the brilliant Sapphire Knight Sylvia, will appear where they please, marking the territory of her new imperium. To the surprise of all, its decorum and etiquette shall amaze those who have been brutally conquered.


    ???

 4. On the Suffering of the World - III

    On the opposing shore of the Adriatic, Pope Sylvester rushed through the halls of the Papal Palace. His weighty white robes billowed behind him. His erratic eyes turned to the marvels of the Sistine Chapel and its pristine beauty consoled him. He reminded himself that as a descendant of the Medici family, Sylvester¡¯s ancestors had graced upon Italy and the world the likes of Raphael, Grannaci, Michelangelo, Monaco, da Vinci, Toscanelli, the writings of Machiavelli, the heresies and triumphs of Galileo, surely these historic contributions would not go unrewarded.


    The holy residence of the Vicarius Christi rang with hollow footsteps that afternoon. Earlier that day, agents of the Vatican informed Sylvester that worldwide communications had been severed. Their contact with the far reaches of the Holy Alliance and its Entities had gone dark. At first, Sylvester thought perhaps this was some sort of cyber attack, an advanced denial of service strike by a committed group of atheists or a heretical foreign adversary, perhaps an incendiary message from the Near East who had long wished to supplant Christian dominance with their feckless Eastern beliefs. With the greatest precaution, Sylvester ordered that the papal residencies be vacated and for the most important members of the church to converge on the Bunker.


    But runners from Rome and Paris soon informed him that the Italian and French governments had been similarly crippled. Like some kind of nonsense apocalypse movie, Morse Code was now the default mode of short burst communication between world governments. The possibility remained that Europe was under siege, but Sylvester now understood that the Vatican was clearly not the only target. Sylvester asked that the cardinals remain calm.


    Shortly after, soldiers from an observation deck carried delusional tidings of mythical creatures pouring from the clouds on the other side of the sea. They also witnessed a wintry fortress emerging from underground. Croatia was besieged by the soldiers and winged horses, led by a woman donning red and purple ornaments. At that moment, the cardinals lost their minds and began a medieval chant. One of them recited the verse from Revelation about the Whore of Babylon. After all, what follower of Christ would not be both elated and anxious at these developments?


    That was the moment Sylvester fled the underground bunker and began to race down the halls of the Apostolic Palace with a vigor he had not felt in decades. The irregular behavior of his cardinals suggested all kinds of foul play by the enemy. A bioweapon, maybe, some kind of new contagion that drove those of the faith to the brink of insanity? If so, Sylvester had walked right into their hands.


    The pope prayed for the safe passage of the Catholic hierarchy into the mountain of Purgatory, but there remained matters on Earth that Sylvester needed to attend to. He fumbled around in his robes for a ring of golden keys and inserted one of them into the doors of his private office. Surrounded by books he had retrieved from the library, the hourglass standing on his ornate desk, the adorned picture of Christ behind his antique mahogany chair, the fine quilts resting on the floor, it was the second time that morning that Sylvester felt a true sense of calm.


    That was when Sylvester noticed the person appearing from behind the suede velvet curtains draped over the windows. Sylvester found it hard to describe who he was seeing. Under certain lighting, the man adopted the babied features of a proud noble youth. Yet like a mirage, when gazed from a different angle, Sylvester would only see the wrinkled textures of an elderly gentleman. Even the colors and fabrics of his clothes seemed to refract under the light, and Sylvester realized that he was no longer even certain of the person¡¯s gender.


    ¡°How long have you been hiding here?¡± Sylvester asked, ¡°I¡¯ll call the guards.¡±


    ¡°I apologize, His Holiness,¡± the intruder bowed, their voice a reverberating medley of sonorous voices, all of them beautiful, ¡°It was not my intention to surprise you. We had an appointment today, don¡¯t you remember? I saw that your door was open earlier and was looking out the window while waiting for you. The view is¡­beautiful today.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t think I don¡¯t know how to spot a bold faced lie,¡± Sylvester said, ¡°The door was locked when I came in. Did you come in through the window?¡±


    ¡°My apologies, His Holiness,¡± the intruder bowed again, ¡°It seems we¡¯re talking a little bit past each other. You should probably have a seat.¡±


    A powerful gravity gripped Sylvester by his arms and legs. It dragged the pope out of his office, his red leather shoes scraping the marble tiles until the floor bled crimson. The corridors of the papal residency disintegrated into a blur of prismatic colors, and the pope felt the tug of his collar choking him to death. Sylvester tried to scream, but he could hardly summon the effort to even breathe. In this secluded space, hurtling towards his doom, Sylvester forgot to even pray.


    Then the kaleidoscope of ancient colors disappeared, and Sylvester¡¯s view was replaced with a haze of rich verdant green. He felt his frail back slam into a wooden rocking chair in the middle of the Vatican gardens. Sylvester tasted rusty copper in his throat, and his feet burned with such deafening intensity he dared not to look at them. Instead, his eyes shifted left and right, taking in trimmed hedges and a stone fountain. The garden was empty save for the intruder, who sat in his seat across from the pope while stirring a cup of tea in his lap. Sylvester tried to lift himself from his chair, but his back stayed glued to the chair.


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    ¡°There, we¡¯re in the gardens,¡± the person said, ¡°Isn¡¯t it so soft and serene out here? Much easier to understand one another when we¡¯re out here, in nature.¡±


    ¡°W-what kind of devilry is this?¡± Sylvester stammered, ¡°Have you drugged me? Is this some kind of dream? Hallucination? Stay away from me!¡±


    ¡°There, there, His Holiness,¡± the person sighed, ¡°I thought this chance of place would have calmed your nerves. Maybe we really do need a different place where we can discuss our arrangement.¡±


    ¡°No, no, no,¡± Sylvester cried, ¡°It¡¯s quite alright. I¡¯ll pay attention. Just don¡¯t do that again.¡±


    ¡°Excellent,¡± the person clapped their hands, ¡°I¡¯m so glad we could reach a mutual understanding. Now, let us begin! Right, I¡¯ve almost forgotten to introduce myself.¡±


    The intruder took a sip of tea and set it aside. They folded their legs, then, visibly unsatisfied, folded it the other way. They leaned forward with a smile, but the refractive nature of their expression made it impossible to tell whether its nature was evil or benign.


    ¡°My name is Florence,¡± said the intruder, ¡°I¡¯m the ruling Archbishop for the Archdiocese of Mars.¡±


    ¡°Mars?¡± Sylvester shook his head, ¡°We don¡¯t have a bishop for any extraterrestrial bodies save for the moon. Who are you trying to fool?¡±


    ¡°Of course, of course, His Holiness,¡± the Archbishop Florence bowed, ¡°It¡¯s understandable that you would have these misconceptions. That¡¯s why we¡¯re here, to correct your misunderstandings of the world at present, the Church, and of God.¡±


    ¡°This is heresy!¡±


    ¡°I would never dare!¡± Florence said, ¡°I am merely stating my rank and position, His Holiness. And the mere truth is that there is a flourishing religious community both on the surface of Mars as well as a growing episcopal community on Deimos, both of which have come to a broader understanding of our Catholic doctrine. That is why I¡¯m here, to rectify the misunderstandings of our faith that have occurred in our brief separation of spacetime.¡±


    ¡°If it¡¯s not heresy, you¡¯re insane,¡± Sylvester murmured. He tried, and failed again, to rise from his seat.


    ¡°There¡¯s more to the Bible once you¡¯ve ventured into space,¡± Florence ignored him, ¡°It¡¯s similar to an object transcending two dimensions and arriving in a three dimensional space. We get a clearer picture of God¡¯s machinations when we¡¯re on Mars, you see. We also see with painful resignation how little it is our cardinal brothers and sisters know about him when they remain on Earth.¡±


    ¡°Nonsense,¡± Sylvester said, ¡°Even if what you say is true, you haven¡¯t escaped to some higher plane, you¡¯ve simply traveled to Mars. Congratulations, the atmosphere and harsh winds and solar flares have inspired a kind of novel madness in you people.¡±


    ¡°The same madness that you attribute to your cardinal bishops howling in the underground bunker?¡± Florence asked.


    Sylvester stayed silent.


    ¡°Yes, the Archdiocese of Mars knows many things,¡± Florence said, ¡°Like the nature of the invaders on the other side of the Adriatic, whether they are harbingers of the end times that you suspect they are, and the real nature of God.¡±


    ¡°Are they the harbingers of the end times?¡±


    ¡°Of course not,¡± Florence laughed, ¡°If you merely visited us on Mars, you would have known this. They¡¯re mere interlocutors. When I assume authority here, I will be uniting the forces of Europe to drive them from our lands.¡±


    ¡°Assume authority? How do you suppose you intend to do that?¡±


    ¡°Will your god help you escape the chair that God has placed you in?¡± Florence asked, ¡°Would you like to meet our community on Mars, His Holiness?¡±


    ¡°False prophet, playful tricks to fool the masses,¡± Sylvester cursed.


    ¡°No, no, no, you don¡¯t understand,¡± Florence sighed, ¡°It is the Catholic Church here, on Earth, that has fooled the masses. Why can I send you flying out of the Vatican while you are powerless against me? Is that not a definitive sign that I am backed by a higher power while you, His Holiness, with all due respect, are the most ordained among us?¡±


    ¡°Tricks! He shall reward the faithful! I, of the Medici family, shall never yield to the likes of you,¡± Sylvester shrieked and wrangled his hands stuck against the arms of the chair, ¡°Sorcerer of the Devil!¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but it¡¯s you that commits the work of the Devil,¡± Florence said, ¡°The real God is in fact here, trapped beneath the Vatican. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum tells us of the many faces of God. I am here to free Him and this Church from your grasp. It has become clear that we won¡¯t be able to reach any kind of amicable arrangement. I shall take you to Mars, now.¡±


    That gravity, that overwhelming force, lifted Sylvester from his seat once again. He found himself soaring into the skies until he could see the height of Queen Memoria¡¯s castles, the architecture of the Vatican below him, the clouds swirling among bell towers and snowy ramparts, legions of valkyries descending to the earth. He felt like, as he gazed at the papal residencies, he could still see the demonic Archbishop Florence of the Archdiocese of Mars smiling faintly at him. His body grew colder and colder, and Sylvester closed his eyes to pray.


    The silence, the vacuum of space and his body¡¯s obliteration, was his god¡¯s answer.


    What could be more immortal than an idea, an idea that festers deeper than any wound?


    The Archbishop Florence of the Archdiocese of Mars will appear neither as man nor woman, but rather as a sort of amalgam of contradictions and untenable juxtapositions. Those who see them will see the rotting wounds festering at the core of the Earth. Every heretic burned at the stake, every schoolboy seeking falsehoods during Sunday school, they all empower the Archbishop¡¯s divine mission to unify the unsavory theories of our Lord deemed as blasphemy and save the Church from itself.


    ???

 5. On the Suffering of the World - IV

    The orange miasma was first spotted by a young girl off the eastern shores of Malaysia. She was gazing at the setting sun, her hands smoothing the outer walls of a sand castle that had taken all afternoon to build. Her parents stood further up the hill, packing up the picnic baskets with their eldest son.


    The miasma appeared like steam billowing from a toppled dry ice bucket. It waded quickly towards the shore, and the haze was thin enough that the young girl spotted silhouettes deep in the middle of the expanding mist. They looked like cloaked riders on horseback, but the girl knew that couldn¡¯t be right because mommy had told her that horses could not gallop on water.


    Finally, the miasma came ashore and the girl breathed in the fumes, which tasted and smelled like nothing. Then the girl crumpled onto the beach and died. Her sand castle was crushed under her body. It then continued to crawl forwards, slowed for a moment by an uphill climb. The girl¡¯s parents finally noticed the mist and saw their prone daughter. Not knowing she was already gone, the father called out and raced into the orange haze, only to collapse and die as well.


    The mother and the eldest son began to run, but by now the miasma had learned the terrain of the shoreline and had picked up speed. The mother, slowed by years of backbreaking labor in the rice fields, was caught by the haze and died. The eldest son, perhaps the healthiest in the family, kept running, yelling for others in nearby buildings to vacate and flee for their lives. The edges of the miasma clipped at his heels, and the eldest son, in a fright, tripped, breathed in the mist, and died.


    By evening, the miasma had reached Kuala Lumpur. By then, people knew that the mist only affected humans. Crows and vultures nipped away in the mass graves of small villages and big cities. The forests bristled at the moisture in the air. The ocean and its sea creatures continued as it always had.


    People on the other hand tried everything. Gas masks, locking their homes, locking themselves in their cars, fanning away the mists. Nothing worked and the roads were flooded by bodies who had been trampled or stuck in traffic. The miasma endured, pushing now in all directions towards Singapore, Cambodia, and Thailand.


    In Singapore, the first death was a young man walking alone in an underground parking lot. The mist entered through the central air system. The man was hungry and had just left his car parked on his way to his favorite chicken restaurant. He approached the mist without much thought, only thinking that he might catch a whiff of his favorite fried dishes, but instead, he toppled over and died.


    In Cambodia, a local fisherman spotted the miasma as it approached the southern peninsula. He gave it very little thought. He stowed his fishing gear, drew his oars, and began to row back towards shore. He had been taught from a young age by his father that it was not safe to travel in misty waters. The fisherman figured it would be best to simply return home to his wife and child and wait for the weather to clear up. The miasma surrounded his fishing boat and in the next moment he was dead.


    Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    The miasma snaked towards Thailand, avoiding the neighboring shores as if it was set on ambushing the city of Bangkok. A row of foreign tourists peered into the gulf from a rustic red bridge, a popular spot for spotting dolphins and the sunset. Many had lost their cellular internet and reception that morning and had nothing better than to do. Some of them were concerned they wouldn¡¯t be able to make their flights the next morning, while the others joked to themselves that it was perhaps good fortune that their vacations had been extended.


    The miasma came and killed everyone standing on the bridge, and then it killed everyone surrounding the bridge, and then it continued inland past the bridge killing everyone at every shrine and restaurant and highway. The Wat Arun on the west bank of the Chao Phraya River, where Yasushi Kazuo had visited when he had finished university and found himself mesmerized by its listless architecture, was littered with the corpses of tour guides and Buddhist practitioners.


    Some heard the neighs and prances of horses before they died, though too few lived to remember the sound clearly. Others saw the cloaked riders themselves, shrouded in ordinary dark garbs, but most who were close enough to see them died shortly afterwards. Word spread too slowly for people to pack their things and flee, the miasma moved ever faster, crossing great distances with the speed of a galloping steed, spilling into Laos and Vietnam and Indonesia.


    By the next morning, almost all of Southeast Asia had been covered by the orange miasma, and everyone still within was dead.


    In spite of her distaste for human affairs, it was very rare for Morgan to unleash her miasma of death. Humans, like rats or rabbits caught and caged in a sterilized lab, were creatures to be used for experimentation. And besides, the miasma of death was a special concoction. Morgan had only ever used it once before.


    At her beckoning, the enigmatic Riders of Fata Morgana galloped from dawn to dusk without rest, releasing their master¡¯s specially brewed miasma into the wild. Each time, the mist would do something different. Some humans lost their memories and walked for the rest of their lives with both foggy body and mind. Other times, people grew feral, formed packs like starving wolves, and fought over food, having abandoned all semblance of reason and etiquette.


    Fata Morgana always chose a specific element of human nature, some kind of civilized preoccupation, like love or culture or reason, and brewed her miasma with the intent of erasing it from the human psyche. Just to see what happened. To Morgan, it was her proof that in the end, all human enterprises were malleable and feeble, nothing more than ephemeral echoes, too easily lost in a haze of an endless mist.


    ???

 6. On the Suffering of the World - V

    Yasushi Kazuo was, even at his worst, a formidably intricate and detailed writer. He left no things to chance. Every plotline needed to be accounted for. No character was ever to be robbed of closure. Everything and everyone possessed a purpose for the day his misanthropy might be understood by the world. It is all the more concerning, then, that within the disparate notes that he sent along with the manuscript for his final novel lies the immutable, haunting detail of Yasushi Kazuo¡¯s most abominable character.


    ¡°Mephisto has been the real narrator behind all my work, but unlike me, his stories have yet to end.¡±


    Erica Zen


    2XXX


    A Steinway piano stood at the center of a ruined concert hall. Gentle moonlight from above the shattered ceiling glanced off its black lacquer. Its ivory keys were suspiciously untouched by glass, dust, or rubble.


    The pianist entered from the right side of the stage. He wore a bespoke tuxedo with his lengthy hair waxed and combed. A red rose with loose petals dangled from the pocket stitched onto his blazer. He stopped midway between the stage entrance and the piano and turned with an abrupt irritated click of his tongue to the darkened seats in the hall.


    ¡°When the pianist enters,¡± the gentleman sighed, ¡°That¡¯s when you clap. Hello? Anyone? Oh come on, do you really need a demonstration? Fine, fine.¡±


    The pianist tapped his black oxfords against the creaking floorboards. In the next moment, he found himself seated at one of the chairs on the upper terrace. He began to clap, slowly at first, but with greater vigor and enthusiasm with each meeting of the palms.


    ¡°Now, some people like to whistle. How do you whistle? Really? Well, like this,¡± the pianist held a thumb and index finger to his lips, ¡°But I just like clapping. It¡¯s simple, it¡¯s elegant. You whistle and you run the risk of sounding like one of those brutes who¡¯s trying to catcall women, and you really shouldn¡¯t do that. You¡¯re supposed to be killing them instead.¡±


    The gentleman tapped his shoes again and he appeared back on stage. He strode to the piano and rested one hand on the black resin rim. He smiled, turning his face to every corner of the concert hall, and took a deep bow. He raised his head and seated himself on the cushioned bench. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his fingers forth, holding them level over the keys. A moment later, he heaved another disappointed sigh.


    ¡°You can stop clapping now,¡± he murmured to the dark hall, ¡°Stop. Stop! You¡¯re all supposed to stop clapping when I get seated. How have you not learned a single thing about human decorum? Thank you.¡±


    The pianist turned his attention back to his instrument. He shrugged his shoulders again  and stationed his fingers upon the keys. Finally, he began to play, softly at first, a doleful chord progression dancing around the tonic, his body rolling back and forth, side to side alongside a rich, mesmerizing harmony. Eyes closed, the gentleman¡¯s head rose to face the moon as if he believed the Earth¡¯s gravity could force back the tears in his eyes.


    ¡°Such vivid emotions! Doesn¡¯t this piece remind any of you of anything?¡± the pianist asked, ¡°No? Has no one heard Beethoven¡¯s Archduke Trio before? Opus 97? Both these pieces begin in moderato. Both are set in the same B-flat key. But Beethoven wrote his trio for young Rudolph, an Archduke of Austria, and the dialogue between pianos is meant to represent our dear Ludwig¡¯s complex relationship with his friend, his student, his patron. On the other hand, our other departed maestro writes this dialogue with a single hammerklavier. Did you hear that tepid uncertainty in the harmony, that brief hesitation in the second measure when the major allows room for an augmented fourth, only to find its footing moments later? The piece wavers. Listen again, the maestro invites us to converse not with anyone but ourselves, we alone in this world who lack conviction as we near our end. Why? Because of death, of course! Listen! Listen for once in your foolish lives!¡±


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    The pianist leaned closer and raised his left hand with dramatic flair. The music rested in temporary suspense. Somewhere, a cough was heard and the pianist furrowed his brow. He would have to kill whoever did that later. When his fingers fell back to the ivory, they played a mysterious deep trill originating on G-flat.


    ¡°Scholars debate the meaning behind this trill,¡± the gentleman said, ¡°On its face, Schubert presents us a tranquil, lyrical cantabile. It does inspire a sort of calm, but hear how the piano rumbles as it plays. It trembles from the depth of the keys. It¡¯s not as tragic as the andante sostenuto, but there is something devilish about it, don¡¯t you think? Something haunts the underbelly of the harmony. After all, silence begets and ends music, so why does the trill exist alone in between two rests? I¡¯ll tell you why; it¡¯s because death lurks in the intervals between music. Music is the last bastion that reminds us of our human condition. Death, on the other hand, stalks us from the shadows of our mind, watches as we take our last breath, and leads us into the darkness where the musical rest is not a half bar or full measure but eternal and we hear ourselves no more.¡±


    As he finished speaking and transitioned into the sonata¡¯s development, the piano began to buckle. Smoke emerged from beneath the lid of the piano and below the case. Dense clouds bundled around the pianist¡¯s feet while a white trail snaked above the broken roof of the concert hall and into the night sky like a smoke signal. The hammers within the instrument cracked, the strings snapped, the black varnish melted from a mysterious heat, and a filthy muck oozed down the piano. The legs then split on all sides and the piano collapsed like an animal with ropes fastened around its legs. When it crashed onto the floorboards, the cracked wood below split open, and the piano fell through into a chasm, falling through a hollow cavernous abyss until it met its end at the bottom. The clangs of cacophonous broken keys echoed into the concert hall and died.


    Only dust remained.


    Mephisto lifted his fingers and rested them on his lap. He frowned.


    ¡°Looks like this Steinway¡¯s no good either,¡± he murmured, ¡°Only measure nineteen?¡±


    A sound emerged from the seats in the audience. It wasn¡¯t clapping, though the noise did at first mimic the cadence of applause. Mephisto could hear the clanging of blunt objects against metal and plastic and mutilated flesh and wished that his audience were less rambunctious. Joyful cheers and indistinguishable hollers joined the racket and Mephisto stood and bowed to his listeners.


    ¡°Bravo, bravo,¡± he sighed, ¡°That¡¯s what you¡¯re supposed to say at the end of a concert, not your twisted demonic tongues. At least give me the courtesy of a standing ovation.¡±


    And then it began with the first flame.


    In the front row, the fallen angels hidden in fear of the moonlight brandished their swords. A great fire erupted upon their blades and revealed the mangled bodies of humans who had been seated at the most prestigious seats in the audience. The fire linked with the angels and demons, one by one, row after row, drawing their weapons until even the giants standing guard as ushers by the concert doors had been embraced by the flames. The fire trailed upwards and touched the scimitars and tridents and matchlock rifles of the angels on the upper terrace. The concert hall burned in this inferno, drowning in the chorus of fallen angels who now abandoned their horrid shrieks to sing a melancholic ballad.


    The sound of that song assaulted the very foundations of the concert hall. The groans of a dense reverb unshackled the cement bedrock from its roots and blasted the doors and walls apart. The ornate tiled roof soared into the night sky while the rest of the support structures crumbled, brick by brick, until the edifice collapsed into dust and scattered steel.


    Then, when the haze from fallen rubble had settled, the fires that had joined the angels in the concert hall continued to spread outwards, to the angels just outside the hall, to the narrow streets littered with bodies and smashed taxi cars, to the toppled tips of glass skyscrapers bludgeoned from their pedestal in the heavens, to burning Michelin star restaurants to dilapidated bodegas to the overpriced apartments built before the war along with their red bricks and lead pipes and closet spaced studios, to the heckling demons cheering from the subway trains uprooted from their underground nests, and even to the decrepit halls of the New York Stock Exchange, where angels with baited breath nailed stockbrokers and bankers to iron crucifixes; all of these places were linked by the licks of that devilish flame until the fires and screams of this pandemonium had traveled to all corners of a desolate ruined Manhattan, conquered by the millions of faithful angels and demons under the command of an aloof, wandering pianist.


    ¡°Right. That¡¯s more like it,¡± Mephisto nodded, ¡°That¡¯s what I call a standing ovation.¡±


    The pianist gazed into his heart and grinned.


    ¡°I guess it¡¯s about time to get started.¡±