Coffin Island (29 page)

Professor Coffin and The Red Lady were
groaning at great length about their revised position on The Great
Chain of Being. The thing that I admired was the audacity with
which they pronounced themselves creatures on The Great Chain of
Being. They were the roaches of this theoretical platform for all
purposes. I feel like I was being extremely generous in that
classification. Frankly they were beneath categorization in this
world. What good are scavengers in this world? Who cares about
carrion if that’s all a world consists of? Why bother having any
vultures even on the insect level?

The only reason that I granted them
roach status was so I had a justification for stomping them to
death with brutal force. I was classifying them so I could kill
them with passion. Why execute something that you hate if you
aren’t going to celebrate? You don’t scalp something without
juvenile gloating that is unnecessary and vulgar. Being high toned
doesn’t get your point across. It makes your critics think that
you’re a fraud which you are. And we couldn’t have that.

Chapter

Professor Coffin and The Red Lady
needed to be stomped to death with a vulgar brutality that bespoke
them. I wanted a suit of their skin that was exquisitely tailored
by a furrier. I wanted to put it on and strut around a bit.
Foreshadow for their boss what was going to happen next. You’re
skin is going on my back next. Maybe some kidney skin slippers too.
Why not flash around a bit?

This grim hell was what qualified as an
education at The Coffin Island School for Witches? Although that
was some sort of misnomer calling The Coffin Island School for
Witches a school. My examiner was a demon. And that school was hell
too.

Why not make education as evil as
possible? You’ve got to crucify those pupils to teach them
anything. Otherwise your message just won’t get through. That’s why
we have to put you on a cross on a hilltop. We’re going to drive
our point right through the palm of your hands. Welcome to the
Crucifix. Who are we nailing up there, you might ask? Well, what
about you?

My examiner had set this horrible
destination into motion with a flick of his wings. And even if he
hadn’t, which he had, I didn’t care. The tail was getting pinned on
that donkey. There was nothing that ass could do it about it. Let
him honk all he wants. Nobody will hear him because all the horses
have gone to war. We’re going to pave that path of destruction with
skulls because the cobblestones are all in the catapult. There is a
grim logic here if you’re willing to go after it. But how do you
march on something that you cannot precisely locate?

Why not locate yourself on a map before
engaging in brutal over-the-top war on a theoretical plan with some
sock puppets that deserve it or at the very least their handler
that is in hiding?

We had the broad outlines of what it
was, or where it was inspired from, a Flemish portrait of hell,
made by a frontal lobe madman who should have been shot along with
his benefactor. It was an ungenerous assessment but I was the one
currently standing in it. Not gazing at it from the safe distance
of the exterior of the frame down through the ages. Or at the very
least the responsible parties should not have given the madman a
paintbrush to quiet his troubled mind.

That was the first mistake that set
this brutal hell into motion. You couldn’t argue with that. It was
trying to placate a Flemish madman that was the first wrong move.
It had sent this whole demented dimension into motion. Attempting
to find a safe haven to occupy that unquiet mind? The arts were a
decidedly poor choice.

What about tulip cultivation? You don’t
like flowers? You’d much rather paint a vision of hell? Here is
your paintbrush and oils, madman. How about a stipend for absinthe
too? You had to admire the stupidity of the fools. Perhaps some
hallucinatory roots from the forest might suit you too.

An artist had thought of this grim hell
then had been permitted to paint it. It was the permission that I
was taking issue with. That was the big omission because we’re all
constantly having unsettling thoughts. We just don’t have the
courage to do anything with them.

We mercilessly stamp them out in
ourselves. We also mercilessly stamp them out in others when they
have the audacity to not self-censor. Otherwise someone will create
something that will make us all uncomfortable. And we don’t want
that. We prefer to cower in our holes.

However the good news is that the
really dark edges of art yields three destinations, the bughouse,
the big house and the penthouse. The artist, the creator of this
uncomfortable truth, tends to top out at one destination. The
select few go two. And some rare birds like the ones in this
Flemish hell do the revolving door before they finally climb into
the oven.

It’s worth noting that there is a holy
fool or two in every generation. The world permits the holy fool to
become massively rich and live in a castle to keep the flicker of
the arts alive. Also we like to watch the holy fool explode. It’s
highly entertaining to watch the talented explode. Who doesn’t
enjoy a spectacular flameout on the castle level?

The world permits the artist some
monitored freedoms such as standing in Flemish hell. Starving the
artist does not serve anyone as much as we would like to do it. We
would gladly put the fool in a padded room and starve it to death
but you’ve got to take the long view. It’s the elite down the
hereditary line that need their vicarious thrill. We don’t want to
starve them of that.

They’re the rightful recipients of this
art. We want them to exercise that right, that’s right. The foolish
amount of money that they pay to procure all this misery is a form
of art too. It makes the artist in the grave shudder. Or laugh. You
pick.

Really hellish art is often made at the
expense of the life of the creator. Or the life within is so
damaged that creating really hellish art is all that it can do. The
creator is a pariah either way. It doesn’t even really have a
gender because nobody likes it. It’s just an unpleasant thing to be
around for all parties included including the artist itself. It’s
the output of this unsavory character that must be persevered and
honored. Not the pariah itself. We throw it out like a bag of
garbage in some ashcan of an atoll on the emerald ocean.

Were these bodies in Flemish hell the
corpses of the creators of art? Was I beginning to see a violent
symmetry here? Were the bodies a body of work too?

Chapter

The horror that the artist produced,
the art of Flemish hell, was someday going to be ghastly expensive
if we could cart it out of here. It was going to adorn the walls of
the future elite. Perhaps sit on their bookshelves in the form of
books too. Why not scribble a bit on those ghastly
corpses?

We permit certain fools the luxury of
art. Or we just can’t make them stop short of killing them which we
sometimes do. The artists have got to go into the ashcan of an
atoll in the emerald ocean periodically too. Authoritarianism
demands it. It’s very strict that authoritarianism.

It’s enough to make you believe in
religion because it’s all predestine. Really hellish art goes
straight to the top. It goes straight into the hearts and minds of
people too. It will also go the distance. Longevity is the ticket.
Bury all the critics, literally. Step aside pallbearer there is a
novel here to defecate on the deceased literary critic. It claims
that it won. It’s gloating too.

Punishing art is going to gaze into its
owner’s eyes way down the line. There is nothing to stop it. The
competition is nonexistent. Peering into those greedy eyes of the
future is a given. Those eyes of the future squinting into this
Flemish hell are as grim as the eyes of the creator. I could attest
to it because they were mine.

My eyes were just a different type of
grim that this world had awarded. I was still standing here. And it
was going to keep on awarding me because I wasn’t quitting. The
truly hideous thing was that this Flemish hell wasn’t going to let
me go. I didn’t want it too either. I might have cringed and cried
along the way but I refused to let it go now because of how far I
had traveled to get it. You don’t put that horse to bed cold and
not shoot it. It gets up hot for revenge. Time to get bucked off,
cowboy baby.

Was this the last stop on the railroad?
Where the train jumped the track and went screaming off into the
hills? I was one the glorious ticket holders. Hell had taken me
into its warm embrace. There was no question about that. How are
you enjoying the destination? Don’t blame the keeper because the
keeper is you. You turned up the heat.

However there was that cold handshake
to contend with. It was a more pressing matter because it was
extended and waiting. It had kept me waiting and now I was keeping
it waiting a bit. I had to seize that hand of the dead before it
skipped a generation.

That cold hand formed a deadly chain
back to the dawn of writing. It was warmly extended to me, or at
least that’s what it looked like. It was hard to tell because it
wasn’t real. Figments of fevered imaginations are hard to read
especially when it’s your imagination. You lose perspective a bit
as it were. No matter. What’s a delusion at this point?

I had certitude. A human chain of dead
hands went through corpse after corpse on that killing field in
Flemish hell until it terminated in the original bloody hand. I
thought that I could see that suicide over the horizon. It was
waving at me to come hither.

I can’t say that it is a pleasure to
meet you. Frankly, I didn’t know that I was seeking you. You snuck
up on me unannounced, my slit wrist. However I am sorry to
disappoint because I can’t say that I’m afraid of you. On the
contrary, my suicide friend, you should be afraid of me. I have
actually come here to kill you. It’s lights out for you, suicide
hand.

You’re just another terror in the night
that I can easily dismiss. You’ve haunted me too many times before.
You will have to beg for that handshake now. Plead for my
forgiveness for keeping me waiting.

That heartless cunning that other
people might mistake for wiliness or Coyote wasn’t either. It was
success. I had bested witchcraft at its own grim game. However it
wasn’t an honorific. Crypt Island, the painting that I was
currently standing in, as well as the curator of, had pulled a fast
one. This painting owned me. Not the other way around. There was no
question about it. It had bought me. And it played for keeps. So I
had finally been purchased off a block and this is what bought me?
Perhaps those fables about the devil and the crossroads were more
than tall tales.

But where precisely was this Flemish
hell located in this unpleasant universe of witchcraft? Perhaps
tackle that slippery cat, geography. Locate yourself on a map.
Worry about the theoretical underpinnings, at a later time, from a
safe distance of centuries if at all possible. That happened to me
more than four centuries ago. You can’t possibly be referring to
that little mental collapse. I’ve put that in my rearview. In the
parlance of the mental health community, I’ve moved on. You should
move on too before I do it for you too. I’m dangerous like that.
Cats scratch. It’s the only residual piece of insanity that I’ve
hung on to. I’m sure that you can understand as I put this claw
into you. Why meow around if you’re not scratchy too? Put the
needle on the record.

I glanced around. I couldn’t entirely
visualize the end of this world but I sensed that there was wood
out there. There was wood over the horizon. It made perfect sense.
Why wouldn’t Flemish hell have a wooden horizon? It needed a frame
around it. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a painting. It would infiltrate
all parts of our lives and we would all go insane. It wouldn’t be
art. It would be real. We’d be living inside someone else’s
delusions instead of our own.

It was hard to draw the distinction
between delusions at this particular moment but the frame was out
there. There was no getting around that. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a
painting. It would be something too horrible. The mind would revolt
at the concept. Irretrievable madness would have already taken
hold. I laughed at witchcraft. Trickery and jokes, I thought. You
don’t fool me.

This acceptable level of madness was a
very good sign. It was a madness that you could work with. It was
only mildly unreasonable. Fevered at times but that was to be
expected. You couldn’t expect your madness to not misbehave a bit.
Scamper like a squirrel on a telephone wire. Otherwise it wouldn’t
be madness. It would be something that wasn’t worth qualifying. The
madman must be bugged out because if he’s not he’s just an ordinary
man after all. Freak out moon age daydreamer. Freak out. Then keep
on freaking out. You’re not a moon age daydreamer otherwise. You’re
just a daydreamer without a freaking moon. And we aren’t paying for
that.

There was definitely a wooden frame
around me. My madness couldn’t deny it. I could smell it. I could
feel it too. Wood was giving off its wooden vibrations. That faint
odor was definitely wood. There was a box around me. This was a
very good sign.

Was this the coffin room on Coffin
Island? Was this the waiting room for the witches that were waiting
to enter the coffin room? How to die here and get to the next
death? Or live and simply get out of here?