Maniacs in The Fourth Dimension (11 page)

''I guess that not only
herbivores come here.''

''Tyrannosaur, probably, did this'', said Lempo.

''It's that guy from the
park!'', said Emily: ''The one that absorbed the tulip's energy, he
had red 'allstars', remember?''

Shit, she's right.

''It is him.''

I did not need to see this.

''We should bury the remains.
It's the only thing we can do for him now.''

''With
what?!'', Lempo disagreed: ''We can't waste time, Cleit, especially
not here, where it's dangerous, or we'll finish like him. It means
nothing to him anyway, he's dead.''

''Lempo's right'', said
Emily.

''We agreed we're coming here to
explore.''

''Well, that kinda loses
importance when you find severed half of a man. We have to go on,
at least to the level nine, we can't go back until we get there,
and gain the ability of multidimensionality. We need to follow
Laslo.''

''And where is he?''

''On the next level, where else
would we follow him?''

''How the
fuck would I know, he might of gone home.''

''He didn't. He ascended to the
next level by killing a dinosaur. We need to do the same, now,
without hesitation. Those iguanodons are a gift from the sky for
us, and we need to take it.''

''You would
kill a creature that did nothing wrong to you?''

''And what have those
jellyfishes done to us?''

''Jellyfishes don't have
eyes!''

''Cleit is
right'', said Jove, praise Jesus, he sided with me: ''We should go
to the city, spread around and each of us should look for a big
black gwangi. If we survive encounter with him, we'll gain a
mammoth amount of energy, and we just might go directly to the
ninth level.''

Tension. Lempo spoke first.

''OK. We
should go separate ways, then.''

''If I
succeed, I'll go back for the others, from the convention, they
will not make it without help.''

Lempo left
first. Emily stared at me. She opened her mouth like she wants to
say something to me, but she didn't, and she walked away
too.

''Strange
girl. She told me, back there on the rooftop, how she never smiles,
because she doesn't know how. She told me how she practiced smiling
in front of the mirror, and that every smile she made, seemed fake
to her. But, you already know that, 'cause you've been there the
whole time, haven't you?''

''I couldn't help myself. If
it's any comfort to you, who knows what else was watching from some
higher dimension.''

I laughed. His brain works in
mysterious ways.

''We should do something about
that corpse, Jove. If we just leave it there, it's bad fuckin'
karma, man.''

''We can get
some shovels on our way back here, or we can take some gasoline and
burn the remains. That is, if we survive, of course.''

Chapter twenty seven

Live in
PCC park

I see him, but not now, I behold
him, but not near, a star will come out of Jacob, a scepter will
rise out of Israel, He will crush the foreheads of Moab, the skulls
of all the people of Sheth, the virgin will conceive and give birth
to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, fire…

''Fire…''

Fire, God of
Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers and of
scholars...

''Certainty,
joy, peace…''

''Are you okay?''

''Sweet and
total renunciation, total submission…''

''Calm down…''

''DON'T LAY YOUR HAND ON
ME!''

''JESUS CHRIST! MY EYES!''

I'm sorry…

''I'm sorry…''

I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,
I'm…

Chapter twenty eight

''Cleit!
Stop
writhing, Cleit, move your hands,
let me see.''

''IT HURTS, MY FACE IS FUCKIN'
BURNING!''

''There's nothing on your face,
man, it looks normal, Cleit, look at me man.''

''I can't Jove, I can't see
anything, all is black, she fried my fuckin' eyes in my fuckin'
skull!''

I couldn't let his arms, or he
would scratch his eyes out.

''She didn't,
Cleit, your eyes look fine, it's probably temporary, shock, it will
pass. I will let go your arms, but you have to stop digging your
fingers in your eyes.''

''Where is
she? The girl that blasted the bolt to my face, where is
everybody?''

''She ran into the woods, they
went after her.''

''Go, go
after them! You can let go of me, go see what's happening with
them!''

I released
his hands. He gripped one with the other. Thank god.

''The moment I return, I'm
taking you to hospital!''

''Okay. Run, Jove.''

I can hear
them. Now, I see them. Oh, fuck no. She threw the canister out of
her hands, she's dripping wet with gasoline.

''NO!'', I screamed at her.

''What's her name?'', I asked
the guy I saw her with before, but he didn't register me.

I slapped the back of his head,
too hard, he looked at me with pain on his face.

''What's her NAME?!''

''Alice.''

''Alice! Alice, look at
me!''

She did.

''Don't do
this, Alice. I will make all this disappear, I will take you home,
to sweet security of your home, right now, this moment, you just
need to give me your hand.''

I reached my hand towards
her.

''Just take my hand, close your
eyes and you will be back in the world you know and love. Please,
Alice. This is not the way.''

I took her hand. She spoke.

''You believe
what you like to. Your eyes see what you want to see, and your ears
hear what you want to hear, not what's really there.''

She turned
her head away, closed her eyes and constricted her lips, like she's
awating a blow to her face.

''No.''

No.

Chapter twenty nine

Cleit predicts his own death and other
stories


Jove says
that we're in the Poplar-Ararat's. Hospital. I wouldn't know, I'm
blind. Doctor doesn't believe that bolt hit my eyes. She says that
my pupils are reacting to light, and I have begin seeing shapes,
she says that's a good sign, that my sight is restoring. She put
some ointment in my eyes and covered them with gauze. Now, I don't
see even those murky shapes. I'm sitting on the hospital
bed.

Jove says
that that girl that did this to me, Alice is her name according to
Jove, burned herself to death, in front of Jove's naked eyes. He's
not very chatty, I had to draw informations out of him. People
cried. Kristen attacked Alice's boyfriend for what happened,
blaming him for ignoring the signs of her mental meltdown. Alice
was a very religious person and she didn't take all this very well.
That's all I managed to get out of Jove.

I'm the one that brought her
there, and her meltdown, I brought them all there. Without me, they
would all be staring at, or throwing junk at the medusas. Her death
is on my hands. I must pay for it.

''Jove! Are you here?!''

''I'm here, man, don't yell,
we're not alone, people are sleeping.''

''Where are you?''

He touched my hand, I gripped
his and pulled him towards me.

''Listen to me, Jove. You have
to snap out of your condition, because there will be more death. I
have to die for what happened to that girl, her death is on my
hands, I brought her there, I've put the fire in her hands. Death
for death, it's the way karma flips.''

''Stop saying
that, you didn't do this to her. Fault is not yours. And you're not
the only one losing it, man!''

X X X

''Jove, are you there?''

''I'm here.''

''What's the doc like? On the
scale?''

''Oh, she's good. An eight.
Older gal, but good.''

''I knew it.
Her voice is a ten. Brunette?''

''Yeah. What,
you have the sixth sense, now?''

''What famous chick does she
remind of?''

''I don't know… Maybe, Lena
Olin.''

''Sweet
Jesus! When she comes back, I'll tell her that the bolt also hit my
genitals, and that she needs to rub that ointment on
them.''

''Sure, do that.''

''Wait a sec.
Are you fucking with me? A blind man? She's not some two hundred
and twenty pounds ballooner with the face of Jack Nicholson?! Is
she?!''

''Bwahahah!
You'll have to wait and see for yourself. Bwahahah!''

X X X

''I have an
idea. We should catch some smaller gwangi, small enough to fit in
the toilet bowl, take it back to our world, and close it in the
toilet bowl at your place's.
Then, when
Isaac is around, we'll turn on MTV. As soon as he sees one of those
scrawny ass bitches doing their thang, he'll get a boner, and run
in the bathroom to jerk off. He'll lift the lid of the toilet bowl,
and gwangi will spring at him. Bwahah! It's gonna be
hilarious.''

''That's some
straight youtube material, man. It has to be immortalized with
camera. I'll fix the camera above the doors, so it can catch the
whole thing. First, I have to get my camera back from Booboo, I
gave it to him. We have to think of some good title for the video,
before we put it on youtube. How about… Squeezing the
lizard?''

Chapter thirty

Listen to this. I googled it
out.

’’
But in each heaven I changed my form," says he, "in
accordance with the form of those who were in each heaven, that I
might escape the notice of my angelic powers and come down to the
Thought, who is none other than her who is also called Prunikos and
Holy Ghost, through whom I created the angels, while the angels
created the world and men.’’

Epiphanius of
Salamis' writing. It's one of the things I found when I typed
'Simon the Magus' in the browser of my phone. This Simon is a
pseudo-historical figure from biblical times, according to most
stories, a Samaritan, and a great sorcerer. Tradition has Simon
levitating in Roman Forum, before Peter, Paul, and Nero, to
convince them that he's a prophet, messiah, or something like that.
That's why I remembered him, because of levitation, Abraxas said
that the last two things from
our world that will disappear
in the very distant dimensions, are gravity and time.

Tradition also list Simon as the
first Gnostic.
'
History of
Gnosticism
'
is a course I attended,
that’s where I first heard of Simon. If you’re not into religion,
and you
'
re not familiar with with the
term
'G
nosticism
'
, I’ll sum it up for you as mix of Christianity,
oriental religions, and teachings of Pythagoras and Plato. Weird
syncretic systems of beliefs. They still make a-hell-lot-more-sense
than L. Ron.

Anyway, Simon the Sorcerer fits
just nicely in the world of
'
365
heavens
'
, and judging by that excerpt
above, he
'
s not only multidimensional,
but
'
alldimensional
'
. I would share my discovery with Hubert, but
beside the fact that he probably read it before, he
'
s asleep in the chair. He
'
s pretty sauced. But, I can imagine what would he
say to this passage, he
'
d say that
it
'
s only one of many things from old
literature about Gnosticism that inspired the world of
'
365 heavens
'
, that exists
only on paper.

Myself, personally,
don
'
t know what to think.

There
'
s another interesting thing I found, googling about
Simon.
A famous and powerful druid from Irish
legends, I don't remember his name, but I can google it out if need
be, is said to be the student of Simon. Another druid is also a
hero of '365 heavens'. Coincidence? Or, just another inspiration
for the world that exist only on paper? It was said that druids
were the excuse for Roman conquering of the Celtic world, they
allegedly practiced human sacrifices, practice that disgusted
Romans. So, Romans kept conquering to exterminate the druids, but
nowhere is written that they actually ever found any of them.
Romans saw druids in a way similar we today see the Masons, or some
other secret group. It was written that the druids shared their
secret knowledge only orally, hidden in forests and caves, and that
it took up to twenty years of learning to become one. No piece of
information can be confirmed about the druids, they remain the
stuff of legends. Now, I have to ask myself, could the secret
knowledge of the druids be their access to other worlds?