p o e t r y




Three Poems
by Luke Buckham


1. Techniques of conscious hunger

I fall asleep by thinking of a strong bird
swerving over vacant parking lots
enjoying the abandoned landscapes
that push up against the shape of the air
not considering the tormented human destinies
taking place so far below him. if he looked too long
at how slow they move on that surface, his wings might falter,
so the surging continuation of his footsteps into the same sky
where their bodily tracks stop, holds him in his roving place.
why live like those who make their homes so close to gravity?
all day I travel in his light-boned skin,
and go to sleep like a whole room full of feathers.

I wake up by feeling that same bird stiffening his tiny heart
for the plunge toward his oblivious prey in the waters,
he flicker of a fish taking its piece of splintered sunlight
through the trembling waters bright with light
just before the darkness where the meat almost has a tangible soul,
where the strong beak that curves from the pinched face
like a desire to devour made manifest in the flesh
grabs up its prey like a dagger made soft,
no longer a blade to cut the water but a soft blade
to be eaten in order that the body can be carved
into health from within, and still soar over the earth
with its own cutting force, the persistence of animal motion
changing arenas to show how life must brutally transform itself.

I feel the downward plunge that is not a descent
but a plunge ecstatic toward the hottest part of earth,
furnace that will someday burn for us both,
letting gravity take the focused body into its plunge
to stun its victim, using the strongest force on earth
to make its beak stronger than any muscle.
I know that I myself am the desires of earth made flesh,
and that if I let the glory of life flow through me

that I will stun my own prey, the tenderness inherent
in the human heart, and grab it up out of its dark waters
as it sometimes lashes the air, urgency of a second trying to become a minute,
in surprise to be so flawlessly consumed,
in only a few delicate flickers, of violence like water,
the little piece of sunlight that clung to their body
descending into my stomach yet remaining
draped on their form like a white towel
that all the other solar systems have thrown down into ours
to be churned out with the force in two sets of human wings
that grow in the perfumed air of each other's suddenness.
this is how God feels— the life of a completely cleansing fuck


2. The man who won't die
(dedicated to the spirit of Van Gogh)

a man sits on a park bench
on a boardwalk in front of the ocean.
time has departed from him.
he no longer feels the drag of time's anchor
under the boat of his life.
the ocean fits in his amazing eyes.
seagulls moving through the air
are moving through his body.
he has a pain like a little lizard
filled with poison crawling in his jaw.
it's crooked and he never had the money to repair it.
a town is flickering clumsily to life
behind him and he thinks of finding someone
waking up inside the blinking neon blankets
there to repair all the parts of his body
that don't line up properly.
he looks at the glistening blanket of the town
and imagines the unreachable cure,
the numbers stacked up to the correct level
so that nothing human will collapse.
the pain becomes a part of the sky above him.
the birds fly through his vast and tiny body.
each crest of wave overlaps a sand year of his life.
he gathers the memories of friends,
their expressions and their laughter,
the inner numbness that always kept him
from entering their lives.
he recollects that he hasn't had a job in weeks,
but the realization seems to come from another lifetime.
the ham sandwich in his hand
is the last piece of food he'll ever pay for.
the meat glows wet in the last of the moonlight,
he knows that once this meat breathed
and that it was cut from his own carcass.
he throws the tough edges of the bread
into the air against his hunger
and two seagulls swoop down
from the open mouth of heaven
and grab it in their beaks inside his body.
nothing can be given to feed the world
without resulting conflict; more than one
thing always wants to eat, millions of mouths
crowd the same small moment.
at once the hard mouths gather
in the air that is his flesh
and rip a part of the sky's bread to pieces,
then the fighting begins somewhere else.
the man smiles not from emotion but to see
if he still has capable muscles in his face.
he is seventeen years old and the circles
under his eyes already forecast a very old age.
he is seventy years old and the smooth parts
of his cheeks between the silver stubble
remember a very young age.
he takes off his shoes again and again,
begins to sprint down the boardwalk
into frail man-made eternities screaming
with glee to see if his voice is real.
wind like sandpaper painfully
wears away his years and makes him a boy
for as long as his lungs can hold the earth's breath.
the miracle of the air fills the miracle of his lungs,
potted pine saplings on the edge
of the boardwalk that faces the town
away from the ocean become a part
of his tear ducts as they stream with ragged water,
the sand on the other side shines with the beginnings
of the day's sun and drys his eyes
in the middle of the same miracle.
if someone would come out of the fracturing atmosphere
to hand him a brush he would paint us all a canvas:
a fleet of shimmering angels coming out of a great swamp,
the green slime in their revolving eyes
their crocodile teeth beneath blonde hair
sprouting from the shaking palette
in a timid hand forgetting its mortality.
his soft feet meet the boardwalk
and become tough within seconds.
pain roars through his throat
as if the air held murder and into his lungs
a river of blood too hot to hold,
stop-signs leaping out of the limited oxygen
into the visible air, but he keeps pushing
past them and each one sends a sliver
into the walls of his lungs become the pulsing world.
he remembers the body of a woman
he'll never touch again, the jellyfish far out
beneath the ocean's parade of waves
palpitate with his remembrance in the water,
squid suck in water and push it out in invisible spurts,
just as his breath meets the air with no answering sign
because the heat has risen through his flesh
to match his temperature.
there's a tiger shark swimming near the place
where the smooth sand drops sudden miles,
and he can feel it prowling through his body.
it gives him strength to proceed without wings
into the human world. he walks panting
through a neon wall that is an immense eye
aching without sight. the first waitress he sees
is a thing torn from his ribs, the world begun again,
her angular features tearing the soft air to pieces,
earth's kaleidescope unable to resist
projecting the sight of her on the blank walls of everything.
faces flash onto the television walls in yet another life,
some of them the leaders of his lost country.
who are they, were they born of the same mother?
after the sights of morning, the white blades of the seagulls
cutting the empty air wide above the ocean
before any boats, beaks colliding in the air
over a piece of bread from his flesh,
who is the authority over him?
faint voices from the screen
do not speak of his life,
the television past can't touch
the things he has experienced.
he asks for a glass of water
and a bird cuts through the wind of his body,
still moving through the orbits from the long run.
he is a god who will die soon
without a mouthful of scrambled eggs.
the water hurts his throat,
the things that give him life
make their draws on his energy,
there is no release from memories of faces
pressed into his distant chest on hotel beds,
the demanding voice at the door that should never enter.
when you are about to die you finally realize
how little it would have taken to save you.
but how complex you always were,
how full of inexplicably intense needs.
the face of the last waitress on earth
shines faintly on the polished table.
he keeps his eyes on the slight reflection,
afraid that if he looks up at the real thing
she will hurt him very badly with her beauty.
if she asks him to leave he will have to find a way
to kill himself again. if she brings free food
and smiles at him with something
stronger and better than pity in her face,
his life will find a way to begin again.
he wavers between the two possibilities,
hoping that nothing waiting for him
will be less intense than life or death.
the wait is longer than any of his memories.
he raises his ancient face,
his tiny action making flesh of stone.
through the battered cloth suns of his eyes,
his face marbled by homelessness,
his vision climbs the ivory legs
of his own flesh several times removed
and leaves the restaurant in painted flames.
we have not yet seen each other's faces in this world.


3. This is this

This is the voice for nobody.
This is the trumpet without lips on it.
This is the quick fuck in the woods while the car waits
humming on the human road. This is
the hopeless moments of everybody.
This is your crazy aunt running through the backyard
breaking a white picket fence with her waist
on the way out of your family stumbling slightly,
reaching the driveway with bloody feet,
throwing a beerbottle off the edge of the world and screaming
as it shatters in hell and hell becomes
smaller than the inside of a glove.

A man, having seen this, leaves the family reunion forever,
stops on a bridge, stares down into a river,
sees a large toothless mouth trembling
beneath the currents, thinks
"there might be a doorway somewhere there"

This is a poem sick of its own bones.
This is your roommate having sex with your girlfriend
wearing a snarling grin while the washer and dryer
spin downstairs covering their gasps
and you sit lonely on a windowsill in your scentless room,
waiting for a breeze to knock you out like a dead moth.
Fingernails can't find the moon. Want something big enough
to scratch at. Argh. A little girl the size of my thumb
stares at the Grand Canyon
where her parents just drove off. The smoke from their car,
now small as a beetle on the canyon wall,
wafts through her hair and she gently smiles.
This is. Because it can happen.
Your heart is fucked out. Young, you can't say no
to the wrong people, or yes to the right ones.
And finally the refusal to attempt smiling
leads to a smile of relief. You grow up,
and your frenzied roots
wrench buried human throats

—Luke Buckham is a spreadhead poetry regular.






[triptych]
Big Red
by Dan Schneider

‘If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.’
—Frederick Douglass

(1)
Punk

‘You are a glass that I have paid to shatter
and I swallow the pieces down with my spit.’
—Buying The Whore, Anne Sexton

The Argument: In 1945 a two-bit hustler named Malcolm Little ruled the Harlem night. Born on May 19th, 1925 to the Reverend Earl Little and his wife, Louise, Malcolm had a childhood fraught with temptation and danger. Taking a cue from the Romans, he became their greatest advocate.

“Hey baby, the word is this:
You can do it or you can not do it;
that’s the choice-- it’s like some cat
who comes dicin’ for some reefer without any stash.
I say ‘It’s copacetic, my brother.’
BUT he knows he’ll hafta pay….
someday.

‘Cause you see, sweetness, there really ain’t no choice-- dig?--
that’s the game- the system- see? -whether or not you knows it.
‘S‘like, one day a few months ago, I’m groovin’ with this main cat’o’mine
in mah rubber cruisin’ by 143rd street and I sees
this white bitch workin’ mah corner-
and I’m rippin’ and spittin’
on the inside, but hey
I am the icicle, dig? So my homeboy
and I take her back to his pad and we crashin’ I and snortin’
and dis bitch is like same Lillian Gish bein’ I tied down to some railroad tracks
not knowin’ dat de Detroit Red Express is bearin’ down on her
white behind- and she trippin’ and smilin’ getting’ poked
by her two big nigger stallions-
and she beggin’ to be tied up (like she readin’ mah mind)-
dig?-
so we ties her up and fuck her till she’s got Africa drippin’
outta her pussy-
O yes, praise De Lord,
She groovin’, we movin’
whlle she’s funnin’ her fingers
through mah pretty red conk
shittin’ ‘bout how she needs
a Negro stud to ‘set me right!’
So I’m laughin’ and smilin’ and she totally oblivious to mah choo-choo,
choo-choo- ya dig?- I know you do- you one smart little piece-
so I puts mah hands around her throat and kiss her neck gently
cooing that shit those cunts love to hear from niggers
so sweetly until- O mah Word! -mah hands slip tight around her neck
and I says:
‘Listen up, bitch! You ever crash our scene again
and I’ll blackjack and waylay you- dig?
You see, hon-nay, I’m a righteous man, a pious brother
and mah tolerance is strong- it’s broad
as the shoulders square on mah zoot, little sister,
but I EVER catch your pale ass pushin’ its way down there again
and, baby, the East River will be your next lay- dig?
And she’s turnin’ purple and cryin’ and cursin’ de Lord
for her wicked lust of niggers- never again! She screams, ‘NEVER AGAIN!’
as she screamin’ and runnin’ half-naked out of mah man’s apartment;
probably back to her Nebraska cornfields and crackers.
And mah man is strokin’ his wide-brim, jackin’ to his gold chain
and the fear I put into this twat, and shit- now dig this!:

Like later,
when we goes jumpin’ joints up near The Apollo, swingin’ bigtime,
and this nigger wants ta rip me mah due- o’course I’d let’im slide once or twice,
claimin’ his number came in and smilin’ while I'm checkin’
mah stubs to confirm his bullshit; and he’s slick and oiled
wit’ de lies he tryin’ to pass off, but his eyes is see-through as glass-
so mah blood smiles, like some cracker fresh from a Georgia lynchin’,
and I smiles till-
WHAM! I bust this nigger’s head wide open
wit’ de butt-end of mah .45 and say, ‘JIGGA-
now here's the skinny- You dig,
NEE-GROW!? Don’t be ‘Daddy-o,
slide me sane skin’-nin’ me, boy!
I’ll fuck you hard up the ass
with a brandin’ iron- see?-
Don’t ever try ta be slickin’ Big Red!
Now I staked you many a time and you repays me
ike dis. Tsk-tsk, mah brother;
mah daddy keeps strict accounts,
and now he’ll hafta know….’
And mah mark, he starts cryin’ and beggin’ for forgiveness-
claimin’ he could’a sworn he combinated jus’ right-
and mah boy starts grinnin’ as I’m about to give dis fool Negro
some advice- ‘cause Lord knows I believes in me- till we hear
the sirens, so we gotta scat and cool it outta there
so I says to this boy- wit’ spit in mah eyes and mah piece at his ear-
‘Nee-Grow, I’m a patient man; I can wait for the harvest;
I ain’t no fool- you thinks I’m a fool?- and he cries ‘NO!’-
but NEVER, EVER fuck wit’ me, brother- just don’t do it!-
‘cause one thing you needs ta learn is: Never fuck with a man
who ain’t afraid ta die!- ‘cuz he can do any damn thing he wants!- dig?’

So we cut, and we be scattin’ and we be groovin’,
sellin’ dope and coon-tang and numbers and scams
till- guess what, Sweetness?-
I meets up with you- all alone,
straight from Ohio- that’s what you say?-
all alone. Don’t cry, child. Big Red is here! He never be
leavin’. He take care o’you, honey. But everythin’s got a price.
You sow. You reap. You just gots to learn
the system. I did! You will, too!
You young. You pretty. You white.
We be settin’ you up real fine; BUT
you gots ta make the choice:
the ground is fertile, the Lord is righteous-
You smart- I know you’ll do right....”


(2)
Brimstone

‘The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life.’ —Ayn Rand

The Argument: In 1960 a hollow hustler named Malcolm X held The Nation Of Islam. Born from the ashes of a February, 1946 arrest-- and subsequent years in prison-- X devoted his prowess to persuade to the service of one Elijah Poole cum Muhammad, a tin-pot prophet of the kind the Apocalypse forewarns. But X minded not.

“Yes, brothers and sisters, the truth is this:
We did not come here for freedom’s glory.
We came here for freedom’s gory.
We came here not to be saved.
We came here to be enslaved.
We did not come here and land on Plymouth Rock.
We came here and Plymouth Rock landed on us.
We did not usurp and destroy our brothers’ lands.
We did not rape and infect our sisters’ blood.
We did not employ the piratical ways
of- what the white man so laughingly and gently calls-
the game, the system, to steal and to rob
from the black man, the brown man, the red man, the yellow man.
The white man did; and so I charge the white man
with murder, I charge the white man
with kidnaping, I charge the white man
with havoc, I charge the white man
with malice, I charge the white man
with destruction, I charge the white man
with slavery, I charge the white man
with the sins he longs so long to hide
away from: the breaking of families, generations
of young black men in institutions. And yes,
with other lesser evils- the consumption
of liquors and swine-flesh, the barter
of women in slavery- I know you know I know
what I’m talking about, brothers and sisters.
So often in those concentration camps we call ‘ghettoes’
we pass by a brother or a sister in need for we have been lied to
that this is the ‘American Way’, and too often
the so-called ‘Negro’, the ‘Good Negro’ bows and, ‘Yassir’’s
in fear that the few crumbs the white devil drops his way
will be revoked, for my friends, you know and I know
the acme of evil
is the great white devil.

And, people, let it be known, I come before you
a product of the white devil’s ways and world,
I come before you a vessel formerly filled with the sins
of the white devil; yet I come before you
a chastened man, a humbled man, an emptied glass, a willing servant
to the greater cause, the glorious light- Allah-
and I come as servant to his divine shepherd-
the Honorable Mister Elijah Muhammad.
I am nothing. I have nothing. I have no purpose
save this service. And I come before you
to show you the strength of the chains that yet enslave you,
the chains that you thought you had cast down a hundred years ago;
Master Lincoln lied, Mister Douglass lied- that poor old Tom-
and his children- the N.A.A.C.P., Dr. King- Dr. Uncle Thomas-
bleating to us to be as lambs and lay with the reformed white wolf;
‘the good white shepherd Jesus will protect you’ I they say.
The shepherd that the wolf buys the wool he steals from our backs.
The poisons that we ingest in the feed we line up for.
The defecations in the trough of the waters we imbibe from.
I SCREAM TO YOU- brothers and sisters- I SCREAM TO YOU:
Spit out the white devil’s poisons,
spit out the white devil’s lies
lest you be surprised with the shards you find
infecting the very spit you swallow.
Refuse the white man’s poison!
Refuse the white man’s woman!
(and brothers, I know their wanton ways!)
Refuse his narcotics! Refuse his wine!
Refuse his cigarets! Refuse his swine!
Refuse his lusts! Refuse his lies!
Refuse his passions! Refuse his perversions!
Refuse, most of all, his permission to refuse
for, my friends, you all know
the acme of evil
is the great white devil.

That devil, you know him, the one that lynched our sons,
the one that spat on those poor boys from Scottsboro
and a thousand thousand more from Alabama to Boston,
from Austin to Africa. And yet some speak against us
that we hate- that we are wrong not to turn the other cheek.
Ye-es, ha-ha, the old white devil’s always ready to sic
his faithful brown fine-breeds on the lowly brown stray
that howls too loudly in his backyard. Yes, I ask you-
Is it wrong to hate the stuffed white man who denies us liberty?
Is it wrong to hate the puffed Jew who denies us prosperity?
Who hides like a scorpion beneath our very eyes?
Is it wrong to hate the hatred that made us deny our selves?
Ha-ha, well, then you see the game, brothers and sisters-
the shell game to keep us off balance-
to get us thinking of our sins, our hatred,
while still the heel of the white devil’s boot is on our necks;
yet we don’t hate. WE DON’T HATE!
Can the sheep hate the wolf?
Can the rain hate the thunder?
Does one hate the fool with his glass of dirty water? No.
We need merely show him the glass full of clear water.
Do we hate? Does Allah hate the heathen? No.
Only pity does the Great One show.
But do we fear? Yes. Do we fear
the brilliance of the divine truth
like the glory of the mid-day sun? Yes.
We fear. But we do not fear evil, for friends- we know
the acme of evil
is the great white devil.

And, brothers and sisters, you know that I love you.
You know that Mister Elijah Muhammad loves you.
You know that the divine Master loves you,
even though he cannot disclose his plans to you,
and you know that the white man hates you and fears you
for you are the Original Man, the image of the Divine one,
the scepter of Allah’s right hand, notwithstanding
the unholy race of Mr. Yacub- that big-headed fool;
this is why the bleached white devil calls you such vile and debased names:
he calls you ‘nigger’, ‘jiggaboo’, ‘coon’, ‘boy’, ‘whore’, ‘bitch’….
And, well, do not be caught in the penumbra of our righteous cause.
Do not be silent at the sight of a night stick.
Do not be bowed by the weight of oppression’s might. Rise up, RISE UP from the muck, the briar patch that enslaves you. No more be kowed by the white straw demon. The white scarecrow shall hold you no more. No more!
You have the right to defend yourself.
You have the right to arm yourself.
You have the right to protect yourself-
be it by anger, by fist, by gun, or by atomic bomb….
Ye-es, if needed, defend yourself by what ever means necessary!
For you know, my brothers and sisters,
the acme of evil
is the great white devil.

The truth is out there.
Just open your eyes….”


(3)
Bullet

‘Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!’
—Adonais, Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Argument: In 1965 a devout man named El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was murdered at 3:30 P.M. on February 21st. Born from a pilgrimage to Mecca, Shabazz drank from the well of Zenza, as well from his own soul. The Muslim-cum-Moslem, at last, was at peace.

“It is this:
Weep not for me.
Weep not for the train as it departs.
Weep not for the child that walks
toward the light. It consumes.
Weep not for the hated.
Weep not for the hater.
Weep only for the hate. I shall.
I shall not hate. I shall not presume. I shall not convict
any man who has done no wrong by me. For I have shared
water, bedding, clothing and love amongst those
once I called devils. But now my eyes are open.
So betray me, defile me, spit upon me- I shall not hate
myself nor others. I have hated enough for a lifetime-
a thousand lifetimes- yet I do not hate;
not even the hate itself, for under the oneness
of Allah, the oneness of all, the time has come
to honor all men, all women, all children.

And how does one stand to behold such love?
And how does one stand in an empty time?
Both are acts of perdurance.
Both are sounds of soundlessness.

This universe is a tiny mote, caught
in the spin of minds and systems and galaxies
mankind is but its simple wonder.

My friends, this final tale shall I tell:
A man, one day, down to the delta
of a seaward river went. He feared
its terrible break and awful pull
until the sea spat mighty Leviathan
at his feet. As the beast slowly
and pitilessly died, the man did
nothing save roar inward, at this omen,
and he wept, in fear, as nothing,
nothing at all, occurred….”

—Dan Schneider edits www.Cosmoetica.com





















p r o s e




[essay]
Conrad Aiken: Cosmic Mariner, Destination Unknown
by Gary Lehmann


When the American poet, novelist and critic, Conrad Aiken, was a child, he witnessed his mother's murder and his father's suicide when he was just eleven years old. His early life was spent in Savannah, a hot steamy city where passions run deep and in mysterious ways. To this day, even in this electronic world all digitally controlled, you can still feel the spirtitual dimension of the place in its lovely squares.

After the tragic death of both of his parents in 1901, ostensibly caused by his mother's inordinate love of dinner parties, but perhaps caused by some darker financial crisis looming on the horizon, Conrad was whisked away to relatives in Massachussetts, to Harvard, and to a career in letters. He eventually won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a seat in poetry at the Library of Congress.

In 1962, when he retired, Aiken moved back to Savannah and bought a rowhouse at 230 East Oglethorpe Avenue, immediately next door to the site of his childhood tragedy. Separated only by the thickness of a single brick wall, he slept night after night with the ghosts of his family wafting in and out of his nightly dreams.

As the heat of his life wound down, he settled on a plot in Bonaventure Cemetery off Victory Drive on the outskirts of his beloved Savannah. Surrounded by a forest of primeval live oaks festooned with Spanish moss, he sat for hours admiring the view of the river. He loved to watch the boats pass by so much that he actually had a bench installed by his grave so others could enjoy it as well.

One day, while deep in meditation, a boat called the Cosmic Mariner passed by this magical place. He loved the name and eagerly sought out the shipping news to find out where it was going, but he was disappointed. All the Savannah Evening Press reported was "destination unknown."

When Aiken came to composing the words for his tombstone, he recalled this suggestive event and had these words inscribed in granite to characterize his time on earth: Cosmic Mariner, Destination Unknown.

—Gary Lehmann teaches writing and poetry at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His poetry and short stories are widely published— about 60 pieces a year. He is the director of the Athenaeum Poetry group which recently published their first chapbook, Poetic Visions. When not writing or teaching, he interprets 19th century shoemaking at the Genesee Country Museum.








[narrative]
Intermezzo
by D. Harlan Wilson


“A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.”
—Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

. . . explodes out a gaping manhole, does a graceful back flip in slow-mo and lands squarely, like an Olympic gymnast, on two strong feet. he quickly cracks his neck and rearranges his tie . . . and strikes a little old bag lady underneath her chin with the blade of his hand, snapping her neck. a bloody butcher’s knife flies helplessly out of the bag lady’s dead claw as she flies end over end across the street as if awkwardly projected out of giant slingshot . . . a man in an Alfred Hitchcock fatsuit beheads three Russian mafioso thugs with a samurai sword in one swipe. the heads topple to the asphalt in slow-mo . . . speed up and splat. expressions of paralyzed confusion on their broken faces. their bodies continue to kung fu fight against the Alfred Hitchcock impersonator for 15 more minutes until they realize their heads are lying on the ground like smashed pumpkins and they no longer belong to the land of the living . . . black blood and cirrhotic innards spew out of neck holes . . . Dr. Dorian “Bling-Bling” Thunderlove dodges a deadly kick. slo-mo close-up on his livid b&w face . . . screaming ninjas in nazi uniforms flip and fly across the expanse of the neon green sky . . . boy bands do dance moves and sing songs on street corners, providing the background score for the formulaic ho-hum holocaust . . . here comes a brigade of teeth-gnashing late-nineteenth century Men of Import in bowlers and handlebar mustaches and skintight Derridian suits goosestepping down Giddyap Street . . . there goes a brigade of blank-faced futique Men of Implode in stovepipe hats and isosceles triangle chin-beards and loose-fitting Calvin Klein Mexican Tuxedos jetpacking down Horrorshow Boulevard . . . flashbulb of infinite, inexplicable grotesqueries . . . naked jailbreakers smoke hubbly-bubbly in alleyways and smoke seeps out of their twitching lips, nostrils, ears in slo-mo . . . a roided up history professor tackles two kissass students, rips off their pencil-thin limbs, growls and flexes like the Hulk. he calmly removes a pair of chopsticks from his antiquated tweed jacket and dines on their eyeballs, dry-heaving with each tasteless swallow . . . pornstars descend from the heavens, exert a powerful deus ex machina, set everything in order. politicians immediately rise out of the gutters, return everything to shit and taxes . . . and gang-rape every last hardbodied evil-doer . . . a food fight breaks out in a sausage factory inducing uncontrollable penis envy in its female workers. giant razorsharp phalluses reflexively sprout from their crotches and attack anything that threatens their authority . . . MAN GORED BY GIANT PHALLUS THAT REFLEXIVELY SPROUTS OUT CO-WORKER’S CROTCH, reads a tabloid headline long before the atrocity takes place . . . a bug-eyed monster brandishes the old two-fingered peace sign as two roadragers leap out of their Beamers and square off with samurai swords. one of the roadragers is split in two from top to bottom—his halves slide apart with a slurp, black bile and bowels flow onto the street. a tear rolls down the alien’s scaly cheek. camera pops. the alien becomes a posterboy for The Blah Blah Movement, gives motivational speeches in tall-steepled churches, sporting arenas, city squares, reality studios . . . [missing passage here: insert random act of ultraviolence] . . . purple blacklights stain the streets for miles and casts countless shadows of twitching stick figures . . . Dr. Thunderlove jabs, jabs, jabs, grins, leaps into the air, does six fasttime backflips, weaves through the maelstrom of flesh, freezeframes in midair. a random stranger scratches his head. the doctor bursts into realtime and bears down on the stranger’s midsection with a karate chop from Hell. his insides pour out his mouth like a rainbow of sewage and the stranger slumps to the pavement, an empty shell, a hollow man, a BwO . . . sentient skyscrapers spit infinite catwalks out of their window holes into the jungle of swinging construction beams outside . . . inside the skyscraper that sits on the corner of Niminy and Piminy on the 498th floor in sector 38 across from restroom 111 in cubicle 230,856, an actuary with a concave chest, chronic halitosis and asymmetrical widow’s peaks takes a delicate sip of steaming hot decaffeinated freeze-dried coffee from a thimble-sized styrofoam cup . . . wild packs of cheetahs and crocodiles gallop across the city preying on window shoppers . . . exploding fire hydrants . . . fistfuls of doll hairs . . . immeasurable breakdance and kung fu moves in slo-mo, in slower-mo . . . a thousand sleeping p.b.-pees (pseudofolliculitis barbae people) dream the exact same dream at the exact same time . . . dreaming about the doctor’s doppelgänger, Mr. Stanley “Third World” Ashenbach, everyman extraordinaire who moonlights as an urbanized übermensch, goes by the name of Bourgeois Man. in the dream Mr. Ashenbach is contemplating the art of sandwich-making as he prances down the street, pursing his lips and fluttering his eyes and carrying on like the straight up dandy he is. suddenly arch-nemesis Wigga Man descends from the sky in a neckfull of chains, a gold-plated cape, an oversized mask (a strap-on likeness of Jung Ladd a.k.a. Q. P. “Quarter Past” Nuthin), and stiffly starched tighty-whities. he’s got a mean-on and starts reeking all kinds of lexical havoc. Bourgeois Man to the rescue. no change of clothes necessary (this übermensch is always in uniform)—he makes sure his fedora is in place, leaps into the air, hauls ass across town and flies at top speed into Wigga Man, clipping him in the back with a sharp elbow and shattering his spine. Wigga Man had been machinegunning a cluster of would-be lunch-goers with a fusillade of Old English signifiers. he falls over in slo-mo, lands on the asphalt like a sack of potatoes. he gurgles blood and spits pieces of spine out of his mouth as Bourgeois Man bows to a smiling audience that nods and claps at him in fasttime by slamming strong index fingers into their wrinkled palms . . . wake up and freezeframe . . . passing out to slo-mo and the audience detonates . . . gore . . . irradiated skeletons erupting into the mirrored walls of the financial district . . . spectacle of scintillating crystals . . . spectacle of . . .

—D. Harlan Wilson is a Michigan-based writer of irreal fiction. He has published over 100 stories in magazines and anthologies throughout the world. In 1997 Wilson received a M.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts-Boston, and in 1998 he received a M.A. in Science Fiction Studies from the University of Liverpool. Prior to that he worked as an international salesman, a model and actor, a casino dealer, a security guard, a garbage man and a flâneur. Currently he teaches creative writing at Michigan State University while writing his Ph.D. dissertation on postmodern science fiction.
Here is D. Harlan Wilson on 'Intermezzo:' "This piece is rather unconventional and will appear as the central story in my next book, Pseudo-City, as a "break" from the rest of the book. It works as a stand alone narrative, I think, in a theoretical sense, but certainly not in a practical sense."
Check out his webby: www.dharlanwilson.com








[nonfiction]
Centripetal
by Dan Schneider


Things tend toward the middle in my world. Ideas, memories, my own living. It is night. I open up a new book- perhaps it is a manuscript written by Jessica? Maybe it is a new novel, something some 1 has recommended to me. Little I read has any impact. Most writing goes a to b to c to d & can barely sustain that simple formula. I look online & the writing of prose, especially, is worse than that in print. Because 1 can lift a pen between their fingers, or peck away at a keyboard, the belief that 1 can write well becomes self-sustaining. Poetry is the highest art there is. People admit this unwittingly when anything that is of the best quality it can be is referred to as ‘poetic’. Prose is not as high a permutation of writing- it can slide by on the spine of narrative. Poetry has no such backbone/

A few years ago I read of a man’s trip along the railways of Depression era America. I think of my dad & his best friend Charley Erhardt. They have hopped the rails & are heading south to Colorado on a weekend furlough from their Idaho CC Camp. But it is not dad. It is not Charley. I read of a man named Loren Eiseley. The book is called All The Strange Hours. It is 1 of the most wonderful autobiographies ever written. I still do not know, to this day, anything of the man’s ‘real life’- but I know him like few others I have ever read of/

1985- winter. It is almost a year since I penned a poem called ‘A Chance’ to woo brunet & lovely Brenda Hiram. I had seen a Phil Donahue talk show where an ‘expert’ spoke of the surefire method of wooing any girl. Not flowers, not candy, but poetry. I opened up my Funk & Wagnall’s Encyclopedia & read of poetry. That’s the shit that rhymes. I can write better than most of this garbage. Well, I know that I could if I put my mind to it. ABAB. A year till I’m here. Poems & rhymes bore me. Bookstores are boring. Hmm....I’ve heard this name before. Walt Whitman. Hmm....His poems don’t rhyme. Leaves Of Grass. How can a poem not rhyme? That might be easier & less boring to write. Brenda is no more. She lives. But not in my life. Poems that don’t rhyme. I buy the book/

There is a boy. He is alone in a large city. He is walking down a street. He enters into a house full of drug addicts. There is a large noise- restless- violent- there is screaming in the night- there is nothing so specific- the silence of the surrounding ghetto absorbs such. Far above this all a reader closes a book. It is me. The reader- not the boy. The name is familiar. I am not. This is the guy who wrote the tv show Roots. This book is called The Autobiography Of Malcolm X. I am writing away. 1940s. 1970s. There is a difference of color. Nothing is like me. All is with me. Nothing is what I write. Everything else is the same/

I am finishing up my research for an essay. I am learning that others can see what I can. Technique. Narration. Suasion. The crumbs from the forest lead me to read Alien Abductions. Later. Its writer has read my piece & emails me. Years earlier I read a book by a con man- it is about Missing Time. I wrote to him. He is not true. I see many people believe their dreams. I believe my life. This is called suasion/

Jessica has me read her 2nd novel. I read her short stories. She is Matisse. Her prose strokes at description & lets the reader finish the curve. I am Frederic Edwin Church. I am detailed. Clarity. I am Herman Hesse. Jess is Milan Kundera. Mid 1990s. A blond girl named Liza Harper gives me The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting. She says she loves me. I love her. She is the 2nd woman I have ever spoken those words to. She is the 1st to speak them to me. But she is ghost. Her lines curve from mine. Jessica’s gravity. I am in orbit of that which I cannot see. Feel/

Science consumes me. I am reading a textbook I will grow to love- Cauldrons In The Cosmos. I am thinking of Carl Sagan. I met his son- not really, via telephone- last year doing an Internet radio talk show. He proofs a memoir for me. In 1980 I see painting by Picasso. I am moved without understanding. 1994. A book is read. Art And Physics. Its author also guests on my Internet radio show. I am waiting for something/

Here is the middle:

Many people live without comment. Their dull lives bleed days into seconds until years snap back at their end. We do not see straight on. The edges of things allure & tantalize. Galaxies light years off are seen as they were. I am not born when the light that reaches your eye off of this page in a field still moist with morning was sent on its way piercing through the billionfold greater light of our nearer star only to let you know the word is READ.

-----------------------------------

Second Murder: Summer of ‘72

I was seven.

The sky was clear. In the city
it happens so often. "Da deat’ of a nigguh
ain’t nuttin'!" said Ziggy.

As he and I watched the old black man bleed
in the gutter, from a whorehouse rooftop,
fat Georgey couldn’t watch. My eyes
drifting
from the dying guy to the indigo city skyline.

Only from a rooftop
could a child grab at the sky:
each star a later possibility
still beyond its reach.

As a siren blared and faded
we knew no one would come
in time.

A few minutes earlier
some young black punks had beaten and robbed
the old guy. He had nothing but his clothes,
so they beat him for that, then left him
to die. As a few people strolled by
Ziggy pointed this out to us:
“Ol’ black guys ain’t wort’ shit!”

Three more times sirens blared
then faded into the distance.

The fourth time was too late.

As they zipped him up
all that was left was a chalk outline.
No crowds had formed. This time
was nothing special. From a world above
we agreed.

We knew everything then.

From fifty feet removed
his features were all gray-
much like the smog which settled about
us and his memory pasted and closed
so long into some yellowing pages.

And now, years later, a relative- or friend-
will stare in a blank cemetery, somewhere,
grieving the blur that was his life.

Meanwhile I, sharply focused- unlike old photos,
will now remember the five or so minutes he bled
to death. I raise my eyes. In this pitiless evening
visibility is unlimited. On adult ground, decades removed,
I can now grab each star from where I stand.

-----------------------------------

Is what I know here & now ever the same as what will be known by others there & then? The poem above contains images which should not shock those of you who have ventured this far with me. They contain characters that by now you should be familiar with. Did this happen? Not just in the real existential way- but did things happen as the poem relates? How much of it is just what I choose to tell you- or myself?///

In St. John’s Sunday School I am sitting in a ring with other kids. There are few kids from Sunday School that I recall, even though I spent 7 full years in its indoctrinating classes. Perhaps that’s because I only spent an hour or so each week. Perhaps it’s because I did not care to know about what even I at the age of 5 knew was just bullshit. A fairy tale. The only 2 things that happened of any interest in my 7 years of Sunday School was my ascension to herohood after saving Christine Wender from a fir which caught in her long brown hair & the disgrace of 1 of my Sunday School teachers. Her name was Katy Vetter & I believe it it the early-mid 1970s. Katy was an olive-skinned beauty with raven hair & sharp, strong features. Even at my age I could feel stirrings of desire for this woman. She was perhaps college-aged at the time. 1 week we were told that Sunday School was canceled. We kids would have to brave 1 of Pastor Steege’s narcoleptic sermons with the rest of the congregation. In we filed to the center of the church where folding chairs were set up for us children to sit. The assumption was that Katy had gotten sick. The following Sunday we had a new Sunday School teacher. Her name & look leave no trace in me. I was already majorly disappointed with all aspects of church before this- but now they had fired the gorgeous heartthrob for whom I would even put on a bowtie? This was bullshit.

Then the story got around that Katy was gonna have a baby. Damn! There went my chance to marry her! Apparently, though, Katy was not married. She was like the hookers who had kids without real dads. In fact, she barely knew her baby’s father. A few months earlier Katy had gone to a famous singer’s concert, met the 3rd rate singer, & gotten knocked up by him. Not only was she out of her job as a Sunday School teacher, but she could not work until the baby was born. The Church Elders had thought she was getting larger- but when news of her paternity suit against the singer hit the media it was all confirmed. It took many years for Katy to get the singer to take responsibility his paternity & pay to support Katy & her daughter. But he never visited little Tiffany. Years later I saw Katy- a fat hausfrau- in the Queens Mall. She was a blimp. She was holding her daughter’s hand as they headed down the escalator to the 2nd floor. I was going up the escalator to the 2nd floor. As Katy & her daughter walked by me I thought of saying hi, but something stopped me. If I said something it would mean that this Katy was the real Katy Vetter- not the gorgeous girl of 15 years before- the 1 I had a crush on. In the middle of a crowded shopping mall I do nothing & choose the past///

Not far from the concrete chess boards of Irving Square Park- in 1972- Ziggy, Georgey G., & I played. We were playing war or some such thing. We had made our way up to the roof of a tenement where we would fry our brains in the heat rising from the tarpaper. Bang. We hears sounds below us. A gang of black kids, a little older than Ziggy, were beating this old black guy down below. He had no money. They would not stop. Quietly 6 eyes (or 8 if you include my glasses) watched them beat & kick the old man until his body only moved with the force of their bodies’ actions upon him. Nothing emanated from within the old man. All force went inward, into his form. Nothing was said as we watched. After the kids left the alley we leant up against the inside guard of the tenement top.
Me: Ya think he’s dead?
Ziggy: Prob’ly.
Georgey: Should we try to help him?
Ziggy: He’s fuckin’ dead I said. Besides, no 1 cares about old bums anyway- especially niggers.
Me: Why is that?
Ziggy: Da fuck do I know?
Me: Just askin’. But, he wasn’t a bum. You know that-
Ziggy: Fuck it. You guys better stick right by me. This here’s a dangerous nabe. Remember that old bitch wit’ de gun?
Georgey: What?
Ziggy: That was after you left ya fat little tit-monkey. (gives Georgey 2 purple nurples)
Me: Yeah, I ‘member. But-
Ziggy: Well, she ain’t the worst of it. There are lots of punks like that tribe of niggers what killed that old dude. I tell you I seen shit that’d make you piss your pants wit’ fear.
Georgey: Like what?
Ziggy: Like faggots that make little boys suck their dicks, take them in cars- like that Tommy kid you told me ‘bout. (to me) & you should see how some of the fuckers in cars treat the girls- worse’n the cops!
Me: I seen that, too.
Ziggy: But I seen worse.
Me: I gotta go down there to see if he’s alright.
Ziggy: I hear a ambulance comin’. He’ll be alright. The ambulance will take care of him.
Me: But, Ziggy- it’s Al….
Ziggy: Yeah. I know. But don’t worry- some day, though, things’ll change///

& they did- from 1972 to 1974. Not that the year in between was not of import- but not right now it isn’t. Ziggy has just set up a bad drug deal for some scumbag cop. A junky argues with his dealer over the purity of the cut. Death, How this happened is of no consequence. Ziggy is there- the next day or the day after that- telling us he saw a murder. Not telling us his part in it. A cop car pulls up Ziggy’s Omar’s stoop on George Street. The cop motions Ziggy over. It is the same cop that gave Ziggy the bad drugs. In the seat next to him, driving, is another cop I know. He’s a flatfoot that sent Tony the Bretzel Man to the hospital. Ziggy says he’s gotta go. He gets in the car & they take off. Georgey asks how can a kid like Ziggy be a cop? He thought only grownups can have real jobs. I tell him that’s true///

Georgey G. is scared. Ziggy left without saying goodbye a few weeks ago & now Ditty- the red-haired little psycho has been beating Georgey up every day. Georgey is on the cellar steps below his brownstone & crying. He has black & blue marks all over him. I ask if Talia- his older sister- did this to him? He says no. I ask if it was Ditty? He says no. Georgey will not speak of things. He runs inside. He has to. Soon his father will be home from work///

Back on the rooftop we watch the old man being beaten by 6 or 7 young black kids. He looks up to the heavens. He looks past us. In his last moments I see Al see his son. It is over none too soon///

I close the Loren Eiseley book. I am both there & here & on the rooftop. Ziggy has just finished his preachment. There is a look in his eye. I have 1 too. It is different. Ziggy is a creature of a machinery- not of the material, but of the motive. He will plot & stir & lay out all the tracks needed for an engine car that is not built to 1 day crash head long into something at a specific time & a specific place in a specific way. I understand that. But I am not Ziggy. The old black man was a friend of mine. Not just another nigger.

As a siren blared and faded we knew no one would come in time.

As I see the gang of punks ready to turn the corner from where they left Al’s body to the roaches, rats, & pigeons I heave a soda bottle from off the roof & at them. It flies down toward the corner & smashes on the brick edge of the corner building. Its shatter catches a couple of the scum-punks in the eye. Blood. Across the street a handful of Puerto Rican punks hear the noise & see the black kids look danger-filled their way. The black kids turn, see the worst & head across the street, where the PRs are already foaming in the middle. I still hear their unarticulated grunts, & flense the years from all purity. At the smash’s reverberations I look down at these animals in the street. Many people pass by, but I am the only 1 who takes note of it all. Yet, I am beyond them. Little rhymes so well.

—Dan Schneider edits www.Cosmoetica.com.








[fiction]
Harry Potter" and the Blood-soaked Orgy of Teeth
by Sean Kilpatrick


The addicts have crashed their flying-magic cars through the crowded windows of Barnes & Noble, Royal Oak, Friday night, 12am and bodies litter the aisles. But everything's alright, the carpets soak blood nicely and the smell of cracked skulls and broken backs (white spine juice) mean nothing to the throb-knuckled Harry Potter maniacs. I have been hiding in a far upstairs corner for forty-five minutes, praying (yes, but to what I don't know), waiting to toss this large atlas into the first pack of wand wielding preteens that charges me.

Taped, plastic glasses and Z-shaped scars, some real, some painted...a common sight among this crowd of hysterical, dangerous fans. They can smell the non-committed. The meat-covered bones of an unfortunate channel five news team have been fastened into a giant phoenix in the downstairs lobby. They are now soaking the monument in gasoline. Paperbacks curl under the fumes. Babies pass out on their mother's shoulders.

An announcement shatters the crowd's vicious hum...hundreds of heads crane toward the checkout desk where steel crates of JK Rowling's fifth outing at Hogwarts, The Order of the Phoenix, are being pried open by armed guards: "IT'S HARRY POTTER TIME!"

The stampede begins...mothers trample screaming children...blonde hair jerks under pounding boots...a solid guttural yelp whelming from the people...waited this long...waited years for...fathers sell their daughters for tickets...employees try desperately to herd lines...floored and torn apart like a zombie film...clothes and intestines thrown high in the air...raining down blood and teeth...sniper bullets smack through an upstairs window...an old man shakes and falls...blood sprays from his neck...the floor, the walls, even SHHREEEMP bouncing along the ceiling...forming a path of bodies...I see a young girl spitting orders into a walkie-talkie and moving toward the front...then the fire explodes and they're bowing as the books are tossed freely into hungry, grabbing hands...finally.

They disperse as quietly as they came. I creep downstairs, after making sure they're all outside - taking their fat books home to clean off the caked blood and read...almost 900 pages...and read again, then stop until the next installment comes (a victory earned and a battle well worth the wait) - fighting shock, into the shit-stench and cold. The fire has died to lines of pale smoke. More bodies, more leftover chaos. The night is punctuated by occasional giddy screaming.

I leave with Kathy Acker, speeding through the streets, anywhere...away from that...we stop at a diner. Quiet, the waitress, orange hair, is staring. I've been converted, my glasses broke and set with tape, the lightening bolt carved permanently on my skull. "But that's okay, Harry," she says, sitting on my lap in the booth, spilling some coffee as she plucks out my eyelashes and sets them in her white palm in tiny rows. It's love...

—Sean Kilpatrick has been previously published online at The Dream People (http://www.dreampeople.org/), The 2nd Hand (www.the2ndhand.com), Dark Fiction E-zine (http://www.darkfiction.org/index.html) House of Pain (http://www.house-of-pain.com/fiction/index.html, and Mused Magazine (http://www.musedmagazine.com/issue1.htm. He is also slated to be published in the upcoming issues of The Exquisite Corpse (http://www.corpse.org/index.html)and The Glut (http://www.theglut.com/). The foregoing "short absurdist-journalism piece" is Kilpatrick's first appearance on spread.








[fiction]
Severed Souls
by Randall W. Collier


We were hanging there in suspension, on a finely wound web of deceit.

It startled us to think that we would in some way now be normal. She had lived 19 years of her life with a hideous boil-sized growth on the end of her nose. It made her nauseas to think what people thought of her when they looked at her. He, on the other hand, had been burned severely as a child, and his face was still there yet, somehow melted. His life could have been compared to that of a sideshow freak.

They had been living together now for 5 years, saving every penny they made. Today was the goal achieved. The bright and shining reward for 5 years of hard work and determination. They were in love. In deep soul love, where outside appearances are not even a factor in the equation. Deep soul love.

They sat together in a very bland and normal waiting office, awaiting the moment of normalcy in their own lives. However, their presence in the bland waiting room somehow took away its sense of normalcy and everything turned strange. It was the sideshow freak rhythm and blues review right there in the blandly strange waiting room.

In a couple of minutes they will be called in to the back of the clinic and meet the black market doctor, the very illegal Doctor Dim. He would be assisting them on their quest for normalcy today. Doctor Dim was an underground surgeon practiced in the art of changing appearances and they had saved every penny they had for 5 years. Doctor Dim’s prices were half of what it would cost at a real hospital. Doctor Dim is all they could afford and they had every ounce of faith that he would get the job done, and restore some since of normalcy to their twisted and scarred worlds.

They were in love. Deep Soul Love.

She was going under the knife to have the hideousness removed from her now deformed nose. He was having a latex prosthetic mask made and from the measurements of his melted head and a picture he had of himself when he was 4 years old. It was all he had. It was all she had. It was all they had, and they loved each other. They were in Deep Soul Love

They heard their names called and jumped to attention and made their way down the darkened hall. They held tightly to one another’s hands. The Doctor would see them now, and yes, now is when they fully realize that you get what you pay for in this wicked world.

She was handed a bottle of warm Jack Daniels and told to take a few belts before going under the knife. “Anesthesia” Doctor Dim said in a most professional manner, as he made his way toward her with the scalpel. She took 3 good hits off that fine Tennessee whiskey before the good Doctor lopped off the hideousness on her pointed nose. Plop went the hideousness when it hit the dull red floor. She was given a handful of gauze and a bottle of rubbing alcohol and instructed to apply pressure immediately. She didn’t have enough money to pay for stitches and she would have to make due.

He was given a shoddy latex mask that looked strangely like a grown up cabbage patch doll. It scarcely had hair and was permanently scarred with a childish grimace on its odd looking face. He was told he looked fantastic, when in reality he looked more hideous than before, just not melted now. He knew they had to spend most of the money they had on her, because hers was more of a surgical nature. He loved her and settled for his end of the reward. He loved her and she loved him. That is what mattered. They were in love.

Within five minutes the deed was done and they walked together hand in hand back towards the waiting room to give payment for services rendered. They looked deep into each other’s souls and saw all the beauty of life that stands there.

She was standing there with blood running down the front of her yellow cotton dress, applying alcohol and pressure to her now gaping wound, reeking of sour mash whiskey. He stood looking like some horrorshow slasher in a bad Jason mask. They were in love, deep soul love, and looked forward to a life of normalcy.

Normalcy of the soul.

We were hanging there in suspension, on a finely wound web of deceit. It startled us to think that we could somehow someway be normal.

He stood waning on the diamond hard edge of a moment.

Bitter tears bled form his ugly green eyes. He had waited a lifetime for this, and now that it was here, he cringed. She was the center of all attention, not him. He thought of escape through suicide, but that seemed far too easy. He saw his only way out, as portraying a homicidal maniac, vicariously living through her pain.

They were in love. Deep soul love, and he now saw the need.

He now saw that he needed to sever the soul that loved him.

Forever.
A

—Randall W. Collier, 39, is a full-time student at a local university in Bakersfield California. He has been writing since he was seven. This is his second appearance on spread.








[fiction]
The Zombies of Nihilism
by Killian Scarre


The dead are walking the earth. Great masses of animated corpses roam about, and then explode into violent thrashing, gnashing, and clawing when their pale dead eyes catch sight of the young woman running by. She is alive, perhaps the last to be alive, and she is desperate to escape the clutches of these zombies and thus preserve her life.

She is running along the road at a sustained pace. An exhausted pace. She has been running for hours now. To her it seems as if she has been running for months; and perhaps she has. Her face bears an expression of utter exhaustion. Her eyes are dulled, fixed upon the looming edifice in the distance, up the road. Her gaze hardly strays from it to take in the abominations that leer out from her peripheral. As she passes, the decaying, moaning figures surge out from every shadow. They spill out of ruined doorways, and from between darkened trees. They pull themselves, drag themselves out of ditches and attempt to pursue their prey with broken, rotten limbs; like pathetic awkward serpents, not yet evolved to depend upon their bellies for locomotion. But these vile creatures will not evolve. They are dead. They are dead tissue that have come to be by some unnatural means. They are truly abominations.

Behind her, close behind her, follow the zombies that are in less advanced states of decay. They are the more recently deceased. They keep pace with her. The whole mass of them leering and stumbling, lumbering and reaching, as desperate to grab hold of her sweet, living flesh as she is to escape them.

But while she is silent, not making a noise save for her labored breathing, they are a noisy mass. Gasping, moaning, wailing in their pain and suffering, lamenting in their desperation to overcome it. To overcome it by the taste of this sweet flesh, running just beyond their grasp.

Hundreds of them, with more added every few paces, and all are oblivious to everything but their own driving hunger. Their distorted rotting faces display the painful desperation they suffer. In exaggerated grimaces they express the shock and horror of being dead and yet still being so compelled by hunger.

In contrast, the expression upon the face of the girl is absent of any emotion. Exhaustion has drained all of the fear and disgust from her and left only a stoic resignation. In her eyes there is only the immediate goal of shelter; of a sanctuary from the masses of cannibalistic zombies that endlessly, tirelessly pursue her. The edifice.

She is close to it now. It is a large dark building. Perhaps a museum. Or rather it was a museum before…before all this, before the end of the world had came and went. It is a large structure with multiple floors and a huge entrance of many steps and pillars and columns; after the Greek style. It does not appear to be infested with the zombies.

And, most importantly, there is a light in one of the top floor windows. This light itself is enough to warrant some hope. For everywhere else the only light comes from the moon, which is now full and suspended above the earth. She has seen no artificial light for days. Ever since the hordes of dead finally broke down the barriers that protected her and the last of the survivors. Only she had escaped from their biting jaws and clawing fingers. Only she had managed to somehow wriggle out into the open as the lanterns and flashlights were extinguished amidst the screams of the dying. The lights went out, one by one; just as the people who had held them breathed their last in an exhalation of horror and agony.

Since then it seemed like she had been running, almost continuously. She had thought herself to be all alone. Perhaps the last person on the whole planet. But now, surely someone had barricaded themselves inside this museum. She was drawn to that little flickering light as if it were all that was left of life and of the world. She would exhaust her final resources to get to it. She was drawn to it like a moth to the flame.

Up the steps she sprinted. Two at a time. But the steps prove difficult for the zombies. They can not effectively maneuver them and they fall upon one another and continue to stumble upward. Wet tissue is torn open and frail dead bones are snapped in their clumsy haste to secure their prey. Up the steps the girl climbs. This is it. This is the last burst of her energy. If more zombies lie in wait on the inside she will surely be devoured.

She stops for just the briefest moment at the huge, double doors that stand ajar. Inside it is pitch black, but no sound, no movement. She hesitates a moment longer and then, looking back upon the decaying throng climbing the steps, flings herself inside. She takes hold of one door and then another, pushes, tries to shut them. But it is no use. She wastes no more time and continues on.

Her footsteps fall heavy in the dark tomb-like silence. The quick pat, pat, pat, echoes back at her from marble floors and concrete walls within the hollow chambers of this edifice. Her eyes are beginning to adjust to the gloom as she hears the first of her rancid pursuers spilling into the building. She must find the stairs.

Running wildly, breathless, exhausted, suddenly she slams into something with her shins. The impact topples her. Searing pain shoots up her legs and causes starbursts to go off behind her eyes as she lets out a cry. It is the first time that she has heard her own voice in days. Not since she escaped the fate that her companions had met. She picks herself up and now continues to make her way, only now at a considerably slower gait.

The zombies are gaining on her now. She can not comprehend how it is that they can sense her there, in the dark. Her own live senses can barely make out the shapes of things by the sparse light of the moon that manages to shine in. How is it that they, with dead eyes and only reanimated brains are able to follow her? They follow her by scent perhaps. Within their decaying heads the scent of her live flesh swirls around, filling them with insane desire. Her living, breathing flesh enticing them into cannibalistic madness. But maybe to call them cannibals is inaccurate, for they are no longer of the same species. Not really. These walking corpses constitute some new adaptation to nature. Some blasphemous exception to the laws which govern life.

The stairs! She has found the staircase. It is illuminated by a window overlooking the landing. Quickly she climbs. Both shins aching, pulsing. Pain surges hotly through both legs until she feels as though she will burst. Her head swoons with exhaustion. And still she climbs. Up one flight, and then another, still another.

And then she arrives at the door. She can see clearly within the gloom the frame of a door illuminated from the inside. A dim light traces the shut door within the frame, and it flickers a little. It is candle light. Someone must be in that room! If it were a battery operated light it may have been left on in the unoccupied room for perhaps days, but this is definitely candle light. Someone has to be inside that room!

No longer feeling the pain or exhaustion she flies at the door and, grasping the handle…she is stopped dead.

The door is locked. In an outburst of confused emotions and sheer panic she begins into a torrent of screaming and pounding upon the door. She claws at the wood with her nails she pounds with her palms, her fists, her forearms, her knees. She cries out, “Please! Oh god, please open the door! Oh god, oh god damn it open this god damn door! Please! I’m still alive! I’m trapped out here! Please! Their coming! Their coming! Please open this god damn door now!”

Utter panic ensues. It takes over her entire being. Where the will to survive had spurred her on before, had got her here, now at this point, at the end of the road panic has taken over. Mortal fear has superceded all other thought and function within her.

She turns back toward the staircase to see the first of the zombies emerge over the landing. She pauses in her hysteria to watch with crazed eyes as crooked, unsteady, rotten feet set down upon the floor. Her eyes meet the cataract gaze within the wrinkled, pained face of the dead. The things move toward her now and as they do she resumes her display. Screaming and crying and pounding upon the door. Letting herself go to the fear, to the madness. In desperate, wailing tones she begins to break down, appealing to the mercy of someone whom might not even exist. “Please! Oh please!”

The zombies come closer. They surge forward. Their own desperate moans becoming louder and louder. The din of their hunger drowning out all other sound, just as their dead organisms are sure to drown this final living victim.

Trapped, her back against the door. Sobbing, her lips drawn into ridiculous sniveling, she resigns herself to fate. The outstretched arms, the grasping fingers come nearer, propelled by broken bodies. The gaping open mouths lined with foul slimy teeth chattering, gnashing in anticipation of the squealing, squirming meal. The fingertips, reaching, reaching in the darkness, clutching at her, grabbing at her, taking hold of that sweet, soft flesh, taking hold…

Suddenly she falls. The nightmare was complete. The feast was imminent. In all of her wildest nightmares she couldn’t have anticipated the horror of all those dead zombie faces gathering around her…and then, a different nightmare. Falling. Falling in the darkness. She is falling backwards, backwards into the darkest night. Falling. Falling for what seems like a long time. Such a very long time.

“Get up, move out of the way!” a man shouts at her as he sweeps her legs clear and shuts the door. She watches, amazed, enthralled, dumbfounded as he simply shuts the door. Shuts the door upon the looming faces, the hungry zombie faces that are still too slow to register what has just happened. Faces that were about to devour her. Faces full of sinister teeth and sickly salivating mouths that were prepared to feast upon her. Until…until he, this man, simply shut the door.

This man now bars the heavy door and crouching to her asks if she’s all right. She does not respond. She only stares, still in the shock of the moment, still not certain she has survived.

He offers her a hand, to help her up. She hesitates. He smiles reassuringly. She accepts and is helped slowly to her feet. The noise just outside the door grows louder as the zombies arrive at the realization that they have been cut off from their prey. Dead limbs limply pound against the door. Impotent gurgling lamentations emanate from their hungry rotting mouths. But she is safe now. Yes, finally safe.

She looks around, taking in the room. Candles in various stages of disintegration dot the room and dimly display shelves of books. Too small to be a library but perhaps a study.

She feels the eyes of the man upon her. She looks him over now. They don’t speak for a while. They just gaze back and forth. There is a mixture of strangeness and recognition in their glances, of suspicion and of utmost faith. They are the last human beings alive.

“Are there any others?” he asks, but as he does the optimism in his voice drops. He already knows the answer.

She looks at him, dumbly. Trying to remember that most essential human function of language. The look of anticipation on his face almost fills her with disgust. He is so obviously desperate for communication, for conversation with another live human being. His face veritably beams as she tries to form the words.

“Are you alone?” she asks softly; doing her best to hide her disgust at his desperation.

“Yes...yes; until now, that is.” he says. His face beams at her. He does not try to disguise his joy at having her there. He is no longer alone, and in his reverie he takes no notice of her aversion to him.

She, in comparison, takes no pleasure in his company. She is not even certain of being grateful to him for opening the door and prolonging, not saving, but prolonging her life. Now what is to be; she starts to think. She is trapped. The zombies are still right outside the door, surrounding the building; and presumably everywhere upon the planet earth. Now she is trapped in here with this strange man. This strange smiling man who is so happy to have her there. So happy that it makes her sick. His beaming face in the candle light, taking her in with his greedy eyes, drinking in her image, devouring her with his eyes just as the zombies wish to do. Devouring her with his beaming face, his disgusting, ridiculous, his almost cartoon face, sickening, making her sick, making her nauseous, making her want to vomit, making her want to…

She vomits. The stinging warm bile comes spilling out of her mouth and down the front of her. She drops to her knees and vomits again. Acidic liquid convulsing out of her and pouring down upon the floor. She faces the puddle below, all clear liquid, rank with the fumes of digestion. Not much substance to it. She can not remember the last time she ate. The last time she ate…when was that? They had wanted to eat one amongst them who had died, she had opposed it, she had refused, but they…they insisted. They were going to eat the dead man. They had to, they reasoned. They had to stay alive. But as they cut into his fresh corpse…just as they began to cut away at the meat…the corpse’s eyes sprang open wide…an inhuman hollowness…and then the scream, like nothing she had ever heard a human being make…and then the corpse attacked them, and bit into them, and proceeded to eat them…a fine reversal, an almost comical irony…almost comical but not quite because they we're still all trapped in that little space, with that corpse thrashing around, biting, violent, screaming…trapped…

Kneeling over her own vomit she loses consciousness.

She awakens and with hazy eyes and swimming head finds that she is beneath a small tree. Above the stretching limbs a pitch black ceiling, no there are stars, it is a glass ceiling. It’s still night. The man is seated upon the floor on the other side of the room, the other side of the tree. He looks up from his book and smiles. She feels her nausea coming back.

He places the book on the floor, stands and comes toward her.

“You should try to eat. It will make you feel better.” He offers her a small piece of dark fruit.

“What is this place?” she asks. Her voice quavering as she accepts the strange fruit.

“I don’t really know. Some kind of terrarium. I’ve been here for about…oh, a month, maybe six weeks…you kind of lose track of time when…” he breaks off into an awkward little laugh. It grates against her. She remembers her revulsion of him. “I was lucky to find this place. I’ve been living on the fruit this tree produces. It’s not much, but it has sustained me. I think if were careful with it there should be plenty for the both of us. It’ll last until…until whenever.” He smiled sheepishly at her, breaking off the thought.

Meanwhile she had completely devoured all but the pit of the strange dark fruit.

“Until what?” she asks in a sardonic tone. She rises to look for more of the fruit. It hangs in plump little dark orbs from the drooping branches of the small tree.

The man follows her. “Well until those zombies die.”

“They’re already dead.” She quips in the same sardonic tone as before as she reaches to pluck another piece of fruit.

“Yes, but I mean until they rot all the way through. Until their bodies decay so much that they can’t move any longer. I mean whatever brought them back to life can’t possibly keep them moving after all their muscles have turned to jelly. They’re already rotting. I mean…it shouldn’t take too much longer. You know, a few months maybe. In the meantime were safe here. They can’t get in, and as long as the light still shines in,” he points up to the sky-light. “We’ll be OK.” He smiles at her reassuringly. She is not impressed.

Just then, a loud rhythmic thumping starts. It comes from the other room, through a small doorway back to the study. She jumps with a start.

“Don’t worry. They can’t get through. These two rooms are completely sealed. We’re safe.” He assures her. “They must have found something to bang on the door with, a piece of furniture or something. But don’t worry they can’t get through. They just make a lot of noise. They were making so much noise I thought it best to pull you in here, but we can go back in there whenever we want. They can’t get in and there are a lot of books to read, and…” he stops short. Her look cuts him down. He is beginning to sense her aversion for him. “Don’t worry.” He insists. “We’ll be all right.”

For a long while nothing is spoken between them. He goes back to reading. She just mills around aimlessly. Inspecting the confinement of this sanctuary. Two small rooms. One full of mildewed books, the other with a small, fruit bearing tree. She tries to ignore the incessant pounding, pounding at the door. She tries to ignore the incoherent moaning, the garbled noise coming from the rotting throats on the other side of the door. She hopes that the throats rot away first. The throats and then the arms. She hopes they just rot away and fall off and then she won’t have to listen to them anymore. She wonders how long that will take. Certainly the dead flesh couldn’t be sustained much longer now. It’s already been…how long? Two months? Three? How much longer could it take? Weeks, maybe months…oh god maybe…maybe years! Years trapped inside these two stifling rooms. Trapped in here with this idiot sitting in the corner calmly reading, all happy to have someone to! talk to. And all the while, just outside the door, the muffled sounds of zombie mumbling, and against the door, beating against the door, pounding against the door, over and over again, pounding, pounding, incessantly pounding. Day after day after week…and stretching into months, into years! Oh my god, into years! And then…and then!

“And then what!” she suddenly shouts at the man. Her thoughts spilling out into the world, her venomous emotions directed at her unfortunate, unwanted companion.

“What do you mean?” he asks looking up from his book.

Surprised by her own outburst and yet carried forth by its momentum she starts in on him. “After they rot away, if they ever rot away, then what do you suggest we do? Just go ahead and go out and live our lives again? They’re all dead. Everyone. Every single one of them is dead. There’s nothing left. Nothing!” she stands staring at him, hating him. How can he be so calm? How can he just sit there reading while all around them the world has gone to hell? She finds herself asking this question aloud.

He is almost amused. It’s as if he were waiting for her to engage him in this very conversation. “Well,” he begins smugly, “if there ever existed anything to live for, I can’t see that anything’s changed.”

“Everything’s changed!” she exclaims. “Everyone’s dead! Every single person! We used to be capable of such achievements, of such joy in life. But now that’s all gone. All of our human potential is gone!”

“Are you religious?” he queries in a calm and interrogatory voice.

“What?” she is stumped by the sudden change in direction, and by his still composed manner.

“Do you have a belief system? What do you believe in?” His dispassionate steady tone seems to mollify her.

“I…I used to be, well I used to be a humanist I guess. I mean, I never really believed in God, but I believed in something. I believed that man could strive for perfection. I believed in absolute being, truth, goodness, beauty, freedom, etc.”

“And now?” he questioned.

“Now I’m a Nihilist. Now I see that we will never reach those ideal standards of achievement. Now I see that nothing we do is worth anything because we’ll never reach that state of perfection. Now were just falling away from those most high and lofty ideals. Now were just falling away from all that is true and good and perfect. Therefore I am a Nihilist.” She spoke all of this with a far off look in her eyes and an almost melodramatic tone in her voice.

When she was finished the man began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, his mirthful convulsions echoing in the small enclosure. He laughed until she was infuriated with him. Then he apologized… and quickly began to laugh some more.

“What’s so god damn funny?” she spits at him as if her words were acid.

“Nothing.” He pauses as if he just told the punch-line to a joke, and begins laughing again. “I’m sorry I don’t mean to laugh. Please forgive me.”

“Just what do you find so amusing asshole?” she utters through gritting teeth. If this was the real world she wouldn’t even entertain the notion of speaking to this guy any longer. But there is nowhere to go. She is trapped in here with him. She is seen through his eyes. Like it or not, he is her counterpart and reflection.

“Well it’s just that you claim to be a Nihilist.”

“I am a Nihilist. With the way the world is now, it’s the only belief system that makes sense anymore.” She is adamant.

He starts to laugh again but stops himself. “I’m sorry, but to put it quite simply; you are not a Nihilist.”

“Excuse me, but I think I know a little bit about philosophies and beliefs, and I sure in the hell know about my own beliefs, and I’m telling you-I am a Nihilist.”

“Well it is clear that you definitely do know a little bit about philosophy,” he pauses for effect, “a very little bit.” And he starts laughing to himself again.

She is so disgusted at this point that she turns and walks away. She moves towards the threshold of the study and then, hearing the muffled pounding of the zombies, thinks better of it.

He begins to address her from his spot on the floor. “Look I’m sorry. Please don’t be upset. Let’s try to understand this shall we.” He rises and begins to pontificate in the manner of a college professor. “Nihilism is agreed upon by most to constitute a rejection of all values and the denial of such concepts as being, truth, goodness, beauty, freedom, etc. It is not simply a lament at that which is unattainable. Instead, all is meaningless and worthless; always. Nihilism represents the bitter refutation that these concepts of perfection have meaning and worth at all. Nihilism knows no such distinction between the flawed, real-world versions of ideals and their perfected other-worldly counterparts; all and everything is looked upon with equal disdain. The Nihilist lives in a world of shit.”

She is taken aback, but still insists. “I am a Nihilist because I am disillusioned with the world.”

The man just looks at her and shakes his head in a condescending manner. “Let’s look at what the exact definition of the word is, shall we? The basis of the word Nihilism can be found in the Latin ‘nihil’ which means nothing; that which is devoid of value. This nothing does not refer to a disappointment. It does not allow for any other-worldly postulations of perfection. What is meant by nothingness is essentially that all is meaningless. All is worthless. Such high concepts as truth, goodness, beauty, freedom, etc. are not only inconceivable by the human mind but could not exist in this world or in any other. This is because when the human mind is trained on such lofty principles and tries to imagine such a thing as being, truth, goodness, beauty, freedom, etc., one invariably finds that the concepts are hazy at best. They can not be conceived of by the human mind. These high and lofty concepts have never been conclusively put forth by any philosopher, th! eologian, psychologist, nor leader. These concepts, these (Platonic) Forms have never been demonstrated to conform to perfection. They will always fall short; conceptually and otherwise. To place any of these concepts under the slightest scrutiny one will always find that, not only do we have no clear conception of what that perfection might be; but that any attempt to put those concepts into any kind of communicable or attainable idea falls short. There is always some flaw where the reasoning breaks down. There is always some hidden implication that comes out beneath the weight of a rigorous and honest scrutiny and contradicts these ideas.

“I don’t believe that anyone in the history of the civilization of man has ever really been able to hold the concept of being, truth, goodness, beauty, freedom, etc. in their mind for even the briefest of moments. The glimpses that we get when we attempt to do this are obscure, fleeting, hazy, abstract, and static.

“Furthermore we can not have these lofty concepts independent of the circumstances that they are applied to. You can not have beauty stand alone, as if it were a Platonic Form floating somewhere out in the other-world. In order to have beauty you must have it as something that is beautiful. But beauty, like the concepts of justice and freedom and truth etc., is a thing which is highly subjective. It is entirely dependent upon the observer, upon his frame of reference according to his personal experiences prior to the witnessing of the object of beauty, his social conditioning and cultural epoch, his genetic predisposition, and the desired expectations of the object beheld.

“Aside from this the object of beauty is almost certainly subject to flaws in that beauty. When gazing upon an object that one regards as beautiful, one is almost always willing to overlook any ugliness. But that secret ugliness is there none the less, threatening to overwhelm the beauty from certain angles and perspectives. And within the form of the beauty itself decadence has already taken hold just beneath the surface. Even in the very midst of life and beauty, death and ugliness are already present. They brought the form into existence and lie subtly awaiting to reclaim it.” The man paused. There was something in his face and in his manner that the girl hadn’t noticed before. Something sinister. Something mad.

She responded, this time treading a little more lightly. “Certainly it is accurate to say that in our lives we perpetually strive to achieve something better, and consistently fall short of this goal and into despair. Is this not Nihilism?”

He started to speak; his eyes were wild now, crazed. It was as though speaking about such things had unleashed something within him. Some madness that he had stifled before, but that now threatened to explode at any moment. “To grasp at an understanding of the psychology behind Nihilistic thought one must assess the fundamental despair of human awareness,” He gesticulated wildly as he spoke. He glared at her as he paced back and forth. “But to postulate that the motivations of Nihilistic thought emanate from a peculiar type of despair, this despair being a reaction to one’s realization of an ideal of perfection and of the subsequent failure to achieve that perfection, either individually or as a culture, race, etc.; is quite simply inconsistent. Furthermore it is a clear indication of desperation in one’s own psychology. A Nihilist would have no need to imagine some perfect other-world that exists beyond his and his races capacity for achievement. This is ! not Nihilism. This is something else.

“Perhaps this could correctly be called Gnosticism. Gnosticism is an ancient mode of thought that has pre-dated Christianity and was absorbed into it as one of the many heretical movements that sprang up in the early years of the church. The basis of Gnostic principles places the world of matter and all that exists within it far away from divinity; not only in spirit but in actual proximity. The Gnostics teach either that God created and then abandoned the world to its own machinations, or that the world was created by a lesser divinity, or perhaps a malignant entity and that God is somehow unaware and powerless, at least partially, to intercede on the worlds behalf. Either way, those that find themselves trapped in this hellish world of imperfect matter can achieve a reunion with God and with the perfect other-world through Gnosis; or Knowledge. Thus these mystic Gnostics would have a conception of the perfected way things should be, contrary to the corrupted ways of the world.

“Or maybe it’s Relativism that you espouse. Nihilism goes far beyond the basic tenets of Relativism though. A Relativist might postulate that values and truth are subjective; i.e. the Sophists argument that a Greek would accept no amount of money to eat his grandparents, but that there exists many exotic cultures who would accept no amount of money to refrain from bashing their elders on the back of the head and devouring their corpse, in order to absorb their life force in homage. So for the Relativist truth and morality are exclusive to the culture, the historical period of time, the individual circumstance. Truth is to be found exclusively in the moment.

“But for the Nihilist, the hardcore Nihilist, the denier of not only absolute truth and morality but also of any subjective claim to higher knowledge, there is no such circumstance that might warrant a valuation judgment; save that there can be none.

Nihilism is not born of any cultural phenomena either (though it was not named such until 1862). The anti-morality of Nihilism has existed far longer than any culture, as it is not a by-product of social convention or industrialization. Certainly the consequences of industrialization, as well as exponential population growth have heightened the phenomenon of Nihilistic thought, but it can not accurately be considered its source.” He glared at her. Waiting for the next challenge. Waiting as if all this time he had been waiting. Waiting just for her, for her to come and seek refuge here with him so that he could argue philosophy with her. Maybe he had been waiting precisely for this. Maybe he truly was mad.

“What about the philosophers? What about the one’s who were Nihilists? Wasn’t Nietzsche a Nihilist?” she asks. She is afraid to let the conversation lull. She is afraid of the way he has begun to glower at her. But she is also afraid to continue the debate. She begins to wonder if there is a way out of these two little rooms.

“Ha! No…no,” he laughs, but there is no mirth in it now. Now his laughter sounds devious, sinister. Still staring her down, still pacing like a caged animal waiting for feeding time, he continues, “No serious philosopher yet has attached himself to the idea of Nihilism. None would because to do so would be to utter an apparent contradiction. To say that ‘all ideas are worthless’ and then to say that ‘therefore I am a Nihilist’, so that ‘the idea of Nihilism has worth to me’, is to commit a fallacy. It can not withstand the test of self-reference.

“So if we want to look at who the real adherents to Nihilism might be, we need to look at not intellectual figures necessarily, but to madmen, murderers, psychopaths, and tyrants. Only those individuals whose morality is eclipsed by the darkness of eternity, whose morality bears no resemblance to anything remotely altruistic or abides to nothing of higher purpose. These black souls might be said to be the closest thing to an actual Nihilist that exists. Though this too is not entirely accurate. Most serial-killers and tyrants have a value system. In Nietzsche’s terms these values may be termed the ‘will to power’. Madmen are perhaps the closest it comes. For in some madmen the only motivation is that secret darkness of the soul; that malady that would, from a religious perspective be considered satanic. But it is to the madman nothing less than a joyful, agonizing plunge into the darkness of human depravity. From this perspective all the universe is shown ! to be nothing more than a violent and crushing moment of nihilistic fantasy. As severe and unforgiving and indifferent as nature is to man’s over-sensitivity as an organism. This is what the Nihilist and the madman agree upon. This is what is glimpsed in those moments of utter, willful self-destruction. This Nihilism does not seek a better place and find only that which falls short, find only disappointment and despair. This Nihilism rejoices in the idea that all will come to not, that all has been for not, that all and everything is simply a futile convulsion in the eternal night of cold, cold darkness that everywhere pervades and everywhere reigns.” He drew a deep breath, exaggerating the motion as though he were breathing in the very blackness that he had just spoken of.

Then he continued, “Was Nietzsche a Nihilist? I don’t think so. An atheist? Nietzsche was definitely an atheist. Anti-Christian, or rather anti-Christianity? That can be said with little doubt. Was he a relativist? To some degree, and to some degree he was a pragmatist as well, perhaps even a utilitarian. Perhaps. Was he a Nihilist? I think that… only in those dark, dark nights… when the health of his ailing body had left him all together… when his awareness could focus upon nothing but his own suffering and the inevitability of his own merciless death. In those moments, when Nietzsche forsook all optimism, and all human endeavor. When he no longer despaired because those human emotions were obliterated, and, as it were, annihilated; at those moments it may be said that he had reached a state of Nihilism.”

“But no one arrives at their belief system in a vacuum.” she ventured, “How else would one come to be a Nihilist except through disillusionment?” She was still looking for a way to get out. As he paced the floor and came nearer and nearer, she also moved about the room scanning the walls and ceilings for any possible escape. She also cast her gaze about for something with which to defend herself. In a shadowy corner she could make out what looked to be pruning shears.

“Oh, well…” He was clearly delighted with the prospect of refuting her. He was breathing heavy now. His chest heaved. Sweat began to glisten upon his brow. Madness was transforming him as they spoke. “Perhaps one might arrive at Nihilism by the mechanism of disillusionment. In this case it would be a reaction to the realization that the world is not perfect, specifically as one had considered it in youth. Or rather as one was not compelled to consider whether the world is perfect or not because children often take such considerations for granted; in this case Nihilism is arrived at through crushed optimism. It is a reaction to being hurt by the world that you once trusted and looked to for fulfillment. But this is not Nihilism. Nihilism goes beyond this stage. Nihilism renounces that past optimism. It denies it all together. It sees it for the fallacious naivety that it is and contributes it to nothing more than a human being’s lack of awareness; and disca! rds it appropriately. So if our awareness is limited, which it most certainly is, perhaps Nihilism is the utmost reaction to those fleeting glimpses of awareness of just how dire a situation that we as human organisms find ourselves immersed in.

“Nihilism can not be the recognition of perfect ideals of truth, goodness, beauty, freedom, etc. and our failure at achieving those high ideals. Nihilism is the recognition that those high and worthy ideals do not exist, have never existed, will never exist and that even the very conception of those ideals do not conform to any type of perfection. All of those concepts are flawed in their very essence. Furthermore, not only do these concepts possess no ontological reality, but to assert that these are standards set by an ‘absolute being’ is to misunderstand the premise of Nihilism entirely. Nihilism is the recognition that not only is everything in the world of man fucked, but that everything, even that which is independent of man, is fucked. Amen.”

Having said that he came closer and closer, leering at her, menacing her, until he had backed her into a corner. But she had anticipated it and, walking backwards had edged herself toward the corner that held the pruning shears.

“And now my dear,” he started to say, almost in a whisper, and grinning from ear to ear, “I am a man. And I have been alone for a long while now. As a man I have certain biological needs. These needs will not be denied, no not a moment longer. And so, as you are in the world of man, you are going to be fucked…”

He lunged at her and they slammed into the wall. He snarled as his frantic hands tore at her clothing and scratched at her skin. She groped behind her for the shears, got them, dropped them, and then picked them up again. She tightened her grip upon the handle and in a single swift motion stabbed upward into his belly. He pulled back as the sharp point tore into his stomach. She squirmed out from beneath him as he slumped over. The immense pain left him gasping as she made her to the study.

She looked back to see him regain some composure and try to stand upright. His left hand clutched at his belly and was already full of blood.

“Oh but you didn’t let me finish,” he tried to laugh; “First I’m going to fuck you. But then you’re going to satisfy another biological need. Then I intend to eat you.” This starts him laughing painfully as he hobbles toward her.

Nowhere to run. She finds herself now pressed against the other side of the door she was so desperate to get into earlier. She can hear the zombies on the other side still pounding, still hungry.

He appears in the doorway. He is badly wounded. But worse he is completely insane now. He has abandoned all regard for his own well being. Now the only thing left for him is to have her and to kill her. The look in his eyes conveys this quite clearly.

“Nowhere to go,” he sings out, “No perfect world to hope for.” And he lopes toward at her full speed.

She does not panic. She simply swings the door wide open and stands behind it.

The zombies that had been pushed against it came spilling in onto the floor. These were immediately followed by a voracious wall of gnashing teeth and clutching bony hands that flowed over the pile of broken flesh beneath them and instantly converged upon the wounded madman. He gave one shriek of terror as he went down and was lost within that sea of putrefying bodies.

The girl managed to streak past him and back into the terrarium. She locked the door behind her just as the swarm of zombies came slamming up against it. She slid to a seated position on the floor and remained perfectly still for quite some time.

It was not until the first rays of the morning sun began to shine in through the sky-light that she stirred from that spot against the door. She listened to the zombies all night. She could hear them feasting on the flesh of the madman and others still tried desperately to get at her through the door. They will probably never stop trying to get in. And when their bodies finally do give out they will just stay right where they are, in a big pile of decaying flesh. She’ll have to push through them, push them out of the way to open the door.

She walked over to the book the madman had been reading and picked it up. It was a dictionary. She looked to the tree. A few pieces of fruit still clung to it. It would grow more she supposed, just as long as the sun could still shine in through the sky-light.

Just then she looked up to see a clawing hand, and then another appear on the glass of the sky-light. And then another pair scratching its way up. And another. Soon grotesque faces were pressing against the glass, distorting their already decayed features into soft, slimy nightmare glances. Before long dark bodies were being dragged up over the glass. Zombie after zombie glared down at her from the sky-light. Chomping and drooling and smearing their filthy bile all over the glass and all over each other. Some of the bile seeped down through tiny spaces in the caulking. It dripped in thick black strings upon the tree. Soon the sky-light would be completely covered with these grotesque corpses. Soon all the light would be blocked out. Forever.

—Killian Scarre sends this fiction piece "in response, or in refutation," to an essay posted on spread entitled "The rejuvenating power of nihilism" by John Marmysz